What’s in a Name?
An Interview with D. F. Lewis
Luís Rodrigues: Publishers today seem to prefer novels, each more massive than the previous. Several authors appear to use their short stories merely as stepping stones in order to obtain recognition near publishing houses, until they can sell their longer works. Do you regret the fact there aren’t enough people specialising in short fiction?
D. F. Lewis: Well, yes—simply to give short story editors and publishers more diverse sources to choose from. Meanwhile, publishers, though, have decided, it seems, to publish blockbuster novels for those short-span attentions that have been engendered by other media. I sound paradoxical (and patronising!), but it is easier for many people to concentrate on long novels each occasion they pick it up.
Luís Rodrigues: It does make sense. Do you believe people have an aversion to ideas being thrown at them every ten pages, particularly when they’re not mollycoddled with familiar characters and setting that have to be thoroughly portrayed? Quite often you can find more mind-bombs in a 100-page collection than in an 800-page novel…
D. F. Lewis: Well, I’ve never really thought of it like that, but you make an interesting point. Mind-bombs? What a lovely expression in this context. And, indeed, judging by the reaction I’ve received from readers about the Nemonymous experience and by the way people, perhaps, regard the presentation there as revelatory and giving new angles or easier interconnections between the stories because of the lack of by-lines (and, hopefully, the way I’ve tried to orchestrate them and present them physically), the mind-bombs are more easily assimilated.
Luís Rodrigues: What novels would you consider an exception to this?
D. F. Lewis: Proust! I am currently involved in my second reading of this after 30 years. I had a dream before starting this fresh rite of passage through Proust. There was a house fire and one of the inhabitants escaped rather later than the others by the skin of his teeth. When asked about this, he said he had been in the middle of a sentence by Proust. Actually, there are many novels that I admire: including some by Stephen King, Barbara Vine, John Fowles, A.S. Byatt, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Bowen…
Luís Rodrigues: Last year you announced you’d stop writing and focus solely on Nemonymous. However, you still have some work that remains unpublished, like your two novels Miscreant in Moonstream and Emoss Crack. Any chance we might see those soon?
D. F. Lewis: Emoss Crack and Miscreant in Moonstream are in fact examples of those accretions I’ve mentioned. Gradually in this decade (the noughties?), I’ve lost faith in my own writing. I no longer write it or actively market it. So very little chance, I reckon, in anyone seeing these in the near future. However, over recent years, I’ve collaborated on stories with many people (‘famous’ and unknown), a process which seems to fit in better with a more impersonal credo of fiction creation. Fits in with the ‘Jungian’ approach, too, I guess. And I still collaborate from time to time.
