Dan Pearlman Interview
Dan Pearlman’s fiction began appearing in 1987 in magazines and anthologies such as New England Review, Quarterly West, Amazing Stories, Synergy, and Simulations.
Books of fiction to date include The Best-Known Man in the World & Other Misfits (Aardwolf Press, 2001), a new collection of stories in modes ranging widely from the mad to the magical; Black Flames, a novel (White Pine Press, 1997), a twisted excursion into the Spanish Civil War; and The Final Dream & Other Fictions (Permeable Press, 1995), a book of speculative fictions. In his day job, Pearlman teaches fiction writing at the University of Rhode Island. In the mid-1990s, he founded the Council for the Literature of the Fantastic, an organization devoted to championing literature of the fantastic, whether found under “genre” or “mainstream” labels. Pearlman is also a noted Ezra Pound scholar.
Pearlman’s work has been lauded by writers such as Paul Di Filippo, Jack Dann, and George Zebrowski. My interview with Dan took place via email during the early weeks of November.
—Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer: What makes you angry or emotional?
Daniel Pearlman: What makes me angriest is, in Hamlet’s words, “the insolence of office,” including the hypocrisy, lying, delaying and betraying that people who have power over you (bosses, agents, publishers, etc.) will engage in simply because they are not accountable to anyone or anything—outside their usually vacationing conscience.
Jeff VanderMeer: What do you most fear? And how does that work its way into your fiction?
Daniel Pearlman: I don’t fear death. I fear undergoing a process of mental and physical deterioration that is death-in-life. I knew of a retired old gent, husband of an elderly professor in my current department, who at age 99 was still jogging—and suddenly just keeled over and died. Now that’s a happy man! In all three of my published books, among my numerous dramatis personae, you’ll find an elderly character or so struggling in some weird way against the inevitable.
Jeff VanderMeer: Please describe how you write—do you do long-hand drafts, for example. What is a typical work day like for you?
Daniel Pearlman: Since the late eighties I’ve written directly on the computer—even many of my first notes for stories, and I tend to revise on the computer screen also, even in the case of novels. In fact, the find/replace option makes revising on-screen so much more convenient for long works.
I have notes, sometimes very full notes, for countless stories which I probably will never write. Lately I will not write a story unless I think it a big challenge to my technical and imaginative capacities, so there are many “good” stories I dream up which would doubtless keep me more prolific but which I ultimately judge unworthy of my energies. Typical work day? When I do write, after diddling around for a couple of hours trying to get a first sentence, a first paragraph (that might be my first “day” at a new project), I’ll go each subsequent day for from four to six hours without any major break. When I start each new day I go over the previous session’s “product” and revise, thus getting my head back into the flow of things.
I think that in the earlier years of my writing non-career I was driven to “prove” that I was a true Writer by forcing myself to produce, and occasionally some good stuff would emerge under that regime; but latterly, now that I have confidence in my craft (and, in any case, since I’ve never been under pressure to write fiction to make a living), I do not write under pressure of guilt but rather when an idea occurs to me that I simply can’t resist. I’m not prolific, but I’m extremely selective about what I choose to handle. I now attempt only those subjects that present me with a major challenge, usually a theme or setting or type of character I’ve never dealt with before. After all, if, as a writer, you’re not in it (primarily) for the money, but to get some stuff out there that people will read and even reread for years, decades, eons even (isn’t that the fundamental illusion behind every serious writer’s ambition?), you know that it’s finally the quality that counts, not the word-count.
Interestingly, lots of “professional” writers—whatever that means, presumably those who depend mostly on writing for a living—look down upon us amateurs with an air of superiority. I’m thinking of a guy like Algys Budrys, who expressed himself in that fashion in an essay some years ago. I think, however, that in the history of modern literature, for every major writer who was a full-time pro, you’ll find at least one major writer to match who was an amateur. “They also serve who stand and wait [at tables, etc.].”
