Fantastic Metropolis

Jeffrey Ford: When did you first decide that you wanted to be a writer?

Paul Witcover: I remember in fifth grade having the epiphany that I could become a poet, and from that point on, I think I always knew that I was going to be a writer. It wasn’t really a decision, more like a recognition about myself.

Jeffrey Ford: Did the fact that your father is a writer influence your choice to also write? Was his vocation ever a hindrance to you pursuing yours? What does he think of your books?

Paul Witcover: My dad’s a journalist who’s published ten or eleven non-fiction books about the American political scene, and one novel. His memoirs, The Making of an Ink-Stained Wretch, are coming out this fall. Obviously, he was a big influence, both positive and negative. Every boy wants nothing more than to be like his dad, but only until he wants nothing less. I remember Saturday mornings when I was a kid, my sisters and I would wake up to the sound of the typewriter keys clacking madly downstairs. Ti-ti-ti-type-type. So from an early age, I understood the work ethic required, and I also had some insight into the publishing process. All that was very helpful.

My dad doesn’t really get my stuff, though he does read it. He can appreciate the writing on the level of craftsmanship, at least sometimes, but he’s not at all into spec fic of any kind, and I think for better or worse you need a certain familiarity with the genre in order to get into my books. My mom was an English teacher and editor, and she was as much or more of an influence, especially in espousing a level of artistic perfection that is impossible to meet but worthy of striving for. She passed away before I could finish Tumbling After, I’m sorry to say. The book is dedicated to both of them.

Jeffrey Ford: Fairy Tales, Nursery Rhymes, Folk Tales, Myths, seem to be lurking in the background of both your novels, Waking Beauty and Tumbling After (Jack and Jill). Even your e-mail address gives a nod to a famous fairy tale. What is it about these archetypal stories that interests you in relation to your own work? When did they become important to you?

Paul Witcover: They’ve always been important to me. One of the first books I remember possessing was the wonderful Greek Myths by the D’Aulaires, a copy of which I still own and treasure. I would leaf through those oversized pages and absorb the illustrations and stories for hours and hours. The last page of that book, which depicts the head from a shattered statue of Zeus blindly contemplating the constellations, struck me as unutterably sad and deeply unfair. I didn’t want the reign of Zeus and the Olympians to end! That was probably the first grudge I consciously carried against grim Jehovah, but not the last. Later, it was the fairy books of Andrew Lang that I devoured, finding in them some of the same captivating magic of the Greek myths. Myths, fairy tales, nursery rhymes: they are primal material, perfect in a way that no considered work of art can ever be. They are spontaneous growths of the human mind and spirit, and that’s why I think I strive for a similar organic development in my own stories; I want them to exfoliate in the manner of the timeless myths and legends, to give some analog of that feeling the reader had when he or she first encountered those old tales. They contain all our past as a species, and, I’m convinced, all our future too.

Jeffrey Ford: Your novel work is so uniquely original, I really want to know what works and writers had the greatest influences on you. A couple of the reviews I read for Tumbling After mentioned Delany, Dick, Crowley. Are any of these guys likely suspects? Who else?

Paul Witcover: Oh boy. Delany, definitely. When I was in high school, he was like a god to me, right up there with Bowie and other members of my personal rock pantheon. Dhalgren was my writing bible for a long time; at Clarion, in 1980, Algis Budrys taught me a valuable lesson by calling me Samuel R. Witcover. I was also really into Phil Dick, and in Tumbling After I wanted to duplicate some of that paranoid atmosphere that he conveys so well, and also the notion of the arbitrariness of reality. I admire Crowley’s work more than I can say, his lucid style and his ability to tap into the mythic source, in which I think he is virtually unrivaled, although Liz Hand gives him a run for his money, in my opinion. Her connection to myth is darker, more dangerous, but also more ecstatic, it seems to me. Apollo and Dionysus. I went to Clarion with Lucius Shepard, and from the first story he submitted, it was clear that he was something special, as his subsequent career has confirmed. It was not only his subject matter but his approach to it that was illuminating for me. I’m an admirer of Michael Moorcock, who I think is vastly underrated as a writer. Mother London is one of the great books of the last century. Gene Wolfe, whose novels have grown more opaque and mysterious even as he strips all ornament from his style. These writers have all been big influences on me, and in some cases still are. Outside the genre, Proust, Nabokov, Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner come to mind. At least, those are the writers whose gravity was the hardest for me to fight free of.