Album Zutique
A Jeff VanderMeer Interview
Album Zutique (sample story excerpt) is the first of a planned series of pocket books mainly focused on surreal and decadent literature. Jeff VanderMeer will serve as series editor and the editor of the first number. Thereafter, VanderMeer will enlist guest editors to edit subsequent numbers of this series. The emphasis will be on nonfiction as well as fiction. For purposes of continuity, each volume will have the same basic layout, with the typography used as the “cover art” and a different color scheme for each book.
Jeff VanderMeer talks to Claude Lalumière about Album Zutique, in this interview conducted over e-mail during the second half of April 2003.
Claude Lalumière: Can you explain how you came to conceive of developing the Album Zutique series?
Jeff VanderMeer: The Leviathan anthology series I created through the Ministry of Whimsy has gradually become more and more ritualistic and large. By which I mean it’s become something of a Ministry institution. It’s the Ministry’s aircraft carrier. I suddenly wondered if the Ministry needed a sloop as well—something more maneuverable and flexible. I was reading a new translation of Rimbaud’s poetry at the time and came across this idea of the Album Zutique. Album Zutique was an open poetry/prose journal that members of Rimbaud’s writing group wrote in, and apparently left around for passersby to read. The name resonated. Then it was just a matter of branding the series. I chose the small size, the typography-as-art cover approach, and the 200-pages-or-less constraint as a way to both brand the series and make it clearly different from Leviathan. And true to the idea of flexibility, Album Zutique is not bound to be an anthology. It can be a single-author collection of fiction or nonfiction, an anthology of African magic realists, etc. The length—50,000 words or less—makes editing an Album Zutique a much quicker experience. Theoretically, we could deploy an AZ within eight weeks of coming up with that particular number’s theme or idea. Much as we did with AZ#1.
Claude Lalumière: Why now? Are the times conducive to a “surreal & decadent” revival?
Jeff VanderMeer: I would say that the surreal and decadent have permeated the work of many contemporary authors, including such amazing writers as M. John Harrison and Rikki Ducornet. The work of China Miéville is clearly influenced by the surrealists and the decadents. I don’t see this as a revival so much as a cataloguing of material already being published in the mainstream and genre—but concentrating it in one place. I also see it as a way to bring international surrealism/decadence to the attention of U.S. readers.
Claude Lalumière: “Decadence” and “surrealism” are words that come with a lot of baggage and cultural associations. Not everyone means the same thing when they use them. What do you mean by them?
Jeff VanderMeer: I mean specifically the Decadent Movement extant in France and England around 1870 to 1915, and the subsequent Surrealist Movement prevalent initially from the 1920s until World War II. I also include the Chicago Surrealists from the 1960s on, and specific writers, like Angela Carter, who can be seen as one of the first writers to successfully apply surrealist techniques and manifestos to a plot-driven, causal storyline.
Decadent literature influenced the Surrealists, of course. In some ways, you’d have to say the Decadents were more successful writers than the early Surrealists—Breton could be a horrible bore, for example—but that Surrealism has since invaded even television commercials and become somewhat ubiquitous. We just don’t as often see it expressed in fiction without some diluting mechanism in place.
Claude Lalumière: Are there widespread interpretations of these terms—or cultural manifestations of such—that you find hinder your agenda?
Jeff VanderMeer: Not so far. We will, of course, stretch the interpretation of those terms to encompass work on the edges of Surrealism and Decadence. And there’s been some talk of including “magic realism” as a term if it’s necessary to include Borges and his ilk.
Claude Lalumière: What role do surrealism and decadence play within fantastic fiction—both according to your ideals and according to what’s really happening in the publishing arena?
Jeff VanderMeer: Well, as stated before, writers like M. John Harrison, Rikki Ducornet, China Miéville, and others have been influenced by these groups. Some openly seek to extend experiments by Surrealist or Decadent-era writers. Harrison shamelessly (to his credit) stole from the Decadents for his Viriconium cycle. I would have done the same for my Ambergris cycle if I hadn’t come to the Decadents late in the game. A writer like Jeffrey Ford’s surreal streak is what gives his work its uniqueness. He’s become a master of hardwiring that surreal element into works that are otherwise more contemporary or magic realist in origin. So the idea with Album Zutique is not to publish work that apes the original Decadents or Surrealists, but to publish work that builds on that work in some way. You could say it’s just as realistic and commercial an approach as identifying as “fantasy” every text that contains any fantastical element, no matter how diverse or different. In fact, it’s probably a better approach.
Claude Lalumière: How so?
Jeff VanderMeer: It more clearly identifies what makes such works unique and what is, in many cases, the driving force behind them. While I’d prefer all labels be dismantled, at least by pinpointing “Surrealism” and “Decadence” we can place works within the context of specific intellectual and artistic movements, rather than define ourselves by publisher’s labels, which have no intellectual or artistic merit, for the most part.
Claude Lalumière: How did you come to assemble the group of writers that contributed to the first Album Zutique? Which qualities, or range of qualities, were you seeking?
Jeff VanderMeer: Album Zutique #1 was an exercise in speed. I wanted it—from conception to sending it to the printer for advance bound galleys—to be an eight-week process, tops. To that end, the selection method was very unfair—I simply sent emails to those writers whose works had in the past, to my mind, exemplified some aspect of the surreal or decadent and who I had worked with before. From these submissions, I took the ones that worked best together. I was lucky in that several authors had just put the finishing touches on new work that fit the idea. And, a few authors who were wondering exactly where to send that odd surreal story they weren’t so sure would find a place with the usual genre markets.
Claude Lalumière: What are, for you, the essential works of fantastic surrealism & decadence?
Jeff VanderMeer: I think the Decadents were extremely erratic writers. Therefore, I’d recommend the Dedalus series—The Dedalus Book of Decadence, The Second Dedalus Book of Decadence, both edited by Brian Stableford—as well as other books from Dedalus, like The Other Side by Alfred Kubin, Monsieur de Phocas by Jean Lorrain, etc. Dedalus’ fantasy anthologies such as the Dedalus/Ariadne Book of Austrian Fantasy, also include a lot of great Decadent work. The collected poetry of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, etc. There’s some overlap, too—Symbolist writers who also were Decadents, or who were just lucky enough to have critics rescue them from the slightly disreputable “Decadent” label and remake them as Symbolists.
Claude Lalumière: Are there current writers whose work strikes you as especially imbued with the decadent/surreal esthetic?
Jeff VanderMeer: I think Richard Calder and Brendan Connell are two of the foremost writers of Decadent/Surreal fiction today. David Madsen, also published by Dedalus. Rikki Ducornet, Leonora Carrington on the surrealist side. K. J. Bishop is working on a novel that’s very much in that vein. Brian Evenson’s work, on the mainstream side, could not exist without the Decadent tradition. And many others, who are escaping my mind right now…
Claude Lalumière: As a writer and editor of fiction, do you find that writing and editing are activities that feed or hinder each other?
Jeff VanderMeer: As long as I can compartmentalize them, they don’t do each other harm. In terms of what I learn about writing while editing, it’s helpful to the writing. The danger is in letting one enterprise take up all of your time. This is one reason why I will be the series editor, while each of the next AZs have a guest editor. I’ll direct the general direction of the series, but someone else will edit each individual number. The added advantage to that approach is getting some fresh perspectives involved in the creation of the series.
Claude Lalumière: What about writing criticism, which you also do? How does that interact with your writing and your editing?
Jeff VanderMeer: Writing criticism is the easiest type of writing I do. It doesn’t really influence the editing or fiction writing.
Claude Lalumière: Album Zutique #1 is a beautiful object. Is the esthetics of bookcrafting an essential part of this project?
Jeff VanderMeer: The aesthetics of book crafting are always a part of every project I’m involved with. I want the books to look gorgeous. With AZ, this was doubly important since we’re branding an entire series. Unlike Leviathan, where it doesn’t need to look the same every time.
I have to say that Jonathan Edwards did a spectacular job with the cover design, and Garry Nurrish did a wonderful job with the interior layout.
Claude Lalumière: What’s coming up in later volumes of Album Zutique?
Jeff VanderMeer: The next volume will be Rhys Hughes’ A New Universal History of Infamy, completing the Borges project, A Universal History of Infamy. After that, there are several possibilities, including an anthology of translations of contemporary Argentinean fantasists, and much else. It’s just a matter of deciding what to do first.
Album Zutique #1 is available from Night Shade Books.
Copyright © 2003 by Claude Lalumière.
