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From the Editors’ Skulls

The Editor's Skull.

 

Interview with William Gillespie, conducted and translated into Croatian by Natalija Grgorinic and Ognjen Raden in 2008. Published in Nova Istra,  a regional literary journal published by the Istrian branch of the Croatian Writers’ Society, in 2010.

 

What is the current position of writers in the US, and how do they, in your opinion, meet the challenges of their role in the American society?

 

The schism between commercial and literary writers widens, with New York publishing houses (increasingly owned by gigantic media conglomerates for whom book publishing is an irrelevant and insufficiently profitable sideline) supporting the former and universities and a very few sources of public funding supporting the latter. Only a handful of writers are acknowledged by both camps--their books sell and yet they are taught in universities. At times, the antagonism between the two sides is severe (and childish) and what gets lost in the rift is readers. In the USA, education is underfunded, increasingly privatized, and, after eight years of an illiterate, rabid presidency, not even valued as part of the American esteem. So as writers, our first challenge is to get people reading and writing. We are not pulling together to address this challenge. We are the three-legged dog trying to kick its own leg.

 

At present, the market seems to be the (almost) exclusive way for authors to reach an audience. Can they (or how do they) (circum)navigate it without compromising their aesthetic or personal integrity?

 

I may not agree with the premise of this question. The market (along with the library network) still provides the primary infrastructure for the exchange of books, but this exchange is detached from market forces. For example, my publishing house Spineless Books, posing as a business in the eyes of the state, loses money printing and selling books, money I get from working numerous irrelevant jobs. As another example, there are so many online used book stores that many good books now cost literally one penny. Increasingly, we use the market's devices to give books to one another under the guise of commerce. Meanwhile, new technology such as affordable page layout software, color printers, and the easy, uniquitous blog, have made the exchange of text easier than ever, perfectly free from market forces, and even, if the author wishes, anonymous. Happily, the answer is yes. The main problem is not losing integrity, it is having integrity in the first place, or even knowing what integrity is and why it might be important.

 

What is your most immediate goal as a poet and a writer and how does it correspond with the time and place you live in?

 

I wish to publish 30 books, some of which I will write. This corresponds to the time in which I live in that my writing is politically sensitive and timely. This corresponds to the place in which I live in that I am nostalgic for the much-derided, unfashionable agricultural plains of central North America (south of Chicago), and even fond of the artistic and (currently retarded) moral potential of my country. This corresponds to neither because I am very stubborn and will probably pursue this goal no matter how irrelevant it may become.

 

Should writers fear politics and ideology (or maybe even political or ideological engagement) and why (or why not)?

 

I often wish more writers would engage politics, but realize I want this only if their politics agree with mine. Conversely, there is something important about the refuge and wilderness of pure imagination, as in the literature of Julio Cortazar or Franz Kafka, or the songs of Syd Barrett or Robyn Hitchcock. My answer is no, because the seemingly apolitical imagination of even the most estranged (or spoiled) artist may contain an intuition of a better world that policy-makers could never reach through the mechanics of politics. Political writing and journalism can effortlessly generate a criticism of the world, but only art is free to generate a desireable world.

 

What changes do you expect (or hope for) in American literature, or literature as such?

 

As the compact disc seems to have revolutionized recorded music by making the vinyl LP even more attractive (instead of obsolete, as was the intention), I expect that all the corporations scratching after a profitable ebook model like pigs scratching after truffles will eventually succeed in creating a wave of bland mass-produced digital literature that will spark a rennaisance of the codex. Books will boast of the quality of the paper they are printed on just as new LPs boast of being pressed on "180 gram vinyl." Once books are in the position to be a novelty, or a retro throwback to a quaint past, they will be appreciated more than they have been for centuries. I believe that literature will resist everything I have complained about in this interview and will prevail with or without people to read and write it.

 

William.

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Skullclutter

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