an interview with Chris Bachelder

Chris Bachelders' book Bear v. Shark came out this last year and won us over. It comes out in paperback next month and it comes with the highest of Hobart recommendations, so you really should pick it up. He also had some very funny reviews of his beard posted over on McSweeneys.

The chapters are written in very commercial-like fashion. Did the concept of the novel originate through the snippets or were they the natural progression of how to convey the grand idea of Bear v. Shark?

I'm not sure that I began with the idea of the mini-chapters, but I very quickly realized that the form and tone of the novel could parody the satirical targets. The short chapters are a naturally comic form, and they gave me the permission and ability to range widely and play. It's a damn good thing they were thematically relevant because it's not like I knew how to do anything else. I had no idea how to write a novel, and these tiny pieces were a way (the only way) I could write the book.

Bear v. Shark is a fun read. It gives the impression that it was fun to write as well. Did some of the chapters grow out of something fun to write?

Many of these chapters were very fun to write. The seven second delay chapter, for instance, was fun. So was Lady v. Cake. I mean, having fun writing is not quite the same thing as having fun at a very fun party. I wasn't dancing in my chair or doing the wave or laughing. I still worked at timing and rhythm and pacing, the same way a writer might work at a sad or poignant scene. But I was having fun, and I was writing with energy and conviction and very little thought of publishing. I'm actually trying to get back to that place right now, the Fun Place. We so often hear that writing is suffering, that it is dreadful, thankless work. And too often it is, but I find that when I'm writing well, I'm having fun and it doesn't feel like work.

In the book, Las Vegas is its own sovereign nation. Do you have any personal Vegas stories for us?

I wish I did. I wish there was something I could write about waking up in some theme-based casino wearing only a feather boa and some poker chips. Alas. I went to Vegas once and I played nickel slots and walked around and took pictures of exploding pirate ships just like all the other honkeys.

Shark Week on the Discovery channel rules! Thoughts?

This "Discovery Channel" you speak of, this is a television network? I've never watched cable television.

Apparently you had written an essay that did not win. Did you expect to win, seeing as how you wrote the book? Were you disappointed that you weren't able to wear the "I won the Bear v. Shark essay contest and you didn't" shirt?

I still can't really talk about this. I get too angry. Curtis's winning essay was completely incoherent. Mine was imaginative and biting. It was humiliating not to win the contest in my own book.

There are several instances where you directly address the reader, and this seems to be a recent trend. What are your thoughts about author interjection and what do you think it conveys to the reader? What was your motivation behind doing this?

I have mixed feelings about this strategy, and right now I feel like I won't do it again. To the extent that it's trendy and clever (and because trendy, not really all that clever), I have misgivings. It's a gimmick and people grow tired of gimmicks. But I do think it has its uses, and not all of them are glib and cheeky (check out the character Richard Powers in Richard Powers' novel Galatea 2.2, for instance, or Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five). One of the things the authorial intrusion does, obviously, is distance readers from the story. This and other metafictional strategies never let readers forget they are reading fiction. But strangely, in a thoroughly metafictional context (in which the reader is relentlessly distanced from the story), authorial intrusion can actually have the opposite effect, and this is what I was trying to do in Bear v. Shark. I was trying to get closer to the reader, to break through the nonsense, to try to indicate that the story, while made up, is important and, well, sad. I used it for humor, but I tried primarly to use it for pathos. Reading Vonnegut, you can always feel the author there, you can see him with his crazy hair and his cigarette, and he's clowning around, but he's deeply sad and he's hurt, and that authorial presence lends gravity to thework. That's what I was after. I wanted "my" presence in the novel to create a sense of urgency and melancholy.

One other issue here is that I feel slightly embarrassed to tell a straight story, and I suspect I'm not alone here. It's a strange stance for a fiction writer, I know, but I can barely stand to write about people talking or walking across a room, BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW I JUST MADE IT UP. It feels ridiculous to try to fool you with my made-up people, so I feel most comfortable owning up to the fiction. I'm the author and these are my characters. I'm trying to cure myself of this, by the way. I'm trying to become more comfortable with story. I don't have this reaction when I read—I'm happy to invest time and emotion into made-up people, so I need to understand that readers will invest in my inventions if I do it well.

It seems that many writers out there feel somewhat awkward writing novels. Maybe this was always out there, but do you think writers today are less sure of themselves? Maybe less egotistical? Or do we just see it manifesting in more obvious ways?

This is a good question. There are many possible answers. One answer of course is that writing a novel is just so hard to do. I can't believe how many people do it well. Perhaps the extraordinary novel is rare, but there are many really good ones. Another answer is that there may be a little more pressure on contemporary writers. This has been said a lot of times lately, but publishing houses seem less inclined these days to stick with a writer over the long haul. Everyone's looking for the big hit, and preferably the big hit by the eighteen-year-old first-time novelist who was raised by pygmies and then worked as a riverboat captain before going to prison. If the book actually is a hit, then there is crippling pressure on the writer to repeat the success. If the book is not a hit, well then there is crippling pressure to write a book that agents, editors, and the public will like. The market sneaks into your study. You don't want to be forgotten. My first novel didn't sell that well in hardback and I've been struggling with a second one, and I know that I've had to work a bit to fight off the panic, the anxiety. I've had good support from my editors, but still I worry that I could fall of the map. I don't think writers today can feel patient and secure that they will be nurtured and supported and developed over a career. It's hard enough to write a good book without worrying about your sales record or your precarious status in the publishing world. This pressure can account for some of the fear and anxiety surrounding novel writing.

pics taken from BloomsburyMagazine.com

Yet another answer has to do with my comments above about being embarrassed by telling stories. A novel usually requires some good old-fashioned narrative elements. Plot, for instance. Robbe-Grillet said a few years back that telling a story is now impossible. This is big French overstatement, but I do think it's true that many writers these days are a little sheepish about plot and story. The reasons for this are complicated, but I suspect it may have something to do with the theoretical work in the last century that has worked to deconstruct our big narratives and to cast suspicion on truth statements, moral assertions, overarching systems. (And what is a novel if not an overarching (and inescapably moral) system?) So.

It's also the case, I think, that many really great contemporary writers are voicey, and I think voice-driven fiction wears thin over the course of a novel. It's better suited for the short form. (I'm thinking here of George Saunders, whom I greatly admire.) I can write a funny and potentially poignant ten-page voice-driven story about a guy wandering the aisles of a home improvement warehouse, but it's not going to make for a good novel. In novels, there has to be action and movement. I think a lot of writers (myself included) can create energetic and engaging voices but are less good at traditional methods of storytelling. My sense is that the writers who really know how to tell stories are the ones who stick around. I'm trying to get better. We should not be afraid of plot.

One last point: I'm not sure it's always been the case, but there's a sense now that you're not completely legitimate as a writer until you write a novel. I mean, there's Alice Munro, but there aren't a whole lot of professional short story writers, which is probably not right. What you see is a lot of tremendously gifted short story writers killing themselves to write the novel and gain legitimacy.

We at hobart are huge fans of facial hair and we really dug your first beard. Do you have any hopes for your current beard? Any plans for a second? May we suggest the colonial look?

It's nice to hear because I thought that some people really misunderstood my beard. The reviewer in the Denver paper was particularly nasty. “The heir to a bankrupt tradition”? Ouch. I'm busy at work on my second beard, and I don't want to give away too much, but let me say that people who thought the van dyke was a dead form will be forced to publish some embarrassing retractions.

Interview basics: Favorite authors? What are your writing habits like?

Richard Powers, Padgett Powell, Mary Robison, Joy Williams, George Saunders, Donald Antrim, Donald Barthelme, Barry Hannah, Denis Johnson, Lewis Nordan. DeLillo and Wallace, of course. Recently I've gotten really into Thomas McGuane.

I write around my teaching schedule, usually about five days a week, mornings, about two hours each day. But I could quit any time I want.

The book is somewhat anticlimactic in the end. No clear cut winner, small explosions, minimal loss of life, etc. Was that a technique for the novel or a comment on American social dynamics?

This was perhaps a risky move. It was something of a rug-pulling move, I guess, though I didn't set out to do this. As if to say, “Ha, and you really wanted to know who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark—well the joke's on you, dear reader.” I'm sheepish of big plot (see above) and I sacrificed drama to make a point—the point that it doesn't matter who wins, the point that if you're disappointed then you got sucked in just like everyone else, the point that it's going to happen all over again. But there are inherent contradictions in trying to write an entertaining satire of entertainment. And there are risks in idea fiction. I'm learning that writers should be careful when sacrificing drama.

Give us the Bachelder odds:

Gatorade v. Extra pulp Tropicana O.J.

That pulp means business—I do NOT take the pulp lightly—but I've got to go with Gatorade. Have you tried Starfruit? Riptide Rush? (Your crack research team will no doubt uncover my University of Florida ties.)

Synth Pop v. Death Metal

I'm thinking that beneath all the shouting, the gore, the nihilistic world view, death metal is a real softy. I'm going with synth pop in the upset.

Alabama v. Maine

Here's one I would pay to see. At a neutral site, I've got to go with Alabama, only because the ruddy and well-dressed Mainers might be too self-reliant to form a standing army. But there's no way that I think Alabama could March into Maine and take it. You're looking at some serious guerilla warfare in unfamiliar terrain. Also, there's Maine's three most famous generals: December, January, February.

Larry Fishburne v. Edward Norton

Are these popular cinema stars? Sorry, I'm just not up on pop culture.

The final question: Given a relatively level playing field, who would win in a fight between a Bear and a Shark?

Hobart has it here in the exclusive interview: Shark. Shark, shark, shark.