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Just a guy who sweats novels

By
Jackson Evarts, professor emeritus Humboldt State University

    The following interview with Patrick Fealey was conducted May 13, 2002, in Newport, RI, at 304 Broadway, beginning 3:44 pm. Upper 40s and raining.

    Jackson: A lot of these questions are for the readers more than for me because I’m somewhat familiar with your writing habits. There are a lot of writers and people who want to write who might gain insight and at least motivation from hearing how a writer such as yourself works.

    Fealey: First off, I am not a writer. I am a guy who writes. I am a man, not a thing. The rest of it I agree with, that we can learn and be inspired by others who have done it or are there. I know others have helped me, including Henry Miller, though it’s not going to get you off your ass every morning, or whenever it is you write or propose to. In the end, my view on other writers, their works and their ways, as relating to other up-and-coming writers, is this. If you look around for something and are not finding it, you are it.

    J: you mean style, content, the writer, like that?

    F: Yes. My point is do not look outward with all your confidence in what is there, because the guys you are seeing once looked out and did not see themselves among the selection. Don’t put too much confidence or weight in what is out there. Of course, a hack will, but we’ll leave the hacks out of this for now, those people who read every fucking thing in existence and can’t write, like professors, you know, like you. I’m talking about writers who are finding their way and naturally look in and out and everywhere for help, affirmation, about what they are doing or where they are going. There’s a good level of insecurity in any artist and when starting out, confidence can be kind of low, too low, maybe. Doubts in general are good, but one needs to move. I’m saying that he should not have so much doubt as to be shut down. And if there is anything that is going to bury a guy in despair it’s the canon and The New Yorker. And the rest of them. word happy egotists like Mailer will kill, but terrors like Celine . . . he’ll dare you. But getting back to your question, nobody is going to write like you and you shouldn’t attempt to write like another guy. If you are going through writers and are getting this feeling of dissatisfaction, that your need is not being met, it’s likely that that is the thing in you which needs to come out onto paper. That you are that writer. That’s all. It’s an active approach to the problem and it makes sense, since they are your needs. That said, we are talking here about maybe a dozen living people out there right now with the capability of matching or beating the resident geniuses while changing the nature of the game. Pollock, Miles, Cobain, Rimbaud . . .

    J: Where is writing going?

    F: (laughs)

    J: You know some writers, some good ones.

    F: Yeah. Real ones. We keep a respectful distance. When you work the same turf, it’s tough to admit things. You know. The best writer I know in California, he says he envies my writing ability. I told him I don’t like that word. To me, envy implies separation, conflict, an unease. Nobody can be me. I can’t be anyone else. I told him only you can be yourself.” He’s an ass, but he can write. But that’s where personality comes in. Picasso said ninety-percent of great art is personality, ten-percent talent. That guy is ninety percent talent. There are things he can do which I will never be able to do and I have gotten used to that. It’s the same as being a guitarist who knows a kick-ass guitarist who pulls off amazing riffs and solos that you’ll never do. You have to accept it and go with your own strengths. Nobody can be you. Shit, if I could write like someone, it would be Celine. See, I have had to get over the fact that I am not Celine. I am also not Balzac, nor am I Saul Bellow, thank god. Life is too short to read Saul Bellow. I consider myself one of the most fortunate guys to know these writers through their works, these men. Miler was a man first, a person, which is more than you can say for Wally Lamb. I don’t want to be nasty. But if you are not a genius, you have no business wasting paper. There are plenty of geniuses around already wasting paper. Go get a job cutting down trees or inventing tougher computer keyboards.

    J: Would you say you’re getting more confident about what you do?

    F: Each day is a struggle. When you win more than you lose, you gain confidence. This writing game is played on a clock that’s set in years, not seconds or minutes. Sometimes hundreds of years. The victories have been small. Affirmations have come from people and places I respect, usually indirectly, sometimes with acceptances. The most important victories are at home, you don’t even remember them, the realizations, the words, they’re like injections, firecrackers in your ass. Those keep you going. Sometimes you know when you are in it and that is the most and something you want to keep going. The outside things, they are less frequent, but you remember them better for some reason. Maybe it’s the ego. I remember one time I was introduced by a guitarist to a published novelist in a fucking Oxford and the guitarist says, “This is pat. He’s a real writer.” The Oxford dude stayed away from me the rest of the night. The ninety-percent talent guy was glued to him all night because he needed an agent. What the guitarist said is cool. What’s also cool is when you open up a highly lauded book, you know, national book award, Pulitzer, Nobel, Booker, Starbucks memoirist of the week, and you start reading and before you finish a paragraph you stop, close it, and think, fuck, man, I wrote better when I was 12. Half the people I know who do not consider themselves writers, do better than this.

    J: But isn’t that also somewhat depressing, discouraging? If it’s true?

    F: Fuck you on the second part of your question. But yes, it is discouraging, so far as believing your work will ever get out to people to read. It’s also discouraging financially, because succeeding as a starving artist means that yes, you are alive, but you can hardly travel or buy clothes or even eat out, your health suffers, all of that. I went to the dentist and he said he had to yank 8 teeth. I said fuck! I don’t eat, but I’d like to delude myself! Obviously, I do not own a car and finding a girlfriend is not easy. Hi. I’m sick, but they took away my guns. I’m recovering from hepatitis, but I don’t have AIDS, I have no money . . . I will spend half my waking time ignoring you . . .

    J: It’s your choice.

    F: No. it’s not. Maybe some choose it, but it chose me in fifth grade. I started writing obsessively. The rest of us are possessed. Call it the muse, but I think “muse” is too delicate a word for whatever I’ve got. I have a disease. I don’t have a life. I have this affliction, which really I know is an obligation, a responsibility, a calling.

    J: To what?

    F: I don’t know. Sit around thinking about what I’m not thinking about? Maybe write the Third Testament to The Bible?

    J: Since you mentioned muses. Writer’s block?

    F: Only thing I know about the muse is it doesn’t care about whether you live or not. I got blocked once that I can remember, writing a page one story on deadline. I’d gone out to interview this archaeologist, famous in her field, over in Egypt, London, Harvard here. The problem was by the end of the interview I was in love. She was beautiful in and out and I was late getting back to the office because she made me fucking dinner. So I went back and I’m sitting there and the other reporters notice I have got a sentence after half an hour. They start to laugh at me, say I’d fallen in love. I tried to ignore them, but the truth was I was out of my head. I couldn’t write because I was in love. Five years later we finally had our “summer of love” and we had occasional rendezvous, a correspondence. If a block happens, it is infrequent and I take the day off. Usually if I don’t or can’t get into it, it means I need a rest. Rest is important. I tend to write in shifts, sleep in-between, when I am into a book.

    J: So you would say writing is physically tiring, as well as mentally and emotionally?

    F: Yes, and the emotional and mental side sneaks into your sleep and disrupts it. You are trying to rest your brain and body and the faces and words follow you into darkness.

    J: That is obsessed.

    F: Nobody knows. Obsessed is being able to write a novel in two days. A short novel, but a good novel. I know several people who can do that. I did it on scraps of paper, napkins and a notebook in this café in San Francisco, Que Tal, on Guerrero Street. They thought I was nuts. It must have looked pretentious sitting there for 12 hours, but I had nowhere to go. the woman who owned the joint kept giving me the hairy eyeball. I got to know the chicks who worked there and they kept me fueled with free coffee.

    J: Where’s the book?

    F: I think it is stuck into The Wastrels manuscript, but I think I’m pulling it out and putting it together with some other San Francicso writing from that time, which was a period of two months in late ‘99. It’ll be more solid with the context, but it could stand as a novella. Thing is, writing a novel in two days is not something I could do full-time, not even doing romance novels or porn. Speaking of romance novels, I had to interview this girl I used to work with who published one. She was also a reporter, back in the day. I did the story. She told me about getting her agent and her contacts, etc., She knew I wrote, but she didn’t offer any help. Which is fine. But it’s an interesting attitude.

    J: More opposition.

    F: More true friendship!

    J: Have you considered writing porn?

    F: Rarely.

    J: It’s obvious that you could. You’d make a little money.

    F: I think the only reason I haven’t is time and energy. I suppose I could devote a couple hours, say 3 to 6 am to writing porn. A lot of great writers have done it. Miller, Nin, and Whitman’s publisher was a shady pornographer. If it wasn’t for the poems of manly love, which are beautiful, we might not have Leaves of Grass. Who knows. But yeah, I should look into porn. Which reminds me, I left two first editions of de Sade in San Francico when I split in ’99, couldn’t carry any more weight. My friend, Father O’Brian had to sell them because he was starving on Mission Street. A couple pages of the Marquis are enough, but 1000 pages are a meal.

    J: I already know this about you. You have no respect for books. Is that fair?

    F: Not even my own. I respect some of what’s in them, and some of the writers. But no, I do not cling to them. They are not precious and I do not get caught up in them. I rough them up when I read them and I give them away. I know I can find them again anyhow, if I want. I have sold books, but most of them I have given away or thrown out. I give a lot away. I have three small piles of books here, most of which I acquired in the last year. I go through cycles, I guess. A year ago I was a 33-year-old writer with no books. Whether I read them or not, they go, with few exceptions.

    J: Such as?

    F: Top of my head? Villon. Rimbaud. Baudelaire. I replaced Baudelaire. I let go of Celine and Miller, but they’ll be back. Bukowski is gone and may be back. Blake is back.

    J: All poets. Predominantly romantics.

    F: Yeah. That’s funny. I didn’t appreciate them until later. Now I consider it the most perfect form. Writing so concise, demanding.

    J: Novelists?

    F: You’re not going to let me expound on poetry?

    J: How long will we have to wait for you to become concise?

    F: I believe in free speech.

    J: It appears language is not on your side. The novelists?

    F: I already mentioned two, Celine and Miller. Hemingway was decent, but didn’t last, except for his short stories. That’s all I can come up with for today.

    J: A writer said to me that you seem to ‘sweat novels.’

    F: (laughs) I once added up all the pages and divided it by the years and it turns out I write one finished page a day.

    J: That’s all? But you’re talking to the final draft?

    F: Yeah. Thing is I’ve been writing for a long time, so it looks like I ‘sweat novels’ when the fact of the matter is, I’m slow as hell. I just work a lot.

    J: Places like this allow that.

    F: Low rent is my NEA grant. America takes care of its artists, despite what you think. Soup kitchens, Medicaid.

    J: You just have to be mentally disturbed.

    F: Yes. And willing to lose your family, friends, job, health, social standing, and live like a starving dog in the worse neighborhoods this country has to offer.

    J: It makes sense.

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