J.A.T: According to Edward Mullany’s posting on BigOther.com, you created the cover for Pee on Water – can you talk to us a little about how this came about, what was the catalyst for this cover, and how you worked with Publishing Genius on it?
R.B.G: I’ve always been drawn to patterns. In 2005, I had this idea to take Seurat’s painting The Bather and remake it as a huge quilt. I never got around to it. Recently, I made it in Photoshop, using swatches from online fabric stores. It took about 22 hours, but the result was very weird and satisfying. I wanted to do another digital quilt, and searched for a painting with good shapes begging to be covered in novelty fabric. When I showed friends and family the finished Caravaggio, a couple suggested I make it the cover of POW, but it seemed too wild and strange at first. Adam was allowing me to create cover ideas, which I was thankful for. I would send him different options and we would politely debate them. The earliest covers were paintings by my friends from R.I.S.D., the crazily talented painters Aaron Gilbert and Amara Clark. I had created around 40 covers, but me and Adam could still not agree on one. Adam began thinking we should just make the cover text only, but eventually, we settled on the Caravaggio.
J.A.T: Though many don’t put much stake in blurbs (or reject them entirely), I am always drawn to the connections that blurbs make between writers, editors, publishers, etc. – the blurbs for Pee on Water are from the likes of Stanley G. Crawford, Chris Bachelder, Noy Holland, & Giancarlo DiTrapano – how did these blurbs come about? Do you know these writers personally or was this something that Adam Robinson at Publishing Genius facilitated?
R.B.G: I know these writers personally, though Stanley the most recent. Noy and Chris are excellent teachers at Umass-Amherst’s MFA program, and participated in my thesis defensive of POW. I met Gian when he published the story Pee On Water in his all ladies issue of New York Tyrant, and have gotten to hang out with him some fun times since. Stanley taught at Umass this last past semester, and though I didn’t get to take his class, I got to meet him, hear him read, and talk with him and his amazing wife Rose Mary at many local literary events. It was most intimidating to ask him, because he had never read my work before, but I am such a fan of the Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine, that I had to ask him to take a look.
J.A.T: The title story from this collection Pee on Water, which was originally published in New York Tyrant and then recently republished online at We Are Champion, was an honorable mention for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. How did you find out about this and has it stirred any extra interest in your work?
R.B.G: I had no clue it was an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize until you mentioned it in an email to me. I didn’t really believe it, and spent some time Googling, but could not confirm it. Later, when I checked the back of the Pushcart book, I saw it was true and told Giancarlo, who had no idea either (I think). Two literary agencies contacted me after, which excited my parents and flattered me, but I had no novel to show them, and nothing else has happened yet.
J.A.T: There was, I believe, some tension in the decision about this book’s title – you wanted Pee on Water and Adam was pushing for The Totems are Grand (both stories in the collection) – how was this issue eventually rectified and how did the conversation sound (can you let us be a fly on the e-wall between author and publisher / editor)?
R.B.G: Yes, the Pee On Water title has been troubling from before Adam Robinson. At my thesis defense, all three of my advisors advised me strongly against it. For a while, it seemed like people younger than 30 liked it, and people older than 30 did not. For a few weeks I tried to find a title to replace it, but I had been calling the book Pee On Water in my head from the time I first wrote that story, so it was a strong instinct to override. I think Adam felt like it sounded crass. He said when he first saw it was title of my collection, before he had read it, he immediately didn’t want to publish it. He liked the title more after reading the story Pee On Water, but felt people new to my work wouldn’t take it as seriously. He and Blake Butler had a debate about it, which I heard about after, but Adam never made it a big issue. He told me his opinions on it, but said that I had final choice, which made me feel less dramatic.
J.A.T: People including Giancarlo DiTrapano and Adam Robinson have stated that your writing in Pee on Water is something that breaks rules or cannot be done yet is or is a kind of writing that they haven’t seen before – can you address this for us? Do you feel like your writing is breaking rules / conventions or doing things that have not been done in this way before?
R.B.G: One of my main goals while writing is to surprise the reader. I try starting a story one way and having it mutate towards something very different. Or by giving a character a loony, long speech that distracts the reader from the story. Or by having different texts appear within the story. There are a lot of stories out there that do this, but most do not, creating certain trends for fiction that are satisfying to mess with. I have always been interested in things like this, like how in Legend of Zelda (for SNES) there were games inside of the game, or like how Built to Spill (the band) would have bizarre song structures and put a guitar solo after the song, or before the song. I was especially inspired by Cassavetes movies, where characters would suddenly sing for ten minutes, or have repetitive fights. If I don’t know what is going to happen in a story, it feels more like it is happening to me.
J.A.T: If it is possible, can you share with us a phrase or sentence or paragraph that you think best presents Pee on Water and then maybe talk with us a bit about how this excerpt is, for you, the best representation of this forthcoming collection?
R.B.G: “If one could suspend knowledge and judgment, consider Jesus as the kind-hearted high school sweetheart who dies tragically in a car crash (and just two days before graduation)! A dead boyfriend, as we all know, is impossible to “get over,” having committed no crime besides stealing our hearts, etc. Breaking off a relationship with no one breaking it off, this kind of end is very hard to accept, leaving the left one thinking, if only I had driven myself, if only I hadn’t insisted on ice cream, if only the weather had been nicer, or the road had been cleared, or my purse hadn’t been lazily draped over the gear shift, etc. The world wants to meet, to speak with the tragically died-young, the perpetual. There is no old-aged Lennon, no middle-aged Cobain running amuck. To die young is to stay young, to keep everyone wanting to stay young with you, to make them afraid to approach an age you never got to, that you were supposed to get to first.”
This is from my story Iconographic Conventions. It’s a good representation of the collection because it is almost like a gutsy teenage girl creating her own version of history, and many of the stories share her skewed viewpoint. Also, the collection has a lot of ideas in it. Even in a more plot-filled story, the narrative will run for a while, leading up to a point where ideas will speak up, before returning again to the narrative.
J.A. Tyler reviews books and things for Rumble Magazine. He is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press. He is a terminator.