Hurry up. Rainbow Brite is coming on in a
half-hour.
Sure
thing. Your definition of noir?
There's
a David Lee Roth quote from after he left Van Halen and Sammy Hagar took his
place. I'm too lazy to look up the exact wording, but it was something like,
"Classic Van Halen makes you wanna drink, fight and fuck. His new Van
Halen encourages you to drink milk, drive a Nissan, and have a
relationship." That's how I look at noir versus the more respectable
"literary" brand of fiction.
Or
how about this: literary fiction is what they assign in school; noir is the
shit you want to read, the well-worn paperback rolled in your back pocket as
you climb trees to watch the neighborhood cheerleaders change. Only you're 36.
So now you have the cops on your ass. Which sucks. Because you also have an
outstanding warrant. So you got to run. Doesn't let you think right. And when
you think wrong, bad things happen. That's noir. Go read Jim Thompson and back
issues of Thuglit; they're probably
better examples.
You
began in literary fiction and crossed over to noir. Why this and not Sci Fi,
horror, et cetera?
I have nothing against science fiction. But
it's kind of for nerds. And the dude who writes the Ender's Game series is a right-wing fascist. Horror's cool. I mean,
I like Stephen King, who is as good a writer as this place has ever produced. (And
FFO co-editor Tom Pitts swears by his book On
Writing.) Dead Zone is an
All-Time Top 20.
And there's a lot of great writers of that
genre down here in the trenches—Lily Childs and the fine folks over at Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers (where
former FFO editor David Barber now works), but that's the thing; TK 'n' C is a horror AND noir site.
Which makes sense. They're fucking cousins. Both embrace the darker, and you
can have that in sci-fi, too. Add another tit to a mutant hooker. Sorry. Just
saw the Total Recall reboot. Do
yourself a favor. Don't. See Lawless instead.
The second part of your question... I wrote
a piece a while back about going to AWP and the problem with literary fiction.
I can't do it again. I don't write much literary fiction these days. I find
that the purveyors of and houses for that shit tend to be, well, douches. You
can't stereotype with such broad strokes—OK, you can; that's why it's
stereotyping—but I had a bad experience. I read somewhere "AWP is where
middling writers go to feel like rock stars," and after 3 days of that
dance—MFAers trying to cram their collective noses up the pasty, un-toned asses
of middling success—it really turned me off. There's a snobbery in lit fiction
that doesn't seem present in noir.
I've always said the irony of comparing the
two is that while lit fiction writers tend to craft sensitive, flowery verse
about Christmas dinners with dying grandmothers (usually in some foreign country),
in real life its authors often prove less than helpful; whereas noir writers—with
their dead hookers and guns and junk and armed robbery and ex-cons and more
dead hookers, outside of their fiction, they tend to be some of the nicest,
most helpful, supportive mutherfuckers you'll ever meet.
I
missed everything you said after 'add another tit to a mutant hooker'. Yeah, I’ve
heard bad things about the new Total Recall.
Too bad, since the director did Underworld
I and II. I liked those movies and had higher hopes for the reboot. Hollywood is re-doing RoboCop as well. I refuse to see that. You?
Total Recall sucks. It passes the time but adds
nothing to the original, while losing all the campy fun. The new armor suit for
RoboCop looks like they’re trying to
cash in on The Dark Knight. I don’t
have higher hopes. That’s part of my problem. It’s…frustrating…knowing so many
writers, with so many great ideas, while Hollywood and the Big Six continue to
rehash and churn out crap like 50 Shades
of Mommy Porn and A Shore Thing.
But you can’t exactly blame them. They’re in the business of making money, and
that shit, inexplicable as it is, makes money.
Do
you envy my sideburns?
Son,
I could grow a full mustache where I was nine.
I’ll take that as a yes. How have you gotten to write what you
write?
There’s two components to
that, really. How you write, and what you write. Subject matter and voice. Both
are the really the result of the same thing: what you read. You are what you
eat, y’know? My favorite books and authors include everything from Catcher in the Rye to Batman, and I
think you see that reflected in my subject matter. My hardboiled novel, Wake
the Undertaker, which comes out in December (Snubnose), has been described (by
MFA creative director Les Standiford) as “the secret life of Batman.” I like
that. Comic books are hugely influential, as are the classics. War and Peace has turned into punch line.
“What are you writing? War and
Peace? Har Har.” But you know what? It’s
one of the best fucking books you’ll ever read. Wuthering Heights is another one that’s made a profound impression
(although don’t let Needle editor
Steve Weddle hear me say that or I can kiss my chances of getting in his
magazine goodbye; he hates that book). I can’t help it if the novel’s been
taken hostage by a bunch of oversexed teenage vampires. Heathcliff is as dark
and twisted as a hero/villain gets, and I’d place his black heart right at home
in noir.
If I like something, I like
it. I have a friend, for whom I played “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance. He loved
it. Then he asked who the band was, and when I told him, he said, “Oh. Then I
don’t like it anymore.” That shit makes no sense to me. If it speaks to me, it
speaks to me. So even though I classify myself as a “hardboiled” writer, there
are a million parts that make that up. From the early mysteries of (the kids’
series) The Great Brain right on
through to Philip Marlowe.
Then there’s the drugs. There’s
no way around it. I don’t run from it. I don’t want to run from it. I spent a
long time as a street junkie, shooting speed and smack, stealing, getting
arrested, being homeless, and that history, the intimate acquaintance with that
world, is ever-present in my work. Even in a story about three escaped Russian
prisoners (my story “The Meat” in Choice
Cuts) is shaped by that experience. It was well over ten years ago. But when
you live like we did—when you don’t know where you’re going to be sleeping
tonight, or if you’ll eat; when you don’t know whether the abscess on your hand
is going to heal and if they’re going to have to cut off your arm—when you are
literally viewed as a walking disease—you establish a baseline that’s hard to
shake. Which is great to mine for fiction.
 |
| Joe Clifford. |
What parts of Joe wind up in your stuff?
Same as any
writer. It’s what you find interesting, what fascinates you. I’ve always been
drawn to that darker side of life, the night, the SRO hotels and criminal, even
before I became a junkie; hell, that could’ve been part of the reason I become
a junkie in the first place. There’s only a certain kind of person who hears a
Tom Waits song or reads a Bukowski story and is, like, “That’s what I want to
do with my life!” And then takes active steps to make it happen. These are not
normal, well-adjusted people. Though I am better now.
What direction do you see the noir community moving in?
That’s a question for more literary
minded folk. Noir will continue to do what it’s always done: mine the depths of
desperation. It’s a big ol’ well that will never run dry. Suspect people doing
suspect things for suspect gains.
The pool of quality hardboiled
authors today is as deep as it’s ever been. Hilary Davidson. Todd Robinson. Keith
Rawson. Les Edgerton. Frank Bill. I could list off a hundred and fifty names. Most
of them are giving their genius away for free, or damn near next to it. Check
out any of the hardboiled ezines and anthologies, Shotgun Honey to the one (Tom Pitts, Court Merrigan and) I edit, Flash Fiction Offensive/Bareknuckles Pulp (Out
of the Gutter); it’s like being around when Black
Mask was Black Mask. Go to these
sites and check out their blog rolls; go to Spinetingler,
or Crime Factory. You can literally
close your eyes and point, and you will find a great hardboiled writer.
Pimp your stuff and give Tom Pitts a shout-out, please.
Tom Pitts was my running
partner and best friend. We met at a house called Hepatitis Heights on Potrero
Hill in San Francisco in the 1990s. We were as lowdown and worthless a pair of
scumbag junkies as you’d ever find. Except for the part that we were good
friends, and Tom was, and is now, a righteous mutherfucker.
There’s a misnomer in the
recovery community, mostly promoted through AA, that your using buddies aren’t
your real friends. Which is bullshit. Yeah, most using buddies suck. Because
most people suck. Tom was just in my wedding party. When I got sober back in
2001—well, it took a while, but when I popped my head back up in 2004, the
first person I tried to find was Tom. A lot of people die out there, and I
figured there was a good chance he’d died; he probably thought the same of me. But
he pulled himself out.
The funny part is that after
we reconnected, both Tom and I were sober and trying to be writers. And we both
seem to be enjoying some success at the same time. The day Snubnose told me
they were taking my two books, Tom learned they were taking his novella,
Piggyback. And I just finished reading a draft of Tom’s new novel, Hustle,
which is amazing. Read it on practically one sitting. It should punch his
ticket to the big time.
My shit? Choice Cuts is my short story collection (Snubnose), which includes
three stories that originally appeared in Thuglit,
a magazine I pimp endlessly (along with its editor Todd Robinson), because they
were the first place to really embrace my work and what I do. It’s called “Choice
Cuts” because most of the stories have to do with meat, in one way or another,
either in terms of “human life nothing but pieces of,” or the setting being an
actual meat market, or images of slaughterhouses. 16 stories. Hardboiled. Taut
and gritty. And my hot wife is on the cover. You can buy it here
(for less than the cost of a latte).
Wake the Undertaker (Snubnose)
is loosely based on Chet Baker, if Chet Baker had a little more Batman in him, and
was a lounge singer turned jacked-up mob enforcer. It’s about a lounge lizard,
Colin Specter, living in a darker alternative San Francisco who has to avenge
his own disfigurement. Think Gangs of New
York meets Sin City.
And Junkie Love, that’s the
big one. At least the one dearest to my heart. I originally wanted to release
it as a memoir, but decided to put it out as a novel, which frees me up to take
some…creative licenses. Most of the names will be changed (except for Gluehead,
who has given me permission to use his name. Which is cool, ’cause I ain’t
coming up with a better name than Gluehead), but the arc, at least in terms of
what happens to me, remains unaffected. It’s about an unnamed junkie narrator
who leaves rehab with a girl he meets, and goes on a final 7-month
cross-country spree, running from cops, shooting dope, stealing shit, trying to
win his wife back, hoping his mother doesn’t die before he can get back home, all
the while clinging hard to his rock ’n’ roll dreams.
If people could read
just one Joe Clifford story, which would you want it to be?
Junkie Love. It’s…special. Short story? That’s harder. I just
finished one called “Day Tripper” that I think might be the best I’ve ever
written. In Choice Cuts? Hard to say,
Ryan; they’re all so damned good. “Red Pistachios,” “Rags to Riches,” and
“Tripping for Biscuits” are probably my favorites. “Unpublished Manuscript
#36,” which kicks off the collection, is up there, too.
I have to say my
favorite of yours is “A Private Letter to My Crush,” which is, of course, your collected
love letters to me. I realize you won’t let it get published because it’s just
for us, but still. It’s great stuff. If you had a theme song that played every
time you walked into a room, what would it be?
The theme to Rocky.
Or maybe the Imperial Death March. That’s what we used for my last wedding
party entrance.
It’s
been a half-hour. I’ll let you get out of here so you can catch Rainbow Brite.
Thanks for the interview.
And just like that, Joe is
gone. He left the gun and coffee. I finish the coffee, pocket the heater. I'm sure I'll need a drop-gun real soon. We touched on a lot of things, folks. Some ugly things. So, the discussion topics
(including but not limited to, dear readers, get on here and steer things as
well):
1. Somebody name a great
example of suspect people doing suspect things for suspect gains. A story,
something in real life. Don’t care.
2. Somebody name a story
you’ve read that will make a better movie than some nobody director coming
along and raping Total Recall and RoboCop. Please. Like the TR reboot? Fine.
Defend it.
3. This interview shines a
light on Joe Clifford, so I think it’d be great if someone were to give a
shout-out to one of his stories that landed home with them. Here’s mine: "The
Banyan Tree", which you can read here. That story just
picked me up and put me in that car. I smelled the cigarettes, the thick, humid
air in a south Florida rain storm, the whole nine. I got (well, I think I got)
what Joe was doing in a very smooth way. That’s the kind of story that makes me
wish I wrote it.
Next week—we have the
honor of sitting down with Chris F’ing Holm, the man who single-handedly
invented the Urban Fantasy genre. His second novel in his Collector series,
entitled The Wrong Goodbye (Angry Robot), hit shelves on September 25, 2012. Might
want to pick that one up. Stay tuned.
