Joe and I meet in an abandoned warehouse. Early morning. Dirty Oakland sunlight cascades through what’s left of the high, broken windows. It filters down through dust motes circling in the air like buzzards. There’s just a small wood table in the center of the vast space. Joe sits quietly, a coffee steaming snakes into the air. Next to it, a gun is pointed where I’ll be sitting. The first thing I notice isn’t that Joe’s armed, but that he has no pants on.
Well, this is what I signed up for. Let's do this.
Well, this is what I signed up for. Let's do this.
Joe, thanks for meeting me.
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 had higher hopes. They’re
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 when 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 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 FIU's MFA 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 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.
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 Yorks 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. Well, Joe touched on a lot
of 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.
