David Samuel Levinson is the author of the forthcoming novel Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence (Algonquin Books) as well as the acclaimed story collection Most of Us Are Here Against Our Will (Viking UK). He has published or has forthcoming stories and poems in the New Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, the Toronto Quarterly, West Branch, and the Brooklyn Review. His story “Gut Renovation” appears in the summer 2010 issue of Prairie Schooner. Marianne Kunkel interviews him about his work:
MK: “Gut Renovation” examines in poignant detail the irreparably broken friendship between two men. Compared to the closeness that is often assumed about female friendships, intimate male friendships seem rare in American society, and consequently not written about nearly enough. What drew you to elaborating on male friendship and what challenges, if any, came up in writing about it?
DSL: This is actually a very interesting and pertinent question and I think I'll start backward and work my way forward in answering it. In any story I set out to write, I'm always thinking about the challenges the story itself brings with it. In “Gut Renovation,” the challenge was to present a fairly unlikeable narrator, in my opinion, and give him grace, empathy and compassion. It was to present him with all of his foibles and in all of his nakedness and peel away that layer of defense, the protective covering that makes him who he is to get at that which makes him who he isn't. He's not a mean guy, he's just misguided. Misguided men—this seems to be a theme cropping up in a lot of my fiction these days. I love them. There's nothing more satisfying to me than creating a character who wants A but ends up with K and has no idea how to go about getting A back—Ed wants his friendship with Faisal back, but instead he gets Caitlin, which means he'll never get Faisal back. On the other hand, Faisal wants his things back, but, well, I suppose you'll just have to read the story to find out what Faisal never gets back. Vonnegut said to give your characters a want, even if it's only a glass of water. I think he's right. But I also think that you need to give your characters something more, an abstract want—i.e., love, liberation, enslavement, serenity, friendship—and a concrete want–i.e., Vonnegut's glass of water. One want moves the story forward, the other deepens the characters' motivations. Why does he want that particular glass of water from that particular person? What drives him, beyond thirst, to ask for the glass of water? He might not even want the water, but rather to watch the other character pour it for him. That glass of water must mean something beyond what it is, like the meeting of two men, once friends, must mean something beyond the story's immediate context.
Friendship, male friendship, then is nothing more than a vehicle for me to explore the subtext of desire, that which two men, gay or straight, might never be able to say to each other. Years ago, I read Junot Diaz's story “Drown” and was blown away by it. As far as I knew, Diaz was gay, because, I thought, only a gay guy could write with such eloquence about that kind of desire. Turns out Diaz is straight and that I was simply making the mistake many readers seem to make—equating the writer with his characters. I am not Ed and I am not Faisal, but I am the glue that holds them together. I am also the hammer than breaks them apart. In my life, I have been Ed and I have been Faisal. This story is simply me trying to work out that dynamic, what can go wrong when two men fall out of love with each other.
For a story of its length, “Gut Renovation” features quite a lot of different living spaces—the four-story brownstone, an East Village apartment, a thatched-roof childhood home and others. Like the characters in the story, you reside in New York; what does the urban home represent to you in your writing? Are there writers who have written about New York and its landscape in a way that particularly resonates with you?
I lived in NYC for over twenty years, but since the publication of “Gut Renovation,” I have moved to Berlin. I just finished a story that I set here, in Berlin, which I almost never do; e.g., set a story where I'm living. I find that I usually need a whole lot of distance from the place I'm writing about. But sometimes the place dictates the story and vice versa. Having grown up in the suburbs of San Antonio, I was always fascinated by cities, by East Coast cities in particular. There was a history to them, an otherworldliness, that did not exist in
I don't think there's been a writer since Edith Wharton who's written about NYC with such fascination and devotion. Sure, people write about the city all the time, but not with the same humility and love that Wharton did. In Wharton, the city was a character as well, inexorable, maddening, ruthless. She knew it better than anyone, it seems, at least the part of it that was sealed off from me. Perhaps this is why I like to write about NYC—it's just as mysterious to me as it was the day I arrived in the late 80s.
So much of being a successful writer requires knowing when there is more to say, and when you have said just enough. In your own writing, how do you know when a story is finished? How do you know if it is good?
“Gut Renovation” is actually a rewrite of a story called “How She Built Her House” and looks nothing like the original. I thought HSBHH was finished and was good, but then I took it to a workshop and realized, to my horror and chagrin, that I had stayed much too close to the truth and that because of it, the story was flat. There were some good moments, but overall it stank. This was back in 2005. I'm not sure why, but I got that story out a year or so later, dusted it off, and started from scratch. Sometimes, this is what you have to do. Jill Ciment, a fantastic writer herself and someone I look up to, once told me that a story needs to have an emotional core. HSBHH had no emotional core. I didn't know what the characters wanted, from themselves, from one another. “Gut Renovation” grew out of a desire to understand what these characters wanted and how far they would go to get it.
Once I finished “Gut Renovation,” I knew it was good, because I had a history with it, a sordid history, yes, but a history nonetheless. I could point to what had come before—this sentence, that passage—and see where I'd gone wrong. The new version was vastly different, with different characters, but the setting was the same. I knew it was good because I had some doubts about it. Even today, as I see it in print, I still have some doubts about it. Did I get the right point of view? Did I capture the moment honestly? I know when my drafts are successful. I have a harder time knowing when the final story is. Even getting an acceptance by a magazine or journal does not guarantee a story's success. It just guarantees that you got some of it right. Maybe as writers that's all we can hope for: to get as much of it right as possible.
On your personal website (www.david-levinson.com), music plays. Do you listen to music as you write? If so, what are the top five songs on your playlist? Are there other routines or habits that are a must when you write?
G-d, this question! It's perfect. I'm sitting at my table and there's this gathering going on in the courtyard and all I want to do is go downstairs and pull the plug on the music! When I write, I need quiet, plain and simple. I'm not the kind of writer who can sit at a cafe and get anything done. I'm too distractible, I suppose. But also I believe in the psychic energy of a place and of people and being within too close of a proximity to someone else throws me off. My routine: I get up in the morning, I fix a pot of coffee, I sit down, open my computer and get right back to work. It's the routine that makes writing possible for me. The coffee cup always has to be on my right for easy consumption. The desk or table I'm working at must be free of clutter of any kind. It's just the computer, the mug of coffee, and me. Clean surfaces, because the cleaner the surface the more messy I can make the story. Once I carve out the psychic space, I can't work anywhere else. No matter how hard I try. For a while, I was trying to work in my partner's kitchen, but this didn't go so well. It's HIS kitchen and HIS things, HIS table, HIS chair, HIS electricity. I cannot work with someone else around. It just throws off my game.
In addition to your 2004 short story collection Most of Us Are Here Against Our Will and your forthcoming novel Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence, your short stories and poems have appeared in many high-quality journals. What tips do you have for submitting your work that other creative writers could learn from?
It seems like perseverance wins out, though I have my doubts about this. I've been persevering at writing for fifteen years and I'm still like an overjoyed kid when one of my stories sells. I suppose the only advice I can give is this: In the end, the story has to speak for itself. In other words, whom you know doesn't matter and your cover letter doesn't matter and the fact that your uncle Bob was once best friends with the editor at the New Yorker doesn't matter. All that matters is the writing and whether or not it can find a home on its own. Give it to readers. Make sure it's the cleanest copy in the entire world, free of typos and grammar mistakes. There's nothing worse than reading a story full of misspellings. The cleaner the copy, the better your shot. Send out to as many places as possible, sure. Schmooze to your heart's content, yes. Be ruthless with yourself. First impressions count. Burn a bridge or two for character. You will anyway, whether you want to or not. I think that most younger writers forget (as do I, believe me) that they are not alone in this, that there are people in the world who value what they write, and that it's up to them to find these people. It's taken me a very long time to make peace with the fact that I write the kinds of stories I do. And this is okay. Make peace with your own work. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I believe the world is full of readers and that the right editor comes along unexpectedly. I've never sold a story by knowing someone. I know it happens, it's just never happened to me. Keep your cover letters short and sweet and never ever explain the story you're submitting. This reeks of the amateur. Most important of all, understand that a rejection is just that and that it has no bearing on you as a writer. It simply means that this story has not reached its intended audience yet. Try again. Fail better.
“Gut Renovation” is one of the Summer 2010 issue’s online offerings. Read it in its entirety at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu
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