It's a
world that's familiar but totally alien, with a startling array
of new consumer products to dazzle and astound (try a tinned
tiny hammerhead shark, won’t you?). Zanesville literally
begins with a tornado, a potent symbol of the vortex of its
protagonist’s history. The introduction reads like an extended
lead-in to a sci-fi film, the massive scale of a Lucas blockbuster
crossed with the claustrophic foreboding and weirdness of Bowie’s
Labyrinth. Instantly, I was drawn into the story as I
downloaded Clearfather’s history file into my head (or
the story was drawn into me; who can tell?).
This is like bluetooth text transmission—wireless, no big
spikes through the back of one's skull...like in The Matrix.
And this old, historic world Saknussemm paints, that hints of
the absinthe-soaked debaucheries of Baudelaire and dreadful
biblical forebodings, already reeks of the techno-paranoia that
is to follow. This is a world of the putrid stenches that linger
beneath the sanitized vinyl seats of a busy commuter train.
Strange albino children obscured in sedative fogs. Butch pixies.
Cracked lips oozing collagen. Adventures in the Patrick Swayze
Center for Serious Depression. Overnight stays in the Will Smith
Hotel. Flesh and machine unified, bodily secretions and digitized
DNA sequences. This is not a map-on-the-first-page fantasy
novel, these biomechanoids that hang around in derelict factory
precincts aren’t carrying your light sabre; they want to
wear your face. It reminds you that plastic is made out of oil
and oil is made out of dead animals and rotten trees. It’s
an anarchistic spiritual journey, this text, a satirical metamorphosis
of our dystopic 20th century fondness for infomercials and the
latest gadget into a twisted, nightmarish future of drug dependency;
addiction to superficial surgery and bioengineering; a broken
urban landscape littered with the remnants of an exhausted consumerist
ideology; a slapped stick insect leaking its green guts onto
grandma’s favorite lace tablecloth, or a smashed flatscreen
monitor seeping liquid crystals onto an autopsy table.
This book is the Hegelian dialectic manifested; it contains
a threat, and that threat contains its own solution. It's Sleeping
Beauty’s fruit and the Prince’s kiss all rolled into
one easy-to-swallow pill. Kris Saknussemm is a magician directing
a film inside of your head. They say a picture paints a thousand
words; I’d like to see a thousand words from Zanesville
made into a picture. The character Clearfather, ex-porn star
turned cyberwarrior against the omnipresent technofeudal overlord
the Vitessa Corporation, is enigmatic, loveable, charismatic
and prone to playing with language in a highbrow intellectual
way but can suddenly slide into slovenly rhymes such as “Old
Mrs. Rushcutter had a rough-cut punt. Not a punt-cut rough,
but a rough-cut punt.” The narration from the story’s
author and its protagonists own observations become quite blurred,
almost as if it's Clearfather telling the story, himself, in
a clever, almost idiot savant obsessive manner. Books like this
help one to remember that, in the beginning there was The Word,
and that the word reigns supreme. Characters like Clearfather
will live on in the cybernetic dream.
Saknussemm has shoved his way into the broken line of my favourite
authors. He writes with the mastery of the greats—Baudelaire,
Lautremont, Philip K Dick, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Umberto
Eco, to name but a few. He creates a new version of the old
familiar world, a new fractal of the possible direction in which
we could all slide if this dimension continues as it is. Do
yourself a favor and read Zanesville. Read it three times.
It's been described as brilliant, funny, impressively deliberate
and one of the most original books to appear in a long time;
and I agree with the reviews.
It's not every day I get the ear of a burgeoning great, and
I definitely wanted to ask him some questions. We spent four
hours on the pavement, in the sun, drinking beer. I managed
to ask him the following before coherence left for the evening.
|
| FRAZER:
First up, Kris, after I read your book, I couldn't help but think
of many of my favorite authors [see above]. Do you view such comparisons
as debilitating to an author’s career, or do you find such
comparisons encouraging? |
| |
| SAKNUSSEMM:
We’ve all heard the saying, “You can choose your friends,
but not your family.” Well, the thing that writers do, above
all, is...choose their [families]. They externalize their imaginations
and emotional beings, and they knowingly—or not—reach
out to their antecedents and inspirers. I think the only time
comparisons are debilitating is when an author feels they’re
outright invalid or superficially applied. In this case, you’ve
put me in great company, and I’d love to think my work was
worthy of them. |
| |
| FRAZER:
In several reviews I read of Zanesville, previous to
my having read the book, it was painted as being a satire,
comic, a parody. Personally, while, indeed in part, it was obviously
a satire—you intentionally draw our attention to this in
the beginning, with the giant electronic billboards streaming
AL-WAQI’A STILL A THREAT—I found it contained a warning
about humanity’s current obsession with things like genetic
engineering and physical enhancement via plastic surgery and implants,
the dangers of physiologically addictive entertainments and artificial
stimulants. But it was also funny and entertaining. So, my question
is: Was it your intention to educate and entertain, or just freak
people out, in general? |
| |
| SAKNUSSEMM:
This may say something disturbing about my psyche, but it would
have been a far freakier work if I’d really let my
creatures loose. I felt I was being very disciplined and restrained.
I hesitate to claim any educational benefit. Authors who consciously
try to educate their audience have usually underestimated their
audience. I’m very happy if the book is entertaining. Entertaining
the people I’m trying to reach is a high calling. As to the
predictive, warning aspect of the story, there are undeniably
things in our society which are scary and which really scare me.
I find the best way to deal with them is through farce. Other
people’s paranoia can be so amusing; it’s only our
own that grates and jars. Zanesville was a way for
me to distance myself from certain fears about our culture and
regain my sense of humor and hopefulness. |
| |
| FRAZER:
There's an ever-present supernatural theme throughout the book;
to your characters, godheads and ritual prayers are commonplace.
I read in your biography that, while working with the guerrilla
theatre group you founded (False Frontier Society), you had a
near fatal fall from scaffolding. Did this experience lead you
into themes of mortality, transcendence and personal longevity
that you explore in Zanesville, or were these things of
interest to you, previously? |
| |
| SAKNUSSEMM:
These themes have always been of interest to me, and indeed the
accident you mention, although unhinging, was only one in a long
series of “ritual enactments”. I’ve always believed
in a secret, invisible world of presences and influences behind
or adjacent to this reality. When I was growing up, my father
was a minister and my mother was a drama teacher and theatre director,
so there was, from the beginning, an underlying element of ritual
magic and “spirit talking” in the family, although neither
of my parents would have acknowledged it as such. My principal
life experience and the inciting incident for this ongoing fascination
actually occurred when I was 9. I was attacked by a sexual predator
along a railroad bridge that lay on the way home from school.
I escaped, but all my school books had to be abandoned. I went
into traumatic shock, living with my grandmother for six weeks
afterward. When I eventually returned to school, I found that
my classmates, who had found my school books torn up along the
tracks, assumed I’d been killed. For the rest of that year
I had an eerie celebrity of having come back from the dead. That
sense of movement between the worlds has never left me. |
| |
| FRAZER:
I believe that there's an important relationship between the scanning/surveillance
technology in Zanesville and the diagnostic quality of
the text as a whole. I get the impression you're a heavy technology
buff. Are you personally interested in the evolution of technology
and the future implications of such things as nanobots, or are
you like a method actor who gets seriously interested in his subject
only while writing about it and then you become an authority on
the subject? |
| |
| SAKNUSSEMM:
As with people like J.G. Ballard, I am extremely curious about
the interplay between technological development, culture and the
individual psyche. Back in the middle of the 19th century, Thoreau
said “Man has become the tool of his tools.” Ever since
I read that, I’ve been interested in trying to understand
the dynamics of this observation, and I’ve been very influenced
by people like the anthropologist Edward T. Hall and his theory
of how our technological “extensions” have redefined
and vastly accelerated human evolution. The whole question is,
I think, the major cultural issue of our time. But I’m not
a technophile and certainly not a techno-fetishist. If anything,
I believe we overvalue, animate and even deify technology,
while forgetting or ignoring some of the really complex and intricate
social mechanisms which define human culture and make technological
advancement possible. |
| |
| FRAZER:
May I pry into your technique? How reliant are you on technology?
Are you one of those writers who uses the latest voice-to-text
technology or do you sit down in the garden, under a shady tree,
with a notebook and a cigarette? Do you work with the smell of
high-density plastics or old typewriter ribbons? |
| |
| SAKNUSSEMM:
I’ve had a bag of mini-cassette tapes and a handheld recorder
for years. 'Never been able to use them. I have to have the keyboard
action, to have those reflex arcs lit up. I use a laptop, now,
which does offer some appreciated mobility, and I carry notebooks
and pens around—but just for notes. For me, working effectively
outside my office would be like a sculptor who welds trying to
do stuff on the run. You can harvest things, reflect on what you’re
doing and get inspiration—but then you have to get back to
the shed. Using a computer just makes sense. Mine’s a cool
silver one with a lovely sensual touch. Her name is Barbara. |
| |
FRAZER:
You're from the United States, originally, and have been living
in Australia for the past 20 years. Although your book uses American
English, I find it very—if you’ll forgive my terminology—European
in its philosophical thematics; it’s post-existential anti-authoritarianism,
like the writings of Guy Debord in The
Society of the Spectacle .
Also, I can't help but think of Nietzsche while reading Zanesville,
his Übermensch seems manifestly Clearfatherish, as does his
Zarathustra. Do you have an affinity toward any particular national
identity, or do you consider yourself a citizen of the world? |
| |
SAKNUSSEMM:
Often, when people hear me speak, they can’t quite pick out
what kind of accent I have or where I’m from. I guess that’s
how I think of myself. Very American in one sense, and not all
in others. I definitely have been heavily influenced by European
writers and thinkers like DeBord and René Girard, the author
of books like Violence
and the Sacred .
There's a profound insularity (if not ignorance) in American culture,
which is only understandable because Americans feel they are the
center of the world, at this point in history. That view concerns
me greatly, so I can’t imagine ever feeling truly “at
home” there, although I confess I also miss it. I think I’ve
come around to being grateful for my distance from American culture,
even though that hasn’t helped my writing career, but I’m
always curious about what sort of outrageousness they’re
going to get up to next. The U.S. is, arguably, the best funded
social experiment on the planet, and I don’t want to miss
anything. |
| |
| FRAZER:
It's obvious, from reading your work and speaking with you, that
you're wide awake to the [global] political situation at present.
What's your take on the current government attitude of implying
that ‘the arts’ are dangerous to the statuts quo and
the implementation of draconian sedition laws. Do you consider
this to be an ominous sign of a further erosion of civil liberties?
|
| |
| SAKNUSSEMM:
Henry Miller once said, “We don’t need more freedoms,
we need bigger ideas.” To me, there’s no question that
there is a concerted program in place, in America, which is designed
to undermine specific freedoms that I feel are very important,
and it’s spreading fast to places like Australia. But sometimes
the civil libertarians worry me as much as the religious fundamentalists
and the political hardliners. Fanaticism and ideology are the
real enemies. And the nullification of common sense that comes
from inter-tribal conflict. In the American state of Florida,
a currently enshrined civil liberty is the right of average citizens
to carry a concealed firearm. I don’t know if I feel good
about that. Or consider the issue of abortion. If you’re
a leftist minded person, to have any reservations at all about
the abortion rights issue’s monolithic importance on the
social agenda is sacrilege. Forget healthcare, education, the
environment or the question of public versus private responsibility—are
you Pro-Choice, yes or no? No one could be more vehemently opposed
to the growing strength of the Christian Right than I am, but
I find it ludicrous and pathetic when singing Christmas carols
is outlawed in public schools and the only song that passes muster
is “Frosty the Snowman”. This is one of the things that
Zanesville is about—the paralysis of reason and goodwill,
the inability to be discerning for fear of discrimination. |
| |
| FRAZER:
I think there are, indeed, vicious a**holes out there trying to
control us, but I’m actually far less worried about their
frontal assaults on personal liberties than I am by the collateral
and peripheral damage of orthodoxy, political correctness, and
the downside of things like computer technology, which offers
so many welcome benefits while having harrowing implications for
the right to privacy. |
| |
| SAKNUSSEMM:
As to any “attack” on the Arts—whether overt or
insidious—I think it’s a blessing. We have far too many
culturally-approved artists supported by grants, comfortable with
low-responsibility teaching positions (that are really, effectively,
grants) or earning significant sums for churning out insipid middle
of the road dreck. I don’t think artists, as individuals,
have any responsibility to be political, moral or socially instructive,
in the least. They do need to have ability, vision and
courage. I think threats of “sedition” are the best
thing that could happen. The sad truth is the Arts, today, are
about as dangerous as whist and lawn bowls. |
| |
| FRAZER:
Considering the previous question, and the climate we're operating
in, here—and if it’s not asking you to jump into the
fire—what's your political persuasion? Are you left of the
fence, right of the fence, or have you built an easy chair on
the fence? |
| |
|
SAKNUSSEMM:
In American terms, I am staunchly left. I believe the current
administration is not only stupid but malignant. The nation’s
foreign policy is a disaster of phallic militarism and commercial
greed. The let-market force- rule/retreat-behind-the-walls-of-wealth
mentality has, along with endemic racism, meant that the public
delivery of healthcare and education is virtually obsolete.
Things ain’t good on any level and those in power are intent
on doing still more and possibly irreparable damage. Of course,
they are merely public stooges for less directly accountable
corporate criminals and witch hunt-hungry special interest groups
who are crazed with a religious sense of mission that is every
bit as terrifying as the most rabid Muslim fundamentalist.
Living in Australia, my views soften considerably, and I think
the situation is genuinely very, very different. I strongly
oppose many of the Federal Government’s policies, but I
think Labor is a shambles of ineptitude and petty squabbling.
The Union movement seems deeply corrupt, and no party is effectively
supporting small business, which is responsible for 75% of employment
in the country. The privatization mania will, no doubt, have
the same negative effect as in the States; and, yet, I see that
there has long been a complacency within the Australian populace,
a dependence on a bureaucratic socialist model of government,
which, in my view, still needs to be prodded awake. As to Australia’s
support of American foreign policy, what real choice is there?
Either party would do the same. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
Or, rather, in for a penny, in for a pound of flesh—and
a cubic ton or two of greenhouse emissions.
|
| |
| FRAZER:
You said, in a letter to me, that it took you many years to get
this book into print, and I applaud Villard [an imprint of Random
House] for doing so. With this in mind, and considering the fact
that [this] is a writers magazine, I have to ask you a writer
type question: Do you have any advice for all the writers out
there who are walking the same path littered with rejection slips
and faith-stealing economic ghosts? Maybe a little advice about
keeping the faith, which often seems to be the hardest
part? |
| |
|
SAKNUSSEMM:
One of the principal characters in Zanesville says, at
one point, “I have time for science, religion and magic.”
I think all three are required to survive as a writer. You mentioned
faith, so let’s take religion first. It’s essential
to have faith not just in yourself but in a higher power or,
more precisely, a higher purpose. For some people, this will
be a traditional divinity. For others, it will be like the Third
Mind that William Burroughs and Brion Gysin wrote of. For still
others, it will be a sense of participating and sharing in a
larger cultural project—telling a portion of the Giant
Story, contributing to the Big Debate. However you think of
it, you have to feel you are not just alone typing in a room.
You are linked. You bring the whole art form alive through your
efforts. The word has to be made flesh continuously. As ego-driven
as the enterprise can often seem to be, it’s really about
communication, connection, and collaboration. Those who lose
themselves will find themselves.
The science is the systematic discipline of defining your audience
and reaching out to them in deliberate, measurable ways. Don’t
show your work to friends or colleagues you know won’t
understand it (although you may well reconsider them as friends
and colleagues). And don’t submit your work to publications
or publishers that are clearly not going to “get”
it. I once submitted a highly experimental novel to a major
New York publisher and—surprise, surprise—they wrote
back! They wrote back and suggested I seek urgent psychiatric
evaluation. We can, if we choose, sabotage ourselves and waste
tremendous amounts of time and energy. Or we can be brutally
honest and build the strongest and most self-sustaining networks
possible, however small. The acid test is this: Which would
you honestly prefer—one reader who really digests
your words, questions your ideas and engages with what you write
or ten people who know your name? Do you want the big display
section in the chain bookstore or would you feel more pride
in seeing someone in a wheelchair, who is dependent on public
transport, get your book out of the library? If you’re
truly honest with yourself about what kind of success you’re
seeking, you’re 100% more likely to achieve it.
As to magic, I mean the ceremonial attempt to reinforce and
project one’s imagination. I set out to write, not
to seek approval or gain recognition and/or income. I wanted
to make a world interesting and whole enough for me to live
in. Of course, contracts, reviews, awards and recognition become
important, but they are really only means to send one’s
imagination rippling further out into the pond. My work space
is filled with icons, images and quotations that strengthen
my inspiration field. I see the whole act as transposing my
Tardis-like environment into the larger world. Above my desk
is this remark from Kafka:
| "If
you have the strength to look at things steadily, without,
as it were, blinking your eyes, you can see much; but if
you relax only once and shut your eyes, everything fades
immediately into obscurity." |
I think, above all else, writers need to protect their sense
of concentration. It’s a hard thing, because you may lose
a lot. I lost a marriage. I lost years and thousands of dollars.
I now celebrate those losses and failures. Unless you are a
culturally sanitized spokesperson angling for grants and approval,
you will be very lonely and wonder what the hell. But
every so often, if you can sustain your focus and suspend your
own disbelief, the magic circuit will be completed and, for
a moment, you will be not just telling a part of the
Story but a character in it. Now all you have to do is
to make that moment last.
|
| |
| FRAZER:
What can we expect next from Clearfather in The Lodemania Testament,
from the brilliant mind of Kris Saknussemm? Is there any thing
you can give away without ruining the surprise? |
| |
|
SAKNUSSEMM:
The next book, which has the working title of Enigmatic Pilot,
takes us back to the beginning of the Lodemania saga, to the
birth of Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd, in the mid 19th century—his
mystical experience with the tornado and the trials and adventures
that both shape my alternate version of America and his life.
His first life.
Readers will have to wait a little longer to find out what happens
to Clearfather and for “all to be revealed”.
|
|
