On fighting in art and life

Scott McClanahan is the author of Crapalachia, Hill William, The Sarah Book, and Fights! He lives in West Virginia.

In your new book, Fights!, you write about losing your friend and publisher, Giancarlo DiTrapano. What was it like writing about his passing?

Time is like an organism. And like most organisms, it needs to eat in order to continue. What makes time continue is our bodies. It’s sucking the life from us in order for it to carry on.

I wrote this book to meet Gian again. I believe books are little bundles of energy, and that’s why books work. I also believe that there are vortexes that you can enter. For a number of years, I put all of my grief into entering that vortex of the book.

When I was young, I thought I was going to be as famous as, like, Goethe, and little German school children would be reciting my poetry before they started school. That didn’t happen. The megalomania of my youth no longer exists. I kicked out at the world, and the world kicked back. With this book, I’m trying to deal with that fact.

Do you not feel famous?

Oh, no. Not at all.

I feel like you are!

Maybe in our little subculture. But, Madeline, we’re part of a subculture, of a subculture, of a subculture. But maybe that’s true. I have enough weird people that contact me to the extent that I’m going to get a P.O. box. The type of thing that I do, it makes people think they know me.

After writing a book, you’re probably like, “there’s nothing more to say!” Nevertheless, people like me still want to bother you.

I understand that, too. There’s a whole industry of writers talking about writing. I just don’t think that you learn anything from other writers.

There’s a Robert Louis Stevenson quote about the teachers of his past: “I can’t remember a single thing I learned in their classroom, but I remember their spirits.” That’s what lasts. Looking back on the great teachers in my life, I don’t remember anything specific they taught. But my god, their spirits still feel juicy to me.

You also teach. I’m teaching college kids now. Any advice?

When you get in the room with a group of people, and you cannot necessarily control them, but you persuade them to do things that they normally wouldn’t want to do. That’s all you’re doing on the page. You’re taking the reader where you want them to go.

But it’s also like that Mike Tyson quote: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” That’s the classroom. You have all these plans, but you have to just go with it sometimes.

You’ve said publishing is masochistic. Why publish Fights!?

I’m saying goodbye. The best way to say goodbye is to say it in the relationships that I’ve had that are inside of that book, with a book. This is my goodbye to Gian. Everybody else has done their little remembrances. There’s a mythos that’s developed, and it’s not even connected to reality.

I wrote for so long to keep from killing myself. When you start having a life, and other people are connected to that, you can’t kill yourself anymore. At least from my perspective, you can’t, even though I want to, for desperate reasons, some days. It’s no longer an option. I don’t even know if this answer makes sense. But I’m saying goodbye in that book.

I guess books are like small suicides.

They are, aren’t they? There’s this Bart Simpson quote: “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why I enjoyed it. I don’t know why I’ll do it again.” That makes perfect sense to me.

In Fights!, you describe “a tiny history of how writing was made at the beginning of the 21st century […] how a small literature was written in the age of the internet.” What do people misunderstand about this mythologized period?

There was a lot of crap. But with any time, there’s 95 percent crap and five percent that’s interesting. Gian was a part of that five percent that still has resonance. Then, the internet was optimistic. It was a way for you to sell your shit, which is really the only purpose of social media technologies. Whereas now, it feels like the book is a souvenir of your online experience. The book is an afterthought in order to have your Instagrammable moment.

You’ve given iconic reading performances. What makes for a good reading? Nowadays, your performances seem more stripped down.

There would be something kind of pathetic about a 47-year-old man doing the crazy ass shit that he did when he was 30. I felt like Ian Curtis from Joy Division. I felt the spirit. But it’s nice to let the spirit go. The spirit needs to find somebody else. I want to see if I can move you without all of that other crap. Otherwise, you live in the danger of becoming like Carrot Top, a prop performer. You do a reading series right?

Yes. It’s called Late to the Party Press.

I’m so glad you’re doing that.

Thank you. I like being with people in person.

It’s also a way to show yourself. At a reading, the chickens come home to roost. Your work is either connected to who you are, and what’s in your mouth as you’re speaking, or it’s not.

I appreciate how Fights! shows what it’s really like in a long-term relationship, if you’re honest. Did you have reservations about publishing your arguments?

There’s a Machiavelli book called Discourses on Livy, where he writes about how conflict is healthy for a nation-state. Disagreements are where we’re alive. One day I’m going to die, and in those last moments, am I going to be thinking about idealized moments with someone? I’ll be thinking about our fights, when we were at our most animal, which also makes us at our most human. Things are always blowing up. Then you’re trying to put it back together. That’s your history with a person. I know people would say that’s unhealthy, but relationships are a battle of wills.

There’s so much discourse now like: “If he’s not doing this, dump him.”

That shit is so insane. That’s all you do in a relationship. For years, you argue, bicker, and fight. That’s just being with somebody.

What made Gian special as an editor?

He picked great writers. It makes editing really easy when you pick folks that are making something fascinating. He was an excellent hype man. He would tell you what was crap. He would tell you, “this is good, keep doing this.” It was emotional, being conspirators together.

Writers have this cliche of “kill your darlings.” That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. Take out all of the things that you love in your manuscript? You have to battle for what you want, and believe that you were right. Gian believed that he was right. But if he believed that you believed more that you were right? He’d let it stay.

You published Fights! with Chelsea Hodson’s Rose Books. What’s great about independent presses like hers?

Chelsea’s thinking is: If everything is available instantly, and if everything has no value, the only way to create value within the object is by pulling back from that mechanism that’s degrading it each time someone orders it. You want to make what feels homemade and personal with your friends, so that it has some fucking meaning to you.

Indie Lit failed you guys. We didn’t build an infrastructure. We believed in all of the bullshit of “I’m going to get on a big press. My life is going to be changed. They’ll turn my book into a Netflix television series. I’ll have all this wealth.” We failed you because we didn’t make a thing where we didn’t need big publishing’s imploding business model. Don’t sell your ass as soon as you get a little bit of capital. They’re just going to use you up. That’s what they do in those places. They use you up.

How do you self-edit?

I have my chapter ideas, which are stories that you could pull out of the narrative framework. I write a couple of paragraphs. The next day, I go through and I recopy what I have. I write by hand because it slows me down. I do that for two or three days, and then I move on to paragraphs four through six of the story. I just recopy it again and again and again and again. By doing that, you charge the piece you’re making.

Pick the things that are the most personal to you. I never concentrate on ideas. Just things. This is a Germanic language. It’s guttural. Du-dunk, du-dunk, du-dunk, du-dunk. Have that rhythm in your head: “This person did this, and then I did this, and then we did this, and then he did this.” You’ll be better off than if you’re trying to think about what its meaning is. It’s meaningless.