Interzone #244 Jan - Feb 2013 (23 page)

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer are highly respected editors, and their first publication as proprietors of Cheeky Frawg is sure-footed, from the intriguing cover onwards. The print edition is handsome, the ebook perfectly set up (rarer than it should be, even with major publishers), the introduction ideal, the author’s afterword fascinating. The print version is perhaps slim for its price, so the cheaper ebook may prove attractive for UK readers, but the stories are so intensely emotional that you wouldn’t necessarily want it to be any longer. I spent much of my last holiday reading the much shorter books in the Penguin Mini Moderns series: Barthelme, Calvino, Petrushevskaya, Borges, Jackson, and so on. The remarkable stories of
Jagannath
would be perfectly at home in that company.

The stories in
Jagannath
cover a wide range of subjects and genres. When asked what kind of writer you are, how do you answer? Do you think in terms of genre, and possible markets, when writing?

I usually tell people I’m a writer. It annoys some people who think it’s more important what genre markers my authorship carries rather than what themes or narratives I work with. I don’t consider genre or markets, except when writing commissioned work.

Which of the stories in the collection is closest to your heart, and why?

‘Jagannath’, I think, because it was such an excursion into an alien mind. It really took me to a new level as a writer. I do have a soft spot for ‘Who is Arvid Pekon?’ too, because I feel sorry for all the things I made Arvid go through.

One thing the stories share is an intense emotional quality. Even ‘Aunts’, with barely human characters doing unspeakable things to each other, is unbearably sad. Is it draining to write such emotional stories – and to then return to them again for translation, and publication? How has your relationship with these stories changed over the years?

Readers seem to have a different emotional response to my stories than I do. They’ll tell me a story is sad or creepy, but I don’t have that kind of relationship to my stories. I write them from the inside, immersing in the personalities and atmospheres. Looking at a story from the inside is different than reacting to it as a reader. ‘Aunts’ wasn’t sad or draining to write because I had the perspective of creatures with a different emotional register. Maybe it’s this contrast between the characters and the reader that creates sadness.

Returning to these stories for editing and publication is fun, especially with the older ones. It’s interesting to see what themes I’ve picked up over the years and how my technique has changed.

Elizabeth Hand has written a lovely introduction to the book, and talks of how the book surprised her with its “strangeness”. Similarly, Ursula K. Le Guin has “never read anything like
Jagannath
”. Why do you think that is?

It’s of course insanely flattering to hear this from two of my heroes, and two writers who have themselves gone deep into the strange and experimental as writers. But you’d have to ask them, because I’ve no idea and I wouldn’t dare to speculate.

Jagannath
is the first title from Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s new imprint, Cheeky Frawg Books. How did that come about, and what was it like working with them? Have you had the opportunity to preview any of their other forthcoming books?

Jeff and Ann knew of my Swedish story collection and asked to see some translations from it, and liked them enough to want to see the rest. We added a bunch of new stories and that was that.

Working with the VanderMeers is a dream. They’re both completely dedicated to their mission and aren’t afraid of taking risks in getting new and interesting fiction out there. I don’t know anyone who works as hard as they do. They’re both excellent text editors – they can see exactly what you’re trying to do with a text and are great at helping a story to reach its full potential. They’ve also been very patient with my English boo-boos, hehe. The rest of the team working on
Jagannath
have also been a blessing: Adam Mills, Teri Goulding and Jeremy Zerfoss, all working their asses off to make it happen.

I’ve heard about the stuff that’s coming out soon, but I haven’t read much of it. Very excited about the Amos Tutuola collection though, he’s an old favourite.

You attended the Clarion writers’ workshop in 2010, and that appears very prominently in your bio. Why was the course so important to you, and what effect did it have upon your work?

Clarion was tremendously important because it was my way into writing in English. I learned a lot about myself as a writer and made huge leaps in both storytelling and English usage. I drafted ‘Cloudberry Jam’, ‘Reindeer Mountain’ and ‘Jagannath’ at Clarion, and I consider them among my best stories to date.

I also learned a ton about the industry and made friends for life. Our class still keep in touch and function as a support network for each other. We have a lovely reverse-psychology contest going to encourage each other to submit stories: whoever racks up the most rejections of the year wins. It’s been very effective – our class has been incredibly successful post-graduation.

Philip K. Dick used to have a much larger presence in French bookshops than in English ones. Are there any fantasy and science fiction writers who do particularly – or surprisingly – well in Sweden?

Foreign authors are huge in Sweden because our indigenous production of fantastic fiction is small. Interestingly, translations from other languages than English are on the rise. Readers have switched into reading in English because there was such a dearth of translations before, so translating from English to Swedish is not as lucrative now. Some popular names are Dmitrij Gluchovskij and Sergei Lukyanenko (Russia), Andrzej Sapkowski (Poland), Cornelia Funke (Germany) and Maria Turtschaninoff (Finland). Some of these are relatively unknown in English, as I understand it.

Which writer have you read more than any other? Who is your greatest influence?

I can’t point out a single writer, but there are a bunch of authors whose work I admire and frequently read: Ursula Le Guin, Elizabeth Hand, Tove Jansson, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and China Miéville.

What can you tell us about your new novel? Are there plans to make it available in English?

Amatka
was published in September 2012, and is a story about colonising a world where physical reality responds to language. It explores language’s effect on perception and reality, and the effect of a strange and hostile environment on what starts out as a socialist utopia. It was also a prose experiment: as language is strictly controlled in the story, the prose had to mirror this. Among other things I had to cut out overt metaphors, homonyms and similes without killing the prose.

I’m working on a translation, but it’ll take a while because the prose is relatively advanced compared to how I usually write in English.

When we arranged this interview, you were on holiday in a small fishing village. Did you come away with any good ideas? Was ‘Brita’s Holiday Village’ based on a previous vacation?

I did get some inspiration for environments while exploring the mountains of Gran Canaria. You think of it as this over-exploited tourist beach, but once you leave the coast and go into the mountains, it’s something completely different, like being on another planet: vast mountain valleys, volcanic cliffs rising into the clouds, angry little succulents.

I don’t base stories on events, but I stole part of the setting for ‘Brita’s Holiday Village’ from an old holiday village on the slopes of Åreskutan (a mountain in Sweden). The cottages were dark, monstrous things in some sort of modernist seventies style, probably cosy in winter but completely misplaced in a summer landscape. Later on some creatures showed up in my brain and asked to live there, and kept pestering me until I let them. Some people have no manners.

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