The Age of Self

Early in The Novelist, the narrator reflects on Kirkegaard’s idea of the real novelist. Did you ever arrive at a certain life-view or unifying life-task for the novel?

This is a good question. I recently read an interview with an author about his new novel, and, since I hadn’t read the novel, the interview felt terribly boring. I thought: Oh God, is this how people have felt reading my interviews?

Did you find yourself surprised by any of the influences that found their way into the book?

Not really. I’d been getting into Rene Girard, who writes almost exclusively about imitation, so my influences were at the forefront of my mind. When I was younger, I was obsessed with “realness,” probably due to rap music, and growing up in Ohio. Rap is a great example of what Girard calls “the Romantic lie.” In almost all rap songs, there is some sentiment about being authentic, being “real.” Being “fake” and copying someone else’s flow are like the cardinal sins. But rap is one of the most imitative genres. To the untrained ear, a lot of rappers just sound totally identical.

Imitation is becoming less taboo though. Rappers are being more up-front about their influences. A lot of young rappers sound like Lil Uzi Vert, but the song that got Lil Uzi famous, “WDYW,” was initially called “Thugger Voice,” because he was consciously imitating Young Thug. Young Thug famously tried to call his debut album Carter 6—explicitly building on Wayne’s Carter 1-5 series—but this led to beef, so Thug called it Barter 6. The irony is that one of Lil Wayne’s first albums was 500 Degreez, which was an imitation of Juvenile’s 400 Degreez. Each of these rappers, needless to say, has been praised for his uniqueness and “authenticity.” With The Novelist, I included the novel’s main influences—The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker and Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard—in the novel itself.

For someone so keenly aware of its ills, you seem to navigate online sociality/discourse with refreshing optimism … I guess my question is posed by the narrator: “How [does] one choose what one engage[s] with or ignore[s]? [Does] one even choose?”

With fear and trembling.

Tell me a bit about your experience with the design/printing of your books—particularly, The Novelist? What interests you on that side of things?

My wife, Nicolette Polek—who is the next Marilynne Robinson—has a much more refined aesthetic sensibility than me. When my publisher told me I could send a “moodboard” for cover inspiration, Nicolette made one for me. Strangely, a lot of the covers were Philip K. Dick novels. I’ve never read Philip K. Dick. We kept saying, “They’re going to think I’m obsessed with Phillip K. Dick.”

Before my poetry books came out, the guy who was designing the covers initially sent me one that was the “parental advisory” label, with my name and the title on it. He was so excited about it; he kept emailing me before he sent it, like, “I can’t wait for you to see what I’ve been cooking up.” I was mortified. Thankfully, he let my friend Mallory Whitten do the cover.

I think it’s important for books to be beautiful. In an ideal world, one would be able to judge a book by its cover.

There’s always latency between producing and releasing/promoting a book; I imagine The Novelist was uniquely delayed because of the pandemic. What have you learned about the novel in that interim?

I finished the first draft in January 2019, so by the time the book came out, I was a little closer to understanding what I had written. It hasn’t really carried over into the novel I’m working on now though. I feel just as lost in my new manuscript as I did with The Novelist. And, despite everything I’ve “learned,” it’s still just as hard for me to be as ruthless as I need to be, to make everything work on its own terms. I always want to insert my latest and greatest bright idea that has nothing to do with the novel. Eventually I’ll submit to it, stop being afraid to lose control of where it’s going—and then, I suspect, it will all come together.

What makes literature “new?”

People are obsessed with “newness,” and yet our intellectual culture is, broadly speaking, totally stagnant. Every academic has to discover some little-known, hyper-specific new thing; every novel has to be “groundbreaking.” We have no reverence for the past. I don’t fetishize the past, but I also don’t fetishize change.

“Newness” ceases to be “newness” in a vacuum. It’s just foolishness. Shakespeare and Dostoevsky are still new to me. The Novelist is unironically written in that lineage. And people won’t shut up about how new it is!

Michael Clune, in a panel discussion about heroin on YouTube, talks about how ever since the Romantic period, artists have been obsessed with trying to create something that feels new each time you see it. Clune uses the example of a car to explain how sight normally works. When you get a new car, you notice everything about it, its rich color, the way the handle is shaped; but after a while it just becomes this vague shape—you barely even see it. For the addict, he says, the addictive object seems new each time he sees it. The drug literally looks new each time. This has implications for addiction, of course—but also for art. We are newness addicts. And just like addicts, we pathetically flail around pathetically.

How did autofiction emerge? What marked the beginning of the end?

Novelists have always drawn on their experience, and novels have always referenced themselves and other novels. Dostoevsky wrote about his contemporaries in St. Petersburg; St. Augustine wrote Confessions about his life; Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night was partly autobiographical. The difference is just in what the time period considers “real.” In the past, the mythical gods were real, so people wrote about the mythical gods. Realism made explicit claims about what was “real,” usually something having to do with society, or the mundane material. Even sci-fi, which doesn’t immediately seem to make any claims about what’s real—because it is “fantastical”—emerged right at a time when “scientism” started talking about multiverses and so on. Now, what’s real is the atomized self reflected back to the self: on social media, in advertisements, in art. Literature is an expression of the times. But when it’s good, it’s also an expression of the future. Autofiction emerged because we are turned in on ourselves. We live in one of those funhouses full of distorted mirrors. It is the age of the Self.

I think Tao Lin’s Taipei was the pinnacle of autofiction. And The Novelist now marks the end.

How is writing different within marriage?

I have to make money now! So I’ve been trying my hand at essays. There was an article in The Guardian today, about a writer who left his partner “because she was also a writer,” and so my timeline has been full of Discourse about writers dating writers. The general consensus seems to be that they shouldn’t date. I agree they shouldn’t date—they should marry. Writers are notoriously selfish, unable to commit; they have pompous ideas of themselves that they rarely put into daily practice. Marriage, when taken seriously, is one of the best things in the world. The commonsense view is that getting married is good because you’ll always have someone to love you, but it’s actually the opposite: it’s good because you’ll always have someone to love. And that’s hard. But life should be spent in service to others. So should writing.

What is it about dogs and writing?

I edited an anthology called PETS, but I’ve since started to feel queasy about our culture’s pet obsession. It feels anti-human. Those “Who Rescued Who?” stickers, for example, fill me with dread. People love their dogs more than they love people, and it’s wrong. When I lived in Maryland, I had a Mexican neighbor who had two chihuahuas, and when I first walked my dogs past his house, his dogs ran out yipping into the street. The first time that happened, I said, “Hey buddy,” in the classic “cute dog” tone. But then every time I passed his house after that, the guy would say “Hey buddy!” to me in the same tone. I think he thought I was talking to him, when I was actually talking to his dogs. It broke my heart.

Who is being slept on?

Writers_Life_Tips, Chelsey Minnis, Paul Tillich. The band Kneeling in Piss. Eric Bugenhagen. Georg Trakl.

Any word on your new work?

I’m writing a series of philosophical essays for the beautiful new Praxis Journal, and am finishing up a draft of my second novel, Muscle Man.

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The Novelist is available from Soft Skull Press. Muscle Man will be available from Catapult Books in September 2025.