I can write my usual 300 to 500 words here listing Craig Clevenger's accomplishments, complementing his work and a little joke to make the pill go down easier. But for Craig Clevengers first novel The Contortionist's Handbook, the SuicideGirls know you cant beat a recommendation from famed author Chuck Palahniuk who said "I swear to God this is the best book I have read in easily five years. Easily. Maybe ten years." And that includes all of Lynda Barrys late 90s books...
Clevenger has written a gem of a novel with The Handbook, as it shall be referred to as. Its the story of John Dolan Vincent, a man who has taken on a series of identities over the years to trick the government, the law, psychiatry and his lovers into not exposing him for who he truly is. Hes a man who is able to keep his behaviors straight in his head, even his anti-social ones, until he is so constrained by it that it is nearly strangling him. Like many authors of this ilk, including Palahniuk, Clevenger includes a twist in his twist, but in a twist on that it comes at the beginning instead of at the end. While Vincent is being evaluated by a psychiatrist we discover that he has checked into the hospital under an assumed name.
Its a story of love, hate and prescription drugs.
Clevenger, contrary to his belief, is a pretty interesting guy himself. He grew up in Texas the home of the crime novel but was raised in Orange County California. After working in the tech field for many years at the age of 35 he preempted his mid-life crisis and instead of buying a Porsche he wrote a book. After writing the novel he hooked up with MacAdam Cage who has released both the hardcover and the soft-cover of the book. His fame exploded on the internet after the book reached Palahniuk, and Clevenger will be a writer that we will be hearing from for many years to come.
Check out Craig Clevengers website.
Daniel Robert Epstein: So youre working on a new novel.
Craig Clevenger: Yeah Ive been up all night working on it. In a fit of frustration I grabbed my computer, my dirty laundry and I threw it all into my car. Im sort of near Victorville but not really. Im just in the middle of nowhere in a hotel. If this hotel didnt have electricity I wouldnt be surprised if it were condemned. There is not another soul here.
DRE: Wheres Victorville?
CC: In California right around Interstate 15 and Interstate something or other. Theres a prison nearby which is great because it makes for cheap room rates. I find if you go two hours out any direction from a metropolitan city you end up in the middle of nowhere pretty fast.
DRE: Thats why I never leave the city. I see no reason to go except when I have to visit relatives I dont want to see anyway.
CC: Youve got a magic city though. I just had to bring the distractions down to zero and lock myself fin a room.
DRE: How was your last trip to New York City?
CC: It was fine. It was my first trip back there since 9/11.
DRE: Its not too much different.
CC: I love it out there. I always heard these horrible things about New Yorkers from Angelinos and my first time out there I found out they get straight to business. What time is it?, four. Theyre not rude but there is no please and thank you.
DRE: I was in Paris a couple of years ago and people say bad things about that city and its people as well. But I would go up to people and ask for directions and people would help me out. But if I asked a follow up question thats they when they got rude. But one question is a go.
CC: I got treated like royalty in Paris. I think with enough alcohol my French came bubbling back up so I was able to get by. The only things that keeps me from living in New York is the weather. Being born in Texas and living in California I am so embarrassingly thin blooded??? even Paris and London. The weather brings me back to California. I am such a weather wimp.
DRE: How was the Soft Skull reading in New York?
CC: It went really well. I havent done many readings and it was the first one where I think I had more strangers than friends there so there were not a lot of sympathy attendees. It went well. It was fun to meet people that Ive only gotten emails from.
DRE: How did the hardcover do?
CC: It did really well. It is MacAdam Cage independent. Im what I call critically acclaimed which means the reviews are great but nobody is making a living on it. Hows that for euphemism? I now know that critically acclaimed means that everyone says they loved it but they havent really read it.
DRE: It was all the people that didnt have to pay for it, like me.
How autobiographical is the book?
CC: Its not really. I would sometimes use the phrase emotional autobiography. Im not going to say its my take on the world because my narrator is a sociopath but a lot of the feelings and axes I had to grind were very much mine. I kind of put a hurdle up for myself. If Im going to say these things and speak my mind I have to play fair because Im not a journalist but a novelist. So Im going to put them into the mouth of someone who is as unlike me as possible.
DRE: Is it a fantasy?
CC: No I dont think so. Its definitely not a life I envy. No one has put the question of autobiography so pointedly. The short answer is no, its not autobiographic at all. The events that happen in the story, with a few minor details, are all completely fabricated. The idea was to create a person who was incredibly left brained, rational, logical to a fault and vent my frustrations through him.
DRE: I just interviewed a film director and I used this. J.G Ballard said that even though Empire of the Sun is his autobiography, Crash is his inner autobiography.
CC: Right that makes sense. Thats what The Handbook was, an inner biography. It was conveying a lot of the ways I felt about trying to swim through the world my whole life and not quite getting it. Feeling two steps behind in some respects and being three steps ahead in others.
DRE: Is it a chance to flip off the world?
CC: Very much so oh yeah [laughs]. That year the millennium sucked, I lost my job two weeks before Christmas because the company shut down, a girl broke up with me, someone ran into my car that same night and just a laundry list of things which were stretching my sanity. Thats what started pushing me to write after hours at my new job. I had to do it to reel back my brain.
The stuff I was saying about psychiatry was not at all directed at psychiatrists or the profession. In California psychology has become so prevalent. Its so hard to open your mouth without somebody saying something like Thats because youre the middle child or some amateur diagnosis like that. Of all the middle fingers thats probably the biggest I was waving.
DRE: In a way the book reminded me of Jim Thompsons The Killer Inside Me.
CC: Thank you. I just finished reading that again. Im a huge fan of Jim Thompson. Its one of the books I brought out here with me to the hotel.
DRE: Yeah youre reading The Killer Inside Me and you think Lou Ford has this master plan. Then you realize that hes a sociopath that just wants to kill more people. We dont know what your main character, John Dolan Vincent, is trying to accomplish.
CC: Thats a really a pretty solid take on it. The idea of somebody so wrapped up in trying to keep his head above water and survive. The core premise of this story is what if this cocktail party conversation, this amateur psychiatrist, every clown who has read a self help book says to you Maybe you wanted your girlfriend to leave you. What if these patronizing things were a real threat. That was the idea behind the book. The closest he comes to a master plan is trying to stay out of a straightjacket. Its because of his doing that which prevents him from doing anything else. Im not saying hes blameless but there is no plan except to keep breathing free air.
DRE: So does he realize he needs to be locked up?
CC: He doesnt believe he needs to be but he knows they would. The resolution of the story is that maybe there isnt an either or choice. Maybe some people can be trusted and there is a middle ground. He does need help.
DRE: So no one has asked how autobiographical it is?
CC: Not from a journalist. A lot of people make the assumption but Im always able to answer it flippantly. But for it to go on record I want to be careful [laughs]. Now Im researching clandestine drug production, lightning strike victims and snake handlers so there is a point I hope to reach where people will stop asking if the book is autobiographical because the sum of their details would make me one insane strange motherfucker.
DRE: I asked Arthur Nersesian if he had reached the point where his books arent autobiographical. He said that you cant help putting yourself in there a little bit.
CC: Of course. I was born in Texas but I grew up in Orange County which has the most conservative middle class there is. I went to Catholic school. I was an altar boy and a Boy Scout. If my books were strictly autobiographical they would be dull as dirt. There would be nothing to write about it.
DRE: Obviously it was important to set this book before the computer age because he would be busted pretty fast.
CC: Yeah most of the stuff I researched, at least with respect to ID forgery, has been outdated by information retrieval technology. The other reason is that I was in high tech for so long I wanted to sweep aside any cultural references like internet, email and cell phones because they were so much a part of my life for so long. It wasnt making me very happy.
DRE: I remember that Gus Van Sant said he set Drugstore Cowboy in the seventies because they dont keep cocaine in pharmacies anymore.
CC: Exactly. I had to be careful though. I had to double check all the drugs I referenced to make sure they existed back then. To be truthful most of the stuff I used about forgery wasnt from ID forgery but from art forgery research.
DRE: Not to give away the ending, but the book is hopeful.
CC: Thank you! Somebody on Amazon said it wasnt a dark book and thats very nice to here. I think it takes a certain kind of person to see the romance. As hard as it would be for people to believe it Im a die-hard romantic. Its very much a hopeful ending. Someone told me that one of the keys to Raymond Chandler was that Philip Marlowe in some odd way was a Christ figure. He never came about to any understanding or resolution without paying some kind of price. Thats what I wanted to convey there.
DRE: It also reminded me of another book called The Toy Collector.
CC: I just started that book, its hilarious. I grabbed the galley from a book store one time.
DRE: That book ended up being hopeful as well. Hes a big screenwriter as well now.
CC: Whats his name again?
DRE: James Gunn. He did the Scooby-Doo movies and Tromeo & Juliet which I worked on.
CC: You worked on Tromeo & Juliet? That makes you personal hero. I love Troma.
DRE: Im proud of my entry on the IMDB.
Did you ever think about not doing it from the main characters point of view?
CC: I did. In earlier drafts there was a lot more correspondence. I thought about trying to do different stories and one of them being the psychiatrists viewpoint, the omniscient standpoint. But two things were happening; one is that as I was writing John Vincent became more and more solid in my head. I realized that part of his survival mechanism was to minimize and dedimensionalize people. He did not see people with any real depth. He immediately flags people with a nickname. The more he dehumanizes the psychiatrist the less latitude that gave me to flesh his character out. It seems like it would give me more but it felt like it gave me less. I think it would have taken the strength out of Vincents viewpoint if the reader was able to see the doctor in more depth.
DRE: How much research went into the book?
CC: Quite a bit. In some respects I think too much. I researched everything as thoroughly as I could even though I didnt necessarily employ all of that research only because I wanted to have John Vincent seem as knowledgeable as possible. I was creating this narrative voice that I described as the voice of someone talking to themselves only fueled up on cocaine. Even though he is smart enough to not convey all the steps and processes in what he does because when you are good at something you dont think about it after a little while. But I wanted him to be mumbling and rambling to his imaginary friend which is the reader throughout the story. I researched a lot in order to have enough of that detail in there. Hindsight tells me that might have been too much. The second book Im going to have detail as well but it will be more narrative driven.
DRE: I did read that you had all sorts of stuff pasted everywhere in order to keep track of Vincents timeline.
CC: Yeah its funny how little I remember of the story itself. Its really strange how much I block out after two years. I had several characters happening at once and I wouldnt have worried about it as much if it just referenced one name and date but because he had multiple aliases I wanted it to stay straight in my mind. So I printed out thirty years of back calendars to John Vincents birth date so I could keep track of his birth, high school, jail dates and headaches. I put all the other plot points as well. So while I was telling the story in a non-linear form I always had my anchors correct.
DRE: Do you get headaches?
CC: Only if I have a nasty flu or a nasty hangover. I have a bottle of aspirin at my house which has turned yellow because I never use it.
DRE: One critic pointed out that John Vincent is hiding from himself but I dont know if I buy that because he only thinks about himself.
CC: I hear that phrase a lot. In one respect it would be nice if Vincent put the same degree of scrutiny on himself that he does to others. But at the same time hes not lacking in self-knowledge by any stretch. One of things I was happiest about was that in spite of everything I made a point of him not playing a victim role. He takes full responsibility for his life. I dont think hes hiding himself at all.
DRE: How long did it take to write the whole thing?
CC: In total I was working on it for a little less two years and it came out late last year.
DRE: How did the book end up in Chuck Palahniuks hands?
CC: Thats a funny story. Wendy Dale, who sent me one of my first fan letters, is a huge Chuck Palahniuk fan. I saw she was coming out with a book as well so I maintained more correspondence with her than I would have. She sent it to the webmaster of, ChuckPalahniuk.net, Dennis Widmyer. Then it sat in Dennis mailbox for a few months. Then he read it and really enjoyed it. Dennis and I became pretty good friends. Dennis sent it directly to Chuck in his periodic care package. Chuck was screaming about it on his blog one day.
DRE: Once Chuck started talking about it how much did it change sales?
CC: It was a spike then a plateau. Amazon ranks are kind of misleading but any writer that says they dont check their Amazon rank is lying at least any new writer. Its like watching a stock ticker.
DRE: Nearly every writer I talk to says they do that.
CC: Ever since Dennis interview, Chucks blog and book tour it caused a renaissance for my book. The frustration with something like The Handbook is that people will say there is no market for it. MacAdam Cage had a hard time selling the paperback rights because of that. In fact there is a market for this kind of work. Chuck Palahniuk and his predecessors have proven that. The problem is people dont know how to categorize a book like this. You cant say its historical fiction, chick lit, this or that. There isnt a nice neat management slot for this stuff. There is clearly an audience for it.
DRE: Its a silly thing to say they cant sell it. It just means they dont know how to sell it, its laziness.
CC: Thats it. Films of this flavor are a lot easier to market. I think people have this preconceived notion that literature needs to have a certain air about it or it cant be marketed. A friend of mine told that a really old woman came into this bookstore looking for my book. They were shocked and they were shocked that I wasnt shocked about that. Ive gotten emails from lots of little old ladies who just want something different to read. They have a shock value threshold thats probably higher than some of the people on Suicide Girls. Palahniuk has really aggregated that audience and I will always be grateful for that.
DRE: The book is not a guidebook for being on the run. But has anyone tried any of the stuff from it?
CC: Not to my knowledge. But I called it The Handbook for obvious reasons. I deliberately obfuscated some facts. Some things I made up and extrapolated from facts. There are very few things in there that have authenticity in 2003. If anyone tries to use the book to do anything Im just going to chuckle.
DRE: I heard you got a tattoo on your hand.
CC: Yeah a six fingered palm print. Ive almost finished one tattoo sleeve. I quit my job, flushed my life down the sewer to do this and Im still paying for it. But after I finished the first draft I was sitting there with this giant mound of paper and it felt really good. I was happy I had done what I set out to do. After that it was all rewriting. To commemorate that I got another finger tattooed on my hand.
DRE: Do you do drugs?
CC: Not as many as people think. But Ill make no apologies for the ones Ive done. Ill indulge like anyone else.
DRE: When I last spoke to Chuck he said that people will send him packages of pills and hell take them without seeing what they are.
CC: [laughs] Ill enjoy the occasional painkiller so there is some hands on research in there. I dont think I would ever take something without knowing what it is. Im a beer snob and if I have one vice its caffeine.
DRE: I read about you and coffee ice cream.
CC: Oh yeah Hagen Dazs coffee ice cream thats the primo stuff.
DRE: I had some coffee ice cream at 9:30 at night recently and was up until 5 am. I had no idea because Im not a caffeine guy at all.
CC: [laughs] Its so good. Granted its expensive stuff but when writing The Handbook I would eat a whole pint of Haagen Dazs coffee ice cream in the middle of the day and that was lunch.
DRE: You must have been bouncing off the walls.
CC: I got a book out of it [laughs].
DRE: Is the Starbucks coffee ice cream good too?
CC: I havent tried it but nothing will ever be better than Haagen Dazs. I ate it off a girls breasts once. Theres no going back after that.
DRE: Was that before the book?
CC: It was after it was done.
DRE: Was it book tour groupies?
CC: No. But Ive got to be careful because Im with someone now.
DRE: I found some stuff on you. Were you ever part of something called Impossible Inc?
CC: Yeah Impossible was the company I worked for briefly after my six years at MetaCreations. Impossible was where I had my preemptive mid-life crisis. I slowly phased myself out of there.
When I started at MetaCreations there was 30 people. Before they shut down they had gone public and 200 people worked there. I could see the same all over again when I started at Impossible. I wanted to start writing again. If I was going to stay at Impossible it was going to be battlefield commitment and I couldnt do that. I might not have started writing again.
DRE: I read that youve been writing since you were in second grade.
CC: Pretty much my whole life I have been scribbling short stories.
DRE: Will a book of short stories come out?
CC: Right now Im deep into this second novel. I want to do another short story for MacAdam Cage.
DRE: What were you like growing up?
CC: I was a good kid. All the trouble I wanted to cause is leaking out now. All the damage I didnt do Im doing now on the page.
DRE: Did you have a good Catholic experience?
CC: Did anyone?
My parents are still practicing and they know I am not. I walked away and never looked back.
DRE: Have your parents read the book?
CC: My father is great. I saw him recently when I was driving out west to on the book tour. I stopped in Arizona and he told me flat out I tried to read it. I could understand the words you put on the page but I couldnt understand the way you put them together. I didnt get it so I gave up. I really appreciated his honesty. He is an avid reader but he didnt get it. Im assuming my mom has read it but I dont know what she thinks of it.
DRE: Are your parents still together?
CC: No they divorced a while back. My mom still lives in Orange County. My dad would kill me if he knew I was talking about him. Hes off the grid. Hes an hour and a half from the nearest running water or human being. Ill say that much. if anyone stumbles on his property god help them.
DRE: Shotgun?
CC: At least. Hes done with humanity. Hes one of the most charming men youll ever meet but given the choice he would not want to deal with people. There is a little bit of him in me.
DRE: Some of that is the book.
CC: Some people ask me about the father character.
DRE: Not just the father character but John Vincent himself. He doesnt deal with human beings.
CC: Yeah very much thats that part of me that thinks that life would be easier like that. But I like people too much to go completely whole hog.
The descriptions of John Sr.s hands are my fathers hands. Just the most work scarred hands youve ever seen.
DRE: Where does the crazy stuff come from?
CC: I dont know. It just boils down to the fact that that is the way writing is. I can take a situation and because Im doing it in fiction I have the latitude to completely take the reins off and do whatever I want. I can just run and create whatever I need to on the page. It doesnt have to come from my life otherwise every mystery writer would have to kill someone. I try to create stories that are as unfamiliar as possible.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Clevenger has written a gem of a novel with The Handbook, as it shall be referred to as. Its the story of John Dolan Vincent, a man who has taken on a series of identities over the years to trick the government, the law, psychiatry and his lovers into not exposing him for who he truly is. Hes a man who is able to keep his behaviors straight in his head, even his anti-social ones, until he is so constrained by it that it is nearly strangling him. Like many authors of this ilk, including Palahniuk, Clevenger includes a twist in his twist, but in a twist on that it comes at the beginning instead of at the end. While Vincent is being evaluated by a psychiatrist we discover that he has checked into the hospital under an assumed name.
Its a story of love, hate and prescription drugs.
Clevenger, contrary to his belief, is a pretty interesting guy himself. He grew up in Texas the home of the crime novel but was raised in Orange County California. After working in the tech field for many years at the age of 35 he preempted his mid-life crisis and instead of buying a Porsche he wrote a book. After writing the novel he hooked up with MacAdam Cage who has released both the hardcover and the soft-cover of the book. His fame exploded on the internet after the book reached Palahniuk, and Clevenger will be a writer that we will be hearing from for many years to come.
Check out Craig Clevengers website.
Daniel Robert Epstein: So youre working on a new novel.
Craig Clevenger: Yeah Ive been up all night working on it. In a fit of frustration I grabbed my computer, my dirty laundry and I threw it all into my car. Im sort of near Victorville but not really. Im just in the middle of nowhere in a hotel. If this hotel didnt have electricity I wouldnt be surprised if it were condemned. There is not another soul here.
DRE: Wheres Victorville?
CC: In California right around Interstate 15 and Interstate something or other. Theres a prison nearby which is great because it makes for cheap room rates. I find if you go two hours out any direction from a metropolitan city you end up in the middle of nowhere pretty fast.
DRE: Thats why I never leave the city. I see no reason to go except when I have to visit relatives I dont want to see anyway.
CC: Youve got a magic city though. I just had to bring the distractions down to zero and lock myself fin a room.
DRE: How was your last trip to New York City?
CC: It was fine. It was my first trip back there since 9/11.
DRE: Its not too much different.
CC: I love it out there. I always heard these horrible things about New Yorkers from Angelinos and my first time out there I found out they get straight to business. What time is it?, four. Theyre not rude but there is no please and thank you.
DRE: I was in Paris a couple of years ago and people say bad things about that city and its people as well. But I would go up to people and ask for directions and people would help me out. But if I asked a follow up question thats they when they got rude. But one question is a go.
CC: I got treated like royalty in Paris. I think with enough alcohol my French came bubbling back up so I was able to get by. The only things that keeps me from living in New York is the weather. Being born in Texas and living in California I am so embarrassingly thin blooded??? even Paris and London. The weather brings me back to California. I am such a weather wimp.
DRE: How was the Soft Skull reading in New York?
CC: It went really well. I havent done many readings and it was the first one where I think I had more strangers than friends there so there were not a lot of sympathy attendees. It went well. It was fun to meet people that Ive only gotten emails from.
DRE: How did the hardcover do?
CC: It did really well. It is MacAdam Cage independent. Im what I call critically acclaimed which means the reviews are great but nobody is making a living on it. Hows that for euphemism? I now know that critically acclaimed means that everyone says they loved it but they havent really read it.
DRE: It was all the people that didnt have to pay for it, like me.
How autobiographical is the book?
CC: Its not really. I would sometimes use the phrase emotional autobiography. Im not going to say its my take on the world because my narrator is a sociopath but a lot of the feelings and axes I had to grind were very much mine. I kind of put a hurdle up for myself. If Im going to say these things and speak my mind I have to play fair because Im not a journalist but a novelist. So Im going to put them into the mouth of someone who is as unlike me as possible.
DRE: Is it a fantasy?
CC: No I dont think so. Its definitely not a life I envy. No one has put the question of autobiography so pointedly. The short answer is no, its not autobiographic at all. The events that happen in the story, with a few minor details, are all completely fabricated. The idea was to create a person who was incredibly left brained, rational, logical to a fault and vent my frustrations through him.
DRE: I just interviewed a film director and I used this. J.G Ballard said that even though Empire of the Sun is his autobiography, Crash is his inner autobiography.
CC: Right that makes sense. Thats what The Handbook was, an inner biography. It was conveying a lot of the ways I felt about trying to swim through the world my whole life and not quite getting it. Feeling two steps behind in some respects and being three steps ahead in others.
DRE: Is it a chance to flip off the world?
CC: Very much so oh yeah [laughs]. That year the millennium sucked, I lost my job two weeks before Christmas because the company shut down, a girl broke up with me, someone ran into my car that same night and just a laundry list of things which were stretching my sanity. Thats what started pushing me to write after hours at my new job. I had to do it to reel back my brain.
The stuff I was saying about psychiatry was not at all directed at psychiatrists or the profession. In California psychology has become so prevalent. Its so hard to open your mouth without somebody saying something like Thats because youre the middle child or some amateur diagnosis like that. Of all the middle fingers thats probably the biggest I was waving.
DRE: In a way the book reminded me of Jim Thompsons The Killer Inside Me.
CC: Thank you. I just finished reading that again. Im a huge fan of Jim Thompson. Its one of the books I brought out here with me to the hotel.
DRE: Yeah youre reading The Killer Inside Me and you think Lou Ford has this master plan. Then you realize that hes a sociopath that just wants to kill more people. We dont know what your main character, John Dolan Vincent, is trying to accomplish.
CC: Thats a really a pretty solid take on it. The idea of somebody so wrapped up in trying to keep his head above water and survive. The core premise of this story is what if this cocktail party conversation, this amateur psychiatrist, every clown who has read a self help book says to you Maybe you wanted your girlfriend to leave you. What if these patronizing things were a real threat. That was the idea behind the book. The closest he comes to a master plan is trying to stay out of a straightjacket. Its because of his doing that which prevents him from doing anything else. Im not saying hes blameless but there is no plan except to keep breathing free air.
DRE: So does he realize he needs to be locked up?
CC: He doesnt believe he needs to be but he knows they would. The resolution of the story is that maybe there isnt an either or choice. Maybe some people can be trusted and there is a middle ground. He does need help.
DRE: So no one has asked how autobiographical it is?
CC: Not from a journalist. A lot of people make the assumption but Im always able to answer it flippantly. But for it to go on record I want to be careful [laughs]. Now Im researching clandestine drug production, lightning strike victims and snake handlers so there is a point I hope to reach where people will stop asking if the book is autobiographical because the sum of their details would make me one insane strange motherfucker.
DRE: I asked Arthur Nersesian if he had reached the point where his books arent autobiographical. He said that you cant help putting yourself in there a little bit.
CC: Of course. I was born in Texas but I grew up in Orange County which has the most conservative middle class there is. I went to Catholic school. I was an altar boy and a Boy Scout. If my books were strictly autobiographical they would be dull as dirt. There would be nothing to write about it.
DRE: Obviously it was important to set this book before the computer age because he would be busted pretty fast.
CC: Yeah most of the stuff I researched, at least with respect to ID forgery, has been outdated by information retrieval technology. The other reason is that I was in high tech for so long I wanted to sweep aside any cultural references like internet, email and cell phones because they were so much a part of my life for so long. It wasnt making me very happy.
DRE: I remember that Gus Van Sant said he set Drugstore Cowboy in the seventies because they dont keep cocaine in pharmacies anymore.
CC: Exactly. I had to be careful though. I had to double check all the drugs I referenced to make sure they existed back then. To be truthful most of the stuff I used about forgery wasnt from ID forgery but from art forgery research.
DRE: Not to give away the ending, but the book is hopeful.
CC: Thank you! Somebody on Amazon said it wasnt a dark book and thats very nice to here. I think it takes a certain kind of person to see the romance. As hard as it would be for people to believe it Im a die-hard romantic. Its very much a hopeful ending. Someone told me that one of the keys to Raymond Chandler was that Philip Marlowe in some odd way was a Christ figure. He never came about to any understanding or resolution without paying some kind of price. Thats what I wanted to convey there.
DRE: It also reminded me of another book called The Toy Collector.
CC: I just started that book, its hilarious. I grabbed the galley from a book store one time.
DRE: That book ended up being hopeful as well. Hes a big screenwriter as well now.
CC: Whats his name again?
DRE: James Gunn. He did the Scooby-Doo movies and Tromeo & Juliet which I worked on.
CC: You worked on Tromeo & Juliet? That makes you personal hero. I love Troma.
DRE: Im proud of my entry on the IMDB.
Did you ever think about not doing it from the main characters point of view?
CC: I did. In earlier drafts there was a lot more correspondence. I thought about trying to do different stories and one of them being the psychiatrists viewpoint, the omniscient standpoint. But two things were happening; one is that as I was writing John Vincent became more and more solid in my head. I realized that part of his survival mechanism was to minimize and dedimensionalize people. He did not see people with any real depth. He immediately flags people with a nickname. The more he dehumanizes the psychiatrist the less latitude that gave me to flesh his character out. It seems like it would give me more but it felt like it gave me less. I think it would have taken the strength out of Vincents viewpoint if the reader was able to see the doctor in more depth.
DRE: How much research went into the book?
CC: Quite a bit. In some respects I think too much. I researched everything as thoroughly as I could even though I didnt necessarily employ all of that research only because I wanted to have John Vincent seem as knowledgeable as possible. I was creating this narrative voice that I described as the voice of someone talking to themselves only fueled up on cocaine. Even though he is smart enough to not convey all the steps and processes in what he does because when you are good at something you dont think about it after a little while. But I wanted him to be mumbling and rambling to his imaginary friend which is the reader throughout the story. I researched a lot in order to have enough of that detail in there. Hindsight tells me that might have been too much. The second book Im going to have detail as well but it will be more narrative driven.
DRE: I did read that you had all sorts of stuff pasted everywhere in order to keep track of Vincents timeline.
CC: Yeah its funny how little I remember of the story itself. Its really strange how much I block out after two years. I had several characters happening at once and I wouldnt have worried about it as much if it just referenced one name and date but because he had multiple aliases I wanted it to stay straight in my mind. So I printed out thirty years of back calendars to John Vincents birth date so I could keep track of his birth, high school, jail dates and headaches. I put all the other plot points as well. So while I was telling the story in a non-linear form I always had my anchors correct.
DRE: Do you get headaches?
CC: Only if I have a nasty flu or a nasty hangover. I have a bottle of aspirin at my house which has turned yellow because I never use it.
DRE: One critic pointed out that John Vincent is hiding from himself but I dont know if I buy that because he only thinks about himself.
CC: I hear that phrase a lot. In one respect it would be nice if Vincent put the same degree of scrutiny on himself that he does to others. But at the same time hes not lacking in self-knowledge by any stretch. One of things I was happiest about was that in spite of everything I made a point of him not playing a victim role. He takes full responsibility for his life. I dont think hes hiding himself at all.
DRE: How long did it take to write the whole thing?
CC: In total I was working on it for a little less two years and it came out late last year.
DRE: How did the book end up in Chuck Palahniuks hands?
CC: Thats a funny story. Wendy Dale, who sent me one of my first fan letters, is a huge Chuck Palahniuk fan. I saw she was coming out with a book as well so I maintained more correspondence with her than I would have. She sent it to the webmaster of, ChuckPalahniuk.net, Dennis Widmyer. Then it sat in Dennis mailbox for a few months. Then he read it and really enjoyed it. Dennis and I became pretty good friends. Dennis sent it directly to Chuck in his periodic care package. Chuck was screaming about it on his blog one day.
DRE: Once Chuck started talking about it how much did it change sales?
CC: It was a spike then a plateau. Amazon ranks are kind of misleading but any writer that says they dont check their Amazon rank is lying at least any new writer. Its like watching a stock ticker.
DRE: Nearly every writer I talk to says they do that.
CC: Ever since Dennis interview, Chucks blog and book tour it caused a renaissance for my book. The frustration with something like The Handbook is that people will say there is no market for it. MacAdam Cage had a hard time selling the paperback rights because of that. In fact there is a market for this kind of work. Chuck Palahniuk and his predecessors have proven that. The problem is people dont know how to categorize a book like this. You cant say its historical fiction, chick lit, this or that. There isnt a nice neat management slot for this stuff. There is clearly an audience for it.
DRE: Its a silly thing to say they cant sell it. It just means they dont know how to sell it, its laziness.
CC: Thats it. Films of this flavor are a lot easier to market. I think people have this preconceived notion that literature needs to have a certain air about it or it cant be marketed. A friend of mine told that a really old woman came into this bookstore looking for my book. They were shocked and they were shocked that I wasnt shocked about that. Ive gotten emails from lots of little old ladies who just want something different to read. They have a shock value threshold thats probably higher than some of the people on Suicide Girls. Palahniuk has really aggregated that audience and I will always be grateful for that.
DRE: The book is not a guidebook for being on the run. But has anyone tried any of the stuff from it?
CC: Not to my knowledge. But I called it The Handbook for obvious reasons. I deliberately obfuscated some facts. Some things I made up and extrapolated from facts. There are very few things in there that have authenticity in 2003. If anyone tries to use the book to do anything Im just going to chuckle.
DRE: I heard you got a tattoo on your hand.
CC: Yeah a six fingered palm print. Ive almost finished one tattoo sleeve. I quit my job, flushed my life down the sewer to do this and Im still paying for it. But after I finished the first draft I was sitting there with this giant mound of paper and it felt really good. I was happy I had done what I set out to do. After that it was all rewriting. To commemorate that I got another finger tattooed on my hand.
DRE: Do you do drugs?
CC: Not as many as people think. But Ill make no apologies for the ones Ive done. Ill indulge like anyone else.
DRE: When I last spoke to Chuck he said that people will send him packages of pills and hell take them without seeing what they are.
CC: [laughs] Ill enjoy the occasional painkiller so there is some hands on research in there. I dont think I would ever take something without knowing what it is. Im a beer snob and if I have one vice its caffeine.
DRE: I read about you and coffee ice cream.
CC: Oh yeah Hagen Dazs coffee ice cream thats the primo stuff.
DRE: I had some coffee ice cream at 9:30 at night recently and was up until 5 am. I had no idea because Im not a caffeine guy at all.
CC: [laughs] Its so good. Granted its expensive stuff but when writing The Handbook I would eat a whole pint of Haagen Dazs coffee ice cream in the middle of the day and that was lunch.
DRE: You must have been bouncing off the walls.
CC: I got a book out of it [laughs].
DRE: Is the Starbucks coffee ice cream good too?
CC: I havent tried it but nothing will ever be better than Haagen Dazs. I ate it off a girls breasts once. Theres no going back after that.
DRE: Was that before the book?
CC: It was after it was done.
DRE: Was it book tour groupies?
CC: No. But Ive got to be careful because Im with someone now.
DRE: I found some stuff on you. Were you ever part of something called Impossible Inc?
CC: Yeah Impossible was the company I worked for briefly after my six years at MetaCreations. Impossible was where I had my preemptive mid-life crisis. I slowly phased myself out of there.
When I started at MetaCreations there was 30 people. Before they shut down they had gone public and 200 people worked there. I could see the same all over again when I started at Impossible. I wanted to start writing again. If I was going to stay at Impossible it was going to be battlefield commitment and I couldnt do that. I might not have started writing again.
DRE: I read that youve been writing since you were in second grade.
CC: Pretty much my whole life I have been scribbling short stories.
DRE: Will a book of short stories come out?
CC: Right now Im deep into this second novel. I want to do another short story for MacAdam Cage.
DRE: What were you like growing up?
CC: I was a good kid. All the trouble I wanted to cause is leaking out now. All the damage I didnt do Im doing now on the page.
DRE: Did you have a good Catholic experience?
CC: Did anyone?
My parents are still practicing and they know I am not. I walked away and never looked back.
DRE: Have your parents read the book?
CC: My father is great. I saw him recently when I was driving out west to on the book tour. I stopped in Arizona and he told me flat out I tried to read it. I could understand the words you put on the page but I couldnt understand the way you put them together. I didnt get it so I gave up. I really appreciated his honesty. He is an avid reader but he didnt get it. Im assuming my mom has read it but I dont know what she thinks of it.
DRE: Are your parents still together?
CC: No they divorced a while back. My mom still lives in Orange County. My dad would kill me if he knew I was talking about him. Hes off the grid. Hes an hour and a half from the nearest running water or human being. Ill say that much. if anyone stumbles on his property god help them.
DRE: Shotgun?
CC: At least. Hes done with humanity. Hes one of the most charming men youll ever meet but given the choice he would not want to deal with people. There is a little bit of him in me.
DRE: Some of that is the book.
CC: Some people ask me about the father character.
DRE: Not just the father character but John Vincent himself. He doesnt deal with human beings.
CC: Yeah very much thats that part of me that thinks that life would be easier like that. But I like people too much to go completely whole hog.
The descriptions of John Sr.s hands are my fathers hands. Just the most work scarred hands youve ever seen.
DRE: Where does the crazy stuff come from?
CC: I dont know. It just boils down to the fact that that is the way writing is. I can take a situation and because Im doing it in fiction I have the latitude to completely take the reins off and do whatever I want. I can just run and create whatever I need to on the page. It doesnt have to come from my life otherwise every mystery writer would have to kill someone. I try to create stories that are as unfamiliar as possible.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
outlawtrick:
i want it
ohsoordinary:
I've read his books. Amazing stuff. I even got to correspond with him a little over email *uber death* He's amazing. Can't wait for more.