Rinsin' Yiddish: a chat with author Clay McLeod Chapman

I caught up earlier today with New York-based author Clay McLeod Chapman, who is both a very talented writer and a very good friend of mine. Author of rest area and miss corpus, and creator of the totally-kick-ass performance group The Pumpkin Pie Show, Clay took a few minutes away from his incredibly busy teaching/writing schedule in Virginia to chat with me on AIM. Below, we discuss such important matters as Cormac McCarthy, American Psycho, Ai's heart-breaking poetry, Jessica Biel (mmmm), and zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.  

Chris Steib: Good morning, good sir

Clay McLeod Chapman: Howdy!

Chris: How're things in VA?

CMC: Humidity's thicker than syrup down here...

Chris: On a related note, I'm eating French Toast.

CMC: How 'bout some Aunt Jemima with that?

Chris: I don't like syrup, hurts my teeth.

CMC: Hurts your... teeth?

Chris: Yes, my back teeth (molars, I think they're called?) are very sensitive to sweets. No gummy bears, no sugar in my coffee...I just stick to trans-fats. But enough about me, what's going on in VA, other than maple-like weather conditions?

CMC: Yesterday I had my first encounter with paratitis. Inflammation of the salivary gland...

Chris: Yikes. You know, my salivary gland always acts up when I see pictures of Jessica Biel. Do you think that's medical?

CMC: There's treatment for that. Something to do with... cold showers, maybe? Or maybe seeing her movies… The right side of my jaw sprouted a lump the size of a golf ball.

Chris: Woah. And aren't you supposed to be teaching?

CMC: I've been a bit of a dumbshit and have taken on some writer-for-hire gigs. Timing's terrible... As of Wednesday, I picked up 225 pages of material translated from 1908. Yiddish. I've got to take the translations and make them sound... more contemporary.

And it's due by Friday. As in, tomorrow.

Chris: Um...

CMC: This is on top of teaching, so it's made for some late nights. My body decided to tell me that it's not all that happy with the schedule we're keeping at the moment.

Chris: Why would you do such a thing?

CMC: Rinsing Yiddish, you mean?

Chris: Yeah. Do you know much Yiddish?

CMC: None at all.

Chris: And "rinsing" -- is that a hip translation term I should know for my next cocktail party?

CMC: Text rinsing. Cleaning it up. Taking all the raw text and sifting through, taking out what doesn't read as well... Tinkering with the text. That sort of thing.

Chris: Sounds like it could be in a hip-hop song: "I be rinsin' like Edith Grossman on Quixote, yo."

CMC: It's been fun thus far. It'd be more fun if it wasn't for the deadline. But hell. Who needs their salivary glands when you've got golems to worry about?

Chris: Hm. Good Point. Is translation/rinsing/revising easier or harder than the initial act of writing?

CMC: It's easier to trim. I may as well be wearing a butcher's apron right now... Which is to say, yes, it's easier to trim away the fat than to sit down and whip up your own words.

Chris: Sounds like you feel a little guilty... Is there a fear that someone who read the original draft will say, "This guy is a butcher! It's NOTHING like the original!" Or is your name in small enough print that you don't care?

CMC: A bit, yes. Maybe the butcher metaphor isn't best. I'm the clean up crew, how about that? Yeah! I'm the cadaver crew... Those guys that come in to a crime scene after the police have sweeped for all their clues, wiping up the mess. Making everything look nice again. No DNA left on the floor...

Chris: Count on you to bring corpses into a breakfast conversation.

CMC: You won't even know I was there. I'm a ghost to these people. Corpses. Ghosts. It's a 24 hour thing... They. Never. Leave. Me... Alone.

Chris: Well, that's terrifying. Thanks for the nightmares.

CMC: Welcome to my world.

Chris: I'd rather stay in mine, thanks. Remember, I've read your books. … But anywho, you've had a few gigs like this -- script-doctoring, writing for the screen, etc -- where your name's in small print. Is there something you like about the anonymity of it?

CMC: We're talking about the interim between big projects... So a lot of this writer-for-hire work is to pay bills. The fork in the road that I got to was -- do I want to work as a writer, even if I'm not necessarily writing for myself? Or do I want to take a job that's completely severed from writing and work around it? Find the time outside of the job to do my stuff? I went for the former, feeling like -- well, it keeps me limber. Keeps me working this muscle, even if it's for someone else...

The internal challenge has been to determine how much of myself, how much of my own voice, can I slip under the radar... Like, say I've been hired to write a screenplay for someone else, taking their story idea and running with it...

Is there a way to sneak myself into it? Can I get away with instilling my own ideas inside someone else's story? The ghost writer possessing the narrative. That sort of thing.

Chris: That's dangerous for someone like you who has such a strong voice, don't you think?

CMC: I've gotten in trouble for it a few times, totally... But my thinking's always been, well, if they're hiring me to do this, and not someone else, I have to assume there's something about my personal voice that they want to bring to their story.Works some of the time.

Chris: Or is it that you're a good technical writer and they're looking for someone to cross the t's, dot the lower-case j's?

CMC:  It all depends on the project. If I was a good boy, I'd just cross my i's and dot my t's... But this ghost writer won't stay dead!

Chris: Again with the ghosts and rising corpses!  .....And speaking of which, you read World War Z, yes?

CMC: I did! Romero by way of Turkel!

Chris: Can we talk briefly about how awesome it is?

CMC: Awesome? Z...? I think you liked it more than I did.

Chris: Damn you!

brb...work to do for a second...

ok…i'm back.

Critical decisions here at Hearst -- picking new business cards.

CMC: Go for Bone White.

Chris: Yes, the lettering is something called "Cilian Rail"

CMC: Wow...The world you live in, my friend. Might as well be speaking Greek to me.

Chris: That's from American Psycho – I thought we were on the same page there. And the lettering on my cards is actually Helvetica Neuve. Nothing fancy-pants like Patrick Bateman’s.

CMC: Oh, yes. Bone White. Cilian Rail... Still, it doesn't change the fact that you are wearing a business suit right now. And me – I haven't shaved in weeks. I look hairy.

Chris: It suits you. And I'm not wearing a full suit today. Casual Thursday. And if you'd like to call me a corporate douchebag sell-out, just come right out with it. I can take it.

CMC: No, no... No douche-baggery here, my friend. I promise… “The lettering. The font…perfect.”

Chris: Haha.

CMC:  Anyway, what I appreciate about [World War Z] is that it breaks the narrative down into multiples. If you're gonna tell the story of the zombie apocalypse, you're gonna have to get into the trenches... and that means letting people have their say. Rather than shoe-horn the arc through one character, he lets everyone talk. The narrative has a trajectory, for sure -- but he strings it through, what? How many different characters?

Chris: Ah, what I loved about WWZ was how Max Brooks brought real, visceral human fear and experience into a genre that typically relies on either pure gore, or the jump-out-and-scare-you tactics.

I also liked the many different narratives that all hover around the same theme/story....and I think you know what I'm getting at here....

CMC: Uh-oh... Lay it on me.

Chris: Well, I want to hear about what you're working on now, and how that's going. The last time we talked you were shopping a collection of thematically-linked stories (like Z), and reworking an old novel that you and I ripped apart a year ago or so.

CMC: Well... Shopping around a new book. JUNTA HIGH. Thematically linked short stories all centering around the same basic premise. Kind of a what-if scenario of taking our current political imbroglio overseas and transplanting it into a modern day American public high school.

Think of it as a Sweet Valley High for terrorists.

Cheerleaders double as suicide bombers... Your guidance counselor just got kidnapped by the rival high school's A/V class. The tongue's planted pretty deep in the cheek... But the general idea is just to bridge the gap. Bring the war home.

Chris: I saw a few of the stories performed at the Pumpkin Pie Show a few years back -- did you always intend for it to be on paper, or was it originally a stage piece? ("Finger Bang," about the suicide-bombing cheerleader...classic)

CMC: Fact of the matter is... Allen Ginsberg really screwed me. I'd read him when I was in middle school, trying to find that ghost in the machine, that thing that really activated the words for me... Then, several years later, I saw him read his own material -- and all of a sudden, I was converted. I believed. One of the more profound experiences of my life, I've got to say. Seeing him sit on stage, squeezing this harmonium in between his knees. Going through Blake's "Nurses Song."

Suddenly this thing on the page wasn't on the page anymore. It was in the air, it was in his mouth... It was everywhere. It activated the text in such a way that I realized you can have what's on the page and think of it as a root. Where it goes from there... There's no telling. Get the text on its feet, get it out in the open, loud and proud... and BAM, it takes on this totally new existence. It becomes alive.

Chris: Yeah, I can see how that would have an effect. So Ginsberg's the one to thank for all your monologue-style narratives?

CMC: Well... There's Ai. This goddamned amazing poet named Ai. Just Ai. She's the one. She did it. It's her fault. God I love her. I've spent my entire writing career merely trying to replicate the personal experience I had my freshman year in high school when I first read "The Kid" from her "Cruelty/Killing Floor" collection. Blame her. And blame Studs Turkel while you're at it. Or Edgar Lee Masters. Hell -- blame them all.

Chris: Ah, I loved "The Kid" by Ai. Read that in college.

CMC: Or Faulker. As I Lay Dying? Come on! It's there! It's always been there...

Chris: I have Ai’s Vice at home somewhere, gotta crack that open again. She has a way of saying things so subtly unnerving, like how "baby coffin" just rolls off her tongue.

CMC: It's devastating what she can do within one poem. Takes me pages to reach what she hits within a single stanza. Never heard her read any of her work... Blame John Giorno! Blame the Beats!

Chris: I blame the Beats for so much already... How about some contemporaries -- who else could you blame today?

CMC: Good lord -- I just had my ass handed to me by Cormac McCarthy. Taking in the trinity of Child of God, Blood Meridian, and The Road... I felt like I knew what it was like to see Jesus on the page. It was, quite honestly, one of the more profound experiences I've had reading a book in a long, long time.

I can only aspire to be the bastard child of Ai and Cormac. Can you imagine? Can you? Like, really?

Chris: No. Not at all. Cormac breaks my heart every time. And yes I keep coming back. I recently read No Country for Old Men (rumored to be in production under direction of the Coen Brothers). It floored me. I always feel bad for the next three books I read after him, because they're all a let down.

CMC: It's this willingness to get hurt that kills me. It's some odd emotionally masochistic urge to read both of their work... So you're so No Country's good? As good as Blood Meridian?

Chris: Something liberating about knowing how easy it is to do damage to ourselves.

CMC: Blame the Coen brothers!

Chris: YES! Definitely blame the Coen brothers for our storytelling passion. No Country's awesome....but I haven't yet read Blood Meridian.

CMC: Ah! Aaaah! You have to! You have to have to!

Chris : I WILL! I WILL! I’ll read it today!

CMC: Barton Fink? Favorite movie. Top three, hands down.Miller's Crossing? Don't even get me started.

Chris: Speaking of Coen brothers, here's a segue for ya: see any good movies lately? It's a relevant question b/c you've worked on movies, and...I think you've even been in a movie, or am i making that up? (After all, you do have an IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1626455/)

CMC: Oh God! You know what I just saw? "If...." This movie is such a sucker punch. Blew me away. You know when you know there's a movie out there that you should see, need to see... but you're just not ready for it? Timing's everything, right? Well -- the time was nigh for me and "If..." and I tell you, it was worth the wait. …Blame Malcom McDowell!

Chris: He's so cool. I want to look like him when I'm older. Or Samuel Beckett.

CMC: Samuel Beckett looked like a Slim Jim. A piece of beef jerky that was left in the sun a little too long. Malcolm McDowell looks like a bleached Boston Terrier.

Chris: Okay, then Tom Waits.

CMC: Blame Tom Waits! Him too!

Chris: What about you…Jack Nicholson, maybe? You've got his cadence down...

CMC: To hell with you.

Chris: Haha. But, yes, blame Tom Waits. For everything. My love for whiskey, women, and carnivalesque alt-country.

CMC: You look like a Fig Newton that I've had tucked in between my butt cheeks for the last five hours. The cookie part has all crumbled away, leaving behind this jam in my ass.

Chris: What did I ever do to deserve this punishment?!

CMC: I love you.

Chris: Just to get back at you, I'm printing this whole thing. I told you we were on the record, bitch.

CMC: Oh. Blame Chris Steib!

Chris: Haha. Yes, blame me. And speaking of “on the record, bitch,” we're WAY over on word-count here, and I don't want to do any "rinsing," so let's wrap with a few serious questions. You must answer in exactly five words on each one. Are you ready?

CMC: Bring it.

Chris: Um...I'm making this up as I go along...so...ok...describe your favorite place to write: five words, go!

CMC: Sensory deprivationed spaces. Utter seclusion.

… Deprived. Deprived spaces! (Please tell me you'll spell check all this...)

Chris: (Nope, I dn’t) Okay, how about...describe how you feel about cottage cheese. Five words...go!

CMC: Lumpy asses at the beach.

Chris: Ooh, you're good at this. Finish this sentence with five words: When I listen to Fugazi, I am...

CMC: Sixteen, in the pit. Lectured.

Chris: Lectured, you say? Wonder what Mr. MacKaye would think of that.

CMC: Well... If I had more than five words it would've read: ...Sixteen years old all over again, in the pit, getting lectured by Ian.

Chris: Fair enough.Okay, final question, finish this sentence in five words: A good book should...

CMC:...Get published. And read.

Chris: Well said. I have no doubt all your books to come will see that fate.

CMC: God bless you.

Chris: Amen. Thanks for chatting it up with me, brother. I should go do some real work. You around again soon? Let's hang.

CMC: Oh, dude... I'm sweating it out down South all through September. You won't see my ass until October 1st. But you've got me... in spirit. … Oooooooooooh-hooooooooooooo.

Chris: Blame Clay McLeod Chapman...for my nightmares.

CMC: Sweet dreams...

Chris: Not after this conversation.

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Chris is a self-proclaimed micrologna expert and a "writer" of sorts. He founded VoidMagazine.com, where he was lucky enough to publish a few of Clay's awesome stories. Read Chris' favorite one here.

And this is a totally embarrassing photo of Clay that Chris found on Google's image search. Viva el Internet! Check out Clay's books here and here, and his official PPS website here. (Oh, and like everyone else, he's on MySpace, too.)