Tag: language

There’s no two ways about it: George Saunders is one of the greatest living writers of fiction in America now. Since his scorching debut collection in 1996, he’s stuck with admirable firmness to his short-fiction guns, publishing only stories and novellas, almost all of which take place in either the contemporary US or a harrowingly shit-awful, worryingly near-futuristic version of it. Saunders’ stories tend to be faultless masterclasses in sentence-perfect brevity, hilariously dismal corporate language and that weird unquantifiable thing that squishes up your heart and makes you do embarrassing involuntary audible laugh-sobs in public. He is a MacArthur-Fellowship-certified proper genius and we were pleased as punch to get to talk to him about his forthcoming collection Tenth of December, which might be his best one yet.

Congratulations on such a head-spinningly good new collection! Your publishers are calling this one your ‘most accessible collection yet’. Do you think that's right?
I think it is more accessible. By which I mean, maybe, that a person who isn’t necessarily a big reader of contemporary short fiction could dive right in and find something in it. Lately I’ve been writing these non-fiction travel pieces and have noticed that a lot of very bright, engaged people I know, who don’t really get my fiction, seemed drawn in by these. So I had that goal in mind – to, where possible, reach out – put up a bigger tent, so to speak.

There’s a pleasing structure to this new one. Do you set out to write a cohesivecollection, or do you just do one story at a time until you've got enough to lump together into a book? When does it become a book?
I don’t have a big, overarching idea for a collection when I start out, no. I try to keep my focus on the small stuff – on the sentences, on keeping the energy high – trusting that the greater whole – story, then book - will take care of itself: it will be coming directly from the subconscious and therefore will have some sort of cohesion. It’s what I think of as a ‘seed crystal’ approach, like in biology class: start with something small and let it accrete organically outward. Using this approach, you can sometimes outwit that simplistic/thematic guy inside yourself.

We’ve always been brimful of admiration at your sticking exclusively to short fiction. But will there ever be a novel?
I think there might be. But not if it would cause you to stop admiringme. Ha. No – I try not to have too many ideas about what I might do/might not do/should do. My hope is just to follow my own natural energy and interest and see what happens. So far, the natural DNA of my writing has been inclined toward brevity. It may be a version of that sports idea, that there are fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles – maybe there’s something similar re: prose style? I imagine my stories as little wind-up toys: wind them up, put them down, they go directly under the couch. I would like to write a novel, just because – at least here in the States – there’s a certain level of cultural and critical attention that seems reserved for that form.

You've said before that it's the improvisatory quality that attracts you to the story form: the way you can start out and not know how you're going to end up. Don’t you know what you’re doing from the outset a bit more these days?
It’s changed a little. In some cases now I have a sort of pre-sense of what I need to make a story – usually just these broad action/escalation markers. If I can figure those out in advance, I can engage that improvisatory energy in figuring out how I get from one marker to the next. In Tenth of December, ‘Victory Lap’ and the title story were written like that – the rest were pretty much improvisations.I love that Gerald Stern quote: ‘If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking – then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.’ Or, as Einstein said it, in his slightly more snooty manner: ‘No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.’ So the trick is to keep the conscious, conceptual mind at bay and thus stay open to mystery, revelation etc.

So the character who turns out to be narrating his story from beyond the grave, for instance: did you know he was going to end up dead when you started out?
No, I didn’t know that. I actually wrote about 100 pages of that story where he lived and actually did escape, before reeling it back in and finding out he was dead/had to die.

You've done quite a bit of dead people speaking or acting, post-mortem: ghosts, disintegrating zombie aunties, narrators who’ve already killed themselves in the most horrifying way possible. Why do you think you keep coming back to this talky-dead business?
There are probably all sorts of thematic implications and so on – but for me the main reason for writing about ghosts is the little rush of pleasure I get from doing it. And I hope that pleasure shows up in the quality of the prose, and also takes the story in an unexpected direction – a story will often take an intriguing turn while you are occupying yourself with making the language energetic.

And why all the futuristic stuff?
My futuristic tendencies are more a means to an end – I want to write about human tendencies at the end conditions. Like in a science experiment: if you want to know something about a concrete beam, put it under extreme stress. One can do that pretty handily in an alternate world.

The other thing we see a lot in this alternate world is this constant anxiety about poverty. You're writing about the richest country on earth, but almost all of your characters are dirt-poor and fretting like mad about it. Not exactly The Great Gatsby, is it?
Well, I think that’s the real American story: the severe divide between the rich and the poor, and the cost the poor pay in grace and ease, and how untroubled the rich are about that. Just about every American life below a certain level is dominated by work and the depredations caused by far to talk about sex or religion or even a small disgusting goitre we have in some private place.

Legal and thoroughly depressing mind-altering drugs come into play a lot in Tenth of December. Is America’s dependence on pharmaceutical drugs an issue you're particularly worried about, or are drugs just a good device for a story for you?
The latter. I loved the opportunities those drugs gave me to write in different registers. I’d made a living out of writing in a sort of stripped-down, vernacular minimalism, and sometimes feel like busting out – ergo, drugs. In the story, that is.

You’ve said before that you came late to literature and that your scientific background (studying and working in the field of geophysical engineering) meant that your writing was “Like if you put a welder to designing dresses.” Do you still feel like the welder, or do you admit by now that you’re basically Karl Lagerfeld?
No, some things die hard. I was poorly trained as a reader and I think will always suffer for that. So what I’m trying to do is make that malformation to work for me, ie make really cool metal-dresses.

It’s kind of reassuring that the final sentiment of the new book – in the acknowledgements in the back where you thank your daughters – is, ‘Goodness is not only possible, it is our natural state.’ It’s way-grim in the world of your fiction, and outside of it much of the time; are you really optimistic about the world your kids are going to inherit?
I don’t think I’m optimistic or pessimistic – these are both versions of the same disease, the disease of wanting to say, ‘Oh, I see how life is (all good/all bad) – now I can stop thinking and worrying about it and interrogating it.’ I will say, however, that one of the revelations I’ve had over the last few years is that goodness is possible and attainable – that we do have the power to move ourselves in the direction of openness and awareness and so on. And that there are remarkable people in the world who are inclined – through disposition and/or training – to positive vision and action.

Cool. What about Ben Stiller? Didn’t he buy the rights to one of your stories, and wasn’t he going to direct and star in it, and you’ve written the screenplay, and oh-God-please let’s have that film soon, please? What’s going on with that?
I think that’s not happening. I wrote one for Ben Stiller that came very close but the signals I’m getting is that that ship has sailed. Or sunk. So we will just have to watch the movies that our minds make. Eesh. That sounds like a bad self-help book: Improving the Movies Our Minds Make: Reinventing Your Inner Tape Loop.

Tenth of December is published by Bloomsbury on January 3

Riccardo Tisci's Fall Givenchy menswear collection, in store summer 2013, focuses on the designer's essential wardrobe ingredients: plaid, prints, contrasting fabrics and engineered cuts.

Reinforcing the language Tisci has established at the maison, the lookbook was shot at a motorcycle workshop, with biker garb and meatpackers’ imagery informing the line-up, which swaps Rottweilers for Dobermans (a fierce but noble dog is for a collection, not just for life).

"Digitally hand-painted Dobermans, the 'Pervert 17' American football sweater and gold studded Derby shoes are some of my highlights from this collection," friend of both Tisci and Dazed, the man in Milan Marcelo Burlon tells us. "New to Riccardo's menswear this time areblue jeans, pushing forward the Givenchy attitude whilst remaining loyal to the spirit he represents."

Here we present Marcelo's favourite looks from the collection in a special edit by the DJ, PR, stylist, editor and all-round creative.

Photography courtesy of Givenchy

“I try to make work that nobody can use if they are not willing to accept a change in whatever logic structure they are stuck in,” explains Lawrence Weiner. It is the day before the opening of his solo exhibition BE THAT AS IT MAY at the Lisson Gallery, and accompanied with a glass of whisky, he begins to unravel a five decade career in which he has deconstructed artistic practices and expanded the accepted notions of the art object. As the title of his new show suggests, Weiner proposes “are we going to accept this as art?” Something that has continued to fuel his fascination with materialism and breaking down the structure of things. THIS AS THAT (BE THAT AS IT MAY) is printed on the window of the gallery, projected inwards and outwards, allowing it to be viewed simultaneously without occupying the room itself. It becomes a material fact, less to do with the way the text is presented and more to do with its relation to space. Here, Lawrence Weiner discusses growing up in the Bronx, pretty girls at MoMa and his dedication to changing attitudes.

When did your fascination with language begin?

Im not even that fascinated by language. Language became the means to break the hierarchal standard. I got good at what I was doing. Language became a necessity because painting had reached a certain point. It just wasn't allowing me to go as deep into the relationship of what interested me - human beings and objects. Remember, at that time, it was not a radical choice. There were thirty or forty artists who began to see language as a means of making art. It wasn't radical. It wasn't even a departure. Nobody was paying attention to you apart from your little art world. It didn't much matter. You didn't have to fit in. The whole point of the work is that it puts a material fact out. It has no metaphor. I don't know how someone will react. It doesn't carry a hidden meaning. You don't miss the point, the point is there. Each individual person comes to art and looks at it. If it doesn't have a metaphor, they will take their needs and their desires and build a metaphor from what they are looking at. That is why Mondrian was so powerful.

You began your career with explosion events...

That was something else. It was 1960 and I was in California. I did a piece of work where I made a mistake, not that we got caught. We didn't even get prosecuted because there was a whole lot of people and I guess the judge at Mill Valley realised that if he held anybody, he would be stuck with all these people. I think we were sort of scary, but not frightening like Hells Angels. I thought that each individual explosion was a sculpture. I had to function and deal with it that way. Four years down the line I had my own crisis. I decided that I didn't want to participate in this world anymore. Looking back, it was a very post-adolescent mentality of not wanting to do something. From then onwards, it wasn't about each individual explosion. Each hole meant something to somebody and the idea became obvious, that each hole would always mean something to somebody. That was the point in making art, that it meant something to somebody. I guess I didn't stop producing this kind of work. Instead, I stopped thinking about the specific individual object. I began to realise that the drama of each individual work was the object. I guess it took me a while.

Growing up in the South Bronx, was there a concept of art?

Only by chance, yes. I had seen art but I didn't really understand it. They gave out free passes to public school kids for the Museum of Modern Art. It knocked my socks off. I made a joke, but it is not really a joke, it is the truth, that whenever you went to MoMa, there were always very pretty girls there. So, that was my introduction into so called 'art'. I guess I wasn't such a loud mouthed kid as I thought. An awful lot of people, and I don't know how they had the patience, were extremely kind to me. Seriously. I didn't have to fight my way through. As an artist it was another story. When it became obvious to me that I knew what I was going to try to do, I remember some very established artists telling me “Hey kid, everybody says your crazy, your not crazy, but how to fuck are you going to make a living?"

Did that excite you?

No, I had used up my excitement by that time. The gentile poverty of being an artist was far less daunting than trying to decide where I fit in positively in society. I come from a background of social engagement and civil rights long before it was fashionable, so I felt a bit of guilt for stepping aside and saying essentially instead of changing the temporal, I was literally trying to change the culture. It took a while and an awful lot of guilt. A lot of self searching to get to the point where I began to think it really was possible, by making art to change the logic structure of society.

There must have been a strong feeling of change since the release of your firstArtist Statement?

No, I was lucky because I had an audience from the very beginning. Mainly consisting of artists. It was small, perhaps it made noise, but it had no power. I never felt like I was one against the world, it just was a little hard. There were difficulties, but they were from my own choice. I had the opportunity to teach, but I wanted not to. When you teach, you take on an authority and you are responsible for people. Artists are not supposed to have authority. You are supposed to really and truly be the scribbler on the ground. Maybe it was a romantic choice. The making of art is about what you show, it is not about this persona that they are trying to build around you.

Do you feel your work is ever romantic?

Aspirational, yes. Of course, doesn't everybody? With every work that I show, if people accept the logic structure it would radically change their attitude towards life. I try to make work that nobody can use if they are not willing to accept a change in whatever logic structure they are stuck in. Art is supposed to change the way you relate to the world at large. Hey, thats not romantic, is it? But, I guess aspirational is not so bad.

Lawrence Weiner'sBE THAT AS IT MAYis held at London'sLisson Galleryuntil 12 January 2013