When the Subconscious Calling the Shots: An Interview with Dale Bridges
AFI: First, congratulations on the
publication of Justice, Inc. Second, thank you for
participating in this interview.
DB: Thank you and thank you. I
appreciate the opportunity to talk about myself.
AFI: As we get started, I have to ask:
how do you feel about Justice, Inc. now that it's a finished
product? This is a short story collection, but in many ways it reads
like one single narrative. Did you write the short stories with the
overall product in mind? Do you have favorites among these short
stories?
DB: Fear. Anxiety. Excitement. And
maybe a little nausea. That’s how I feel.
I definitely did not write these
stories with any kind of over-arching narrative in mind. In fact, it
did not occur to me until the collection was complete that the
stories were connected in any way whatsoever. Perhaps that makes me
appear sort of dense, but I was too focused of writing each story to
notice any larger themes, which was probably for the best. It wasn’t
until I was editing the entire collection that I noticed the stories
were interconnected. And then all I did was add a few details here
and there to make it seem as though that was my plan all along.
Sometimes your subconscious can make you seem more intelligent than
you actually are.
Picking a favorite story is a bit like
picking a favorite child. Of course, I have one, but I’m not going
to admit it. Their feelings would get hurt. There are things a like
about all of them. I think “Welcome to Omni-Mart” is the most
complete, “Justice, Inc.” is my favorite idea, “Life After Men”
was the most fun to write, and “The Girlfriend™” is the most
original, whatever the hell that means.
AFI: I love the piece “Life After
Men.” To avoid sending a spoiler to those who haven't read the
story yet—I love the notion that only men become zombies and it's
all due to a sexually transmitted disease. It's a very funny premise,
but it's not really what the story is about, right? The story, it
seems, is about failed relationships and the patterns of failed
relationships which is something we can all relate to. How did you
come up with the idea of a zombie virus as an STD? Incidentally, the
short-short story “Texting the Apocalypse” is perfectly placed
before “Life After Men.” Was that intentional? And as long as
we're on the subject, “The Girlfriend™” is a stunning if not
disquieting short story and the main character plays a video game
called Life After Men, a video game involving zombies
in Newport. Did one story influence the other? Did you just find it
fitting to connect these references? Or were you consumed with these
themes during the writing of these short stories?
DB: You got it. The zombies in “Life
After Men” are sort of incidental to the plot, despite the fact
that the central conflict appears to revolve around them. I thought
it would be interesting and challenging to create a world where men
exist only as monsters. The story is definitely about dysfunctional
relationships, but it’s also about biology. Much is made in our
culture about the positive qualities of romantic love, but we’ve
all known people who are abused in the name of love, as well. Love
isn’t always a many splendored thing. Love doesn’t always lift us
up where we belong. Sometimes love is a tyrannical bastard that has
its hand wrapped around your throat.
I have no idea where the zombie-STD
idea came from. Another example of my subconscious calling the shots,
I guess. The idea tickled me, so I just went with it.
I definitely put thought into the order
of the stories, but they did not influence each other. Some of the
stories took me years to finish, others were completed in a few
weeks. The process was all over the place. However, I do think I
obsess over certain themes, and that becomes apparent in this
collection.
AFI: You and I became acquainted a few
years ago when Umbrella Factory Magazine (Issue 2, June 2010)
ran your short story “Denim Virgins.” I doubt I told you at the
time, but the entire editorial staff loved that story. I think in the
literary magazine world, especially on the editors' side of things,
we love love a story that makes us laugh. How do you think you've
grown as a writer since “Denim Virgins”? Your list of
publications since mid-2010 is impressive. How do you think working
with magazines and editors has influenced your writing? What was the
best experience you had with a magazine? Which magazine was the
worst?
DB: That’s so nice to hear. “Denim
Virgins” is actually part of a memoir that I’m currently shopping
around to publishers. I started writing about fifteen years ago, and
at that time I was not a good writer. I’m not being humble; I was
bad. I wrote minimalist, testosterone-fueled rip-offs of Hemingway
and Bukowski. But I’m a stubborn SOB, so I stuck with it. After
about ten years, my writing started to improve. Finally. I began
dabbling in nonfiction, mostly humorous essays about growing up the
son of a small-town fundamentalist preacher. That’s when I wrote
“Denim Virgins.”
Somehow in 2007 I managed to land a job
as the A&E editor at an alternative newspaper in Boulder. I
didn’t really want to be a journalist, but the experience
definitely improved my writing. It forced me to give up my “fancy”
sentences (I was going through a Capote stage by that time) and get
straight to the point. And deadlines can be a great motivator. The
story is due at four o’clock, whether you think it’s ready or
not.
Eventually, I decided to return to
fiction but the years I spent as a journalist were important. That’s
when I started publishing more.
Most of my experiences with editors
have been positive. I published “Life After Men” in The
Masters Review, and that was a nice experience. The editors I
worked with there made a few changes to the story that definitely
improved it, and they listened when I took issue with some of the
other alterations they wanted to make. The only truly bad experience
I’ve had was with a long article I wrote for a magazine that no
longer exists. I worked on the story for almost a year, and when it
came out, I discovered that they completely butchered the
introduction without consulting me first. I was pissed off. I called
up the editor and ranted at her for twenty minutes, but it was too
late by then. Ironically, that was the most I’ve been paid for any
single piece of writing. It wasn’t worth it. Assholes.
AFI: When did you first decide to
become a writer? Was there one moment when you knew you were going
to be a writer? Do you recall the title of your first short story?
DB: I was raised in a small-town,
lower-class household, so the idea of being a professional artist was
completely foreign to me. I was an avid reader from a young age, but
it didn’t even occur to me that a person could choose to be a
writer until I was twenty-two. I remember exactly when it happened. I
was finishing up my undergrad degree in history, completely confused
about what I was going to do with my life after graduation. One day I
was walking home from class and I saw my good friend, Chris, taking
photographs of a tree. I asked what the hell he was doing and he said
that he was putting together a portfolio to apply to film school. I
was completely blown away. Of course, I knew that film schools
existed, but it never occurred to me that real people went to
them. I was shocked—and a little bit angry. I’m not sure why.
Something about his artistic ambitions upset my Protestant
sensibilities, I guess. How dare he follow his dreams while the rest
of us pursued boring, practical goals?
Shortly after that, I started writing.
First it was bad poetry, then bad prose. I don’t recall the title
of my first short story, but I know the narrative took place in a
grocery store and it had too many religious metaphors and not enough
plot. Terrible, terrible stuff.
AFI: Who are your influences? Who were
you reading in the formative years as a writer? Who are you reading
now? How do you think other writers influence you?
DB: In my formative years, it was
Hemingway, Carver, Bukowski, etc. Tough manly writers. The problem is
that I’m not all that tough or manly. Then I discovered Vonnegut,
and I tried to copy him for a long time. Sherman Alexie was
influential, too, and later George Saunders, Jincy Willett, Stacey
Richter, and Philip K. Dick. It’s natural to imitate other writers
when you start out, but it’s necessary to move beyond that phase in
order to find your own voice. Currently, I’m reading a lot of
Austin writers because that’s where I live now: Owen Egerton, Mary
Miller. I read for enjoyment now, not research, and that’s nice.
AFI: Going back to Justice Inc.
for a moment, I notice a few recurring themes in these stories. For
instance, it seems that you challenge the idea of procreation in both
“Welcome to Omni-Mart” and the title story, “Justice, Inc.”
In the first story we meet a simulation baby and in the latter we
meet clones. Although, each story has a slightly science fiction or
dystopian feel to them, the child-adult relationship is very real.
What are your impressions of the vulnerable (the baby) and adults
pushed unwillingly into parenthood? Am I seeing more to this than you
intended? Or is the presentation of the child-adult relationship
simply there to progress the plot or perhaps leave us somewhat
unsettled as readers?
DB: I think you’re right, that theme
does exist, but once again I didn’t consciously choose it. I
definitely like to unsettle the reader, so that’s probably part of
it, but I also enjoy the juxtaposition of putting an innocent child
in a dystopian environment. As you probably noticed, there aren’t a
lot of traditional heroes in my stories. No one swoops in to save the
day at the end. They can’t because they’re powerless, hopeless,
broken. The children in these stories demonstrate what these adults
were like before they were chewed up by the cultural machinery.
AFI: I enjoyed Justice, Inc.
very much. When can I expect the next installment? Do you have
another project in the works? Another collection or a novel?
DB: Thank you! I’m currently working
on my first novel. I read somewhere that Ray Bradbury wrote the first
draft of Fahrenheit 451 in nine days at the library. Well,
that kind of pissed me off. What a dick, right? So I decided to take
a crack at it. I plugged out a rough draft in seven days (take that,
Bradbury!) and I’m currently revising it. The revision process is
slow, and I expect it’ll be about a year before it’s ready. It’s
an extremely weird story. I have no idea if it’s any good, but at
least it won’t be formulaic.
AFI: Thank you very much for your time
Dale. It was a pleasure reading your book. Where can someone find a
copy of Justice, Inc. for his library?
DB: Yeah, this was fun. Thank you. The
book will be available in both physical and ethereal form at Amazon
and on the Monkey Puzzle Press website, monkeypuzzlepress.com. It
will also be available at Book People in Austin and hopefully
Tattered Cover in Denver.
Dale Bridges is writer and journalist living in Austin, Texas. His work has been featured in more than thirty publications, including The Rumpus, The Masters Review, and Barrelhouse Magazine. He has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for his feature writing, narrative nonfiction, and cultural criticism. His essays and short stories have been anthologized. When he's not writing, he works at a used bookstore. He is currently working on his first novel.
Anthony ILacqua holds a Master of Fine Arts of writing at Goddard College. His third novel Warehouses and Rusted Angels is forthcoming from Ring of Fire Publishing in late 2014. His former novels, Dysphoric Notions (2012) and Undertakers of Rain (2013) are both published through Ring of Fire Publishing. His screenplays have been made into widely praised films at Rocket House Pictures where he directs as well as writes. He currently functions as editor in chief for Umbrella Factory Magazine that he co-founded in 2009. Meet Anthony at his blog: anthonyilacqua.blogspot.com
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