When Sean Lovelace submitted his manuscript for Fog Gorgeous Stag, I immediately knew I loved it, but I didn't know what it was. That's probably one of the reasons I like anything, immediately -- being mystified by it but knowing that it is an accomplishment, that it has a purpose or a vision, and that it recognizes that goal. Fog Gorgeous Stag is a visionary text. But knowing that doesn't make it any easier to talk about it, so I asked Sean Lovelace four questions to contextualize his book. Adam Robinson
1. Michael Martone calls your writing “prose that out-Jesuses poetry’s poetry.” To you, what genre is this book?
I consider it an artifact, a thing. I want it to be more than the words, whether they are broken with lines or into paragraphs or parentheses, etc. Or all of the gorgeous emptiness of white space. I suppose I mean to say I hope the book surpasses questions of genre. I have seen visual art do such a thing. And if this visual art does its “thingness” well, no one asks what school it exists in. I try to remember that no one knew what to call the work of Richard Brautigan. So they called it a “Brautigan.” I hope this book is worthy of the same genre as fog. A Fog-igan?
2. Is there a theme that guides the book?
Possibly. I have a creek running through my backyard. One day a blue heron was carefully fishing the creek, its legs scissoring in the sun. Yet the heron had a red plastic bag somehow affixed around its neck. I have seen a coyote cross my backyard with a Burger King bag in its jaws. I also wondered how my writing has changed in the face of perpetual warfare, economic calamity as default, natural disaster, media infatuation—these large event storms that are swirling in the sky above my desk/roof/world. I wanted a book steeped in today. Leaking, I suppose. Well, I tried for this idea, for better or worse.
3. Were these written for this specific book, or is this a more general collection?
Every text was written for this book. I wrote it in one summer. A rare case of discipline on my part. I wanted to create a thing, as I mentioned earlier. I usually jump from text to text, a bit squirrely in my way. But for this manuscript I reminded myself: stay with the thing.
4. This book is unlike most other books. What was the impetus for writing it?
The impetus for the book was one exact day. It was early fall; I was hunting. I was deep in the forest and came upon the ruins of some facility, overgrown, deserted roadways, crumbling brick walls, jumbles of rotted/rusted equipment. I descended into a valley, with a seeping spring and wet carpet of brilliant green moss. Scattered in this wet, gurgling glen were the following: blue ceramic shards, Mason jars, mushrooms, oil filters, a rusting wheelchair, ferns of red and green, numerous beer cans and quart bottles, torn, glossy magazines, condoms, a toilet lid, an arrowhead, cigarette butts, a head lamp, the skeleton of what appeared to be opossum or raccoon, all varieties of broken glass, on and on. The juxtaposition was overwhelming. Old and new. Vulgar with sacred. Rather beautiful.
I wanted to write a book to represent that valley. I wanted to try. I tried—this was the impetus.
(By the way, I did some research and the abandoned facility was once a rural medical clinic.)
(Oh and I kept the arrowhead.)
SEAN’S BIO:Sean Lovelace lives in Indiana, where he eats nachos and drinks beer and plays disc golf and runs far and teaches at Ball State U and writes bizarre WTFs that challenge words and sentences. He is a contributor to HTMLGiant and his last book was published by Rose Metal Press. He blogs at seanlovelace.com.
