Patrik Sampler is author of the novels Naked Defiance and The Ocean Container. His short-form writing has appeared in a variety of publications including The Guardian, The Millions, and The Scofield. Sampler devoted the better part of a postgraduate degree to the late-career work of Abe Kobo, and was a contributing editor for early editions of the surrealist journal Peculiar Mormyrid. www.patriksampler.com
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Getting my first book published gave me more self-assurance, and made me think some things about publishing.
My most recent novel, Naked Defiance, is less fragmentary than my previous (and first) novel, The Ocean Container, although both novels are digressive. I think Naked Defiance is more metafictional, maybe less lyrical, more about extremists and “idealists who seek a richer engagement with life, but are repressed by the intrusion of internecine politics,” more about leftists turning into rightists and not knowing the difference… I’d like to think it’s funnier.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I think I came to poetry first, then perhaps felt a loss of the kind of innocence that can make poetry vibrant, and also thought that people like Christopher Dewdney and William Wordsworth had already done a good enough job and I had nothing to add. Fiction became a better vehicle for my ideas and I started with short fiction, thinking it would be both easier to write and more marketable, but I was wrong and probably should have started writing novels sooner.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
If it’s a novel, it takes a year or two, anyway. I take notes as I come across useable material, then the notion of a plot occurs and I see how it can be used to hang that material together…
4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Based on whichever notes I gather, I like to get to a general framework pretty soon, then I add to it whatever else I can uncover…
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
If people would invite me to public readings more often, I might have a chance to find out if they’re a part of my creative process. I’ve enjoyed some readings… basically it’s nice to chat with people about writing.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Theoretical concerns… I think theoretical concerns behind my writing include notions of ‘reality.’ Out there, in a number of places, is an assumption that with greater detail something becomes more ‘real’ — but I think Jorge Luis Borges got it right when he said that not knowing the second fact about the first fact is in fact closer to reality.
‘Identity’ is another concern. There’s a popular notion that a label can point to one’s deeper self, even though that’s clearly not how words work. An ‘identity’ can’t be our essence, and we shouldn’t want it to be. There’s a story by Abe Kobo called “The Crime of S. Karma.” In it, a man’s business card — his identity — supplants the man himself and pushes him out of relationships. We should read this as horror.
I’m reacting against certain kinds of received wisdom and if I’m asking any questions, they are rhetorical questions, and I should probably ask some more sincere questions…. Then again, I think the job of the novel is to provide no answers… so maybe — if it’s doing its job — the novel is part of an ever-expanding question.
Concretely, The Ocean Container concerns a political fugitive in partial solitary confinement, and questions the degree to which his perceptions are connected to observations of the external world. Naked Defiance has something of a farcical mismatch between labels and the things to which they supposedly point, and then it’s also — superficially — a crime story in which the facts are never revealed… which reminds me that Chekhov’s gun is another thing that interests me greatly — namely, ensuring that the gun doesn’t shoot. For example, a character in Naked Defiance mentions that she’s pregnant early in the story, but we never hear about it again.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
As I understand it, the role of the writer is to commodify oneself, reify fashionable notions (then evaporate when those notions become unfashionable), and sit for pretentiously composed photo portraits. As for what the role should be… the writer — through their writing — should delight and entertain, invoke strange feelings of our oceanic bond with the mysteries of existence, and touch the sublime. It’s really that simple.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I like working with an outside editor. I’ve had lots of excellent advice. Sometimes I wonder if I’m writing by committee…
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
That I should go to a certain place where a certain famous writer is doing a residency and giving feedback to manuscripts submitted by the public… I don’t want to drop names, because it’s in bad taste to do so. What I will say is that she gave my writing a positive review, and that really did encourage me to write more.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I think it hasn’t been too hard. One thing I like to do in fiction is mix hardly believable scenarios with familiar details of the so-called ‘real’ world. In non-fiction, I do the same, but in different proportions. What I find hard is coming up with the right ‘gimmick’ for a non-fiction piece, so I don’t write them nearly as often. And then the world is quite cluttered with non-fiction of the opinion variety… Well, I guess you could say it’s equally cluttered with fiction, too. As for the appeal… I think the appeal is to have some fun.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I like to write early in the morning, partly because there’s no other time in the day, partly because I like it. I start by eating breakfast (the same one I have every day), stretching, listening to some classical music… Then I sit at the computer and drink a mug of undiluted espresso, and after about an hour I’m quite warmed up, mentally, and then I can go for maybe another hour, maybe two, and that’s about all I can handle. That’s how I like to write, but I can’t do it too often, due to everything else…
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
If my writing gets stalled, I don’t get too worried because most of my ideas happen accidentally. I think just being out in the world… Well, cycling is my usual mode of transportation, sometimes I get ideas when I’m on my bicycle.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Baked mackerel.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Nature is a big influence. Music is another big influence. Those two things appear quite a bit in my writing. The geometric abstractions of Wassily Kandinsky and his Concerning the Spiritual in Art have influenced me greatly, as have the films of Andrei Tarkovsky – Stalker and Mirror, in particular. It was a kind of ecstasy reading his Sculpting in Time.
15 - What other
writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of
your work?
Years ago, discovering Abe Kobo was a big impetus. There’s never been a novel quite like Secret Rendezvous. It starts with a man — a kind of running shoe salesman — and the arrival of an ambulance at his home. The paramedics are there to take his wife to the hospital. She’s not feeling unwell, nor has she called for an ambulance, but they both figure she should go, anyway. After all, if an ambulance shows up, there must be a good reason… And that’s the most ‘normal’ part of the book. I don’t think we’re allowed in Canada to mention what else happens in that novel. Suffice it to say, it showed me the novel didn’t have to be just the same old, same old. As for other novels, Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island is similarly uninhibited, but far more commercial. W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn made a big impression on me, as did Renee Gladman’s Event Factory. I read Anna Kavan’s Ice not too long ago, and it’s been on my mind ever since. I like Italo Calvino quite a bit.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Earn some decent money.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I think of the writing process as being a lot like carving. I could see myself working with wood, maybe as a carpenter. I like plants, so farming might also be nice, except I like to go to the seaside in the summer… Maybe I could work in a haberdasher, or maybe like a... a chapeau shop, or something...
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I didn’t make it anywhere near getting onto a professional team for the Tour de France, so I gave up attempting that, started playing bass guitar, joined a few bands. I had aspirations to make some of those weird, athletic basslines like the ones Derek Forbes of Simple Minds made a few years on either side of 1982. Any bands I was in didn’t quite get off the ground, though, so I turned to writing. Well, I had been writing all along, just not too seriously.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, is certainly a great book, and I’ve just finished reading it again for about the fifth time. It’s often credited as the ‘inspiration’ for George Orwell’s 1984, but the truth is that he just brazenly ripped it off — which isn’t to diminish the value of 1984, because it does a few important things differently. Mostly, however, it’s directly analogous to We, except that We is a lot funnier. No one is being tortured into believing that two plus two equals five. Rather, toward the end of the novel the government sends people door-to-door, basically, encouraging everyone to get a lobotomy.
As for the most recent great film I’ve seen, it’s Kawa no Nagare wa Baiorin no Oto, directed by Sasaki Shoichiro. It’s a studied exercise in disobeying the Chekov’s gun principle, and a very understatedly weird film because it was made for TV and looks like it might be a kind of documentary — except that it’s not. Every few years I watch this film to refresh my memory… I find it mesmerizing.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m tidying up the first part of a two-part novel, about a man with no personality who is on a journey to the edge of the Earth. Along the way he stops at various decadent cities overtaken by primordialist cults. At each hotel he receives an overwrought letter, in a poor imitation of the style of Anaïs Nin, by an estranged lover he might not in fact know. The second part of the novel, which I’m just getting started on, is a family memoir.
I’ve also started outlining a novel about a disenchanted government worker who spends his meagre savings on a used Mazda Bongo camper van and goes on a road trip to sabotage symbols of consumerism during the day while writing reviews of fake novels at night. These fake novel reviews foretell the story: he’s kidnapped by a militant transhumanist, a dialectic ensues, he manages to escape, then regresses to a childhood state of oceanic connection with the natural world… or a kind of pantheistic rapture. There’s more to it than I’ve let on here, but all the pieces will fit together.
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