Peter Dubé is the author, co-author or editor of a dozen books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. His novella, Subtle Bodies, an imagined life of French surrealist René Crevel was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, and his recent work, a novel in prose poems entitled The Headless Man, was shortlisted for both the A. M. Klein Prize and the ReLit award. He was a member of the editorial committee of the contemporary art magazine Espace, art actuel for 18 years and is currently co-editor of The Philosophical Egg, an organ of living surrealism. He lives and works in his hometown of Montreal.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
As is the case for so many questions, there are at
least two answers to this. One concerns the writing of the book, which involved
teaching myself how to write a “book” rather than a poem, a story, or an essay.
Thus in some ways it changed my approach to writing, and assisted in
shaping my process, which had a profound impact. A second answer regards
publication. The appearance of Hovering World (my first book)
did not have a significant impact on my life in material terms, but it did
expand my community of writers as it led to new encounters through more
readings, touring, joining the Writers’ Union, and so on. And those encounters
and friendships are things for which I am profoundly grateful. In terms of its
effects on later work, a first book can, and in my case did, lay the ground, as
it were, It established a number of concerns which I continue to explore –-hopefully
– in greater depth and in diverse formal permutations.
2 - How did you come to fiction
first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
The truth is I have written across genres (poetry,
fiction, and nonfiction) for most of the time I’ve written in a serious way.
Genre represents possibility for me, rather than constraint. Thus I will
usually gravitate toward a form I feel suits a particular project particularly
well. This also partly accounts for my interest in hybrid forms. My earliest
publications were poems and short stories. They appeared in literary magazines
and journals; then I began to publish reviews and articles in newspapers and
art magazines. My first book, however, was a novel, Hovering World. What unites my work across the plurality of genres,
is an enduring interest in figuration, specifically metaphor: its possibilities
as a mode of thought and perception rather than simply a literary technique,
and its larger import in the realm of the social, the way it creates
associative leaps and consequently, connection.
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?
An honest answer to this question is tricky since it requires one to define what is meant by “to start.” I raise the point because I maintain a regular notebook practice and am constantly writing down notes, observations, fleeting thoughts, things I see on the street or overhear in the metro, and very often it is one such note or other that will spark some writing. This can happen weeks, months, or more after the note was initially taken. Once the spark is struck however and I begin writing. a form often emerges and solidifies relatively quickly. That form may shift a bit over the course of composition, but will generally still be at least somewhat recognizable at the end. What does shift a great deal is the details. (And I am a committed polisher of my work, so the veneer or surface definitely changes.)
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction 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?
The answer to this one is already present in my answer to question number 3 above. But perhaps I can offer a concrete example here as an elaboration. My book The Headless Man, for example, grew out of my interest in George Bataille’s image of the “acephale”. My interest in him led to a long period of reading, after which I’d thought I’d worked through the obsession. Of course, he resurfaced one day and insisted on being heard. I was looking through some old notebooks and found a few pages recording some of my findings regarding that acephalic figure. I wrote a poem responding to the image, a single poem, in which I sought to tease out a contemporary significance for this figure. However, in no time at all it proved to need more room to grow. And, it became a book, a book as hybrid as the image’s history. (The image first surfaces, as far I’ve been able to determine, in the Greek magical papyri, but subsequently mutates over time becoming an antifascist allegory in the Twentieth Century and then - in my hands — a novel in prose poems that I hope honours the complexity of his millennia long trajectory.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
The short answer to this one is: absolutely yes! Readings are important in all sorts of ways. First I see literature/writing as partly (an important part) about sound, rhythm, voice (in a variety of senses), and - once again — connection. Reading directly to an audience centres those things. On top of that, it is a unique opportunity to see and hear from your readers/audience in real time and determine what is working especially well, and how. It is a conduit for feedback. And the conversations after a reading are often revelatory and engaging too.
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?
Although ideas and questions certainly emerge in a piece during the writing process itself, I have noted that a number of recurring theoretical/philosophical concerns run through the body of my work in ways both more and less subterranean. One of the main ones, for example, is phenomenological in nature, and about the tricky relationship between experience and account — the manner in which our lives are made meaningful –- indeed are made — by how we talk about or explain them. Another, and clearly related one, might be language and its operations, the ways in which it embodies/enables/elaborates thought. Beyond such abstract philosophical matters however, the work tends to investigate the desire for, and experience of, community and its tricky relationship to individuality too.
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?
Needless to say, the present historical moment is a difficult one for writers. Social, political and technological change has complicated life for everyone, writers included. That said, I’m not prescriptivist by nature, so I hesitate to make blanket statements about the role of the writer as such. I am more inclined to feel that each writer will create her/his/their own role and such a role is likely to emerge naturally from the kind of work they produce.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
This is an interesting, if difficult, question; I will
simply say, my experience has varied. The occasions on which I have found
working with an editor incredibly helpful and rewarding have consistently been
when the editor was sufficiently widely-read to recognize a variety of
aesthetic traditions and consequently able to look at, and work with, a
particular text on its own terms, with an understanding of its specific stakes,
interests and project, and without attempting
to impose some other, arbitrary, form on it. The less successful cases for me
were those in which the editor had a fixed preconception of what made for “good”
or “literary” writing. This invariably, in the end, produces a mutilated and
inauthentic text.
Happily, I have worked with more editors of the former
type.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
If we are talking about writing advice specifically, then it would be the caution I received years ago to not worry about “writing a ‘perfect’ first draft. That a first draft is “a starting point, and not a finishing line.” Happily I did take that to heart; my first complete drafts are now always a place to begin polishing. If we mean advice for getting through life’s tougher moments, I’d have to hearken back to the wise words of Patsy Stone (in Absolutely Fabulous) when she said “Darling, finish the beaujolais and walk away from it.” That’s a handy recommendation for someone like me, who might have a tendency to take the small stuff a little too seriously at times.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (novels to short stories to essays to poems)? What do you see as the appeal?
In fact, this comes quite naturally to me; I’ve been writing poetry and fiction in tandem since I was a teenager. I suppose this stems from my deep interest in all of the possibilities of language, all the cool stuff one might be able to do with it, and the desire to investigate those possibilities. Nonfiction and critical writing came to me a little later in my twenties, I suppose… but those too arise from the same curiosity in many ways.
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 am a morning writer; I prefer to get out new writing early, as close to when I get up as possible –- while the gates to the unconscious, as it were, are still somewhat ajar, and the business of the day has not yet cluttered my mind. Afternoons I tend to focus on looking over and editing stuff.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
A nice walk is usually helpful to me. I get up and go outside to get my blood pumping in time to the rhythms of the city. The exercise and the sights, sounds and energy help recharge the battery and almost invariably provide me with some image or snippet of talk that will get me back to work. For really serious blockages I have also been known to use some of the techniques I’ve learned from surrealism; a little bit of automatic writing will get the words flowing again and is likely to provide an image or phrase as a kind of starting point for beginning anew.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Chanel No. 5, in some ways. (That was my Mum’s perfume when I was a little fella and it always calls up my childhood for me. Hence the deepest sense of home.) The odour of a particular type of cookie has the same effect on me too, I might note.
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?
Given that I’ve written about and reviewed art for decades, my imagination is clearly fed by works of visual art: contemporary, modern, and some earlier periods as well. Further, since I’m a movie buff and did graduate studies in cinema, the movies are just about omnipresent in my consciousness. Finally, I should reprise something I said above too: the city. I am an urban creature, and the presence, energy, beauty and brilliant noise of a large city feed my imagination in particular ways few other things can.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
My personal canon would clearly include the surrealists for sure, as well as gay liberationist writers and the New Narrative group. Those streams of writing are vital sources for my work, my thinking, and my politics. They also help provide a sort-of framework for my approach to daily life at the same time. Finally, there’s no way for me to talk about the important influences on my literary work properly understood without naming Angela Carter. My encounter with her books was absolutely transformational.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
The list of things that interest and tempt me is very long indeed and features travel destinations, workout objectives, and various possible encounters and experiences, but if I restrict myself to just my creative output: I am presently working on a friend’s film project, and am very much enjoying it. This has somehow triggered my long set-aside interest in movie-making, so who knows… though time and money are a factor here needless to say.
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?
As a teenager, I trained as an actor for several years, and was fairly serious about it; I suppose, if writing hadn’t intervened, I might have pursued that path. I also, at some point in my undergraduate studies, entertained the notion of studying the law, so that could have been a possibility too, if it hadn’t lost its appeal so quickly. In the end, writing was the only choice that really worked for me.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
That decision surely begins with a natural inclination or predisposition, and with being a reader. Being someone who loved words, stories, and poems and found real joy in them led me to understand their power to move. That in turn made me want to try it out myself. Once I began, I discovered exercising the imagination helped one engage with what is in excess of reality: all the vital potential and complex possibility underlying some situations and experiences. Writing about them — putting them down on paper — made that potential feel more real somehow, and –– as importantly –– gave them an enduring trace. That closed the circle for me, and I was hooked.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I recently read Brendan Connell's Metrophilias which struck me as walking the line between short fiction and prose poetry wonderfully, and doing so while being imbued with a nicely realized, frequently weird, and sometime disturbing, eroticism.
As for a film, well, I recently enjoyed Jan Svankmajer’s Insect which was, to put it simply, astounding. I watched it as half of a double feature that also included a rewatch of Cruising. (That, I must say — as a sidebar — was an a very interesting combination of viewing.)
20 - What are you currently working on?
Having just published a new chapbook of poems and a hefty work of nonfiction/poetics I am back to fiction and midway through a new novel.
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