by Wil Oakes
Josh Goldfaden’s short stories have appeared in Meridian, Mid-American Review, New England Review, Salmagundi, the Sewanee Review, Washington Square, ZYZZYVA, and others. His first book, a short story collection, Human Resources, was published by Tin House Books in April 2007. It was shortlisted for the 2007 Story Prize, and awarded the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Prose Award. Publisher’s Weekly awarded this book one of its Starred Reviews, noting that, "Admirably, Goldfaden roams widely and erratically, from surfers living on an exclusive beachfront to a bizarre set of contemporary pirates who give up robbing yachts to join a pirate-busting agency. Goldfaden is an undeniable talent."
A recipient of a 2008 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, his short story, "Disorder Destroyers," was the Editor’s Choice for the Mid American Review’s 2006 Sherwood Anderson Award. His story, "Looking at Animals," was awarded the 2007 Lytle Fiction Prize from The Sewanee Review. He recently wrote a screenplay adaptation of his story, "Nautical Intervention," which was optioned for film by the actress Bebe Neuwirth. “Looking at Animals” has also recently been optioned for a short film.
Josh Goldfaden lives in Oceanside, California with his wife, the poet Jennifer Chapis.
I recently had the pleasure of requesting an email interview with him, to which he replied, “Are you high? Of course I want to answer your questions for The Southeast Review.” The correspondence that followed was marked by both enthusiasm and procrastination, a mode of operation that suited both of us well. We talked about surrealism, sentient ferns, penis jokes, and what it’s like to be a young writer trying to make his way.
Q: The stories in Human Resources all walk the line between absurdity and sincerity to some degree. What are the difficulties of balancing the two and making them coexist in a way that allows us to laugh while still offering us something to think about?
A: When I first started writing, I wrote two distinct types of stories. There were the “funny” stories which were completely obscene and ridiculous, and then the serious stories which were utterly humorless. This seemed to conform to most of what I’d read. George Saunders was the first person I found whose work was simultaneously hilarious and moving. To me, this seemed like the most natural and honest writing because life as I’d always seen it tended to be absurd, even at the most significant of moments.
“For me, the key is time. I just need a lot of time, sometimes years, to write draft after draft until I can really figure out what these stories are about.” I do, frankly, find it difficult to straddle that line without falling over into either melodrama or ridiculousness. I tend to want to take jokes too far at the expense of the overall story. At the same time, in early drafts I often try to force emotion in where it hasn’t yet been earned, resulting in melodrama. For me, the key is time. I just need a lot of time, sometimes years, to write draft after draft until I can really figure out what these stories are about. Hopefully, over that long period of time, I’ve managed to whittle away the ridiculous humor at the same time that understanding who these characters really are and what they want has allowed me to replace the melodrama with something more honest.
Q: It occurred to me that most of these stories are about the collapse of relationships—romances, families, friendships—and in that way they’re centered on a theme that’s probably pretty familiar to most people. At the same time, though, you often make the circumstances of these relationships surreal in a way that makes them very unfamiliar—a group of pirates, a dog that lusts after his master, etc. What does your exploration of human relationships gain from these surreal settings and situations?
A: It’s such an interesting question, because, despite the fact that these stories do have odd settings and points of view, at the same time, each of the stories themselves started with setting (as opposed to starting with character or plot), so it’s the setting itself that’s the most organic thing to the story. One of the writing exercises I love using with classes is to have them start a piece by describing the one place in their hometown where anything could happen. It’s not that I’m hoping to receive a bunch of stories about flying people or dragons, but I do like the idea of a setting that allows for things which could just barely happen.
“I remember thinking that I was a genius. A fern’s POV! I thought. My God am I awesome!” As for what’s gained by surreal settings, I want to say that they might allow for humor a bit more easily than if all of these [stories] took place in, for instance, a traditional American home (whatever that might be). Other than an advantage in humor-making, I’m not sure what’s gained by surrealism. Maybe the reason it’s hard to answer is that I never set out to write unusual, surreal stories. In fact, I didn’t even realize that all of the stories in the book were about weird occupations until the book was finished. Even though I know intellectually that these stories are sometimes absurd or their settings surreal, I never think about them this way. I love some of these characters, especially the horribly inappropriate ones. To me, they’re funny, but never unreal.
Q: I like the way you incorporated Bruce Springsteen as a character in “Top of the List.” Normally, I find the appearance of celebrities in stories jarring, but the way you kept Bruce mostly in the background allowed him to function mostly as a concept in protagonist Mary’s head. What was your thought process as you were putting him into that story?
A: That story is the only one in the book based directly on something from my life. I was a waiter in a hip Boston restaurant, and one night Bruce Springsteen had reservations to come in. Though this restaurant had famous people coming in all the time (including Jenna Jameson and Dan Aykroyd at the same table), I’d never seen the restaurant as riled up as it was for Springsteen’s visit. Unfortunately, he never showed up. For many drafts of the story, it ended with everyone realizing that he wasn’t going to show up. At some point, however, I realized that readers would find it just as sucky as we all did when Springsteen didn’t show up, so I put him into the story.
Once he was there, it seemed so stupid to have left him out for so long. The story had always been about a woman with bizarre connections to Bruce Springsteen, so now that he was there with her, she could finally begin to make meaning out of his role in her life. Unfortunately, it took me many more drafts and 3 more years to figure out what that meaning was. In one memorable draft, the main character, Mary, purposely spills hot chocolate on Bruce Springsteen’s son. It was fun and sadistic, but, like all the other missteps, it didn’t work.
Q: Are you a Springsteen fan?
A: I was born in New Jersey, as were both of my parents, and I think that most people in New Jersey have a complicated relationship with Bruce Springsteen. He’s just such an icon, and represents so much to a state normally associated with factories and, I guess now, the Sopranos. I’m actually not much of a Springsteen fan (though I love the album, Born to Run), however like the main character in the story, my family is obsessed with him. I don’t mean that they simply enjoy his music; I’m talking about 60-year-olds jetting out to clubs on a Tuesday night where it’s rumored he might perform—seeing multiple shows on his tours. At my wedding, we played one Bruce Springsteen song, and my family all congregated in the middle of the dance floor and just went nuts. Everyone sort of looked on, unsure what to make of the connection between these people and this music. It was that same mysterious connection that I felt in the restaurant seeing how excited everyone was, and of course, that same mystery I tried to bring to the story.
Q: Is it difficult to write from the perspective of a fern?
A: I wrote the 1st draft of this story in graduate school, and I remember thinking that I was a genius. A fern’s POV! I thought. My God am I awesome! That same story, of course, also has the POV of a Spanish dog who wants to mount and breed with the wife in the story, and tear apart his master. It’s definitely fun to write from the POV of perverted dogs and ferns, as well as modern, chef pirates, and pretentious writers traveling through Europe. Unfortunately, that first “King of the Ferns” draft, like all of my first drafts, was anything but genius. For me, whether it’s the POV of a fern or a photographer, I need a lot of drafts to figure out who these characters really are and what they really want. Even if it’s a fern, it has to feel real and it has to have emotional weight. I constantly want to take things too far, make too many penis jokes, just instinctually want to cross the line that shouldn’t be crossed between absurd and ridiculous. I think the only thing that stops me is taking the time to create real characters with honest needs and flaws, even if they are ferns.
Q: Your book was published by Tin House Books. What have been the pleasures and difficulties of publishing with a small press?
A: Tin House Books is made up of about half a dozen exceptionally talented writers and editors. They’re just really good at helping you to make your work better. Though I’m not sure what it’s like to work with a large publisher, I suspect that many of the small presses are made up of great writers who are uniquely qualified to improve books before publication. I love the following Tin House people: Michelle Wildgen, Lee Montgomery, and Meg Storey. Michelle Wildgen, a Senior Editor of the magazine, edited my book and helped me with every one of the stories. Seriously, when I read the book after it came out, I couldn’t believe how much better every story was. I would lend Michelle a testicle if it came down to it. I’m hoping, however, that it won’t.
Q: In our earlier email, you mentioned having the sense sometimes that the only people reading your work are your workshop and your wife. Would you comment on the isolation that a young writer can feel and what you do to keep yourself motivated?
A: For many of us, it takes a long time to write something that’s ready for publication. In my case, it took about seven years of writing and re-writing the same stories over and over again until I figured out what they were really about. During that time, you’re working on something everyday that nobody is seeing and that, in the darker moments, you fear nobody will ever see. For me, sending stories out to journals helped keep me motivated. Even though the rejections piled up, I just loved the sense of possibility that having a bunch of submissions out there affords. Every day when you pick up the mail, there’s the possibility of great news. Also, while I’m sure the submission system has its problems, I do think that good work does wind up getting published. Even as I made improvements on story drafts, I’d see that work rewarded. Yes, the stories might still get rejected, but you begin to get notes from editors with comments on the piece. It’s amazing how uplifting just a small note of encouragement can be from a journal you love. It’s also amazing how the work does begin to get published once it’s ready.
The other thing that keeps me motivated is that I’m “the Thelonious Monk of fiction,” and anyone who says different can suck my balls. If you do say different, you can go ahead and read Adam Johnson’s blurb on my book confirming this fact. While I’m kidding, I do think that writers tend to be simultaneously the most insecure and egomaniacal people ever. I suppose you have to have at least a tiny bit of useful hubris to sit around all day writing crap down hoping that strangers will pay money to read it.
Q: Do you feel a special affinity for the short story form? Do you see yourself as primarily a short story writer, or are there novels in your future as well? What are you working on now?
A: I love writing short stories, but I feel like they’re way too freakin’ hard. As I mentioned earlier, my book of eight stories took seven years to write. That’s just a stupidly long time.
The thing I like best about short stories, as both a reader and a writer, is the way one can, in a very small space, enter a fully formed, rich world complete with complex characters. However, for me, in order to create these worlds, I need to do a lot of extra writing that never makes it into the story. A good short story is really only telling one story, yet I want to give too much information, too much backstory, tell too many stories for one short story. I wind up writing and rewriting for years until I finally manage to whittle away the unnecessary stuff.
All of this is a probably a way of saying that right now I’m working on a novel. All of my short stories started to be about the same group of characters, and none of them worked as stories, so I realized that this was a novel. I actually just finished the 4th draft of the book, and am about to begin showing it to a few people. This novel has been such a pleasure to write. I had gotten to the point where I was obsessively counting words in my paragraphs—just trying to cut content from every line in order to make the stories “the right length.” Writing the novel has allowed me to indulge my longwindedness. I’m certain that I’ll have to pay for this longwindedness at some point, but for now, it’s a great joy.
Q: Name a writer whose work is currently making you jealous.
A: I get jealous of lots of people’s success, but not their work. Great work just makes me happy.
Q: What kind of child were you?
A: I pooped myself a dozen times a day all the way through high school.
Q: What’s your relationship with rejection like?
A: My mom provided me with a ridiculous sense of my own worth, so I manage to convince myself that all rejections are either a mistake, or that my submission was never read.
Q: Do you have a writerly habit you’d like to break?
A: I’m not sure I understand the strengths and weaknesses of my writing enough to know what habit I need to break. I just want to get better, so the habit I need to break is perhaps the habit of sucking.
