Ask the Author: Eric Beeny

Eric Beeny, persistent and charming, is featured in the December issue with his story Living Expenses. Today, he talks with Guy Brookshire about the dream of books, being taught more than one can learn and the deceit of fiction.

Have you ever mediated a conflict? Did you consider the resolution acceptable?

Yes. Any resolution is acceptable, as long as people aren’t fighting.  Maybe if everyone broke out into song and dance, or just battlerapped instead of fighting,  the world would be a better place. Probably not.

Have you ever dreamed about a book that didn’t exist when you woke up?

Mostly my own—books I’ve been working on or I’ve been thinking of working on. I remember dreaming once about a compendium of all the world’s literature throughout history, and, when I opened the book, all the pages were blank.

What other language’s literature do you value most?

Language itself is valuable. I don’t ever know how to qualify one thing as better than another. Japanese literature is great,  particularly Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes.  Latin American literature is great, authors like Parra, Marquez, Borges, etc. I really like African literature written in English, like  J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Waiting for the Barbarians, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, but especially Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, both of which are based on traditional Yoruban folktales. I want to go back and read all these again, because it’s been a while.

What was the best book you have received as a gift?

There’ve been a few: Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, Bill Knott’s Auto-Necrophilia, Jeffrey McDaniel’s Alibi School, Matt Cook’s Eavesdrop Soup. Most recently Matt Jasper’s Moth Moon, Greg Gerke’s There’s Something Wrong with Sven and Molly Gaudry’s We Take Me Apart.

Name a book that you wanted to like before you read, but ended up not liking so much.

Probably Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.

Have you ever won money gambling? What game were you playing? Where were you?

A long time ago it was my birthday, and a friend took me up to Canada to play Bingo at Uncle Sam’s. We were in line to get our Bingo sheets and my friend had to go to the bathroom. When he got back I let him cut in front of me, so he got the Bingo sheets I would’ve gotten. He ended up winning like $100.

Is solitude necessary for good writing?

Solitude is necessary, period. Individually, people are generally good, but I feel very uncomfortable around groups of people because they influence each other in often dangerous ways. Whether solitude produces better literature, I’m not sure. Seeing how people treat each other, getting beat up a lot as a kid, that helps. Then you’ll maybe want to be alone and create a world that makes more sense  or that you feel more comfortable in.

Have you ever had a premonition? What did you forsee?

I guess I’m what Robert Browning would call a “superstitious atheist.”  I’ve lately  been leaning more toward agnosticism, though, because all I really know is I know enough to know I know nothing. My daughter’s five, and, a few months back, she told me that there is a [g]od, and that it’s a woman, and that [g]od told her that nothing in our lives is real, that we’re all just a dream [g]od is having, and when we die, that’s [g]od waking up. She’s five. I realize every day that she has more to teach me than I’m  capable of learning.

What is your favorite holiday decoration? Have you ever kissed anyone under mistletoe?

Christmas lights. I’ve always  imagined hanging them from clouds during a city-wide blackout. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been kissed. There wasn’t any mistletoe involved.

Is fiction deceptive?

Melville wrote that the only way to access truth is through “indirection.” So, if that’s true, it’s probably not true. Fiction disguises truth with truth, distracts us from one truth with many others. So it seems more democratic—e pluribus unum (someone should trademark that as a web domain)—, as one true truth would supposedly be universal. But, relatively speaking, truth is subjective,  so  an objective truth would ultimately depend on externally imposed authority for the purposes of maintaining that authority. Subjective truth,  theoretically, can’t be proven to an external collective,  so maybe the only way of accessing it would be by avoiding it. Multi-verse theories (String / M-theory)  propose all truths or possible truths exist simultaneously, meaning it’s reality that’s deceptive. Fiction would inevitably reflect that deception.