Ask The Author: Benjamin Rybeck

In January, “Back-Story” by Bejanmin Rybeck. “The real story isn’t starting yet.”….

1. When is the real story starting?

The idea of “the real” is but a construct used to mediate “the imaginary.” Which is to say, it’ll start on Tuesday.

2. What method would you like your back story told?

Told through languid voiceover in which Jessica Chastain whispers things like, “How did you come to me, Benjamin Rybeck? What are we to you?” Or through newsreel footage played after my death to a group of reporters.

3. Would you stop for a woman on the side of the road?

Actually, that part really happened to me. Late at night a woman ran in front of my car like the beginning of Kiss Me Deadly and then jumped in before I could lock the doors. I gave her a ride down an increasingly narrowing series of one-way streets to her destination while I got really paranoid because a car followed us several miles across the city. But I didn’t get robbed. Instead, she called me “a nice Jewish boy” and gave me a motherly kiss on the cheek before getting out.

4. Where did”Back-Story” come from?

Back-story came from a need to “lend depth or verisimilitude to the main story. The dramatic revelation of secrets from the backstory, as a useful technique for developing a story, was recognized as far back as Aristotle, in Poetics”(Wikipedia). Wait, I might have misunderstood the question…

I mean, really, I think there are lots of good reasons to write a story. But “Back-Story” came from my desire to write a story with a hook so that somebody might read/publish it – which, as desires go, is probably pretty ignoble. Then, once I had that hook, I just wound up writing about three different versions of myself.

At heart, I’m a narcissistic showboat. Can I send you a video of myself doing a rocking versionof “Hey Jealousy” at karaoke?

5. How has your life reached its climax? Has it at all?

A climax is dependent on where you choose to begin the story. In that way, every day feelslike a climax; I just constantly have to reconsider where the story began. Let me put it this way: if the story began with me reading [PANK] for the first time and wanting to have an interview in there, then I’m climaxing right now.

6. Would you kind of marry someone or actually marry someone?

Given the statistical likelihood of divorce, I think kind of marrying people is a wise idea; you get all the tax breaks but don’t need to bring lawyers into it when it ends.