The Lightning Room with Trevor Mackesey

 

Empathy is a natural reaction to literature. Read Trevor Mackesey’s “The Containment Store” in the April issue, then come back here and see if you feel more human(e).

 

Interview by Diana Clarke

 

1. In “The Containment Store” you strike a really difficult balance between logical progression (the increasing percentage at which the machine reads Scott’s emotional makeup) and association (the emotionally charged moments that Scott recalls throughout the story and that slowly wear him away) that reads quite naturally. How did you arrive at that structure?

I was concerned with the story’s plot, which might be read as a young couple enters a store, speaks to a salesperson, and nothing happens, and initially used the percentages as a narrative crutch. My hope was that the numbers might act as shorthand for what was going on within Scott, signifying the progression you mention and later his change. I also hoped they’d operate as a unifying return, linking the memories and providing limited access to Scott for Anne and Andy, who are in some ways even more removed from what is happening than the reader.

2. I thought it was super-interesting that you paired emotionally invasive technology, which seems extremely contemporary/internetty, with the physicality of big box-style stores, which fade in importance with the rise of online shopping. How do you experience those places (internet/big-box store) as narrative spaces?

I’ve moved around a lot, and several times I’ve had this experience standing in the middle of a big box store when I’ve glitched and realized I could be in Miami or Reno or Bozeman. Considering how different those locations are, it’s a feeling that is both frightening for its implications and comforting in its emotional projection. You can’t always be where you’d like to be, but standing next to a wall of kitchen gadgets in a climate controlled, brick-and-mortar clone, you can imagine the exit will take you anywhere in the world that has been conquered by convenience and low, low prices.

I feel this dichotomy with technology too. Computers and the Internet make it easier to stay connected, but they also encourage us to be less present. We don’t need to invent a machine that stores or wipes our feelings, we’re already making those alterations through how we interact with the world. If you’re scrolling through your News Feed rather than staring out the window on the bus, you’re denying yourself an opportunity to process your thoughts and feelings. To me, that’s a form of Compartmentalization.

As to narrative spaces, most short stories seem to exist within containers, and that might mean a time period like a vacation, an event like a birthday party, or a distance like the face of the Matterhorn. A trip to a store is a container. It presents a frame that establishes a specific space within which something needs to happen. The Internet is trickier. It’s everywhere and nowhere, and operates more like Boston’s road system than a logical progression. But in that mess, there is room for innovation, excitement, and beauty. And smarter writers, like my buddy Matthew Burnside, are mapping new narratives on top of this world of lateral connectivity, impulse, and hyperlinks.

3. You build so much in this story out of the mundane (oatmeal cookies, Ken dolls, lavender-scented homegoods, Thanksgiving) and give it a weighty emotional/symbolic charge. Can you talk some about that process of transmuting?

I love the idea of transmutation, especially as an alchemical metamorphosis, but I think of myself as more parasite than magician. As a country, we’ve gone overboard with materialism, but objects can still mean a great deal. When I hold my grandfather’s pen, it’s not just ink and metal, but a conduit to him, the letters he wrote, and the relationships they infer. As a writer, I trust that it is often the associations a reader attaches to the mundane that stoke their emotional attachment to a story. I don’t believe I’m skilled enough to conjure feeling from nothing, but maybe if I plant enough markers—an oatmeal cookie, a Lego, the smell of fresh laundry—I can begin to shape the emotional connection a reader generously brings to the piece.

4. To my ear your writing has a touch of George Saunders-style Capitalizing Ordinary Jargon to Emphasize Its Absurdity, and lampooning American consumer culture in general. Would you say that’s accurate? Who would you count among your influences?

I owe so much of this story to George Saunders. I began writing “The Containment Store” as a reaction to In Persuasion Nation, a collection that reminded me how effective satire and absurdity can be as entries into more difficult subject matter. The first draft was full of capitals and inventions, and it was basically a failed commentary on commercialism. But in that failure I found myself responding to this unintentional undercurrent of coping that became the inspiration of future drafts.

I don’t know if I could come up with a shortlist of my influences in general, but in the space of “The Containment Store” I’d add Kafka, Vonnegut, Atwood, Butler, and Heinlein to Saunders.

5. I’ve got to ask: Have you seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? And have you ever wanted the kind of emotional erasure you describe here?: “In fact, we’ve even made strides in storing and wiping the actual memories. For now, you will still remember everything; it just won’t alter your mood in the same way. And, in honor of the holiday season, we are offering 25% off of your first emotional re-Pairing!” What draws you to this subject matter?

I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when it first came out and enjoyed it, and “The Containment Store” is definitely operating in the same space. But I’d like to think that has less to do with the technological overlap than it does the use of science fiction elements to explore interpersonal relationships, hurt, and coping.

I’m not sure how a person makes it through heartache or high school without wishing certain feelings would disappear, but lately I’ve been working on diving into sadness. I’m all for embracing positivity, but it seems to me that a lack of empathy is at the root of so many of our problems as individuals and as a collective. And I believe empathy requires us first to be in touch with our own emotions, their causes, and their effects, and then to be able to apply that understanding to other people and situations. Literature has the power to help us cultivate empathy by encouraging the reader to consider unfamiliar experiences and their consequences. It is not a substitute for living, but I can’t think of an easier and more rewarding way to gain perspective in the thirty minutes before one falls asleep. So, basically we all just need to read more so we stop unintentionally hurting the people we love and our planet.

6. I loved your tight, strong, container-like sentences. How do you know when a story is finished?

The short answer is I don’t. After a workshop, I put “The Containment Store” in a drawer for almost a year before dusting it off, adding a paragraph, and sending it out. I think I’ve accepted that I’ll never believe a story is finished, but sooner or later I have to push it out of the nest and hope it doesn’t break its neck, if only to make room for the next story.