CRAIG CLEVENGER

Conversation with a contortionist

Text: Alberto Fernández Otto

In 2002 Craig Clevenger published his first novel in the US, getting that the punk thriller fans inmediatly accepted to archive it on the catalog of the cult novels. We had to wait almost eight years for The contorsinist´s handbook arrive to Spain. Do we need more so we can read him as a classic of the genre?

The contorsinist´s handbook (Alpha Decay) narrates the biography of John Dolan Vincent, whose his vital cause is to build other identities to hide. Under other names, such as Daniel Fletcher, mocks justice and the predictable bunch of psychiatrists trying to unmask him. Is that punk thriller? So they say. To cite two predecessors enough to understand what we are talking about: Trainspotting and The fight club. And they are not chosen at random. For their owners, Irving Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk, it has not been a cause to praise Clevenger’s work. So, welcome to the club.

Your first novel was published when you were 38. It may be a little late compared to other writers. When did you really think about becoming a novelist?
I’m not sure if any figures exist for the average age of debut novelists. Certainly the celebrity culture here in the U.S. makes for extra publicity for those novelists in their early twenties and thirties, but the fact is I was/am often referred to as a “young novelist,” which is an advantage of the medium. If I were putting together my first punk band at age 38, I’d be considered ancient. But in literary years, that’s considered pretty green. I’ve been writing my whole life, with the single goal of being a novelist. I’ve never had a ‘plan B,’ and every job I’ve ever had has been in service of paying the rent while I wrote.

Even Chuck Palahniuk or Irvine Welsh had praised your work. Which one of those critics had flattered you most?
I can’t choose one over the other. They’re both heavyweights with amazing track records. What made the biggest impression on me was that both of them went well beyond simply offering a blurb. Palahniuk didn’t blurb the novel until after he’d spent several weeks of his Diary tour spreading the word to his audiences. He wasn’t endorsing the novel in any official sense, he was simply acting like a fan. That meant a lot. As for Welsh, my editor at HarperCollins in the U.K. did, in fact, solicit a blurb, which Welsh kindly provided. But he followed that with a lovely write-up in the Sunday U.K. Guardian book review section, which no one had anticipated. I both of them a large debt of gratitude.

The novel’s main character has an extraordinary intelligence. How did you manage to use the voice of a highly gifted person?
A lot of staring at walls and working a scene out in my head, over and over. Writing five pages and throwing out four. Ultimately, I did about twenty drafts of the novel. The act of writing might not make for compelling cinema, but that’s the job. For me, eight hours of writing is really three hours of writing and five hours of pacing and talking to the furniture.

And how did you do to “recreate” the incredible methods of a contortionist? Did you get it from research or imagination?
I made more of it up than most people think. I’d say about half of what was in the novel came from research. Mind you, most of what’s factually accurate is obviated by modern technology, which is one of the reasons I back-dated the story to take place in the late ‘80s. After so much research, other ideas for John Vincent’s methods sprang to mind spontaneously. As for which half is the accurate half, I wouldn’t say even if I could remember. Honestly, I’ve forgotten most of it amidst all the writing I’ve done since then. I met a doorman at a biker bar who knows more about ID forgery than all of the books I read, combined. I wish I’d known him when I wrote the novel.

Can you imagine all those methods for real life?
You mean, do I think they’d work in real life? For most of what’s in the story, not a chance.

Are psychiatrists as predictable as you demonstrate in your novel? Dou you know them as well?
I have great respect for science and the scientific method, be it a psychiatric diagnosis or testing soil for contamination. My intent wasn’t to malign the psychiatric profession, but to attack psychiatry in American pop-culture. The self-help movement is practically out of control, fueled by talk shows, confessional memoirs and the like. Far too many people here think they can lump someone into a category OCD, passive-aggressive, etc.–based on their layman’s knowledge. That was the real target of my criticism. As for knowing psychiatrists, I did have a few grad students and fully-licensed psychiatrists–read the manuscript. They said it was more or less accurate as to the diagnostic process, but with some obvious dramatic liberties taken.

Could your first novel be read as a manual to understand your future books?
I hope not. My intention is to change and grow with each novel, in terms of my style and scope of storytelling. The staccato prose and fact-laden narrative of the Handbook was specific to that novel. My second, Dermaphoria has a similar story structure but a prose style that’s radically different. My third book in progress will be even further afield from the first two. Ideally, I want to be a different writer with each book.

Is there any topic that you promised not to develop at all in your future work?
Hard to say, but I think I’m done with the neo-noir thing, at least for now. My first two books dealt with drugs very heavily, but the subject is virtually absent in my third. I’m obsessed with the notion of identity how our brains shape who we are versus how the rest of the world perceives us. I don’t think I’ll ever shake that obsession (that’s why it’s called an obsession, I suppose). I’ve tackled that subject from the angle of society (paperwork, forms, identification) and brain chemistry (psychoative drugs and memory), so now it’s time to look at it from another perspective.