Display Interview

Conducted by Dan Wickett on 11/23/2004
The following is an interview with Mike Magnuson, author of the novels “The Right Man For the Job” and “The Fire Gospels” and the memoirs “Lummox” and “Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180.”  He teaches Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.  

Dan:

You mentioned in an email several months ago, prior to the Tour de France, that no real cyclists wanted Lance Armstrong to win six in a row.  I didn’t really understand the reasoning behind that, could you expound?

Mike:

Forget that I ever said that about Lance Armstrong, okay?  It’s unAmerican to show anything but total devotion to Lance.  Lance Armstrong is the ONLY great bike racer in the world.  Forget Paolo Bettini or Peter Van Petegem or Alexander Vinokurov or the great Lion of Flanders, Johann Museew.  Forget them all!  Who the hell are these champion cyclists compared to Lance?  Chant it with me:  USA, USA, USA! 


Dan:

You’ve been writing articles for Bicycling magazine for a couple of years now – how does sitting down to write an article differ from writing a memoir?  How about from writing a novel?  That also leads to the question, how different was it for you to go from writing novels to writing Lummox, your first memoir?

Mike:

Besides, Lance won.  My smartass remark has been proven, like most of my smartass remarks, to be immeritorious, and what am I to do about it now but--what the fuck?  You see how many questions you just floated by me at one time?  You’ll confuse me for sure, Wickett, asking me all that at once.
	Let me give you some advice:  You’ve gotta start thinking of interviewing people like you would trying to get laid, okay.  Getting laid, as you no doubt know, is a process of making one simple move at a time.  You don’t meet a woman in a bar and right away start discussing potential relationship implications that could obtain from heading to the parking lot for some, um, fresh air; e.g., you don’t talk about buying a house together in town and having a few kids and getting a summer place in the Smokies.  Well, maybe the summer place in the Smokies might be a good way to get her thinking about a balcony with a mountain view and a hot tub and so on, but that’s beside the point.  You’ve got take it easy, Dan, one easy element at a time.  Ask simple questions; get simple answers; hope the cumulative effect of these simple answers suggests a complicated experience but not too complicated.  We don’t want the experience to become unpleasant.  We wouldn’t want THAT!  We’re just talking about getting away from all this racket for a while, going out to the parking lot, getting some fresh air, and mellowing out.     
 	1) So writing for Bicycling is a kick.  It’s the equivalent, were I golfer, of writing for Golf Digest.  What’s more to say?  
	2)  Writing’s really hard, at least it is for me, under any circumstance.  I always suck; I always KNOW I suck; you can read what I’m writing right now and note plainly that I suck.  Consequently, I hate working.
	3) But moving from one mode of writing to another--from magazine article to memoir to novel to email to poem to goofy interview responses here on Wickett’s World of Unappreciated Wonders--I’m unfazed by it.  It’s all the same shit to me.  I’m still the same person expressing the same exuberantly bleak metaphysical outlook no matter what I’m doing.  I’m thrilled to be alive, but I loathe living.  Take it or leave it, that’s my personality.  That is who I am, and who I am supersedes whatever activity I undertake, which is to say the mode of expression may changeth, but the expressor remaineth the same.  Therefore, when I write or play the piano or bang on the drums or ride my bike or go hiking with my wife and daughters, it’s still me, living the way I’m living and thinking the way I’m thinking.  I’m just doing lots of different shit to keep from getting bored, is all.  Rollo May has written a great deal on this phenomenon, if you’re looking for a clearer and more penetrating explanation of it.    


Dan:

One of your articles was about being hit by a truck while riding (which is also a chapter in Heft on Wheels).  You’ve emailed me about breaking your collarbone from a fall coming down a hill (I believe you said you were going about 60 mph!) over in Europe.

How hard is it (was it) to get back up on your bike and start riding all out again after these incidents?

Mike:

That was no HILL, Dan.  That was Mont Ventoux.

But listen, you play hard, at any sport, you’re gonna get hurt.  You ride bicycles, when you do get hurt, you’re REALLY gonna get hurt.  We’re talking about skipping your body over pavement at fairly high speeds--20 or 30 or 40 miles per hour--and while you may walk away from such a crash, you’ll be limping.  Definitely.  And bleeding.  And you’re gonna be a hurting unit for days and weeks and sometimes months or the rest of your life.  But it’s not like you haven’t known all along that crashing is a possibility.  So you get injured, you don’t feel sorry for yourself.  You heal and get back into shape and get out there and ride again.
	I’d say the experience is identical to publishing books.  When you publish a book, you know it’s doomed from the get-go, that it won’t be a smash hit or even a completely minor one-day blip on the radar, that people will write horribly mean things about it on Amazon.com or not even bother writing about it at all, and two or three months after the book’s publication you will be busted to emotional bits and hardly able to put one word after the other because writing’s so pointless, goddammit.  MY WORK.  NOBODY CARES.
	I should have gone to law school or something instead of being a writer.
          	Where were we?  
	All books, for their authors, are disasters.  That’s where we were.    
	The pavement is there waiting for us, but so what?  We aren’t able to stop seeing the world the way a writer sees it, which is as a thing to be recorded, which means, one way or another, we will go on recording it.  We will live in the hope that the next time we crash, it won’t be our last.

Dan:

If I recall, Lummox wasn’t originally written specifically about the story you ended up with was it?  

Mike:

Dan, that question makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.


Dan:

Your two novels have both been well received critically but didn’t cause the NY Times to add your name to the bestsellers list.  What do you believe is the reason for critically successful authors rarely finding their way onto those charts?

Mike:

I don’t remember the critical-acclaim part.  It didn’t happen, as far as I’m concerned.  I only remember the Magnuson-is-no-good parts.  I mean it.  I want to live, I have to live, in a perpetual state of admitting I’m a piece of shit.  In that manner, I avoid much disappointment.  But about the charts, what’s there to say but God bless the people who do well?


Dan:

In Lummox, you write of discovering writing while reading a short story collection during an unfortunate, brief, incarceration.  However, once you began writing yourself, you don’t seem to have spent much time writing short fiction.  Is there a reason you don’t write short stories that often?

Mike:

I’m bad at them; that’s the biggest reason.  Maybe I don’t need to be bad at them.  Maybe I could try really hard and devote my whole intellectual life to writing good short stories and maybe, after several years of fanatical effort, I could develop the ability to write a good short story--not a great one, mind you, just a competent one.  But why?  That’s what I keep thinking.  There’s no money in it, no glory in it beyond gloating about it at a cocktail party or wherever.  Besides, I don’t really read short stories other than the ones I teach in my writing classes or the ones my students write.  That brings up a point:  One possible side-effect of reading student short stories for long periods of life--forget it.  Whereas I do read loads of crime novels and gothic novels and histories and social commentaries and travel narratives--again, it doesn’t matter.  I’ve fully realized maybe ten short stories in my writing life, and I’ve published three of them.  Maybe the number is four.  I try not to think about them.        


Dan:

An individual who read my review of The Right Man For the Job came up with his own theories (strictly based on my review, not his own reading) that went a little like this:

“The driving force of this book quite obviously (well, not to you) is Winky himself, a phallus not unlike your One-Eyed Jimmy.  Winky provides wisdom to the repo-men through his various sayings.  Furthermore, with his face on the repo truck, Winky provides the repo-men with the very means to do their work (i.d., f’ing former clients up the ass).  Winky even tries to tip you off to these facts by winking at you, get it?”

What do you think of this as a reading of your debut?

Mike:

Perfect.  I give it five stars.


Dan:

Do you pay attention to your reviews (the real ones that is, your signing my copy of The Fire Gospels:  “Dan, 3.5 stars???  Mag” let’s me know you at least read mine!)?  Some of the reviews I’ve seen of Heft on Wheels see an author in denial about his obsessions.  

Mike:

Of course I read reviews.  I want to read how everybody loves me so incredibly much and wants to have me over for dinner and suck my dick afterwards and give me a few hundred bucks pocket money for the long lonesome drive home.
	This mean I’m in denial?  



Dan:

Prior to your becoming a creative writing instructor, you held some interesting jobs – what would you say was the one you minded least getting up for?


Mike:

Never once, to this day, have I enjoyed getting up to do a job.  Well, maybe that’s not true.  Once I had a job that didn’t completely blow.  I did work for a few months at a music store in Minneapolis, which was pretty cool:  I strung guitars and fixed trombones and played pianos and experimented in the back room with percussion instruments all day.  A very fun job, now that I think about it.  I should have appreciated it more at the time.  I ended up getting fired on account of my having too much fun and not doing enough work.  Which goes to show you.


Dan:

You have a presence about you – you’re a bit louder than many, funny, etc.  Do you enjoy giving readings?  Do you think you perform when you’re doing readings?

Mike:

I’ll try to keep it down from now on, okay?
	But yes, it’s true.  I consider public readings to be a performance.  I practice for them--take out the stopwatch, make tapes, take notes, et cetera.  I do this, of course, in the fine tradition of avoiding writing new material.  


Dan:

When you read from Lummox in Ann Arbor, you stunned the “crowd” with the selection you read.  While it was written with the same humorous style the rest of the book (and really all of your writing) was, the ending of the section with the floating dead body of a young boy, really hushed everybody.  Did you read from other sections in other stores/cities, or was this your standard choice for just that reason?

Mike:

I like the mix of funny and sad.  Or happy and sad, that’s more what I’m working toward.  My favorite material in the arts (and for God’s sake I don’t mean by mentioning this stuff that my work is in any way approximate) has that happy-and-sad quality.  Johann Sebastian Bach, for instance.  Or Heironymous Bosch.  Or Gunter Grass.  Or any character acted by Renee Zellweger.  I’m always striving for Renee Zellweger.  Who isn’t?


Dan:

I believe you have an interesting story of some visitors to your hotel room in St. Louis while you were on the Lummox tour.  Would you mind sharing it?  How often did something like this happen to you?

Mike:

Short version.  Got to hotel in St. Louis a few hours before my gig at the bookstore.  Heard knock on hotel-room door.  Opened door.  And dudes were there with bourbon and blow.  No shit.  I freaked, naturally.  And so did the dudes because I actually got righteous and kicked them out of my room.  Now that I’m not the hardcore party animal I used to be, I sometimes regret kicking them out, but Lummox Tour, wow, what a party that was.  It was a good ending to a long and distinguished career.  


Dan:

Elwood Reid suggested that I read you (among others).  You kindly followed suit suggesting I read David Gates, Percival Everett, and Martin Clark.  Since then, Martin followed up and pretty much demanded I read Frank Turner Hollon.  It’s a nice pattern that I certainly appreciate.  Do you feel any sense of duty in making such suggestions to (according to the NEA) the few of us out there reading serious literature?  Do you have any other authors to suggest?

Mike:

James Hines.  He’s incredible.  Check out The Lecturer’s Tale.

Dan:

You’ve spent some time in get togethers with other authors – something for Barry Hannah in MS comes to mind.  Does such networking help you out as an author as support, or seeing others out there doing it, or is it just a bunch of people you get along well with to have a good time?

Mike:

Actually, I didn’t go to the Sons of Barry thing in Oxford because we had a job candidate visiting SIU that weekend, and in those days I was bigttime into kissing ass and trying to get tenure, which I now got.  How’s that for fancy phrasing?  Yippee shit, right? 
	I don’t remember the candidate’s name, to tell you the truth.
	I’m going to start feeling sorry for myself again.  Please look away.  


Dan:

Your latest, Heft on Wheels, describes your complete lifestyle change.  From eating healthy amounts of food to eating healthy food.  From drinking a couple of cases a beer per week, as well as to excess in bars three to four times per week to drinking power shakes and diet soda.  From smoking to the point that there might still be ash residue within your home to the elimination of nicotine from your life.  From being content to watch a little television before crashing on the couch to riding your bike some 300 miles per week minimum.

You are more than careful to admit this wasn’t the smartest way of going about things – cold turkey in every situation above – no discussion with a doctor of any type, etc.  Are you at all concerned that others might just leap into it as hard as you did without the lack of stroke or heart attacks?  Do you think your words might inspire others to go for it as hard as you did?

Mike:

The book HAS inspired lots of people.  Every day people send me emails telling me they’ve read Heft and have identified with it and want to get their shit together and start eating right and riding bikes or participating in an athletic activity, doing something, anything instead of being totally sedentary and bored and eating at the buffet.
	Which brings up a frightening byproduct of Heft on Wheels:  People seek out ME for advice about their health.
  	I honestly try to keep the bullshit to a minimum.  I try to help.

Dan:

You are pretty open about the fact that your relationships within the department you teach in have changed.  You don’t find sitting at the bar discussing writing until 2 or 3 in the morning as useful and especially not without the internal lubrication numerous shots provide.  Does this in particular affect your teaching at all?  

Mike:

Let me get this straight once and for all:  I am a competitive cyclist, I am a university professor, I am a writer, I spread manure across the wastelands of memory and time.
	Just because I live a strictly-regimented cyclist’s lifestyle doesn’t mean I am a lousy English professor.  I’m supposed to teach in a classroom, right?  Not in the bar or at the Margarita Madness party coming up this Saturday night at the graduate student’s house.
	What I don’t do anymore:  I don’t go to the bar with my students after night class.  I don’t go to parties or receptions.  I don’t in fact do shit socially.  I don’t have time for it.  I’ve got too much going on.  
	This isn’t to say I don’t put in the time to do my teaching job correctly.  I do.  I prepare for lectures and by God lecture to the best of my ability and mark up the manuscripts to the best of ability, and when a student’s in my office conferring about a manuscript, I make certain we keep the conversation on target, about the revisions at hand, not about extraneous matters like how great the local acid has been or who’s been fucking who and who’s been saying what or what’s been good at the movies lately.
	I guess the downside of this is I don’t know my students as intricately as I used to.  If you party with people for a dozen or so hours a week (calculated on three, four-hour sessions, which is a fairly standard student hard-drinking schedule), you get to know them personally very very well and subsequently can make judgments about them and give advice to them with considerable authority .  Not hanging out with my students, I can only make judgments and give advice based on WHAT THEY WRITE. 
	But that’s not the issue.  I’m obviously interested in my students, in how they’re doing in school and in life, if they’re okay mentally and all that, but look, I’m their professor, not their father or uncle or brother or whatever.  So I don’t hang out in the bar anymore?  Oh well.  Better not sign up for Professor Magnuson’s class next term.  


Dan:

You also write of the fact that you spent so much time riding and getting ready to ride, etc. over the course of the year the book takes place in that you didn’t spend as much time with students or on their stories as you had in the past.  Do you feel that you’ve slighted any of the students you had during this time period?  Do you think there are any students, especially those that might read Heft on Wheels, that believe they were slighted?

Mike:

See the above.  It is true, however, that during the year I describe in the book I was completely out of it in lots of ways.  What can I say?  I had a tough year.  I was ill, I guess.  I’m sorry.  I’m better now.  Mostly.  


Dan:

Towards the end of Heft on Wheels, you’ve begun writing again and enjoying it.  Has the discipline you developed in your cycling, dieting, no drinking, etc, helped you at all with your writing?

Mike:

No.  Nothing’s changed.  Writing remains a joyless, soulless pursuit.  


Dan:

You are working on a crazy trailer park mystery with some cycling involved in it – how is this coming along? 

Mike:

See previous response.  


Dan:

They’ve both been so well done, do you foresee any future memoirs?  Is there anything left about Magnuson that we, his loyal reader(s), don’t know?


Mike:

I’ll write more nonfiction--as many titles as I can find homes for--but I plan on shifting the narrative ‘I’ to something less confessional and a whole lot more intellectual.  That’s obviously going be a tough change for me.  Ha!
	The truth is, my strongest literary influence has always come from the confessional poets.  Plath. Berryman. Lowell. Sexton. James Wright [well, maybe he’s not a true confessional, but I still read him lots].  I read these poets absolutely regularly--to this day, after twenty-some-odd years, I keep Ariel and The Dream Songs on my nightstand--and I’m still awed beyond belief at how the confessionals laid bare their inner feelings, their self-revulsion, their outright rejection of the way things are, their total raw emotional honesty and steadfast refusal to allow propriety and formal gesture to control the transmission of life to art. There’s incredible power to that.  But those who work in that medium, well, they often have a tough time.  
	I’m not interested in killing myself--not anymore.  I’m having a good time with my life lately and want to keep having a good time, and in order to keep the vibe positive (even if it ultimately makes my work suffer) I’m going to put the personal-revelation material on the shelf for a few years.  I can’t take these ass-kickings like I used to.
	

Dan:

Lastly, if you were a character in “Fahrenheit 451,” what work(s) would you memorize for posterity?

Mike:

Fifteen years ago, I played Vladmir in a university production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and despite the current Swiss-cheese state of my brain, I still remember the whole play and can recite it at will.  When books disappear, I say, I shall be Waiting for Godot.


Dan:

Thanks again, Mike.  With your memoirs, this has probably been by far the most personal one of these interviews has been.  I certainly hope that Harmony has you riding through Ann Arbor to give a reading!

Mike:

Always a honor to talk with you, Dan.