Gabriel Ricard: Tatterdemalion is, to me, the story of what someone will endure in the name of being able to face their demons and walk away intact when it's all said and done. Was that your actual overall intention?
Ray Succre: Once I had a firm idea of where the book was going, yes. I don't usually start a book, or a poem, for that matter, with a concrete story. That evolves early on, but I don't have it when I start in. It builds itself quickly, though, and then I'm all over it. Tatterdemalion has several blind themes that evolve with the book, but one of them, and the most crucial, is certainly what this man will endure and accept in order to better know himself and, more apt, what he is not. It's a common story when people face their dilemmas head-on, slowly overcoming some obstacle to deepen their notions of self, but I thought it might be worth moving these roles around. Instead of facing his obstacles, the main character is led by them, ambushed by his own self, and the obstacles face him. In Tatterdemalion, his troubles have to be uncovered before they can be scrutinized or resolved, and the troubles are quite aware of this. The book displays a man whose subconscious has decided to wake up and solve its own problems with or without him.
GR: Where did the idea for the book first come to you?
RS: I wish I could state that it came to me in some great way, or even in a simple way, and that I planned it all out with much inspiration, but I can't. I began Tatterdemalion with only three or four ideas. I always start blank, in the sense that I don't begin with an outline. I let that take form in the early portions of the book. Like all of my writing, I started mingling a few ideas to see what would happen. Things happened. By the third chapter, I had the book outlined in my head. After the initial draft, I went back and rewrote the beginning. I have a similar process with poetry, which I write from the inside out, never from beginning to end. I do write my novels chronologically, or at least, from beginning to end, but much of my method involves picking my destination after the car is moving, if you know what I mean. It gives me momentum.
GR: Tell us about the dragons.
RS: The dragons are figurative. I wanted to use oracle figures in the book, guidance characters that would function as tricksters, heralds, people, and even enemies. Like much of the book, these characters would represent something beyond the reader's grasp, beyond the main character's realm of comprehension. In this way, I could introduce some mystery to the book without having to fall back on cliffhangers and unrealistic people saying cryptic things (which I would then have to explain quickly to keep the story going). I decided on a modern, yet more mythical approach to the more other-worldly information that would propel the story. This was the breeding ground for the dragons in the book. I was also leery about using the term 'dragons' when writing them, because I didn't want anyone to see that and think 'Oh great, dragons. It's one of those books." I was worried when writing them, but things came out the way I wanted.
The dragons are agencies of thought, and each handles the main character in a unique way. One of them does bear the elements of the traditional European design, with scales, a tail, fire... all that, but I did this to better coast into the figurative nature of them to come. The other dragons in the book are not fire-breathing, scaly creatures at all, but people in strange hiding places, present at times to guide the main character along a certain path, though this path is uncertain and difficult, and changes so often that it becomes one of the major antagonistic forces in the book.
GR: Do you have a personal favorite?
RS: The second, for reasons I can't explain without giving away some crucial portions of the book.
GR: There's clearly a love/hate relationship with literary magazines throughout the book. Though you've been published countless times in virtually every type of literary magazine across the board, I would imagine you also went through the same hell we all go through when we first get into submitting material.
RS: The main character of Tatterdemalion definitely runs a gamut of rejection, both in the unfolding of the book, and through his life prior to the events in the book. I certainly know how that works. Rejection of your work is inescapable. I have 700+ of them (no exaggeration), not including those from book publishers and agents. There comes a point where you open an envelope, read the rejection, and then set it on a stack of them, thinking "Good, I finally got those poems back. I know just where I want to send the first two..." Rejection is not all bad, though. I don't mean in the way people learn from mistakes, or gain experience, or tougher skin; that's a given. I mean only that rejection gives credence to its opposite, and is not the worst thing that can happen when submitting to a literary mag. Irresponse and cruelty are far worse than rejection (I've run into these more than a few times, especially with submissions of prose, the publishing field of this being more competitive and vicious than that of poetry).
The main character of Tatterdemalion has given up on writing, having been rejected too many times, and especially by his father, an editor. He's moved on in his life. Due to coercions of a strength greater than he can oppose, and in a fantasy world of heraldic creatures, he ends up forced to begin writing and submitting again. I can't give away why, or what this entails, or even how this unfolds, without giving away too much of the book, but because it isn't entirely his own work on the line, the rejections don't really sting his creative side. When rejection does come, the repercussions are more dangerous and puzzling than if he were writing and submitting on his own, due to the physical stakes behind the submissions, and who's really creating and handling them.
GR: The novel struck me as a sort of summation of your career. It almost seems like everything you've done up to this point has been leading up to this novel. Do you feel like there might be any truth to that?
RS: Yes, the poetry and submission aspect of the story does mirror my own history somewhat. The phases the various dragons work through the main character's poetry are very similar to those I've gone through, and recall at times in newer work. My publication history thus far is very short, as I've only been at this a little over three years, and as much as that could be easily summarized, the story of Tatterdemalion only uses some of my small press details as fodder for a different story, in the way you might detail a character in a book by using some of your mother's attributes, or give a character a car you used to own.
Much of the past few years has led to this novel, yes. I had abandoned novels in my early twenties, when I discovered I didn't like writing them as much as I enjoyed writing in verse. I enjoyed stanzas more than paragraphs. Things changed a couple of years ago when I began to feel as if the novel had somehow eluded me, or beaten me. I wrote two of them last year, and Tatterdemalion is the second of these. Now, the prose-machine won't shut off. I find myself putting together paragraphs while trying to go to sleep at night. I'm writing much poetry right now, as well.
GR: Metaphor figures very heavily into the book, to such a great extent that the protagonist is forced to face the actual physical manifestation of the metaphors that represent his journey. What was your motivation for taking such a direct and at times brutal approach to the things that promise to either condemn the protagonist or redeem him—or both.
RS: I have trouble doing the same thing repeatedly. I wrote a novel early in '07 called The Bridge to Camas Swale, which was a very straight book that followed the dilemmas of a small family in an isolated, rural town. It was very long, and I wrote it in third with a large number of characters from newborns to seniors and much between, each character getting the narrative spotlight at various points in the book. It was gigantic. After writing that, as well as several straightforward, traditional short stories, I started getting hungry for something else. I tend to be more abstract in my poetry, and I've gotten in the habit of using a lot of surrealism and absurdism. I decided after Swale that I was going to use a craftier pen with the next book, really try to use more of what I've learned from poetry, and apply it to a novel. It may be a curse of mine, but when I find myself writing in a plain, 'this-until-that' fashion for too long, I start to feel like I'm being lazy, or worse, phony, just not living up to the performance for which I should be capable. So, I set out on a different approach with the next novel. I didn't want to obfuscate my language as much as I do in poetry, so I decided to play it out in the theme and subject, use a little more abandon in my tropes and the general story, which became Tatterdemalion.
GR: The jar, the main focus of the protagonist's obsessions is certainly one of my favorite elements of the book. It seems to me like it'd be one of the first things you would come up with. I'd love to know a little bit more about its inspiration and origins.
RS: Ah, the grail. I knew early on that there was going to be a quest element to the story, though in my own definition of an element, and originally planned on this being very minor, a deviation from the main storyline that would swivel through the book. After beginning the initial draft, I couldn't keep the jar on the backburner, so to speak. It seemed obvious I couldn't separate the jar from the main story. What the jar represents was too important and key to be sidelined, so it became a major element in the book. It was one of the first things I came up with, yes.
The jar, like the dragons and jobs in the book, represents something far greater than itself, of course. I can't say what without giving things away, but the main character is obsessed with it because he's teased by it, and his obsession only gains momentum as he gets closer to it. There is an ongoing theme in the book of facsimiles and portrayals, some misleading symbols and a little sleight of character. Like a matryoshka, certain things like the jar contain and represent other things, which then contain and represent yet deeper things... What we're getting at, as these recursions and representations are divulged throughout the book, is the truth between the main character's past and present, and the world that exists between fantasy and reality in which the main character lives and reasons.
GR: You yourself have said that your main area of writing is poetry. Since finishing this novel, do you feel like that's changed? Have you since developed any kind of preference for one or the other?
RS: If you place a page in front of me and tell me to fill it, you'll get a poem or two. I'm better at poetry and I enjoy writing it more, but only for certain elements. It's sort of a paradox that poetry is usually much smaller in length and size than prose, yet I feel to have much more room in it. I prefer writing poetry to prose, yet I prefer writing a novel to a book of poetry. It depends on the outcome.
GR: How much of the book, if any, is autobiographical?
RS: Little of the book is autobiographical. I used a few details of my own life here and there (I was fascinated by brand name products when I was young, like the main character, and I send poetry to magazines, though not much like he does). Overall, the book is pure fiction.
GR: What kind of stuff are you reading these days?
RS: Too many lit mags and journals to begin naming, and quite a few public speeches and video game manuals (for an upcoming project). In my book bag, I have an old Robert Browning collection, Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a copy of The Hole in Sleep by Corey Mesler, WILDFIRE, Candleflame by David D. Horowitz, a large volume of selected poetry by Edmund Spenser (one of those early Rinehart Editions that just can't be beat and smell like a good, old book should), Reich #4 by Elijah Brubaker, and this odd, folded 'pocket' of poems that was handed to me at this year's Burning Word festival. It has no title for which I'm aware, and simply says POEMS on the front. Right now, I can't get enough of the Spenser collection.
GR: I understand you also write plays. Care to elaborate on that?
RS: There's not much to that. I enjoy the format, but haven't had any urge to try and get one of my plays put on or performed. Plays aren't a major part of my writing life. I've written a few, but my fun with these is more in seeing what I can and can't do in the form, and of course, working on dialogue, which can be tricky because you're writing something to be portrayed, not read.
GR: Your work has been published in well over a dozen countries. Is it weird to have your writing reach so many different countries? Is it vindicating in any way?
RS: My first real acceptance for a piece of writing was in England, which was a little strange for me, as I've never been to England. I learned quickly that the small press is a very international and broad entity. Tatterdemalion itself is published by Cauliay, out of Scotland. While I don't want to push any stereotypes on editors-by-country, I will say the responses to my poetry tend to be more positive in the U.K. That's a generalization, sure, but I get fewer rejections from European magazines than I do with the American and Canadian scenes. Seeing my work in publications from countries other than my own has become second nature to me. I'm not a U.S. writer. I'm a writer that lives in the U.S.
As for vindication, there isn't much of that, no. When it comes to the possibility of being printed, I want to send what I write to the editor I think would want it. I do wish I could travel as much as my writing does.
GR: I understand you also work as a co-editor for the literary zine Wings of Icarus. Does it change your perception of writing at all to be on both sides of the fence? As both a writer and editor?
RS: It does. I live in a small town and have never really known other writers. I'm isolated out here, and entirely home-made, so I have a difficult time gauging if a piece of someone's writing is good, but I can tell very quickly if it's bad, so there is a natural lack of assurance in my stint as editor. I would have thought editing could teach me things about my own work, to better know my own writing, but this hasn't been the case. What I've learned as an editor is mostly tactical, relating to process of submission than anything else. As for the writing submitted by others, it varies much. I am somewhat in the dark about the writing of others, but I'm learning, and I might be close to my first merit badge. I haven't read enough contemporary poetry, it seems, and have been playing catch-up for some time. There are some poems for which you can form an opinion quickly, but after waiting only a day, find you disagree with your initial thoughts on it. The writing is so unspecifically present, at times. From a traditional point of view, Story/Poem A is a seamless read, but might have been written with a bored ear, or a great sound but an irregular timing that throws it off, or the piece might have a few holes here and there. However, Story/Poem A might come off great in a speculative light, or if considered relevant in a particular vein of poetry/stories. Is Story/Poem A any good? It's different than Story/Poem B. Should I compare them? Co-editing W.I. with Andrew David King has been a great experience, and I've learned quite a few things I couldn't have gleaned on my own, regarding submission practice and editorial selection. For instance: There is a surprising lack of cover letters anymore, most people send around five poems without a static theme, and authors will usually say thanks if you print them, but most stop their relationship with the publication at that point. It's as if a man sneaking out of a woman's apartment at four in the morning, trying not to be heard, but certainly telling his friends about it the next day.
GR: Do people ever tell you that you have a really weird sense of humor?
RS: I have around five senses of humor, none of which function very well, but if I use them all in quick succession, it creates a kind of buckshot-spread effect, which works well enough in small quarters, like say, in a book or public lavatory. To answer the question appropriately: No one has yet informed me that I possess a weird sense of humor; they more commonly use the word strange.
GR: How are those dishwashing jobs treating you?
RS: Thankfully, I haven't had to wash any dishes (except my own) for quite awhile. When my wife and I decided to try our hand at parenting, we decided that we didn't want to have to pay into daycare and never see our kid, so one of us would be staying home with our little one. When Painter, our toddler, came along, my wife Maisy out-earned me by quite a margin, so the decision was fairly simple: I'd be staying home with the baby. This has turned out to be a rather incredible experience, though the scheduling and manner of each day can be very random and difficult at times. More often than not, I won't know when I'll have time to write next, and usually don't find out until that moment arrives, when I'll rush out the door with an hour or two, to get some writing done. This can be a little aggravating when you're in the middle of a book and you want to write out a chapter, but discover suddenly that you'll only be getting 45 minutes of writing time that day, especially when you discover it not 10 minutes before this span of time is to begin. I did enjoy the dishwashing jobs when I had them. The dishwasher in a restaurant is the only person allowed to let his/her mind drift while working.
GR: Getting back to Tatterdemalion, I was really impressed with the reviewer edition you sent. A CD which included the book itself, a number of essays explaining some of the book's more complicated themes, conceptual art, introductions by both yourself and your editor, small press tie-ins, a detailed biography and even several easter eggs. I gotta say, I don't think I've ever seen something quite this elaborate. Was this your idea?
RS: That was all me, yes. I decided early on (and talked my publisher into it), that I wanted to do something a little different when it came to reviewers. I wanted to be able to send the book out quickly, if needed, but before it was actually printed, which meant the use of an e-book version. I worried that would come off cheap, though, so I decided to make this e-book reviewer's version worth something on its own, aside from the notion that it was a book. I worked on the features the disc contains for three months, and put in just over 200 hours of time into it, on my own, trying to make it a kind of unique platform, not only for viewing the book, but for its own merit.
The reason for making so many features and such an interactive menu system on the Reviewer's Edition disc was me trying to figure out how 'special features' could work for a book. I followed the function of DVD special features when designing it, but had to create a few different modes because of all the text involved. I put a lot into it because we tend to feel cheated when there's but a single extra feature in a movie we like, or nothing but language tracks claiming to be 'bonus features'.
I also have another reason for the disc being created the way it is: Practice for a greater idea. I think the time for special features in books has arrived, and is likely past due. When you rent a movie, there are usually special features on the disc. If you've liked the movie, these are something you look forward to. Many music CDs are now coming with a PC track on them, containing extra material like interviews, live tracks, and videos. It just seems obvious that books should be doing the same. How great would it be to buy a book and have a mini-disc of special features inside? You know, something put together for the book, and done well, with maybe an interview with the author, some background on the story, concept art, pertinent things a reader might find of interest, or alternate cover art. If the writer was adventurous, maybe even an alternate ending, or a couple of short stories as a nice extra... This is something that should be happening with books, and I'm working up to seeing if I can make that work, not with Tatterdemalion, but with possible future projects.
GR: What's next for you?
RS: I've married a few ideas together that I'm going to start a novel with in the Summer, and I've just reached the halfway mark in a new book of poetry. I'm in love with the small press, so I'm going to take a little time to send out some new material to various places and then start in on the new novel. I tend to work in many different manners and styles, and I want to make sure I don't get stuck having to write in the same way repeatedly, so I'm going to try something that's been on my mind the last couple of years with my next book. Other than that, my plate is full with raising my little boy, which can be inferred, thankfully, as something always next for me.
Gabriel Ricard is a Staff Interviewer at Unlikely 2.0. You can learn more about him at his bio page.