What follows transpired over the electronic transom in sporadic bursts of mental energy during the past four months. Questions from Warmy are inadequate and italicized. Kevin's answers are insightful and plain as day in a regular font. Between the questions and answers lie the great mysteries of truth, art and our very call to life. Speaking for everyone here at Warmy HQ, we thank Kevin for humoring us with this, our first bit of literary journalism. Please enjoy, and get to know one fine writer in a bit more detail.

1.
Many readers may not realize the extent to which you publish online. Your level of prolificacy astounds us. If pressed, could you tally a total number of unique works published online, and a total number of distinct venues? Consider yourself pressed.

Couple or three dozen or thereabouts, but not nearly as many as the rejections I receive.

2.
Why publish online? Given the fact that compensation is rare and meager, what satisfactions do you derive from this process?

Of course I'd love to have a book out there with my name on it, at some Very Big Store, or better yet, some Small Indie Place. Recently, in the bargain basement of a VBS, I was confronted by pile upon pile of some of my very favourite reads, a breath away from the incinerator if someone didn't cough up €2 a pop for them. I was sick. There's a Czech writer I love, Bohumil Hrabal, who bemoaned the devaluation of books a generation ago. So what did he do? Yup, he wrote a book about it, Too Loud a Solitude. It's beautiful, and I can't say it better than he did.

People are reading more than ever, and reading online. Look at the quality of storySouth's Million Writers Award, and the inclusion of several online writers in The Best Nonrequired Reading 2005. I'm not playing in this league, but it just shows the great quality of people writing online, and I'm happy to be associated with them. And flattered anyone wants to read anything of mine. People write me emails and say mostly nice things. Plus, frankly, I find a lot of the zines' pages are pretty, and pretty turns me on.

3.
With so many literary journals floating about, how do you decide which are worth a few minutes of your time?

My chance to plug my favourites, right? Most of what I read online lives at www.zmag.org and www.adbusters.org. The truth is far freakier than anything I'll ever write. But stumbling around cyberspace, I did happen upon The Wonderful World of Web Lit. All those great zines; it's like gourmet food, from a different place every night. Generally, I navigate them through www.jensenwhelan.com/links.htm (thanks, Jensen), plus Juked of course, you gotta love Juked. And Somewhat, and Me Three, and ... did I mention The Big Jewel? I read 'em all, and then some. I hardly have time for anything else. You should see my laundry basket.

4.
Please point us toward a single piece of online writing over which your inner core glowed brightly with identification and satisfaction, such that you said out loud to yourself, 'Wow. I wish I'd written that.' Why this particular piece of writing?

Tough question. Keith Baughman's Workshop, at Pindeldyboz. I love the premise, and especially the finality; it's so damn atmospheric. And it feels so nicely wrapped up. I have to think of Rodin, which triggers a chain of thought that ends with Isabelle Adjani playing the role of Camille Claudel, Rodin's muse, lover, and in hindsight, peer. I saw her once, in a street in Paris with Daniel Day Lewis, her beau-in-tow. Someone told me he sent her a fax to break up with her. Isabelle, if you read this: Call.

5.
You live in Ireland, and publish across the globe. Have you noticed any difference in the literary tastes of the various geographic audiences you touch?

You've noticed the amount of chick lit coming out of Ireland, right? I haven't read any of it but my sister tells me it's kind of Irish-style Bollywood—lots of booze, remorse, and pre-marital sex. I have friends in Scandinavia who only read detective novels—they're all the rage up there. So sure, geographically, we differ in our tastes, be they culinary or literary. The world over there are great writers, writing in their vernaculars, who will never be read in our English-language world. Hats off to McSweeney's for devoting half a print issue of their quarterly to Icelandic writers.

On the other hand, it seems that everywhere I've been the last couple of years, people are only reading The Da Vinci Code, at least on public transport. Maybe a) People who read Cloud Atlas don't take the subway; b) They read Cloud Atlas in bed, like I did; or c) I'm visiting the wrong places (sorry Dan, nothing personal). Call me biased, but I feel zine readers are discerning readers. They know Bulgakov was a writer, not football player, or suspect as much, in my humble. But I can't be humble and biased simultaneously, can I?

6.
Talk to us like an Irishman about James Joyce. Has anyone, even in Ireland, actually read Finnegans Wake?

Not to my knowledge. In my book though, James Joyce is, and will remain, The Greatest. He redefined our boundaries, and shifted the parameters of not only prose, but language itself. And no, I haven't read Finnegans Wake, though I've tried. Its central character is language itself, as a deck of cards, which, when shuffled, produces endless meaning. What an achievement. The reader enters into a relationship with Joyce and creates meaning at a level not equaled in literature. My friend Eamon tells me this, and he knows his stuff.

Narrative can be totalitarian, in that the writer gives a beginning, middle and end, and so in a way, excludes the reader. Finnegans Wake questioned that premise. Joyce guessed the book would keep scholars busy for a thousand years, a modest guesstimation, I think. I wonder why I even tried to read it in the first place. I should take a class.

That said, I've read Dubliners and Portrait and yes, Ulysses. Joyce's Ireland was barely post-colonial. We were still hemorrhaging millions of people to death and emigration. Our culture was put to the sword; our language was on the verge of extinction. The majority of those who survived and stayed, even a couple of generations later, were (to say the least) downtrodden and traumatized. They weren't supposed to be raising questions of any great magnitude. They weren't supposed to dare. Then along came James Joyce. He addressed our good old Irish self-destructive passivity. To say he shook things up is a gross understatement—he was a trailblazer.

In Ulysses, through layers of nuance and a myriad of sources, he wrote a book about how we write meaning. As society dumbs down, we're losing access to him. Joyce was classically trained, and not shy about referring to the Greeks or Aquinas or Psychobabble in his work, in search of authenticity. So sure, it can be a workout to read him. You may need an appendix. I do.

Joyce wrote a thousand pages about one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a Dublin Jew. Bloom is everything worth saving in civilization. He won't buy into phoneyism or cronyism of any kind, be it nationalist, parochial, or even ideological. Not easy in Ireland. Bloom, no revolutionary, makes clear that he will not participate in the commonplace. The commonplace is not Truth. He takes pleasure in being alive—in eating, drinking, shitting, and jerking off. Through Bloom, Joyce liberated our consciousness, Irish consciousness first and foremost. He confronted the spirituality we profess with the carnality of our experience, and championed the sensuality at the core of being. And herein lies the danger in talking about Joyce: It can sound so textbook. So let me quote the man: 'scrotum tightening sea'. In the end there can only be the words themselves.

The specificity of this one day in Bloom's life is universal. And that's where the magic lies. Through it all, through all the styles and characterizations that Joyce employed, his work remains distinctly authentic and very Dublin. Ulysses isn't an Irish novel; it's a novel written by an Irishman. It's not Irish experience; it's experience through two very special Irish eyes. Today in Ireland, Joyce is commoditized. Back then he was vilified. I applaud him. He is The Greatest.

7.
How do you feel about blogs?

Some of them are pretty amazing chronicles of the times we live in. Others are hugely overindulgent. That's my take. We need more Salam Paxes though, that's for sure.

8.
Were you to start writing a novel right here and now, tell us the first and last lines. Take one or two minutes to think about this, but no more than three.

He played poker once a year, with the family at Christmas.

But no way does Wordsworth have a monopoly on daffodils, or urns, or any damn thing.

9.
Describe the photo and bio you plan to use for your next book jacket.

My mother said I was a beautiful baby. I was at my most photogenic: big blond curls and chubby thighs. So I'd go with one of my baby snaps, black and white, bien sûr. I still have chubby thighs. Funny how no one finds them cute anymore. As for bio, nothing too clever, nothing too droll:

Kevin has lived in some of the rainiest places on the planet. He wrote this book for you.

10.
Bony Bear at Pindeldyboz: This is the first story of yours that we remember reading. It sticks with us. There is tragedy to it, and joy, and wisdom, and pain. There is falling snow and outsize human compassion. Everything's there that needs to be there, and nothing else. This is a lot to draw from a short bit of fiction, and so we ask you this ridiculously open-ended question: How did you accomplish this?

Thanks Warmy, thanks, really. Bony Bear was driven by grief. I fictionalise so much in life, but this piece cuts to within a whisker of my heart. And it concerns the most important people in my life, which was great motivation. But I don't think I've answered your question, sorry.


TO THE TOP >>