Interzone (England) November 1998: Sunshine Over Shirleyland?
John Shirley Interviewed by David Mathew
Originally, I was going to call this piece "Shirleyland", after William
Gibson's overall title for John Shirley's work, as written in the introduction
for the collection, Heatseeker (1988). By the end of the interview, however,
there was a hint (just a hint, mind) of contentment in Shirley's words, so I
introduced a change in the emotional weather. But the question mark still
seemed relevant.
John Shirley published his first novel, Transmaniacon, in 1974, having
written most of it at the age of nineteen. Since then he has published
thirteen novels (and at least another six under a pseudonym, D.B. Drumm), four
collections of short stories and numerous screenplays, some of which have been
based on the work of other writers. Having published the first novel, Shirley
immediately veered off in a different direction (and some would say, has
continued to do so ever since); he produced a series of high-energy
contributions to the fields of science fiction and horror. Not that his work
is easily definable as either. Shirley is held up as an example of one who was
ahead of his time, but who managed to influence others. City Come A-Walkin'
(1980) is regarded as an important prologue in the story of cyberpunk.
Additionally, rumours have it that Nancy Collins was inspired by the explicit
sexual themes in Shirley's horror novel, Dracula in Love (1983); and that the
ferocity of some of Clive Barker's early stories owes something to Shirley'sCellars (1982).
Yet, despite this reputation as an honorary godfather of generic extremes,
Shirley is only halfway through his forties. Has he experienced a mid-life
crisis? I would say yes; and that it started at the age of fifteen, or
thereabouts. But it looks like he might have made it through. Maybe.
Shirley was interviewed for Interzone in 1986 (by Richard Kadrey) and I used
this interview as the starting-off point for our discussion.
David Mathew: In the 1986 interview you said, "Fascism is making a comeback."
More than a decade down the line, do you still agree with that statement? And
if so, do you mean in America, or would you be referring to the Neo-Nazis in
Germany?
John Shirley: Said German Neo-Nazis recently made the news again, rioting and
appearing
in increasing numbers. They're focusing mostly on immigrants who "take jobs" away from "Germans"
instead of Jews this time. A scapegoat is a scapegoat. The Neo-Nazis are not the
majority in Germany by any means: though Germany has its economic problems,
it is too prosperous still to be fertile for a fascist
takeover. It's just that it's strong enough there and in other places in
Europe, so that if there is major social chaos -- say, from famine resulting
from ecological breakdown, as in my novel Silicon Embrace -- it'll be there to
fill the void. A place that's more in danger of fascism is Eastern Europe and
those countries that used to be Soviet, now pseudo-Russian states...The
Russians love a firm hand. With people in Russia and contiguous former-Soviet
states going months and months without getting paid, the infrastructure
crumbling - crumbling so literally
that in Moscow people taking walks have felt the sidewalk give way and have
fallen into lethal sinkholes of boiling mud caused by broken steam pipes!
Well, that situation only needs the proverbial man on the white charger, and a
certain fascist-leaning Russian general may well be the guy. Then there's the
new Corporate Fascism -- the Corporations remaking the world economy and even
borders, for their own convenience, as for example the MAI treaty...The "religious" right in the USA is getting more and more powerful and they have an agenda, some of them, to change the Constitution so that the USA can become a kind of theocracy like Iran but Christian -- as predicted in my Eclipse books.
DM: How would you describe your work and how do you think it has changed over
the years? How have your attitudes changed, if at all?
JS: My job is to create stories, metaphors, that force me to look at the world
differently even as I'm writing them; that hopefully pull other people into
the orbit, the gravitation of that viewpoint, that nourishing unfamiliarity;
that demonstration of the strangeness of the
accepted; the effort that reveals the normal to be "abnormal" and vice versa. It's social lateral thinking through what I hope is art. This may apply to the human condition, in the "real" world, or it
may be something metaphysical, or both. Is my writing changed? I used to be more interested in bombast, and tried to create prose that was a musical or surrealistic
experience, that really went off like fireworks without
losing the narrative. I wanted to have it all: fireworks and a good story. I suppose Alfred Bester was an influence there, in that sense, and also Tom Wolfe and some Ballard. And I sometimes made very straightforward political statements; and that was probably influenced by John Steinbeck, an underrated writer, and by Philip Wylie and Kurt Vonnegut. Now I try to speak to people about the human condition in a way that isn't even remotely propagandistic. Though sometimes I am satirical, as in parts of Silicon Embrace -- like Vonnegut I think you can write satirically and seriously at once, make your statements with or around the satire. The human condition and the better-than-human condition; the finer metaphysical state...Generally I'm now more interested in expression, and craft, and letting the images speak for
themselves; letting the scenes speak almost like plays in the reader's head. Or that's what I try for. On one level I like to take people places in fiction that they -- I hope -- believe in, really believe in, no matter how outrageous those places. Most of my work is deliberately written on three levels; quite consciously, but without much conscious advance planning.
DM: So if someone had never read a word of you, nor knew your name, what
single piece of your own fiction would you point that person towards, and what
would you expect him or her to get out of it?
JS:I'd ask what sort of thing they like. But in general, maybe The Brigade
(1982), Wetbones(1991), and the Eclipse Trilogy (1985-1990). These are the
most user friendly. Lots of people seem to like City Come A-Walkin' Which
needs a British edition... What should they get out of it? I know it's hubris, pretentious of
me, but I can't help but desire to create an increase in consciousness, social
or otherwise; a kind of literary altered state. And yes, paranoia! I think
paranoia can be instructive in the right doses. Paranoia is a skill. But of
course I'm always hoping to entertain; to make them laugh, to feel things, to
feel pleasure, even. Writers are wired to entertain; genetically wired thus. If they're any good. Postmodern theorists may not think so -- but then, they are patently and utterly full of shit.
DM: Is it harder or easier to find suitable markets for your fiction, now that
you've been writing for a long time?
JS: It's notoriously harder for everyone. Even established writers -- I won't
give any names -- are having trouble selling (or getting decent deals for) new
novels. A lot of people have sort of categorized me -- but categories really
don't work very well for me, which is why I've had
trouble (until now) getting Wetbones into a mass market edition in the USA -- several
editors wanted to do it but the marketing departments - the ones who really
run publishing now -- didn't know how to categorize it. It'll be out in mass market in the spring though, here. Blake publishes it in England. I don't think of
myself as science fiction, or horror, or suspense. I don't know what my
category is. I have things I want to communicate, is all; feelings, states of mind, recognitions.
DM:Did you see A Splendid Chaos (1988) as a take on vampirism? I'm thinking
here of the creatures who starve but for mind and flesh? And what else did you
wish to achieve with this book?
JS: Parasitism, at times, if not vampirism. I remember a character in that book, I think it was called El Chinga Dero? Which if I remember after all these years means "the fucked" in Spanish, or something similar, a woman who had a sort of ethereal spirit of brutal maleness constantly fucking her at all times wherever she went -- like a monkey on her back. And that was a kind of parasitism which was also a statement, and a rather heavy handed one, about women I knew where were used and used and used by men, and neurotically permitted it, and got nothing from these particular oafs in return except an equally neurotic reward. Someone who handles that kind of outright, almost Bunyanesque symbolism more elegantly is C. S. Lewis in an overlooked allegorical fantasy novel, The Great Divorce. Overall in A Splendid Chaos I was trying to make surrealist paintings, in the tradition of Ernst and Duchamp and Tanguy etc, in the minds > of readers; I was trying to induce altered states so they could share them with me (I don't mean drugged states -- I have NEVER written on drugs); I was trying to create mental animations; I was also trying to write an old fashioned interplanetary fantasy a la David Lindsay or E. R. Eddison. But for modern times in modern language. I was, additionally, influenced by Bunuel and Fellini in that book; their visual textures.
DM: Wetbones was the last of your novels to be published in England. What have
you been working on since then?
JS: Screenplays, television, the novel Silicon Embrace (1996, available on
import). The latter a science fiction novel about a near-future Civil War in
the USA, and just how that interfaces with the (probably mythological) Alien
Presence; the grey aliens, the energy-field aliens, the underground bases, all
that internet alien-presence mythology. Stuff I don't really believe -- but I used it as a metaphor, for social and spiritual statement. I was drawing on pop imagery to
create -- I hoped -- a conceptual literary device that would be a sort of gradual
escalator to some ideas about consciousness and responsbility. I was co-writer on the
movie The Crow, of course, but also I did a movie for the Showtime channel
called Primal Scream. Supposed to come out this year, though I fear they're
renaming it something silly. Not sure what. The Showtime movie is actually
three stories with a frame connecting them -- something like Hitchcock,
something like what I call New Noir -- not just the title of one of my story
collections. This is "horror" that
is all completely possible in the real world; not only no supernatural, but
also no compromises in the telling. Much of Black Butterflies (1998) -- the new
story collection -- is comprised of stories like this. I want to make people
think about the underside of civilization; of the people who may go mad and
kill them tomorrow; kill them quite at random. Of the suffering of people they
assume to be "below" suffering, in the human sense; of the humanity of the
subhuman. Some of it based on personal experience -- most of what happens in
the story "The Footlite" in Black Butterflies really happened, and the bar it takes place in, mostly, is a real one I've spent time in (though I don't drink, or take drugs anymore).
DM:My girlfriend loved Wetbones and then hated Heatseeker. Would you say that
that type of extreme reaction is a typical response to your work? As cliched
as it sounds, do people either love it or hate it?
JS: I don't know if it's typical, but it sure doesn't surprise me. I wonder if
she read all of Heatseeker; it varies a lot. A great deal of it was written
when I was very young. An alternate title for it could be "Really Really
Really Weird Stories." Anyway there's definitely a "some
get it and some don't get it" syndrome with that book. Lots of people don't get Silicon
Embrace; lots of people do. It's more a question of not getting it in my opinion, but I
don't blame anyone for that...except John Clute, who has willfully snubbed my stuff, probably out of loyalty to people who didn't like me years ago. If your friend liked Wetbones, she'd probably like Black
Butterflies. So she should see a psychiatrist; she's
obviously a very sick girl.
DM: Was Wetbones an attack (however oblique) on your experiences in writing
for the small and big screens?
JS: An attack no; satire, in that area of the book, yes. Ridicule of those
sorts of people, yes a little. Or perhaps that part of the book is a sort of
reaction, almost like retching at a bad smell...That's Hol-lee-woooooood!
DM:You've acknowledged that some of your TV work has been solely for the
money to support your ex-wives, but have you ever written anything and felt
nothing for it at all? Have
you ever felt, this means nothing except for the cheque at the end?
JS:Not exactly. I do believe that you owe something to people who tune in or
buy the unit. I think you owe them craft; and I feel a pleasure in craft. I
like to write some damn silly thing and see the scene roughly as I wrote it on
a screen. I get an adolescent thrill from that. But it
doesn't mean a lot to me. Wetbones meant something to me, something much
more; and the stories in Black Butterflies and City Come A-Walkin' and
Eclipse.
DM: The Crow ended up as a great film, but it was dogged by problems and then
a catastrophe, of course (the death of its lead actor, Brandon Lee). I'd
assumed that you and David Schow had written it together (not necessarily in
the same room, but at the same time), but now know that the process was more
complicated. Were there any rifts between you and Schow as a result of your
different ideas?
JS: We worked on it sequentially, so no. Dave did a great job. I don't want to
say anything else except to say that the movie is a kind of voodoo loa on
screen; it asserted itself to be made exactly as it is. However Brandon died only because of incompetence on the set.
DM: Your explanation of the title Black Butterflies is interesting. "They
flutter around my house. They are caused by stories that I didn't write down,
which, after awhile, gestate into
butterflies which fly out my open mouth as I sleep." I like this description.
It made me think of Shane MacGowan, who said that songs are in the air and
that it's his job to catch them and write them down before they float away and
get to Paul Simon! My question is: would these Black Butterflies really haunt
you for eternity, until you wrote them down, or would they eventually leave
you alone?
JS: It's just a feeling, that they'd haunt me; and that description came partly from a dream I had about it, and then i woke up and black butterflies were literally winging about my house, in the garden! I don't know, some stories
indeed won't leave me alone unless I either tell them in my head or on paper.
There are hundreds of stories that occur to me and I don't write them down
because I think there'd be no market for them. Then they're
lost after I sort of tell it to myself in my mind. I see the whole thing in my mind, the whole story, like
a movie almost, at times.
DM: On the website dedicated to you and your work you have published a long essay on the
existence of God. It is so thorough and well researched
that I can only assume it had been brewing inside you for some time? Would
that be true?
JS: I have been studying for seven years. I'd like to study philosophy
fulltime. I'm probably too flawed for that. But that essay sprang into my mind
relatively recently; the research was longterm. People who investigate
spirituality in a shallow way are, well, wading in shallows. I think complexity, though, is not necessary -- depth, and real personal sacrifice in terms of conscious suffering, of giving, of self honesty, those things are needed, and are difficult, but they are also simple. Religion gets dangerous when it gets complex -- it can become sick, as the church has done in the past. It also gets dangerous when it becomes mindlessly fanatical or foolishly dogmatic of course, as in current fundamentalism of any sort. But then there is
a way of approaching authentic spiritual experience that is markedly simple. To paraphrase Jesus, only he who is as a child can enter the kingdom of heaven. I'll tell you this,
consciousness is a direction, in a sense, (in another sense it is all
directions) and that, again, takes courage; many people I know of, know a great deal
about spirituality and think they are engaging it, but they lack the courage
to go in that direction in any real, productive way. Raising consciousness takes real
courage because the real thing requires a painful self knowledge.
DM: Why do you think so many musicians want to be writers, and vice versa?
What does music mean to you?
JS:Me, I just can't help it. I've been in bands for years. It's a compulsion,
and must be a sick one considering how difficult and punishing it can be. But
then our generations, that's plural, also make more of music, I think -- it's
not just a pastime, it's a way of life, it's an environment we want to live
in, and it expresses us on deeper levels than in former generations. I mean,
bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain or the Toadies (my current favorite) or
people like Lou Reed or the band Garbage, they are protesting, they're expressing things former
generations mostly wouldn't express in music. Sexual angst, existential
romanticism, urban ennui, a sense of the uncenteringof the world; the
ephemeral nature of identity now, and so forth. In fact, the better modern pop music has, lyrically, many of the same
concerns that modern science fiction has, questioning a civilization that is
both a
good thing and a nightmarish thing -- the benefits of our civilization are
clear, and so is the price we pay for it. An indirect advocacy of a kind of
balance, of social and ecological values, and embracing of diversity...All
this is in the better rock and folk music of the 60s through the 90s. It's in
science fiction and it's in rock. But it's also just part and parcel of our
cultural lives; it has to be important to a culturally online writer.
DM: In the old days, when you were wilder and sometimes drugged up, did you
ever feel so dangerous that you might die? For example, you mention Iggy Pop a
lot in interviews; did you ever carve yourself up on stage with a razor like
he did?
JS: I never took drugs on stage except one time. Drugs was something I mixed with
sex offstage. Private. But I worked myself up into genuine frenzies onstage. I
leaped onto people's tables in nightclubs, that sort of thing. Once I ran onto
stage, put a garbage can over the head of a lead
singer of another band who'd annoyed me; later the band grabbed me, the lot of
them, and pounded me a bit for it. I snarled at some bikers at a party i was
playing at and they broke a bottle over my head which gushed a lot of blood from my scalp, and it looked marvelously theatrical. I once rode a Christmas tree
around a largish concert hall -- it was a Christmas punk show (if you can
imagine that) and I knocked the tree down and sort of
humped it around the room, riding it as I sang. I writhed...I writhed...but I
was never self mutilating.
DM:Once an addict, always an addict, or so they say. But once a punk, always
a punk? What sort of person are you now? Do you still adhere to the basic
aesthetic of punk: that everyone is his or her own artist?
JS: It's both true and untrue -- like almost everything -- that "once an addict
always an addict." I don't take drugs, but I have to work on that, the addict
is inside me, waiting. I think there's a punk in me, waiting, too. A punk
rocker -- not a prison punk! I think William Burroughs died a
beat writer. But on the other hand I've
always shimmered free of categories and I've always written stuff that breaks
that punk mold. Both as writer and performer. I mean, you know, my favorite science
fiction writers are Jack Vance and C.S. Lewis. And, yes, Bruce Sterling and
Rudy Rucker. But the only sf writers I can be counted
on to read are Lewis and Vance. So I'm not any kind of categorical punk in
sensibility. I am a believer in refinement but I also think that a wall of
sound can be refined in a strange way. On the other hand I love Beethoven, and
Debussy and much of Mozart. I try to reach across the spectrum. I like punk, classical, jazz artists like Coltrane, Frank Zappa, industrial bands like Witchman, goths like SIsters of Mercy and also the smarter hard rock bands like the Blue Oyster Cult, of course -- like Michael Moorcock, Patti Smith and Jim Carroll I've written lyrics for the Blue Oyster cult, having written the words on most of their new CD "Heaven Forbid" -- their first in ten years. But, you
know, I'm marked by things I've seen and done and one result is that I don't
take anyone very seriously, except perhaps the few people around who
are genuinely enlightened (but if they say they are enlightened, and act the guru, they're
probably full of shit). So if I don't take anyone seriously (and like Zappa
advised, not myself much either, except as an artist within myself) I can
say any fucking thing I please and you can call that punk if you want. I do think that
honesty is a radically important touchstone -- I think one of Harlan Ellison's
strengths is honesty; it's one of Iggy's great strengths; Hubert Selby's;
Cormac McCarthy's. Artistic honesty takes guts.
DM: Was your early rage a direct result of where you were living, or would you
have been as angry regardless of where you lived?
JS: I was angry as a result of my feeling of externalization from virtually
everything; angry as a result of political conscience and things I saw; angry
because there was so much pent up in me; because of things that had happened
to me which I won't discuss; because the time called for it, called it out of
us; not where I was living, if you mean poverty. I had some adventurous youthful poverty but soon I learned a certain skill -- and then frankly some girl was always supporting me so I
was usually living all right; and I made money from writing so I wasn't
usually in a slum; and...never mind the "and." That was all years ago -- now I'm a respectable married guy with kids. Sort of respectable. But then again as a teen I had hitched to
San Francisco and lived on the streets for a while there, quite literally. It didn't make me angry, living on the streets. I was too interested as I was
seeing the far side of the social veneer. I was often creatively frustrated,
I'll say that. That made me spit sparks more than once. I'm afraid I took it
out on some
perfectly nice people in the publishing business.
DM: Do you think you have a strong fan base?
JS: I do seem to have people who stick with me over the years. Also new people - I just did a reading in San Francisco for Black Butterflies and dozens of goth/industrial kids turned up. God bless em.
DM: Would they follow you, do you think, if you decided to write a western or
an historical romance, for example?
JS: Maybe, maybe...if it was a great western or historical romance (a great one I suppose, for
the latter, must be theoretically possible). There is such a
thing as a great western but I doubt if my readers would dig one from me.
Richard Matheson wrote some.
DM: I must have read Heatseeker when I was around sixteen or seventeen: the
perfect age to be brainwashed, some might say! Do you think you appeal to
people who are younger than yourself? Are you aware of the demographics of
your fan base?
JS: The new fan base seems to be college students or drop-outs, yes, especially which is why I prevailed on
Ziesing to keep Black Butterflies a relatively inexpensive trade paperback at
$16.95. Many people complained they couldn't afford Silicon Embrace. I'm
afraid my arrested adolescent, boyish mentality may appeal to the young; you
can say it's because I have a juvenile mentality if you like, though the real truth is I
don't write "juveniles" and I don't think that's true. I think it's the rock and roll damage and because the young are in search of honesty and because many people want to see the world the way it really is: dark as hell but with redemption in it too.
DM: Do you look ahead? What do you see occurring for you when you hit, say,
50? Or 60? Or 70?
JS: Rejuvenation! Or shuffling off this mortal coil, wriggling free as from a
cocoon. Or rotting in some condominium, addicted to virtual reality or some
escapist crap, and painkillers. But no: I'd like an old age like WIlliam
Burroughs had. Integrity. Style. Good suits.
DM:Last question. Do you think you have achieved enough now to be happy for
evermore, or will you be judged as a genius some years after you've been dead,
like Melville?
JS: (Maniacal laughter.) I could win ten Nobel prizes and five Pulitzers and
three Academy Awards and not be "happy". On the other hand, a part of me is
objective, pristine, more so every day. Lou Reed said, "And me, I just don't
care at all." Only I don't mean it the way he did. The only happiness is in real freedom -- freedom to serve the higher. The paradox of it...submitting to the finer, to the background
intelligence of the cosmos, is becoming free. One is always under an
influence; happiness is the freedom to choose the influence, perhaps? Service
is freedom, strangely: conscious service. Knowing what is appropriate, on some level of inner
iconography that accords with external behavior, for every second. being here,
now. Plumbing relationship. Love. All these are phrases, words, synonymous,
facets of one thing. Going with a nourishing current makes me happy; getting
into a groove; the Stooges' album Funhouse makes me happy; the new album by
the band Garbage; the neoimpressionist painters; the expressionist painters; the surrealists; and inside me, a sense of real being, real
presence. But I agree with the stoics, too: we ask too much when we ask to be
happy. Who can be really happy in a waiting room? We're waiting for
completion; we're learning how to bring it about. We're not supposed to be
happy in the foolish, human sense. We're supposed to find our groove...and, rock with it.
(© 1998 David Mathew)
