Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, this series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20ish odd bookish scenarios....
WOULD YOU RATHER
LANCELOT SCHAUBERT
Would you rather write an entire
book with your feet or with your tongue?
I've already written short
stories with my feet and journalled with my feet, so my feet. Though I can tie
a cherry stem with my tongue. I was told in the 5th grade that this would make
me a good kisser. They didn't, however, tell me that being an overly melancholy
hopeless romantic would repel most girls rather than attract them, so kind
of a horse before the cart skill, all told.
Would you rather have one giant
bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?
I really don't care, as long as
it's the truest, best, most beautiful work I can write. As long as it's really real,
that's all I care about. Is the money the same? Then moderate sales is great
because it's continuous. If the bestseller is traditional and I can get paid in
undervalued shares of the parent company, then that. Or paid in a downmarket.
See this is the problem with asking about sales: books aren't about sales,
first and formost. Keep the wealth, the power, the pleasure, the honor, the
fame. I want to be wise and good and a beautiful soul.
Would you rather be a well known
author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?
Neither. I'd rather my name rot
in obscurity, but the work live on and change people for teh better.
Would you rather write a book
without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one?
"...and I never really
understood why authors didn't start with more conjunctions. But I suppose it's
a personal preference thing, though some seem to forget how well it can be
done. For other authors in times goneby have written this way. Nor did they
write poorly. So well did the conjunctions shape their prose. Yet even now,
folks run from conjunctions at the start of sentences. Or at least let them
languish in obscurity..."
I could go on with coordinating
ones, but I doubt you want 1,000 words on the matter.
Would you rather have every word
of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in
the background for the rest of your life?
This is very difficult for me.
Insanely difficult. I have an auditory processing issue so audio noise stresses
me out more than most. But I also see my skin as a one-of-a-kind living canvas
and a tattoo to be a one-of-a-kind commission on that canvas. So I've yet
to see a tattoo that's worthy. If it could be hand tapped by Samoans whom I had
earned the right to be called "chief" as did my friend Roger Andruss
(only white man I'm aware of to become a chief and get the tattoos) AND if this
is the platonic IDEAL of the novel, then sure. My skin. Otherwise I'd be
tortured auditorily for the sake of my own moral and aesthetic code.
Would you rather write a book you
truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises
everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?
The former, obviously. The world
has enough commodity and propoganda.
Would you rather write a plot
twist you hated or write a character you hated?
If by "hate" you mean
"disappointed by," the twist. If by "hate" you mean "have
a severe negative emotional reaction to so that you nearly wish them ill"
then the character.
Would you rather use your skin as
paper or your blood as ink?
I have written with my blood
before. It replenishes much quicker than skin. So blood. Though I have
vaso vago, so I'd likely pass out after the first pint.
Would you rather become a
character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the
novel in real life?
BELL
HAMMERS and my universe THE VALE features both me as a character and characters
escaping the novel, but I prefer the former.
Would you rather write without
using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the
letter E?
The former. I'm a student of
Koine, Ionic, and Hebrew which all feature the former and don't bother me. The
former doesn't bother McCarthy and the latter doesn't bother e.e. cummings.
Would you rather have schools
teach your book or ban your book?
Both. Ban it and then teach why
it was banned, in cycles.
Would you rather be forced to
listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?
I'd rather get hit on by an angry
Dylan Thomas who's trying to avoid Ayn Rand who's been hitting on him. I'd also
like to hear her bloviate if I'm allowed to dialog because maybe — maybe — a
Socratic dialog would undo much of the terrifying nonsense she produced.
Would you rather be reduced to
speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?
If it's Japanese haiku and there
are no line breaks, I pretty much do that in description anyways. Japanese
haiku (non-syllabic, but "on" and morae based) and Old English
alliterative meter are separated by a hair's breadth and to prove it, I'll
make a haiku out of English cliches:
black and blue
babe in the woods
weathers storm
That's a japanese haiku, 1.5 feet
in an Old English alliterative meter (unless the middle starts and ends one,
then it's two), and it's three cliches. So we talk like this and write like
this all the time in English. I'll point to Chesterton on alliteration:
A very
sympathetic reviewer said that I used too much alliteration; and quoted
Mr. T.S. Eliot (see apology in Introduction) as saying that such a
style maddened him to the point of unendurance; and a similar criticism of my
English was made, I think, by another American writer, Mr. Cuthbert
Wright. Now I think, on fair consideration, that it is perfectly true
that I do use a great deal too much alliteration. The only question on
which these gentlemen and I would probably differ is a question of degree; a
question of the exact importance or necessity of avoiding alliteration.
For I do strongly maintain that it is a question of avoiding
alliteration — and even that phrase does not avoid it! If an English
writer does not avoid it, he is perpetually dragged into it when speaking
rapidly or writing a great deal, by the whole trend and current of the English
speech; perhaps that is why the Anglo-Saxon poetry even down to Piers Plowman
(which I enjoy hugely) was all alliteration. Anyhow, the tendency in
popular and unconscious speech is quite obvious, in phrases and proverbs and
rhymes and catchwords and a thousand things. Time and tide, wind and
water, fire and flood, waste not, want not, bag and baggage, spick and span,
black and blue, deaf and dumb, the devil and the deep sea, when the wine is in
the wit is out, in for a penny, in for a pound, a pig in a poke, a bee in a
bonnet, a bat in a belfry, and so on through a myriad fantastic changes of
popular imagery. What elaborate art, what sleepless cunning even, must
these more refined writers employ to dodge this rush of coincidences; and run
between the drops of this deluge! It must be a terrible strain on the
presence of mind to be always ready with a synonym. I can imagine
Mr. T.S. Eliot just stopping himself in time, and saying with a
refined cough, “Waste not, require not.” I like to think of Mr. Cuthbert
Wright, in some headlong moment of American hustle, still having the
self-control to cry, “Time and Fluctuation wait for no man!” I can imagine his
delicate accent when speaking of a pig in a receptacle or of bats in the
campanile. It is a little difficult perhaps to image the latter critic
apparently confining himself to the isolated statement, “Mr. Smith is
spick,” while his mind hovered in momentary hesitation about how to vary the
corresponding truth that Mr. Smith is span. But it is quite easy to
conceive an advanced modern artist of this school, looking for some sharp and
graphic variation in the old colour scheme of black and blue. Indeed, we
might almost invent a sort of colour test, like that which somebody suggested
about red grass and green sky as a test of different schools of painting.
We might suggest that Decadents beat people black and yellow, Futurists beat
them black and orange, Neo-Victorians beat them black and magenta; but all
recoil from the vulgar alliteration of beating them black and blue. Nor
indeed is the reference to these new and varied styles irrelevant. Some
of the more bizarre modern methods seem to me to make it rather difficult to
have any fixed criticism at all, either of their style or mine. Take, for
instance, the case of Mr. T.S. Eliot himself. I recently saw a
poem of his praised very highly and doubtless very rightly; though to some
extent (it seemed) because it was a poem of profound “disillusionment and
melancholy.” But the passage specially quoted for commendation ran, if I
remember right:
“the smell of
steak in passages.”
That quotation is
enough to indicate the difficulty I mean. For even style of this severe
and classic sort is after all to some extent a matter of taste. It is not
a subject for these extreme controversial passions. If I were to say that
the style of that line maddened me to the point of unendurance, I should be
greatly exaggerating its effect on the emotions. I should not like
everything to be written in that style; I should not like to wander for ever in
passages stuffy with steak (there we go again!) but I cannot think these
questions of style are quite so important as these pure stylists suppose.
We must be moderate in our reactions; as in that verse specially headed “The
Author’s Moderation” in the Bab Ballad about Pasha Bailey Ben — another
great poem written in a tone of melancholy and disillusion.
To say that
Bailey oped his eyes
Would feebly
paint his great surprise;
To say it
almost made him die
Would be to
paint it much too high.
I may be allowed
to open my eyes for a moment at some of the literary models thus commended to
me; but I shall soon close them again in healthful slumber. And when the
more refined critic implies that my own manner of writing almost makes him die,
I think he over-estimates my power over life and death.
But I have begun
with this personal example of alliteration; because a question like that of
alliteration is not so simple as it looks; and the answer to it applies to much
more important things than my own journalistic habits. Alliteration is an
example of a thing much easier to condemn in theory than in practice.
There are, of course, many famous examples in which an exaggerated alliteration
seems quite wrong. And yet those are exactly the examples which it would
be most difficult for anybody to put right. Byron (a splendid example of
the sort of writer who does not bother much about avoiding anything) did not
hesitate to say of his hero at Quatre Bras that he “rushed into the field and
foremost fighting fell.” That is so extreme that we might well suppose it described
the end of the life and adventures of Peter Piper. But I will trouble
anybody to alter one word in the line so as to make it better; or even so as to
make it sense. Byron used those words because they were the right words;
and you cannot alter them without deliberately choosing the wrong words.
This is more often the case in connection with alliteration than many people
imagine. I do not mean to claim any such exalted company when I say that,
on this particular point of conduct, I agree with Byron. But Byron does
not stand alone; Coleridge, a person of some culture, could burst out
boisterously and without stopping for breath:
The fair
breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow
followed free.
and I do not see
that he could have done anything else. I do not think anybody could
interfere with that foaming spate of Fs, if the verse that followed was really
“to follow free.”
There is a
problem behind all this which is also illustrated in other ways. It is
illustrated in the other much controverted question of puns. I know all
about the judgments regularly cited as if from dusty law-books in the
matter. I know all about the story that Dr. Johnson said, “The man
who would make a pun would pick a pocket.” How unlucky that the lexicographer
and guardian of our language, in the very act of purging himself of puns,
should have plunged so shamelessly deep into the mire of alliteration!
His example, in that very instance, would alone be enough to prove the first
part of my case, even when it is brought forward against the second.
Johnson spluttered out all those p’s because he was an Englishman with a sense
of the spirit and vigour of the English language; and not a timid prig who had
to mind his p’s and q’s by using them in exact alternation with a pattern.
But if it came to the old joke of invoking authorities, it would be equally
easy to invoke even greater authorities on the side of the pun. Also
there is something that is more important to my purpose here. It would
not only be easy to quote the puns of the poets; it would be easy to quote the
very bad puns of the very good poets. But the question I wish to ask is
wider and more essential than all this hotch-potch of snobbery and legalism and
A Hundred Familiar Quotations, which goes to make up the modern invocation of
authorities. I wish to point out that there is a general attitude of
mind, which is defensible; or rather two attitudes of mind, which are both
defensible. It is a question of style; but there are here two different
styles; because there are two different motives. If one is now
criticising the other, I do not merely wish to retort the criticism; but rather
to proclaim liberty for both.
All of that to say, I'm
intimidated by neither because when defining haiku properly — by morae — we
English speakers do this all the time. To talk or write in another way is to
talk awkwardly.
Would you rather be stuck on an
island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t
read?
The latter. And make it the
greatest novel series of all time. Preferably an alien island. Then I'm not
only reading a classic, I'm learning a culture through its language. This is
the plot of both Out of the Silent Planet and Arrival, both of
which understand the fundamental nature of language to thought, both of which 50
Shades arguably destroys.
Would you rather critics rip your
book apart publicly or never talk about it at all?
I thrive on public flogging,
particularly when I'm allowed to respond graciously to jerks. There are so few
classic critics these days.
Would you rather have everything
you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your
head narrate your every move?
The latter. Brother
Lawrence called that "prayer."
Would you rather give up your
computer or pens and paper?
My computer can go straight to
hell. And that goes for all complex technology with egregiously simple
uses. I prefer simple tech with near infinite applications. Pen on the paper.
Sword in the stone. Wood in the stove. What sort of spacetravel tech we
will invent, I cannot say. But we'll always need tea kettles for tea and baths
when the power fails and purifying water we drew from a well.
Would you rather write an entire
novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back?
I have a standing desk, so I've
done the former. But I've also written words while bedridden in my bunk bed
growing up. So both are good.
Would you rather read naked in
front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?
Oh gosh, the latter. I've read to
empty rooms. But public nudity... I can't do that. I don't kiss and tell. I
could barely change in the lockerroom growing up.
Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has
an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well?
I've seen plenty of MFA
literature: highly polished turds. On the other hand, George MacDonald's
stories have TERRIBLE prose, and yet because of him we have Narnia and Smith of
Wooton Major and a slew of other great things: his stories are so mythic,
they'll last forever even if his name fades. He's the reason we have the
fantasy genre and almost all of the modern tropes go back to him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two excerpts of Lancelot Schaubert’s debut novel BELL HAMMERS
have sold to The New Haven Review (Yale’s Institute Library) and The Misty
Review, while a third excerpt was selected as a finalist for the last Glimmer
Train Fiction Open in history. He has sold poetry, fiction, and essays to TOR (MacMillan), The Anglican Theological Review,
McSweeney’s, Poker Pro’s World Series Edition, The Poet’s Market, Writer’s
Digest, Space and Time, and many similar markets. Spark + Echo
chose him for their 2019 artist in residency, commissioning him to write four
short stories in addition to the seven they already purchased. He has
published work in anthologies like Author in
Progress, Harry Potter for Nerds, and Of Gods and Globes — the last of
which he edits and has featured stories by Juliet Marillier (whose story was nominated
for an Aurealis award), Howard
Andrew Jones, Kaaron Warren, Anne Greenwood Brown, Dr. Anthony Cirilla, LJ Cohen, FC Shultz, and Emily Munro.
