Interview: D. Harlan Wilson

D. Harlan Wilson is an author of short and novel-length fiction whose work can be described as surrealism, absurdism or Bizarro. His works include The Kafka Effekt, Stranger on the Loose, Pseudo-City and Dr. Identity (reviewed earlier). Wilson is the editor-in-chief of the online absurdist journal The Dream People (reviewed here). He is an assistant professor of English at Wright State University and describes his previous occupations as international salesman, model and actor, casino dealer, security guard, garbage man, tax collector, sommelier, town crier and flaneur. He is probably not lying. HorrorScope spoke with Wilson about Bizarro writing, his debut novel and his work with The Dream People.

HS: You write in a very niche subgenre: Bizarro. How do you define this term?

DHW: The best definition of the term can be found in the introduction to The Bizarro Starter Kit (2006), a collection of stories and novellas written by ten of the movement's leading authors. It's called "Defining Bizarro" and reads:

1. Bizarro, simply put, is the genre of the weird.

2. Bizarro is literature's equivalent to the cult section of the video store.

3. Like cult movies, Bizarro is sometimes surreal, sometimes goofy, sometimes bloody, and sometimes borderline pornographic.

4. Bizarro often contains certain cartoon logic that, when applied to the real world, creates an unstable universe where the bizarre becomes the norm and absurdities are made flesh.

5. Bizarro strives not only to be strange, but fascinating, thought-provoking, and, above all, fun to read.

6. Bizarro was created by a group of small press publishers in response to the increasing demand for (good) weird fiction and the increasing number of authors who specialize in it.

7. Bizarro is:

Franz Kafka meets Joe Bob Briggs
Dr. Seuss of the post-apocalypse
Japanese animation directed by David Lynch

Generally speaking, then, Bizarro encompasses literature, film and art that transgresses and often conflates standard speculative forms (e.g. science fiction, fantasy and horror). It is the realm of hyper-(or post-, or avant-, or uber-)speculation. For more on Bizarro, check out the new website dedicated to it: www.bizarrocentral.com.


HS: That should clear up any lingering confusion in people's minds. So, how does absurdist writing differ in potential and content between the short story and novel forms?

DHW: I think absurdity is much more difficult to maintain in the longer form. People tend to enjoy absurdist narratives in small packages (e.g. the prose poetry of Russell Edson and the short stories of Donald Barthelme and Jorge Luis Borges). Confronted with a 250+ page novel full of shit that doesn't seem to make sense, though, they think they're not "getting it" and give up, or they're simply turned off by the weirdness of it. If people read at all, they read nonfiction - 90% of books sold are nonfiction. The remaining 10% of fiction readers prefer realism (i.e. narratives whose diegetic realities are comparable to the real world). And if they like absurdism, they like it short. This is partly an effect of the Internet and the short attention spans that computer culture has produced in us. But that's another topic. Writing longer works of absurdism is equally difficult in that authors often create new places with new rules that must be sustained from beginning to end. Still, I prefer the absurdist novel to the short story. It's a great challenge. It's the ultimate challenge. I also have the space to create more dynamic and cultivated worlds, characters, scenarios, styles of prose, etc.


HS: You recently published the novel Dr. Identity (Raw Dog Screaming Press). How long was the book in the making? How did it come together?

DHW: It took nine or ten months to write. I began in 2005 when I was teaching English full-time at Albion College and finishing my Ph.D. dissertation at Michigan State University. A busy time. But I usually managed to peck away at Dr. Identity every day, if only for a few minutes. The novel is deeply informed by the science fiction genre - its origins, themes, machinery, futurologies, etc. It's actually the product of about 10 years of closely studying science fiction literature and film (one of those years was spent at the University of Liverpool, where I did an M.A. degree in Science Fiction Studies). I tapped into other genres, too, namely fantasy, horror, noir, and literary theory. So there's a lot going on in Dr. Identity. One of these days I'd like to do an annotated version with notes to the text and subsequent analytical essays.


HS: For all its absurdist hilarity, Dr. Identity can be read as a sober commentary on a dystopian extension of modern society. How important to you are the philosophical implications of your work?

DHW: They're important to me, but that doesn't mean I expect these implications to be important to my readers. I frequently try to write fiction that functions as entertainment as well as social critique and in some cases literary theory. If people don't appreciate that, no problem. Id encourage readers to be subjective, in fact. Dr. Identity, after all, is about perception insofar as it critiques how media technologies construct perception. Anyway, if I can make readers laugh a little and maybe think about something in a new or different light, I'm happy.


HS: So what is the future of Bizarro or absurdist fiction – where is it thriving?

DHW: It seems to mainly thrive on the Internet, although there are real life presences in Oregon, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., where the three biggest Bizarro publishers are located (Eraserhead Press, Afterbirth Books and Raw Dog Screaming Press, respectively). I'm not certain what sort of presence Bizarro has in the U.K., but I know there are lots of British practitioners (e.g. Steve Aylett, Steve Beard, Rhys Hughes). As I said, though, the Internet has been the primary mechanism for spreading the word about Bizarro. I suspect this will always be the case. That's a good thing. And it's inevitable. As computer technology evolves, authors and artists of all kinds and genres will be forced to develop greater and more elaborate electronic identities.


HS: How did the decision to start The Dream People come about?

DHW: Actually I didn't start TDP. Bizarro author and publisher Carlton Mellick III did. I can't remember when, specifically – at some point in the late 90s. At the time, Carlton was publishing chapbooks under the Eraserhead Press label. He edited TDP on the side. It was Carlton who actually "discovered" me when I submitted some material to the magazine, which led to the publication of my first book, The Kafka Effekt (2001), by EHP. As EHP got bigger, he had less and less time to devote to TDP, and in 2002, it was taken over by John Lawson and Jennifer Barnes, the head publishers of Raw Dog Screaming Press. Same thing happened here. RDSP's growing success detracted from time that could be spent on TDP. So I took over as editor-in-chief in 2006. I was at a convention with John, I think, and he mentioned that he didn't have time to work on TDP anymore. Reluctantly he was going to scrap it. I volunteered to take over. Simple as that. It was a very casual exchange. Transitioning into an editing role was smooth enough; I had been submitting stories to magazines for years and knew the drill, more or less.


HS: What does the behind-the-scenes work on The Dream People involve?

DHW: I spend most of my time reading and evaluating submissions and formatting each issue. I have a small cartel of assistant readers, editors and reviewers who help me out. TDP is only published biannually. Ideally I'd like to make it a triannual or even a quarterly publication, but right now I just don't have the time. Other duties include soliciting authors and artists for submissions, conducting interviews, and promoting TDP.


HS: Which of your roles, writer or editor, is more important to you? How do they balance?

DHW: I like doing both. But writing is my first priority and consumes most of my time. I write just about every day and usually have a few different projects on my plate at once. The same goes for editing. In addition to TDP, I'm a co-editor of Guide Dog Books, the new nonfiction syndicate of Raw Dog Screaming Press whose first round of books will be published in 2008. Among them are Mike Arnzen's The Popular Uncanny and my own Technologized Desire: Selfhood and the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction (for more details, check out GDB’s website). Editing and formatting nonfiction book-length works is a long, intricate, sometimes arduous process. But I like doing it, and in the end, editing and writing balance each other out in a healthy way for me. Each requires a different kind of thinking.


HS: Who are your inspirations in literature?

DHW: Existentialists, absurdists, and science fiction writers and theorists, for the most part. Franz Kafka and Philip K. Dick, above all. Also Nikolai Gogol, Jorge Luis Borges, Donald Barthelme, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walter Benjamin, Steve Aylett, Lance Olsen, Harlan Ellison, Henry Miller, Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Mann. I'm deeply inspired by film, too. Without the cinema of David Lynch, for instance, I don't think I'd be the kind of writer I am.


HS: It would not be a complete interview without an insight into the relationship between you and your writing. So tell us: of all the weird and wonderful future technology you describe in Dr. Identity, which would you most like to own?

DHW: A Beetlesneak jetpack. No question about it!


For more information about D. Harlan Wilson, visit his website. His science fictional absurdist horror comedy Dr. Identity is available from Raw Dog Screaming Press for $US14.95.