Matt Ruff: Jane of Dark

-How did you come to writing?

-MR: I basically decided to be a writer when I was five years old, and all worked with that, so I suppose that’s what I was born to do, I guess! There were always novels, for some reason. When I was very young, I was more into the way of soap opera writing, just going on, and when I grew tired of it, I started something new. Then as I grew older, I got more organized and finally I went to university where I studied English with incredible interest in writing. One of my professors was Alison Lurie, who had a Pulitzer. She introduced me to her agent, who sold my first book, ‘Fool on the hill’ shortly after I graduated, allowing to do it for my whole life! Looking back on it, it was completely unexpected, people making a living as a writer are very rare, and I feel very fortunate.

-What were your literary influences?

-MR: In terms of influence on my writing, I would say Ray Bradbury when I was young, and Stephen King was a huge influence too. More recently, Mark Halperin, John Crowley, Richard Price, others too, but I think that writing stories has always been innate to me, even if people have affected my style along the years.

-We often think of Philip K. Dick when we read you…

MR: It’s funny: I really like his style of storytelling, I like the kind of stories he wrote, but I guess I like more logic writing. He wrote some novels in such a hurry, I often feel that there's a logical background that bothers me. I like stories which make me wonder what’s going on, but I definitely like it when you have the feeling that there’s an answer somewhere, even if I don’t know what it is, and sometimes that works, and possibly makes sense, but…

-His book is dedicated to Phil: who is it?

-MR: It’s sort of ambiguous: I was thinking of Philip K. Dick, but obviously, it can be the brother as well.

-Where does this idea of ‘Bad Monkeys’ come from?

MR: There are some very weird origin stories for my book, and it actually started with the title: there’s a TV show called ‘South Park’ and, during the third season, there’s an episode where the kids went to the Costa Rican rainforest and got lost and a certain point of the show, Kenny sees a monkey with a stick screaming ‘bad monkey!’ and, for some reason, it occurred to me that it would be a perfect title for a novel, even if I had no idea of what it would be about. Sometimes, later, I was reading David Simon’s book ‘Homicides’, which is a non fiction book about the years he spent in the Baltimore police department. That gave me the idea to write a police procedural called ‘Bad Monkeys’. One version of the story was going to be a very realistic police drama, about a sheriff and really gruesome crimes, ‘bad monkeys’ being a slang term for perpetrators. And there was another science fiction version of the novel, with a futuristic police department and ‘Bad monkeys’ was a nickname for the division that handled crimes committed by human beings, as opposed to bad robots division which handled crimes committed by computers, but the idea of science fiction doesn’t work for me, but I liked the idea of those nicknames. So, at some point, I gave this idea a twist and tried to build a contemporary secret society which could suffer of possible psychotic delusion, that got me to that person sitting in a room telling the story to the psychiatrist, and the last step was figuring out who this narrator is going to be, because it was starting to sound like a Philip K. Dick novel. I flirted with the idea of having a guy named Phil, but then I was reading a biography of Philip K. Dick, and I found out that he had a twin sister named Jane Charlotte, who died in infancy, and he was sort of haunted by her apparently during his whole life, he made up imaginary playmates as a child, substitutes for her, and in his novels, there are many references to Jane, so I just realised I should have a protagonist named Jane Charlotte and a brother called Phil, and it all took off.

-What interested you the most in the character of Jane Charlotte?

-MR: What I love about Jane, I think, is her ability to confess to pretty much any crime, no matter how horrible, and you may still like her. And, as I was going along, there was always something new she had to talk about, and I was wondering if it would work, and if people would still like her. The real watershed was malfeasance when she’s talking about the bad boys and, I was wondering if I could make it work, and that’s when I realised Jane can confess any crime and get away with it, that was finally what I liked with her, always pushing her limits.

-Bad characters, in books, in movies or else, are always the most interesting?

-MR: Oh yes, certainly, and obviously, a part of the intention of the book is to make her a good person despite what she’s telling you. But that too, was part of the fun of the story. Really, the ending shouldn’t be a surprise, because she told from the very beginning she’s a bad seed, but, because she’s so charismatic, you want to give her the benefit of the doubt, no matter what she does. So, it was a great deal of fun because of that.

-Is she really paranoid, schizophrenic, or is it more simply someone that people don’t want to believe or listen to?

-MR: Certainly, that’s the idea behind the Organisation, if you find something, no one will believe you, but a part of the game for Jane in her way of speaking is being able to say things that won’t be bought, and she can confess anything, false or true, because no one's gonna take her seriously.

-Little by little, the psychiatrist is disappearing from the pages, and you almost forget that Jane is talking to someone…

-MR: Well the role of Jane is to get a story to tell, and she doesn’t care about the protagonist.

-If you could, would you do the same and kill ‘bad people’, when justice is not doing its job, as victims are often considered guilty?

-MR: No, I don’t think I want that responsibility!

- She knows that nobody believes her, so she goes on…Is the use of the Panopticon a way to express the lack of freedom today, the feeling of being observed all the time, as it’s used in prisons?

-MR: Yes, and that’s where the term comes from. It has certainly his resonances with concerns today about surveillance, it’s less about delivering any specific message about that, it’s sort of very much in the air right now. Obviously, with Jane, it’s also a play, in the sense that she’s crazy, she’s paranoid, because it’s the kind of thing that somebody who was paranoid would probably feel today, and it also raises a lot of interesting questions about the fact that it would be useful in the search of evil, but there’s also plenty to worry about it…

-It’s a trap.

-MR: Yes, a trap, in different ways: one, obviously, it’s abused by bad people, but the other interesting thing is that it’s a trap even for people meaning well, because, once you know something, you’re sort of obligated to decide what to do or not to do about. If you don’t wanna hurt people, it’s sort like searching in a bag and finding something suspicious, you have to decide if you want to search further, and sometimes, it’s easier to know less, because you are not forced to make decisions about it! Do I say nothing and risk that person will make something horrible, or do I risk hurting someone that’s not dangerous in order to keep him from doing something?

-Is your novel a way to say that good is not that good, and evil is not that evil sometimes?

-MR: I definitely believe in right and wrong but yes, I also believe it can be very confusing and it’s very easy to cross that line. I think to maintain a purity you have to be pretty simple minded about things, but life is not very allowing that so, it would probably be easier to be purely evil than purely good, I think!

-About evil, do you think that we are born with it, independently of the society around us?

-MR: No, I definitely think it’s to us who make it. When Jane calls herself a bad seed that, in a way is not used as an excuse. But, in the end, if it was at birth, you couldn’t be responsible, and there are many cases where people are responsible. I think it’s a good excuse for some people, it could be a badge a honour for some people I suppose.

-‘Bad monkeys’, in a way, is social and / or political: do you think the writer has a social role in that sense, of information, telling stories to make people think?

-MR: For me, to begin, the most important thing is to tell a good story, but at the same time, it’s less about having a specific social or political message or finding a resonance with current events. I learned very early on that if you try to put a message in your story, people are gonna interpret it in a million different ways, so it’s very hard to leave people like that and it’s less interesting, so what I’m trying to do is telling a story, but at the same time have little philosophical diversions, or thoughts and ideas, but I don’t want to direct people to some direct conclusion.

-No, but just to make them think. That was the purpose of Philip K.Dick, things are not what they seem to be at first?

-MR: Yes, sure, certainly. That stuff comes into it.

-What are you musical tastes, as you seem very fond of music? And have the female singers you like any correspondence with the character of Jane?

-MR: No, I’ve always liked singers anyway, but it’s true that it fits her very well, that the sort of female music that was perfect to play in the vacuum when I was working on Jane! You’ve seen I have a taste for angry female singers, like Liz Phair, Avril Lavigne, Evanescence, but I also like David Bowie, amongst other stuff, and these days, I tend to listen to the last Green Day album.

-Did the music help you to write, to create a landscape of your stories?

-MR: Yes, I tend to listen to quite a bit of music when I’m writing. There are times when I try to work something out where I can’t because there are words in the background, but in general yes, it’s nice to have it.

-You wrote four novels, three translated in French: they all seem to share those preoccupations, as the main characters always have many people in their heads.

-MR: My second published novel here was originally inspired by someone I knew who was like that, and that was just another sort of interesting exploration of a good friend having a very different way of living and being a very nice character in itself. That was a totally different thing for me, in terms of how I came into it.

-Do you have a new book under way?

-MR: I’m working on a new one, but I’m not quite ready to talk about it yet. I have just started to work on it.

Interview made in Paris in January by Jean Paul Coillard.

Thanks to Marie Laure, from 10/18.