Poppy Z. Brite - Wise Blood
| "Exquisite Corpse" is a puzzling book, turned down by all her suddenly puritan publishers. Rather than a banal reflection on violence, it is about the pleasure people can derive from it, either as reader or writer. The Gothic author of "Drawing Blood", "Lost Souls" and Courtney Love's biography tells us what she thinks about sex, violence, New Orleans, etc. Unearthing beauty in rot is still the motto of a diminutive woman very unlike her extreme tales. Former consumer of many an illicit substance ("mushrooms are much more fun than LSD...") and ultra violent movies which gave her a taste for blood, Poppy Brite is still living in New Orleans with 10 dogs, 3 cats and a snake. |
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- It's very rare to see women writing about male characters. Why this choice? - It's just what I've always been drawn to, what I've personally found erotic. I've always identified very strongly with gay men and found the idea of gay male sex very intriguing. It's difficult for me to analyze why I've felt that way ever since I knew what sex was. - What attracted you in vampire characters? - Actually, I never really intended to write a vampire story. I set out to write about the gothic sub-culture, which I was very interested in and a part of at the time. Vampires are so essential to that sub-culture that they just came in and took over the story. I knew about the characters before I knew that they were vampires. I've never really liked the vampire fiction, to be honest with you! (Laughs) - Why are the characters almost exclusively male homosexual couples, why not lesbians, for instance? - For a while, I wanted to write erotic fiction, I still do to some degree and I think an author of erotic fiction needs to write about what turns her on. I have many lesbian friends and love lots of lesbian writers, but lesbian sex just doesn't turn me on! But I do think it's important for an author to be versatile, so I'm trying to write about more different things, but I had to explore my primary obsession first, which was male homosexuality. - "Exquisite Corpse" contains much more violence, like cannibalism and necrophilia, than your previous books... - Necrophilia and cannibalism take the idea of intimacy about as far as it can go. I've always been interested in the extreme intimacy of my characters and I think that has reached its peak in "Exquisite Corpse", there's no way that I can top that, so I'll be doing something very different now. - Is it easier to talk about certain "sensitive" subjects, like AIDS, through fiction? - In the last two years, I've written some non-fiction that was very personal, I'd previously only been able to write "research-based non fiction" about, say, the history of decadence in literature, but I couldn't write anything about myself until very recently and I'm still not sure that I'm very good at it. But yes, it's much easier to express things in fiction, however, I don't feel that my fiction is autobiographical or, if it is, it's very deeply. Autobiographical writing makes me very self-conscious! (Laughs) But I don't think Americans read enough in general, so anything they're reading is better than nothing ! - New Orleans is a very important, often organic presence in your books. What does it represent for you ? - New Orleans is the juxtaposition of extreme beauty and extreme decay, ugliness: the cemetaries are all above ground because the water is so high in the ground and they're like little cities of the dead. They're very beautiful, but they're not well-kept, they're crumbling and sometimes you can see the bones coming out of the tombs. To me, that's incredibly symbolic of New Orleans: it's very beautiful but you can see the corruption inside and that intrigues me. I was born in NO and I grew up there until I was 6 years old. That's another obsession I needed to explore fully and I'm not done with it, I think I'll always write about NO, but I do want to write about other places and I have done so, to some degree, I have my fictional town, Missing Mile, in North Carolina, some stories take place in London, Calcutta, etc. The novel I'm writing now is going to be set, I think, completely in NYC. - How are you perceived in the USA compared to writers like Anne Rice or Stephen King? - I'm definitely seen as more outré, more experimental. I'm constantly being compared to Anne Rice, which I hate because I don't admire her at all and I don't think she's a very good writer. But if you write an erotic novel about vampires set in NO, you deserve it, I guess. Being compared to Stephen King I don't mind, I do admire him, but I don't get that nearly as much. It doesn't particularly affect me or what I write, but I'd rather be compared to an author whose work actually influenced me, like Stephen King, Dennis Cooper or Baudelaire. But comparing a new writer to a well-known writer is just a shorthand for American publishers, it's like saying: if you liked X, you'll like Y. It's lazy, but it probably works. - How did you meet Courtney love and how did you decide to write her biography? - Courtney found me when I was living in the French quarter of New Orleans. She was thinking of buying a house and she wanted to meet people there. She'd read "Lost Souls", my first novel, and liked it, so she contacted me through my publisher. We became friendly acquaintances and she was always talking about these biographies that were being written of her by people she hated or people who didn't know anything about her, so I said: "What if I wrote one? Would you co-operate with me?". She didn't want to co-operate, because she didn't want it to become an authorized biography, I think she may want to write her own autobiography some day. But she wasn't against the idea and she helped me to get access to friends, people from her past, people I would have never been able to talk to otherwise and also to get excerpts from her journals, old letters, photographs, etc. I never would have done the book if I hadn't known her, but I think she's a fascinating character and I'm glad I did it. - What attracted you in Courtney Love's character? - She's so crazy and over the top and yet she's so strong and completely knows what she wants and knows what she has to do to get it. She's very ambitious and I admire that. She's always known she was going to be somebody. She hasn't let anything stop her. She's really interesting in person, she's very well-read and that's something people don't know from her media portrayal. - Was it her purpose to have her biography written by a professional author? - It was my idea, but she wasn't against it. She liked my fiction and felt she could relate to my characters. She thought I would be able to portray her life without judgement. Drugs and sex are not shocking to me. - Courtney Love being fully alive, the biography doesn't have an end, unlike fiction. Was it easier to write a story "without ending"? - The research was much more difficult: talking to people, asking questions they don't necessarily want to answer, that's not a natural thing for me. I don't thing I would be a very good investigative journalist! (Laughs) But the actual writing was much easier than fiction, because the story was already outlined and I didn't have to figure out what would happen next. The only problem was deciding where to stop, because, as you said, she's still alive, young and active. Someone else will have to write the rest of the story. - How would Courtney and Kurt be compared to characters of yours like Jay or Andrew Compton? - I did feel that Kurt and Courtney were natural characters for me to write aboutbecause of their obsessions, preoccupations and similarities with my characters. I don't think it's quite fair to compare them to Jay! (Laughs) It's the classical tragic story of the one who dies for the other one to live on. - You've been writing many short stories recently. Are they more fun to you than novels? - The form of the short story is my first love and I think I'm better at that, I've been writing them longer. They just have more potential to be perfect. I don't think my stories are perfect by any means but the potential is there. They can be compact and perfect like little jewels, whereas the novel is this big, messy, sprawling thing, which can be really fun, because you have much more depth to work in. - As far as comic books are concerned, you wrote "The Crow". - "The Crow" is not a comic, it's a novel based on the concept of the comics and the movies. It's a pretty broad concept, someone coming back from the dead to seek revenge for a wrong that's been done. My story is called "The Lazarus Heart", it's about a photographer who takes violent, bondage S&M pictures, he's framed for the murder of his young gay male lover and several other young men. He's killed in prison and comes back to seek revenge. The female character is the photographer's lover's sister, who helps him with his mission of revenge. I have to admit I'm not a big fan of the "Crow" comic, I did like the first movie quite a bit, but I like underground comics, Robert Crumb is probably my very favourite. I think it's an incredibly underrated art form, there's some amazing work being done and unfortunately most of the artists aren't making any money and no-one has ever heard of them. I wrote a script for a comic in the anthology "Weird Business", called "Becoming a Monster". It's another of my serial killer stories. I really enjoyed it, it was very different because I couldn't rely so heavily on description. It was also very interesting to see how the artist would interpret my words. - Talking about "Millenium": how decided who would do what in the anthology? - Originally, it was the editor's idea, Doug Winter. I don't really know how the decades were divided up, but we were happy to take the 30s. We were two of the last writers to come into the book, because originally, I told him I couldn't do it, I was working on "Exquisite Corpse". But I really wanted to be in the book, I thought it was a wonderful project. I proposed this collaboration with Christa and by then, we only had the choice between the 30s, the 70 or the 90s. The 70s made us sick to even think about and the 90s seemed like it wouldn't be any stretch for us, because that's where all our fiction have been set. We took the 30s to try to do something new. - You've written you short story with Christa Faust, a former dominatrix. How did this association come about? - We met several years ago, we had mutual friends in the horror community and we moved in the same circles. We became friends and realized our strengths as writers were very complementary. She's very plot-driven, she's good at making a very fast story with lots of action, whereas I have more strength, I think, in character development and description. So we fit together really well. I've also written a story with a writer and musician, David Ferguson, it was a story I had to do for an anthology of fairytales rewritten for... gay men! (laughs). It was a lot of fun, we did "The poor miller's apprentice and the cat", it's a kind of gay cat love story. - Who are your favourite writers? - I think my earliest influences were a lot of Southern American writers: Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote; then Stephen King et Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, Burroughs. I love Burroughs a lot. In fact, I put him in a story a week before he died. His death was hardly unexpected. He was very old, I thought he would live forever and that maybe heroine had preserved him, because if junkies don't die young, they can live to be very old. But I'm sure he's in a better place, where he can get high all the time and not get sick from it and have beautiful young boys, guns and cats, everything he loves. I also like Dan Simmons, Harian Ellison, Clive Barker, Dylan Thomas, Poe, Dennis Cooper recently, Harry Crews, Joe Lansdale. - Do you like to Gregg Araki's movies? - "The Living End", his 2nd movie, was a big influence on "Exquisite Corpse", it's my favourite Araki's movie. I dream of having him direct something of mine, but I think he has his own vision and probably has to write his own material, so it probably won't happen... - What is your relationship to the goddess Kali? - Kali is a presence that has haunted me ever since I read Dan Simmons's novel "Song of Kali". I was familiar with her before that, from having read about Indian culture, but that novel had a profound effect on me, it's probably one of the best novels I've ever read. The 1st time I met Dan Simmons, I told him how much I loved that novel and he said jokingly "Oh? Did it make you wanna go to Calcutta?" and I said yes and I think I was the first person to ever answer that! (Laughs) I think he was interested in me because of that. She is the creator and the destroyer simultaneously. I like the evil aspect of her, I'm not interested in the mother-goddess aspect. - What are your musical tastes? - Recently, I've been listening to nothing but the Beatles. I've become interested in them when John Lennon was killed, the media coverage of his death captured my imagination. I'm not sure why I've become obsessed with them again. Music still seems to influence my writing somehow. I still like old gothic music, Tom Waits, early REM, old jazz and blues and even old country like Hank Williams. In "Exquisite Corpse", the music is more harsch, to fit in with the story and the characters. While writing "Drawing Blood", I was listening to NIN's "Pretty Hate Machine" constantly. Even if it's not mentioned in the book, it's its soundtrack. Every book has its own soundtrack, but the music I hear while writing has to be so familiar I hear it subconsciously. I used to need music, but now I sometimes just need silence. - "Exquisite Corpse" shows an evolution in your work and a move away from fantastic themes (vampires, haunted houses) towards more realistic and scary ones: serial killers. Is this type of fiction closer to what you want to do in the future? - I thought so at the time, but now I'm not sure. After EC I wrote THE LAZARUS HEART, which is decidedly supernatural, and I'm currently contemplating an idea for a novel that threatens to be supernatural too. It's not a huge distinction for me between supernatural and "realistic" -- I just write whatever I have to write at the time. - "Exquisite Corpse" and some of your short stories (i.e., Self-made man) are based on actual mass murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer. Are you fascinated by the so-called "true crime stories" and would you fancy writing the biography of a serial killer? - I've always enjoyed reading true crime stories, but I don't think I'd want to write one. Serial killers tend to be much more interesting and dimensional in fiction than they are in real life. - You've always had lots of problems with censorship, especially in the USA, do you find it annoying or rather stimulating? - It's funny that you say that, because I don't see myself as having had many problems with censorship. My American and British publishers declined to publish EC because they felt it was indefensibly violent, but that's not censorship in my mind, it's business. Bad business, as it turns out, since the book has done quite well -- but they were within their contractual rights. The only thing I've experienced that I would call censorship was the cutting of four stories from my anthology LOVE IN VEIN 2 because an editor felt they were obscene. This was very annoying, but there was nothing I could do short of canceling the book and returning the advance, which would have hurt the writers in the anthology far more than the publisher, so I just had to suck it up. - You've written short stories with Christa Faust. Do you think you could write a whole novel in collaboration with someone? - I'm not ready to try. I can give up total control for the duration of a short story or even a novella, but for a novel? I'm too addicted to being God. - In "Are You Loathsome...", certain short stories feature actual characters. You've always confessed your fascination for Joe Orton, but what gave you the idea to put together Mussolini, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the Axeman in one story? - I was trying to come up with an explanation for the Axeman murders, which have never been solved, and also incorporate elements (wraiths, mages) from the White Wolf universe, since the story was written for one of their anthologies. The theme of the anthology was that these creatures had changed history in some way; hence the incorporation of the First World War and the historical figures. (For those who don't know it, White Wolf is an American gaming and publishing company.) I think the explanation I invented was pretty far-fetched, but it was fun! - "Are You Loathsome..." gave you the opportunity to explore other genres, like fairytale or historical fiction. Would you enjoy writing longer pieces of fiction in this style? - "Triads," the novella I co-wrote with Christa Faust, is set in 1930s Hong Kong and Shanghai. I loved writing that, but I have to admit that Christa did most of the historical research, as I was busy finishing EXQUISITE CORPSE at the time. Right now I'm working on a novella set mostly in England in the sixties. It's difficult to speculate on what kind of novels I might write in the future, as I tend to work with the obsessions I have at any given time, but I wouldn't rule out something historical. - Several short stories feature characters who already appeared in your earlier novels. Did you create a kind of fictional, coherent world with recurring characters? Would you consider making them appear again in the future? - Well, it's definitely a fictional world; I can only hope it is coherent! There are many characters I've been keeping track of for years (Steve, Ghost, Trevor, Zach), and I do think I'll write about them again. Though I should say it's not a question of *making* them appear, but of whether they *want* to! - You've already talked about your interest in music. Does cinema influence you? Would you enjoy directing a movie or expressing yourself in other artistic fields? - I think I am less influenced by it than many other writers my age. There are movies I love, but as a form, film doesn't interest me or capture my imagination the way literature and music do. I don't see many of them and don't have much interest in writing for them or involving myself in any other way. I have written scripts for comics, which I enjoyed and would like to do again, and sometimes I draw -- but not terribly well. JP Coillard & Marie Lecocq |
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