Jeff Vandermeer Interview
Six Shooters Series
When do you know it's ok to call yourself a writer?
Writers write even when they're not putting words on paper or a screen, so it's not a simple matter of saying "a writer is someone who produces words in some kind of narrative structure using tools." But anyone can call themselves a writer and that's okay. If a non-lawyer calls herself a lawyer, that's a problem. When a non-doctor calls herself a doctor, that's a problem. But a non-writer calling herself a writer is just mistaken taxonomy waiting for disappointment. If a fish doesn't know it's a fish, that's usually only a problem when it tries to travel on land. I'm all for fools who self-destruct. It leaves more for those of us fools who don't self-destruct.
What are some of the themes/motifs that you keep returning to in your own work?
The moral necessity of trying to do the right thing even when it's meaningless or hopeless--that perhaps it's even more important then. The importance of love and the imagination in how we shape our lives. The aching ridiculousness and sadness of death. The need for connection even when we're all these separate balloons of neurons whose membranes are not truly permeable. The absurdity and, often, mass psychosis of human institutions (which is where most of the humor in my work comes from). The beauty that's available in one's daily life if you stop looking through the same old lenses. The sheer alien diversity of what we call terrestrial life. The importance of friendship, even if it's ephemeral.
Do you think the Internet allows for more or less good writing to be published?
Just like the terms "genre" and "literary mainstream," "the Internet" is a meaningless generality. Inasmuch as something called "the Internet" deals in generalities, it allows for less good writing to be published. Inasmuch as something called "the Internet" deals in specificity of detail, and depth, and recognizes and rewards genius-level imaginations, it allows for more good writing to be published. It doesn't matter whether a genuine spark, a genuine image, a genuine idea enters your mind through a pulp/meat-world page or a constantly shifting colony of pixels and bytes.
Seneca tells us that we allowed our minds to be fragmented in the meat world long before there was an electronic world, so the litmus test is not the technology or the tools--it is what our imaginations or lack thereof, our giant processors or lack thereof, accept and what they reject. J.G. Ballard, who just died, believed we should absorb it all--the good stuff and the junk--and that those who come out the other side with their intellects and emotions intact have passed a kind of test. Do I think we have more distractions than ever before because of the Internet? Yes. But please see prior comment regarding fools.
What's the one invention/political policy you'd like to see realised in your lifetime?
Enforced population control combined with effective environmental/global warming policies that acknowledge we do not have the right to completely **** up the planet and that we also don't have the right to breed like rabbits. That starts here at home because a child growing up in the United States creates more waste and sucks up more energy than a child in a developing country. Is this a popular position? Not in a country that can't even acknowledge gay marriage, fully repudiate torture, or have a logical discussion of abortion.
Still, it's the kind of position that will some day be imposed on us by outside forces, or we'll go the way of the species we've driven into extinction. Am I optimistic? Yes, in the sense that I think we'll either curb our rapacious nature in time or we won't, but either way the planet will survive. The planet doesn't need us. It couldn't give a shit. Nor should it. (This is the one issue that's likely me to seem like a dystopic crank, but too bad.)
Read more from Jeff Vandermeer here
Award-winning writer Jeff VanderMeer has just finished the final novel in his Ambergris Cycle, Finch. With his wife, he recently edited Fast Ships, Black Sails and Best American Fantasy 2. His short fiction has or will soon appear in Black Clock, Tor.com, and two year's best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Washington Post Book World, Omnivoracious, The Believer, the B&N Review, the Huffington Post, and many others.
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