I’ve been an admirer of Grant Maierhofer’s work for years, but my experience of reading his two latest books back to back may be the apex of my experience with his bibliography thus far. Those two books are Synecdoche, New York — an entry in the Timecodes series to which I’m also a contributor — and the book-length essay Serotonin: Writing and Depression. Both books are, in their own way, moving explorations of creativity and mental health. They are candid, often very moving, and haven’t left my brain since I finished them. Maierhofer and I chatted via email about these two books, his larger project, and what’s next for him.
I read Serotonin and Synecdoche, New York back to back, and the two seemed to compliment one another very well. Were you working on the two in close proximity? Did you find that there was any overlap between them from your perspective?
I forget when precisely each was finished, though revision of each definitely overlapped some. I wrote Serotonin as a particular exercise one summer, I think two summers ago, though maybe just one, trying to get over some skepticism about the reality of depression I was experiencing. In a lot of ways I went into the Synecdoche book feeling like I was entering this massive depressive wall, remembering the film reflecting that from previous viewings, but weirdly looking closely at it seemed to enhance how much funny stuff Kaufman was going for. I do kind of think this recent slew of nonfiction books are all kind of part of the same desperate wave. I wanted desperately to publish some criticism, because I felt I’d failed fundamentally at anything else in writing, and it seemed nice to engage the work of others, accordingly, and then with Serotonin, I was in this actual experience that seemed to beg to be written out of, and again I was sick of myself in any other form, so writing attempting to transmit my consciousness on depression/antidepressants seemed less characteristic of what I’d been doing, though probably it’s all the same shit.
There were a few points in Serotonin where you updated certain statements you’d written earlier — that you’d stopped drinking coffee since the writing of a certain paragraph, for instance. What prompted those updates? For how long were you working on Serotonin?
I was really in love with the book U & I while writing Serotonin, by Nicholson Baker, and really just Baker’s work generally, especially the early novels/nonfiction, and it seemed allowable in that manuscript, since it was intended to be sort of like a transcript of my brain, working my way through some problems, to circle back on various things, to comment on myself, and the work, at least allowable per Baker’s precedent, which is often what I’ll be looking for in reading, some sense of permission in what I’m trying to do in my own stuff. I wrote it pretty straightforwardly I think two years ago, submitted it a few places, thought maybe it would come out with Feral Dove for a while, then decided it probably wasn’t worth publishing. I was working with Hobby Horse on this other, weirder book, an apocalyptic novel I wrote by rewriting J.G. Ballard’s The Burning World line-by-line, and we were gonna publish it relatively soon, but I sent Dylan Cloud, who runs the press, this manuscript, and he was way more excited about it, so we decided to revise it and do it first.
With respect to Serotonin beginning as an exercise — how do exercises factor into your overall work as a writer? Is this the first time when something that hadn’t necessarily been written with the intent of publication crossed over?
I think Ebb would’ve been the first true exercise, wherein I wrote a book without a particular letter (a lipogram), but in a way they all kind of take on an exercise quality, since how I’m thinking of the term “exercise” is basically a concept tied to some personal stake in the matter, whose solution can only come from the writing of the book, but with Serotonin it was a different sense, for sure. I’d always meant to write a depression book, and an addiction book, and I guess all of my books are kind of depression/addiction books, but while writing it I kept coming up against my own limitations. I mean I was put on these drugs in a pretty scarring way when I was seven years old, and have struggled year after year with them, so I should’ve been able to write a much more straightforward, Prozac Nation style memoir, but I’m just not particularly gifted along those lines, so I had to do it as this puzzle problem to work my way through. It’s really pathetic. I think I’d probably always dreamt it would be published, as is the case with most anything I sit down to write (a real problem), but it definitely is the first time I’d decided something wasn’t publishable, that in turn got excitedly received by a press, and came out pretty quickly.
I’m always up for a good book-length essay, and I wanted to ask specifically about the structure of Serotonin. The first part is by far the longest; had you always envisioned it as a tripartite structure?
In the first place it was very intuitively written, slowly emptying out my thinking on this problem of depression, what it was, whether I had it, what the medication was, whether I should be taking it, how it affected my writing, etc. Day-by-day, it took this shape, but then as I revised it, and as it took on more of a book shape, both Dylan Cloud and I would have clear moments where breakages seemed to be, where thinking changed. There were also some pretty substantial deletions, since it was so reflective of my thinking as it happened, I had to prune, and he pruned, so we’d need to refine it to something more logical more and more. I’d have written something that felt super clear, and found it made no sense, that kind of thing. I don’t know if I envisioned it in quite its final form, since I did so want it to reflect Baker’s book, which is broken up only a tiny bit, and reads more like one constant thought, but I’ve grown more and more aware of the fact that almost every mercy extended to a reader’s attention is a good thing. I just revised Ebb for its reissue next year and found myself constantly making adjustments to make it more reader-friendly. When you’re working, it can feel honest to simply express yourself, “rawly,” but the experience for the reader is more mind-numbing, not exhilarating at all, for the most part, excepting in very rare cases.
With respect to your book on Synechdoche, New York, were there any ways in which your approach or reaction to the film changed over the time you were writing the book?
It really did, yeah. I think I did actually go into it thinking that I would “solve” the film, even though I talk pretty early about disliking that kind of thing. I knew that the film was a mystery to me, in a lot of ways. I vastly prefer watching Adaptation, for instance, but with Synecdoche it was very apparent that this was a special work of art, made from deep within someone’s consciousness, and that those things I didn’t understand in it were worth poring over and understanding in a more complete way. In the end I don’t feel that I did solve it, or that it should be solved, that the most interesting engagement a book-length work of criticism could have with it would be one of solution. I guess in a sense this book feels like a performance, in that respect. I went in with intentions, put down everything I thought along the way, refined things slightly, but basically put my thoughts out there for people on this film I love to try and understand it, by a writer and director I dearly love to better understand him, and I do feel closer to that now.
I was not expecting Jacques Tati to factor into your book as much as it did. (I have a complicated relationship to Play Time, though I love Jour de Fete.) When did that comparison first come up for you? And, more broadly, to what extent did you want to reference non-SNY films in your book?
At first it was not obvious to me what films, beyond Charlie Kaufman’s, I might make reference to in such a book, since Synecdoche is atypical in so many ways. Beau is Afraid came first, as a mental comparison, just because I’d watched it more recently, and its reception reminded me of Synecdoche‘s, and I liked this idea of a director making a big, unwieldy film and pursuing it to its end. Play Time, I think, first came when thinking about films exploiting a single structure for all it’s worth. The tone, too, since Tati was a showman in these many varied ways, and then applied his sort of theoretical experiments to movies, where Kaufman is kind of similar, in a sense, interested in writing first, but writing novels too, and musicals, and in Synecdoche in the framing device of a theater piece, particularly one inside of a massive structure, it seemed to make sense. I wanted to make what connections I felt made sense, though I was quite sad to see that my index entry for the book’s sole mention of the “B.C. Rich Warlock” guitar was removed before it was printed.
Serotonin gets very personal in places, but its handling of religion is more reserved. Is that something that you could see yourself exploring in a future book or essay?
It’s funny, because when I revised Ebb I was way more interested in some religious stuff that was only hinted at in the first version, so there will be more of that there. I have a book coming out in 2028 with FC2 called Consumer, about a man who locks himself inside a warehouse to livestream himself eating a Cybertruck from bumper-to-bumper, and that was written with a more religious preoccupation, definitely. I’m still finalizing that manuscript, but there were moments where it almost felt like I was writing a work of apologetics. I would be interested in trying this, though I still feel like quite the initiate in this respect, so I don’t know if it would ever take the form of nonfiction, or if it’ll just come through in fiction. The past couple of years I really tried to devote myself to these nonfiction projects, and now that they’re done, I’m so sick of my thinking about anything, though admittedly it’s hard just now to imagine shifting with much excitement to fiction either. It’s interesting, because on the one hand I really do believe that Nelson Algren quote, that “There is no way of being a creative writer in America without being a loser,” and I’m a loser par excellence, but I’ve needed to start rethinking my writing in a lot of ways, slowing down, evaluating motive, and whatnot, so although I have stuff forthcoming, it’s mostly been done for a while. I’d love to someday write something on the order of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, though, and I’d probably call mine Orthodoxy too, because I love using others’ titles.
Can you tell me more about the new version of Ebb?
With the first version of Ebb I think I rested on the idea that I’d written a novel without the letter “A” completely. I felt proud of that, which led me to simply shoving the book out into the world and insisting I’d pulled something off. Then Kernpunkt went under, and the more I looked at it the more I just felt like it was an empty gimmick, so when I revised it I prioritized making it more novel-like, more readable, and removing a lot of the empty, edgelord impulse crap I’d put in thinking I was being “transgressive” or something, to give it something I could feel OK with, as opposed to proud. It’ll be coming out with Erratum some time next year, and then a new edition of The Compleat Lungfish is coming on Inside the Castle’s Crypt Editions in the fall, as I’d realized I really hadn’t aspired to crap with the first version, and I always hated the first cover. I was reading about John Updike’s tendency to improve on his books with every subsequent edition, so I really like the idea of doing it where possible.
I’m also intrigued by the project revisiting a J.G. Ballard book; do you often like to have another work in place as a reference point?
I think the precedent of Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote and Great Expectations, as well as artworks like Douglas Glover’s 24 Hour Psycho, created an allure around using the shell of another work as a prompt towards something new. In a way it’s like my impulse towards critical writing. Ballard’s book is probably his most conventional, so in writing mine I was thinking a lot about his later work and trying to push things into some real craziness with mine, but it’s based on a love of his work initially. I think we basically do this anyway when we work, whether we think “I’d like to write a crime novel,” or “I’d like to write a novel about a guy who wants to kill his dad,” or something, we’re inevitably thinking of other such works en route, large or small, so using that precedent gives you something to constantly be ensuring your book isn’t, while also pushing you in ways you simply wouldn’t be if you were writing in a more amorphous way.
Are there any other films you feel that you could write an entire book on?
Funny story, I actually just finished a book on Bernard Rose’s Candyman for Nick Toti’s DieDieBooks. It may be coming out this year, I’m not sure. Now that I’ve done two I do feel as though I could do it about certain others, though I also feel very emptied by these critical projects, and determined to pursue some new path now. For better or worse, I think I’ve put into these books, and the DeLillo book, much of what I have to say in a critical manner, and though I love Pauline Kael, and Dave Hickey, and William Hazlitt, I don’t know that I’ll write much criticism hereafter.