Tiny Interview #13 - Geoffrey D. Morrison
Here we ask authors we admire to share their musings on art and writing, spill their current reading obsessions, and give us a tiny wedge into their creative life. In this Tiny Interview, meet Geoffrey D. Morrison, whose books include Archaic Torso of Gumby, the poetry collection Blood-Brained Barrier, and most recently, the novel Falling Hour.
(Interviewed by Connor Harrison)
‘Northern Alaska Exploring Expedition,’ 1884-1886
Q: What book(s) are you reading right now?
A: I'm almost finished Mircea Cărtărescu's Solenoid. This book got such an excited reception when its English translation, by Sean Cotter, came out late last year, that in my classic perversity I thought I wouldn't read it. Then my good friend Matthew Tomkinson showed me the first page, the part about the lice, and I saw it really was that good, thanks in no small part to Cotter's wonderful translation. I've felt very creatively refreshed by this book, but also frightened by just how many things in my head (snail shells, pearls, 19th-century algorithms, people called "Dalgarno") also seem to be in Cărtărescu's.
I'm also reading Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet (so funny - they are basically the 19th-century equivalent of those cryptocurrency tech cranks who think they can move to the country and start a farm) and I'm about to start Landscapes by Christine Lai. I'm really excited to begin Landscapes because the book seems to be in dialogue with some forms of early modern art and culture that have also haunted me for a long time as a person who dropped out of a PhD in 17th-century English literature.
Finally, as a special challenge, I am doing my best to read Borges in Spanish. I've been studying the language for a long time y ahora finalmente creo que puedo entender más o menos ochenta y cinco por ciento de lo que leo, with the caveat that no one can ever really understand Borges.
Q: What are your current writing projects?
A: Two things: a novel, about 2/3rds finished, that will also employ the long, digressive sentences of Falling Hour, but with the added complication of UFOs. Also another novel, in early stages and of necessity on the far backburner, about the servants of an impotent but all-knowing deity, who communicate in a mnemonic language somewhat inspired by (but hopefully clearer than) the forms of sonic association in Finnegans Wake.
Q: Do any other art forms influence your writing? If so, how?
A: Music that either has an oceanic, slow-building, improvisational character, or belongs to a folk or classical tradition of endless transmission and retransmission, or both. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is both.
The oceanic improvisational music comes in from my feeling that, when I write, I am discovering what I am doing moment to moment. I never have a very detailed master plan. The transmitted and retransmitted music comes in because, in absence of a detailed master plan, I have preexisting allusions, recombinations, and motifs. And I have history. Folk music is a kind of living record of people's history in motion.
Q: Where is your favorite place to write, and do you have any writing rituals?
A: I like to write outside if the weather is good. Maybe on our apartment balcony. Maybe in a park. I'm not sure this counts as a ritual, but I vastly prefer pen and paper to a computer. It removes inhibition and enables long, flowing sentences. In terms of something like a certain time of day, this really all depends on the outside circumstances of my life in any given month (my teaching schedule etc). If I do write in the morning, I need a strong breakfast tea.
Q: Who is a writer you wish more people were reading?
A: I want to pay my respects to the "longsentencers": Mauro Javier Cárdenas (who I think coined the term), Jen Craig, Emily Hall, and Simon Okotie. I want people to read Dashiell Carrera's The Deer, a book with a structure I found both moving and profound in a way that gives the lie to the idea that formal boldness can't coexist with emotional resonance. I want people to keep an eye out for Thalia Williamson, who has work out most recently in Joyland. And I want people to read Matthew Tomkinson's Oems, a singular poetry collection that is both beautiful and hilarious. In general, I wish more people were reading books that require a little patience and do things they were not expecting.
