Jimmy Chen is the swoon­some grey mat­ter behind Type­writer — a tick­lish new, mod­ern magic (but not in a corny way) selec­tion of little-in-size-not-content stor­ies recently pub­lished by Magic Heli­copter Press.

I cun­ningly con­vinced Jimmy to let me inter­view him, and I didn’t even have to show him my boobs. Score.

AS: Chenchen … may I call you Chenchen? I really like it, Chenchen.
JC: ‘jim­my­chen’ was taken at Yahoo when I set up my mail account, and I didn’t want to be ‘jimmychen0291’ or some crap like that. I think a sim­ilar thing happened when I was get­ting a web domain. There are too many Jimmy Chens in this world. I would be happy to try to be every single one, but that’s ask­ing too much of my schizophrenia.

AS: Chenchen, let’s cut to the chase. You are very smart and very funny. Very, very funny. Accord­ing to every woman’s magazine on the rack it makes sense that you are not single. How do you stop your­self from mak­ing clever, insight­ful and hil­ari­ous yet wholly inap­pro­pri­ate remarks dur­ing sex with your girl­friend? (Feel free to describe the act in las­ci­vi­ous detail.)
JC: Lord Byron once said “A woman’s heart is traced in sand”. That’s why you need to pour Elmer’s glue all over to pack it into some­thing which resembles a cat turd in the lit­ter box, or a de Koon­ing sculp­ture. Note the sym­bol­ism of Elmer’s glue and another kind of fluid. Funny thing is – my girlfriend’s the one who makes inap­pro­pri­ate remarks, mostly involving a French cor­nichon (small pickle) and my anus. Note that ‘cor­nichon’ sounds awfully sim­ilar to ‘cornish hen,’ so let’s just say I’m pens­ive in bed.

AS: The set­tings and situ­ations for the stor­ies in Type­writer, which util­ise things like Face­book and email, will be very famil­iar to a lot of us. Do you think the social net­work­ing thing (did I really just use that phrase?!) increases feel­ings of loneli­ness by feign­ing or rep­lic­at­ing or approx­im­at­ing (help me think of the right word here, Chenchen!) inter­per­sonal con­nec­tions? Or do we really have the poten­tial for more mean­ing­ful link­age thanks to the inter­net (and/or do you give a shit)?
JC: Intim­acy and vicin­ity are unre­lated. Being stuffed in a sub­way train in Japan is prob­ably a very lonely exper­i­ence. I think the inter­net is a very intim­ate place, espe­cially the blog­ging lit­er­at­ure scene. For example, when I read someone’s blog, I can focus on their words entirely, and we all know the cliché of how intim­ate read­ing is. If I were to meet this same per­son in ‘real life’ at a bar, we would prob­ably feel weird and vul­ner­able, thus defens­ive – and unlikely to act ourselves. The inter­net is highly medi­ated, but so is life itself. The inter­net tends to strip the bag­gage of ‘nor­mal’ social inter­ac­tion; it’s hyper real. Plus, if you don’t bathe, you don’t smell.

AS: How often do you google your­self, Chenchen? Be hon­est. It’s okay if it’s a lot because I heard that every time a writer googles him­self an angel gets its wings.
JC: I don’t google myself as much as I google ‘blog­search’ myself, because 90% of the time I’m men­tioned is on a blog. I also tumblr search myself, which is how I found you, dear Ani. I google blog­search myself about 20 — 25 times a day.

AS: In a cer­tain light — like the purplish fluor­es­cent of my addled brain — Type­writer can be seen as per­haps some­what apo­ca­lyptic. Do you think we are accel­er­at­ing our demise through tech­no­logy? Will you and I come to see rad­ical change in soci­ety, maybe even the destruc­tion of our cur­rent way of life, Chenchen?! Please expand while I hyper­ventil­ate into this brown paper bag.
JC: I don’t believe in the Apo­ca­lypse. People are always say­ing how things are get­ting worse. If you look back at human his­tory, our suf­fer­ing is basic­ally decreas­ing. For example: In 1347 we had the Black Death: really really bad. In 1987 we had Whitesnake: just really bad. Now in 2009 we have Type­writer, just bad. See? Things are look­ing up.

AS: Are you one of those strange people that goes tits for typo­graphy, Chenchen? Because no one I know, spe­cially no one that edits this site, has huge green ampersands on their cof­fee table or any­thing.
JC: My tit-meter on typo­graphy is prob­ably a 7 out of 10. I like it, but I’m not some annoy­ing mod­ern guy with a square couch, a square fruit bowl, and square ass.

AS: But really, serif or sans? Or maybe you want to extol the many vir­tues of Comic Sans? Go on, you know you want to.
JC: Comic Sans blows. Arial roun­ded bold is much bet­ter. I like sans for web, and serif for print. I prefer Ver­anda 9pt. for web, and Gara­mond or Caslon 10pt. for print. I can’t stand the Papyrus font. All the yoga and Chinese res­taur­ants here print their stuff in Papyrus. The last time I did yoga some­thing trans­lu­cent came out of my ass. The last time I ate at a Chinese res­taur­ant some­thing opaque came out of my ass. I’m very well balanced.

AS: Look, Chenchen, every­one knows that I don’t know shit about writ­ing, but I will attempt a rel­at­ively straight­for­ward writ­ing type, writerly ques­tion to appease the masses. I felt semi-strongly (unless someone much smarter such as your­self cor­rects me) that the nar­rator in Type­writer is detached or aloof or some­thing. I mean, the nar­rator is often humor­ous and com­pas­sion­ate but also feels removed and all-knowing. Was that inten­tional? Do you sit there and think about stuff like that before you write stor­ies?
JC: Smith­s­mith, you are too self-deprecating. You make a good point about the nar­rator, which I never thought about. I prefer third-person omni­scient, mainly because you have to be really fuck­ing good to write in the first-person in a way that’s remotely inter­est­ing. Lol­ita and Catcher in the Rye are good examples of great first-person, but mostly I find it bor­ing. Basic­ally, other people, or other things, are more inter­est­ing than one­self. When I do write in the first-person, it’s never ‘Jimmy Chen,’ but some nar­rator that’s con­cep­tu­ally tied to the piece.

AS: Totally earn­estly, as is my wont: I con­sider you a suc­cess­ful writer, even though you are not loaded like that Harry Pot­ter lady. I base that on my own defin­i­tions of ‘suc­cess’ and ‘writer’. Do you con­sider your­self suc­cess­ful as a writer? What are your defin­i­tions of those words, Chenchen?
JC: I don’t feel suc­cess­ful because I don’t have a book out in print that sells a lot. I know that’s a very shal­low defin­i­tion of suc­cess, but it’s very persuasive/pervasive. If ‘suc­cess’ is being proud of one’s work, then I feel at best ambi­val­ent. If ‘suc­cess’ is get­ting inter­viewed by the great expat­ri­ate Ani Smith, then I’m big time honey. But ser­i­ously, I think all people – not just writers – want to be more than they are. For some, it’s salary. For oth­ers, it’s phys­ical beauty. The idea of ‘The Embassy of Mis­guided Zen’ stems from exactly this: being so embed­ded in ‘west­ern indi­vidu­al­ity,’ which is essen­tially nar­ciss­ism, while unreal­ist­ic­ally glor­i­fy­ing East­ern philo­sophies in an attempt to be ‘detached’ from one’s inher­ent nar­ciss­ism. The act of want­ing noth­ing is want­ing some­thing. Lydia Davis wrote a great thing which deals with this paradox.

AS: Where does your sexy and slightly inap­pro­pri­ate love of puns come from? I know you have it, Chenchen, don’t lie. You’ve got it bad, baby.
JC: I dunno. I use puns to begin stor­ies, to have some­thing to write about. I don’t feel any imper­at­ive sub­jects to write about. Like, I would never think “I’m going to write a story about two kids on a road trip.” I would just think of a ran­dom and absurd pun, and base the story entirely off that. I think I use a lot of devices to dis­tance – as you poin­ted out earlier – myself from the writ­ing. Maybe I’m afraid of how I really feel. I mean, we’ve all endured exist­en­tial­ism already; there’s no need for chenchen to lament the empti­ness within.

AS: Type­writer’s end­ing made me smile and I feel like telling every­one about it and ruin­ing it for them so it can be mine all mine and only mine. How are you going to stop me, Chenchen?
JC: I can’t stop you – you’re a woman. When people call me a miso­gyn­ist, I say “it’s only miso soup, relax bitch”. These puns are out of con­trol, sorry.

AS: What’s your favour­ite thing in the world right now?
JC: Haha, you spelled favour­ite like a Brit — wel­come to the Com­mon­wealth. My favor­ite thing in the world right now is avo­cado. I have high cho­les­terol and can­not eat bacon or pate or all that stuff I love. Avo­cado has this fatty feel­ing which I like in my mouth. Okay every­one, one blow­job joke each …

Ani Smith writes, piffles, tumbles. She’s get­ting used to this inter­view thing and holds out hope that it’ll get her laid eventually.