This con­ver­sa­tion took place online, at the end of June 2009, between the writers Shane Jones and Ben Brooks – both of whom have forth­com­ing books to be pub­lished by NYC indie pub­lish­ing house, Fugue State Press.

Ben Brooks lives in the UK and main­tains the blog An Inef­fable Play for Voices. His first book, ‘Fences’, will be pub­lished by Fugue State Press in Janu­ary 2010.

Shane Jones lives in New York and main­tains the blog I Think You Are A Good Per­son. His first novel, ‘Light Boxes’, was pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2009 by Pub­lish­ing Genius Press. His next book, ‘The Fail­ure Six’, will be pub­lished by Fugue State Press in Janu­ary 2010.

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Ben Brooks: What is the pur­pose of fic­tion and how does ‘The Fail­ure Six’ achieve this purpose?

Shane Jones: Whoa, pretty intense first ques­tion. I was expect­ing “so, what are you doing right now?” or some­thing like that. Umm, my first reac­tion was “I don’t know”, but then I thought about the ques­tion and can really only answer “what is the pur­pose of fic­tion?” by think­ing about my own exper­i­ences with fic­tion. For me, fic­tion doesn’t really have a pur­pose, but does a vari­ety of things that makes me feel excited and alive. Books I really love sur­prise me, move me, make me want to cre­ate, startle me with lan­guage, make me want to yell “yes!” It’s a very power­ful feel­ing — when you’re read­ing fic­tion, or poetry, or any writ­ing for that mat­ter and it really moves you. It changes you. I think that old quote — was it Auden? — which said “art makes us more tender” is true. Not sure that answers the ques­tion. As far as does ‘The Fail­ure Six’ achieve all of what I just said, I would say yes, it does.

So tell me a little about ‘Fences’. How do you feel about your first book being published?

Ben Brooks: Maybe that would have been a more appro­pri­ate first question.

I made a sort of pact with myself maybe a year or so ago to just keep writ­ing and throw­ing things at pub­lish­ers as much as I could. That way I could per­haps have a book of my own by the time I was 30 or some­thing. When I hit upon writ­ing ‘Fences’ I had no idea what it was. I let go of every sort of idea I had about what made good lit­er­at­ure and I just tried to get down what I was think­ing, feel­ing and see­ing. I spent a week writ­ing, sat alone in the middle of a flat I couldn’t afford with a man selling drugs next door, and wrote it without stop­ping think­ing of it. I felt that was man­age­able for a week. Like if I had been doing a longer, struc­tured piece of writ­ing then I don’t feel I would have been able to hold on to what I was think­ing long enough to put it down. I think I did though. It is essen­tially an exten­ded meta­phor for human emo­tion. A dis­tant love marks the end of the world for a man who has little else. He drives to find the end of the world with a view to con­front­ing the feel­ing that has taken over his life. He finds no com­fort in God or com­pany. I think it is per­haps some­thing that most people have felt at one time in their lives; that’s been con­firmed by the people who have read it so far I think. I am very excited that people are going to read ‘Fences’. I am excited that people will judge it.

If you could get ‘The Fail­ure Six’ into the hands of any per­son alive, who would it be and why?

Shane Jones: That’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. At first I star­ted to think of fam­ous people or writers that I would want to read my book. But most likely they wouldn’t care about my book, so I’d have to say who­ever my biggest fan is. If I have one. Not sure I do. But I think with any new book I put out I would want to put it in the hands of someone who was really excited and look­ing for­ward to read­ing it. That just seems right. My biggest fan would really get some­thing out of it, instead of Lind­say Lohan, Don DeLillo or Steve Erick­son, all who would prob­ably just ignore it.

Ben Brooks: If Lind­say Lohan read ‘The Fail­ure Six’, what would she say?

Shane Jones: Lind­say Lohan would say, “Huh, pretty cool,” or some­thing like that maybe?

You said some­thing to your last answer that struck me. “I am excited that people will judge it.” What do you mean by this? Are you just excited to see what people will think? What’s your biggest fear hav­ing your first book come out soon?

Ben Brooks: I guess I am excited, at a very base level, that some people will know I exist who didn’t before. The people will make a judg­ment about the book, about me. I think it is excit­ing to have people say “your book sucks”, maybe even just as excit­ing as people say­ing “great book”. It’s someone recog­niz­ing you. I think every­one wants to be recog­nized, acknow­ledged. Like in ‘Ghost’ where Patrick Swayze can’t com­mu­nic­ate with Demi Moore. My book is like Whoopi Gold­berg, It’s a way for me to com­mu­nic­ate with people who oth­er­wise wouldn’t know I was there.

People com­mu­nic­ate via writ­ing in ‘The Fail­ure Six’. It seems quite dis­tant. It reminded me of the inter­net in a way. How does the form of com­mu­nic­a­tion used in the book relate to mod­ern day relationships?

Shane Jones: I played around with the com­mu­nic­a­tion idea a little in a story called ‘Mes­sen­gers’ that I wrote last year, but I wanted to do more with it. The idea is that almost every­one in the town is deaf and can only com­mu­nic­ate by way of writ­ten mes­sage, or notes passed back and forth. When they lose their train of thought, or get excited, they try and speak and it just makes this noise like “Bhhmmmmmmmmm,” which forms a square wave of sound in whatever room they are in. I just thought it was an inter­est­ing idea, the power of words, and how the passing of notes is also reflec­ted in the struc­ture of the book — these short sec­tions writ­ten very ‘note-like’. It also seemed like a new way to write dia­log, and it was fun and excit­ing for me. I wasn’t try­ing to say any­thing about mod­ern day rela­tion­ships — although it does relate, in a way, to the inter­net (Twit­ter mes­sages, emails, G-chats, etc) and how we com­mu­nic­ate with writ­ten words. It’s all very old and very new, and I like that con­trast in the book.

So why did you send your book to Fugue State out of so many presses? What has it been like work­ing with James Chapman?

Ben Brooks: I sent Fugue State a dif­fer­ent manu­script about a year ago, and while they rejec­ted it James Chap­man gave the most encour­aging rejec­tion let­ter pos­sible. I found the press through Noah Cicero’s ‘The Human War’ and then went through each given extract in turn and found the sort of tangle of beauty and frag­ment­a­tion fas­cin­at­ing. After ‘Fences’ just sort of came into being I figured it might suit the press, or James might see some­thing in it maybe; i guess he did.

James Chap­man is the best editor you could hope for. He doesn’t impose any­thing, just sug­gests things and his sug­ges­tions tend to be good. He didn’t try to change my idea of the book at all. The book’s text is of vari­ous sizes and quite oddly format­ted so I was wor­ried he might say “we should make all the words the same size” or some­thing, but after talk­ing with him it turns out he’d never sug­gest any­thing like that. James just sort of frames the work, he doesn’t alter it. He’s also refresh­ingly intel­li­gent and inter­est­ing. It’s a shame I live where I do, because it would be nice to meet him in per­son. I like the way he sort of dis­tances him­self from the inter­net writ­ing scene, but is aware of what’s hap­pen­ing and steps in to say things when he feels it’s necessary.

‘The Fail­ure Six’ is, as you said, writ­ten in a ‘note-like’ way. What was your sort of writ­ing pro­cess for the book? How did it come about?

Shane Jones: I had kind of the same story with Fugue State — I had sent James a draft of ‘Light Boxes’ when I was first send­ing it around and he wrote back all this feed­back about how much he liked the book, but ulti­mately it wasn’t right for the press. I remem­ber how import­ant it was to get a rejec­tion like that, instead of just a one line “Thanks, but we’re going to pass on this” or even worse, no response at all.

I wrote ‘Fail­ure’ last fall, in the middle to end of Novem­ber. I remem­ber really clearly sit­ting at my fiancée’s par­ents’ house, upstairs in her bed­room, and just try­ing to get the words out as fast as pos­sible because I didn’t want to lose the story I had in my head. As for as how it came about — I’m not sure. I think the idea of hav­ing this group of mes­sen­gers and how each chapter would be each one came about in my head and cre­ated the frame-tale struc­ture, and then after that it was just a mat­ter of writ­ing each one.

Hav­ing a blog and pub­lish­ing online, do you con­sider your­self an ‘inter­net writer’? Who are some of your favour­ite con­tem­por­ary writers?

Ben Brooks: I wouldn’t say I was an ‘inter­net writer’. I don’t know many people who would. The inter­net is a medium that a lot of people can use to get them­selves noticed for print; I don’t know that as many people are sat­is­fied with forever being pub­lished on the inter­net. That’s not any­thing against inter­net writ­ing — I just think a lot of people want to hold their nov­els or poetry col­lec­tions and leave them places and lend them to friends, things like that; things you need paper for.

I stumbled over the whole scene maybe a year and a half ago when I picked up ‘The Human War’ in a second-hand book­shop. I hadn’t ever read any­thing like that and it sort of hit me. I think I googled Noah and his blog turned up, linked to people like Tao Lin who I can remem­ber being recom­men­ded by friends. ‘The Human War’ is one of my favour­ite books, and Noah’s blog is one of the fun­ni­est and most bit­ter reads on the net. I think I have five cop­ies of the book as well as a Ger­man copy. I like Tao Lin too, though it feels like lighter read­ing. I think for 80% of the inter­net writers around I have at some point or another stumbled over a bit of flash fic­tion or a poem that I have really enjoyed by them. Aside from the inter­net scene I am a big fan of Murakami. I also like Stephen Chbosky. It’s hard to draw up lists, there are so many, but with Chbosky I know that ‘The Perks of Being a Wall­flower’ was one of the first books that made me think “shit, this is what I want to do, I want to write about what people think of each other”.

You made a num­ber of appear­ances in the recent Muumuu House book ‘The Brandon Book Crisis’, not all of which were pos­it­ive por­tray­als. What do you think of the Tao Lin approach to pro­mo­tion, and where do you think the line lies between the book as a valu­able cre­at­ive work and as a com­mer­cial product? Can a book be both?

Shane Jones: Yeah, I’m not even sure why I asked the ques­tion about ‘inter­net writer”. It’s an odd term that I don’t really understand.

As far as a book as a cre­at­ive work and as a com­mer­cial product, that’s a dif­fi­cult and loaded ques­tion that I’m not sure I can answer. I think some big­ger presses view manu­scripts as dol­lar signs as opposed to works of art. I think it’s the oppos­ite in the indie press scene — we all know we’re not going to make money on this. And even if we do make some money, it’s not enough to live on or any­thing. You might be able to buy some extra food, or books, beer, etc, but you still need a decent day job (unless you want to live in a shi­thole apart­ment with five people, which is cool if you’re 22, but not when you get into your thirties and want to have an actual life).

Any­time $$$ and art mix, I get a strange feel­ing that just doesn’t feel right to me. But that’s prob­ably my thing. I’m scared of get­ting to a point where I sit down to write and have dol­lar signs in my eyes. I don’t think this will hap­pen, however.

Pro­mo­tion (espe­cially for someone like me, who doesn’t sell a lot of books) is just an odd thing, because few people really care about your book. You’re try­ing to reach a small group of people and get them inter­ested and just to read your book. I think when all’s said and done though, it’s just a mat­ter of hav­ing a really good book that you’re proud of. If you’re proud of your work, you’ll be some­what happy, and if the book is really good, people will seek it out. It’s all you can hope for.

So what’s next for Ben Brooks? What are you going to do today?

Ben Brooks: I under­stand you ask­ing; it’s a term that’s ban­ded about a lot.

I’m writ­ing a book called ‘The Kasa­hara School of Nihil­ism’ at the moment. I like it, it just needs a fair bit of edit­ing. It’s about five people who try to escape loneli­ness with delusion.

It is around 6pm here. I fig­ure I will go and have a cof­fee then write the night through as I don’t have to be up tomor­row. I just went to the chem­ist to pick stuff up and on the way back a man got out of his car and gave me a thumbs up.

What are you work­ing on at the moment?

Shane Jones: I have a poetry book com­ing out in late spring 2010 called ‘A Cake Appeared’ that I need to edit. I plan to spend a good amount of time on that.

Ben Brooks: Thank you for speak­ing to me, Shane Jones.

Shane Jones: And thank you, Ben Brooks.