David Thayer

<p> Here’s an interview with Keith Dixon, author of the ART OF LOSING from St. Martin’s Press. Keith is an editor at the New York Times.

THE ART OF LOSING is a first person narrative. Did you set out with that approach in my mind when you began the novel?

From the ready-set-go I knew that I wanted this novel to have the immediacy of a first-person narrative—it’s really all about one person’s experience, the push and pull of his angels and demons, and I felt that a third-person narrative wouldn’t accurately convey the urgency of the stresses and strains.

 

Tell us about yourself, how writing fits in with the rest of your life.

Writing’s an essential part of my day—I write three hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year save two: my anniversary, and my wife’s birthday. (Truth be told, I usually manage to sneak in a page on those days, too.) I’m drawn to the craft because I’ve always loved books, because I love the transformative quality of literature, because I love the obliteration of the self that comes with the work. And the work is made all the more interesting by the fact that I’m totally in control of it: I get to decide exactly where I want it to go, which is a far cry from the rest of my life.

 

What sort of books do you gravitate to as a reader?

I’ll read anything that’s well-written and made with an attention to the basics of the craft: I’m just as happy reading Philip Roth as I am James M. Cain. Too, I’ll happily leap from genre to genre, magic realism to stark realism, comedy to tragedy. So long as the chops are there, I’m interested.

 

Guilt is the subtext of THE ART OF LOSING. Is obsessing about money a commentary on the larger question of values?

Absolutely. The writing of the book was a response to a broader paradigm that had taken hold of my own life, that of recognizing that one’s artistic success in no way guarantees commercial success. I had spent an awful lot of time obsessing about the fact that my writing was getting positive attention from the critics but was making me no money whatsoever. This sucker-punches you right in the confidence-bone: you begin to think, Why aren’t I making any money at this? What’s wrong with me? Then you realize that the failing is not yours—all you can do is write the books as well and truly as you can. Once you start thinking first and foremost about the money you’re making off them, you’re in big trouble. I think we all at some time or another face a situation that asks us to compromise our values, and more often than not that situation involves money.

 

 

A lot of readers are writers and they enjoy understanding the process of writing book length fiction. Did you plan THE ART OF LOSING from an outline or wing it from an idea?

I’m a wing-it writer. I write the first sentence without knowing what the second is going to say, and so on. I think that’s because I get the same pleasure from writing that most readers get from reading: I love the sense of discovery, the feeling of a new world opening up right before your eyes. To plot the book out on an outline would not only deaden my enthusiasm for the work—it would kill the book outright. The excitement of watching the thing unfold is what sustains me through the writing.

 

You have a solid grasp on horse racing and the vagaries of gambling on the ponies: did you haunt the OTB for research?

I did lots of research—and yes, some of it at the OTB (I work in Times Square and they have one on West 48th Street just south of Rockefeller Center). I also hit the track myself, and interviewed extensively with one friend who once worked as a professional Las Vegas and Atlantic City gambler, another who professionally gambles on the horses at Belmont and Aqueduct. It’s a world unto itself, with its own language, its own rules, its own mythology. Fascinating, but also a bit threadbare, and certainly reeking of anxious hopes.

 

THE ART OF LOSING might have been sub-titled FATHERS AND SONS. Tell us about the novel’s slant on parental expectations.

So often the stresses between age and youth are that of experience versus desire. The old want to convey all that they’ve learned; the young will not listen because they’re too busy talking about their hopes. The old want to be young, and the young want to be old—or rather, the young want to have experience behind them, and of course the only way to gain experience is to make mistakes and learn, and get old. The novel’s slant on expectations might be characterized thusly: the old cannot bestow experience on those who will not listen. And Michael Jacobs sure as hell doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s too busy listening to the gibbering voice in his head, which wants independence, success, an audience and money all at once. Poor fellow—he’s in for nothing but trouble.

 

Free will is the philosophical cornerstone of western religious belief. Without spoiling the plot I wondered if you came to the end of your story believing Mike had surrendered his?

Indeed Mike has surrendered his free will by the book’s end: because at the end he is yoked to a horrible mistake that will inform his every move for the rest of his life. This is what true guilt is: not an ache of the conscience, but a recognition that your life is no longer your own. The true penitent cannot serve himself, but only the process of reachieving the state of grace that he’s lost.

 

What can you tell us about your next project?

I’m appallingly far into a novel about, strangely enough, writer’s block. And about literary envy. It tells the story of two novelists each committed to the other’s destruction. I’m having a wildly fun time writing it.

 

Thanks, Keith.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.