Artists, no matter how creative they may be, must derive inspiration from somewhere, and as art is at its most basic form about communication, the transference of ideas from one person to another, these creative mines can generally be found within relationships.
Ander Monson is a poet and author from Michigan, visiting our campus as part of a tour promoting his new book, “Neck Deep and Other Predicaments”. His writing is, in many instances, sardonic, bleakly hilarious, sad and most often extremely honest, as is he. After all, how many professional intellectuals admit to getting drunk in mine shafts? I sat down with Monson to get a better understanding of what he was like.
So I could tell you were from Michigan without reading your bio. Can you talk about where you’re from?
There is a real sense of isolation. Which I’m sure was attractive to my parents, but at the time I felt really cut off and extremely isolated, especially during the winter…It was a tough place to grow up. At the same time it wasn’t totally devoid of culture. You could do a lot worse. We didn’t realize at the time but a lot of our friends were professors’ kids, most of whom have left.
I’m ambivalent about it; but in a lot of my work its figured as a really menacing place. Which is partially mythology. A lot of the work that I do is exaggerated or mythologized for effect, you know, the place is the place; but the place is an extreme version of the place…
There is suffering, especially driving though Detroit. It’s a beautiful and amazing place to be. Its almost post-apocalypctic. You can be hiking and stumble upon an open mine shaft. Probably go in and probably get drunk. I’ve got a couple poems about that.
So how do you think, specifically your writing is different because of that environment, that isolation?
There’s a great quote that Auden says of Yeats, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” It’s something I think about. In some ways you are hurt into writing, with me I’m not as sure. I think it’s the place in a lot of ways. When I grew up I had no sense that there was a literature of Michigan until I moved to the south where [literature] was really localized.
In “Other Electricities” you include a section titled “True Truths and Lies About The Author”, which is think is hilarious in a really Bob Dylan, sarcastic, stick-it-to-the-press kind of way.
Yea, I think with first books people equate the author’s life with the narrative, and I even show up in the book, so I think its natural, people want more truth in their fiction now.
Is that good or bad?
Neither. It’s the way things are. People want more truth in everything. We want more reality in our fiction in our poetry, in our TV. And certainly in non-fiction. But it’s because we no longer as a culture trust story. We want it, we want satisfying narrative, but we also want it to be true to life stories, which is dumb, because life doesn’t conform to narrative expectation. You need to compress it. And that’s the truth and lies.
So in a little lighter vein, you mention music often in your poetry, particularly in “Vacationland”, where you talk about how much Journey kind of sucks. What’s good for you?
Music? I’m really voracious with a lot of music. Girl Talk is particularly interesting because he’s really a collage artist. Hip-Hop doesn’t really do it for me…My album of the year is M83’s Saturdays Equal Youth. It sounds exactly like what I used to listen to, but it’s this 25 year old French DJ kind of guy. It’s amazingly loving towards the whole scene. Really self-indulgent. Life is dramatic at 17, and he’s celebrating that.I don’t like, if its something someone gave to me, I can kind of stand it, which is sort of resulted in the dissolution of my dislikes of music. Am I defined by the things I hate? I mean I think I am, but its really freaky. Journey stands up. I read the poem at college, and almost inevitably in every crowd, Journey is someone’s favorite.
Right, so back to you. There’s probably something you’re promoting something, right?
Yea, it’s called, “Neck Deep and Other Predicaments”. Officially I’m here as a non-fiction writer. They want you to represent something sometimes, so I’ll be reading essays from my new book…they’re unusual essays…The essay gets a bad rap especially in colleges because that’s what you have to write, and as a result it’s not thought of as a vehicle of very much fun. The book has had success because of that, because I’m doing things that people aren’t in the form. There’s one in the form of a math proof, there’s an essay about 4 car washes, and one about snow and mines and so on…I don’t think of [my writing] as autobiographical, nor do I think it’s a good thing to write autobiographically. Even though I’m writing about car washes I’m writing about myself, and I’m self conscious about the whole idea.
“Neck Deep and Other Predicaments” by Ander Monson received the 2008 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Creative Non-Fiction.