Michael Kimball Interview

Michael Kimball is a mainstay of the Baltimore literary scene, but he’s much more than simply a writer. Ace poker player, Galaga enthusiast, guerilla filmmaker—Kimball’s pursuits are eclectic, to say the least. This complexity is reflected in his output. No two titles are the same, and yet each bears his signature voice.

I first encountered Kimball’s work with the release of Us (Tyrant Books, 2011). The novel bears many of Kimball’s hallmarks. Multiple narrators, formal experimentation, language distilled to its purest essence. Kimball somehow manages to evoke an intense emotional response through calm, unwavering diction, a truly tremendous feat.

As an interview subject, Kimball proves just as compelling as his fiction. We chatted over email, touching on trauma, place, persona, and a host of other topics. For more on Michael Kimball, visit his website or buy his books here.

I’m curious how you came to Baltimore. What’s your relationship to the city? Has living there influenced your writing? I noticed you used to run a local reading series. My cohorts and I are trying to start up something similar. How would you describe the literary community in Maryland?

I moved to Baltimore in a kind of happy accident, just life circumstances and a job. Years before, I had moved from NYC to West Texas, a kind of cultural wasteland even though a major university exists there. So I was happy to get back to the East Coast and have wondered at all of the great cultural things happening in Baltimore ever since. I’m not sure that the city itself has influenced my writing, but it’s nice to be around so many weirdly-minded creative people. When I moved to Baltimore, I was surprised that there wasn’t a dedicated fiction reading series of any type; there were lots of poetry reading series and the odd events at colleges and universities, but it seemed like a cultural hole. The 510 Reading Series did its best to invite as many different fiction writers as possible (local, national, and international; published and unpublished; any genre as long as the writer was serious about it, etc.); for about a decade, there was a thriving writing community around that reading series. I’m less involved in the scene these days, but it seems to have taken on some good new forms in Baltimore, a pretty generous creative community in my experience.

I noticed you’ve done some work in film. I’ve trained and performed as a theatre actor/director, so I’m always curious about writers who cross into other disciplines. How did you get into cinema? Was it something you always wanted to do or did you stumble into it by chance? Has your writing fed into your filmmaking or vice versa?

The work in film was almost entirely accidental, but a lot of fun. Just before Dear Everybody was published in 2008, I met Luca Dipierro and he was interested in making a short film around the novel. We did that and had a lot of fun doing it. The piece about the feather pillow and the bird, which was part of the short, led to an idea about objects, their stories, and their destruction, which turned into I Will Smash You. The cumulative form of that film then led to 60 Writers / 60 Places, in which we filmed a writer in a location with some personal relevance while they read 60 seconds or less of their work. I don’t know that the films influenced my fiction, but if there is a structural progression in the body of my work, then those two films were two steps in that projection. That said, I also tend to think that everything a writer does, whatever that range of things is, brings some influence to the writing. It can be another creative field, a sport, another discipline, etc. That old writing advice about writing what you know is a lot easier to put into practice when you know a lot of different stuff.

Being a grad student, I spend a lot of time in workshops talking about craft and technique and all those other lofty concepts. The One-Hour MFA is a refreshingly unpretentious guide to writing. The wisdom you provide is so down to earth and easy to digest but still incredibly insightful. I’m curious about the worst writing advice you’ve ever been given. Are there are “rules” or “standards” you hear writers or teachers throwing around that are arbitrary or maybe even harmful to students?

Thanks for the kind words about The One-Hour MFA, which started as a talk I would give at colleges and universities and then turned into that little book; it’s still available for free here. I wanted young writers to have access to that kind of writing advice even if they can’t attend an MFA program. Janet Burroway wrote a famous text for writing students that includes some advice about prose not needing as much craft as poetry to be “good” writing; a lot of students are assigned that text and I suspect it’s had an unfortunate influence over a large swath of contemporary prose. I’d also suggest ignoring any teacher who tells a student to not write something that the student is clearly enthused about writing. I had a writing teacher tell me that The Way the Family Got Away should only be a short story and that I’d waste a few years of my life trying to make it a novel. Obviously, I ignored him and my life (both writing and otherwise) turned out the better for it.

It can be tough for young writers to trust their instincts, especially if some authority figure like a professor is telling them otherwise. There’s definitely a balancing act between following your own vision while also being receptive to outside feedback. I’m glad you ignored that writing teacher about The Way the Family Got Away. Your work is intensely voice-driven. I’m reminded of writers like Barry Hannah who can take a simple concept and transform it into something profound through voice alone. In Us you’re successfully juggling multiple voices, not an easy feat. What’s your process like for developing and distinguishing these voices?

Yeah, that balancing act—trusting yourself and what makes you you as a writer while also accepting sound advice that furthers what you want to do as a writer—it’s such an important thing to figure out (and it’s different for every writer). Regarding voice, I generally let the writing tell me what the voice is. That is, at first, I write without too much thought about what the story is or even who the character is. After the character has said enough—which could be a couple of sentences, pages, chapters, depending—then I look hard at the sentences. I look for idiosyncratic syntax, odd word choices, and any sense of feeling the language gives me; once I have a better sense of that, I start limiting vocabulary and thought and categories of discussion for different characters in different ways. I’m always working with what I already have in the writing or what the writing eventually reveals. With both The Way the Family Got Away and Us, I initially only had one voice. With both books, at different points, I ended up with some writing that didn’t fit the original voice and that’s how I knew a new character wanted to speak.

I like the idea of following where the writing takes you rather than trying to force a character or voice. Seems much more organic that way, more fun too because it adds a sense of discovery. The work you put into developing those voices is on full display in Us. I noticed the book was originally published under a different title. I hear a lot of writers say they look at their published work and immediately want to start editing again. Usually writers don’t get that second chance (unless you’re Walt Whitman, ha!). Was it satisfying being able to refine the original work into something new? Any surprises you encountered in creating an updated version?

I’m pretty sure Walt would have revised those 150th-anniversary editions that have been published recently. And, yeah, Us was originally published as How Much of Us There Was all over the world in English, but never had a U.S. deal. Thankfully, Giancarlo Ditrapano and Tyrant Books rescued it here, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to revise it into Us. I didn’t make any large changes, but made hundreds of little ones. One surprise was realizing I could cut a couple hundred instances of the word “that” throughout the novel. And maybe the biggest surprise was what an incredibly satisfying experience it was. I certainly don’t have any remaining urge to revise that one, though I couldn’t say that for most of my other books.

What strikes me most about the voice in Us, particularly the elderly husband, is its plain-spokenness. The husband narrates in an objective, almost detached way that is still somehow emotionally gut wrenching. I got echoes of Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day. Was this a conscious choice or did it develop organically? What’s your approach to capturing a character’s emotional state?

The way you describe the husband’s narration, that’s what first stood out to me about the initial sentences in that voice, and it’s the main thing I carried with that voice throughout the novel. So it was organic and then deliberate. And the more I let the language go inside the character of the husband (while still being descriptive of the exterior world), the more understated power it seemed to gather.

For my money’s worth, the ending of Us is damn near perfect. I rarely cry when reading a book, but you had me in pieces by the last page. I had recently gotten married myself when I read the book, so the last page packed a particularly potent wallop for me. I’m curious if you always had this conclusion in mind or if it was another discovery you came to as you were writing. Was there ever an alternate ending? I know a lot of writers who say they go in without a clue as to how the piece will end. How do you sense when it’s time to stop writing? Does instinct tell you when something’s finished?

I got the chills when you gave me this question and needed a moment. I came back to it and it happened again. I don’t know what that means, but there is that thing about ghosts communicating that way. Regardless of belief, this is an ending that will always stick with me. I knew I was working on the last section of the novel, but I thought I had maybe 30-40 pages in front of me. Then I wrote that short last chapter, those two pages—and the same thing that is happening to me now happened to me then. I remember stopping, looking up at the ceiling, and saying out loud (to myself): “Oh, that’s the end.” And that was the end. It told me. I felt it happen.

Your response leads me to another question I wanted to ask. I’m still working my way through Big Ray (loving it so far). I understand the book contains autobiographical elements. There’s some truly horrifying shit in there. In my program, we talk a lot about writing through our trauma. It’s shocking how many of my classmates, as well as professors, have been victimized or abused at the hands of a loved one. I’m disturbed by how commonplace it’s become. For you, what’s the greatest challenge in writing about trauma? Do you find it to be a cathartic act? Any advice you can offer for young writers approaching these immensely difficult and painful subjects?

The abuse that so many people suffer through is terribly under-discussed in today’s world. It is beginning to change in some positive ways, I hope, but there is a long way to go with the general perception of that. And writing about trauma is its own particular and difficult problem. I tried to write the material that became Big Ray a few different times without much success. In one early attempt, I don’t think I yet had the writing tools to manage that difficult material. In another early attempt, the tone was just too angry in a distracting way. It wasn’t until I moved the tone toward a kind of understatement that I thought the narrative began to work—and that’s the only somewhat general advice I have: Understatement can carry a kind of narrative strength when working with difficult material. I never expected writing Big Ray to be cathartic, but it was in ways I never imagined. Writing that book released me.

I’m intrigued by the “conceptual pseudonym” Andy Devine that you created. It seems like a fascinating exercise in persona, which is something I’m endlessly studying as an actor. How did this alter ego come into being? Was it a vehicle to write something more experimental? How is Andy Devine different from Michael Kimball?

Andy Devine was one of my Vegas names—picked up on a card counting trip through Nevada and Arizona while passing through Flagstaff, where the actor who used the pseudonym Andy Devine was born, and his name showed up on all kinds of signage. The pseudonym started as a joke, but definitely became a vehicle through which I could push some writing limits. Andy Devine writes with an extreme and unforgiving aesthetic. One of my favorite pieces in Words is the condensed, alphabetical novel buried toward the back of that unreadable book. Michael Kimball enjoys a much wider range of writing and life than Andy Devine does.

Love the idea of a deliberately unreadable book. These days a lot of literature seems increasingly less and less difficult. Gives me hope that there are still writers out there who are willing to experiment with form and challenge readers. You have a pretty diverse body of work: Andy Divine, The One-Hour MFA, Galaga, etc. I admire how each book is wholly unique but still carries your distinct voice. Not an easy feat. What’s next for you? Any upcoming releases or works in progress? I read in another interview that at one point you were toying with a post-apocalyptic novel of some sort. I would be all over that.

Thank you for that kindness. I’ve always been fond of some kind of range in the work of other writers and it’s something I have fun with in my own work. I have a bunch of work-in-progress, as a lot of life and work has gotten in the way of writing over the last few years. The post-apocalyptic novel you mention, I’ve been working on that off-and-on for a decade and I may try to finish it next; it is less unreadable than Words, but a different type of challenge, something like if Wallace Stevens wrote an apocalyptic novel, maybe. I also have a mostly secret project that I’ve just finished and is out with a publisher who is one of the few people who knew I was writing it. And I have a long first draft of a handwritten novel that I should probably type up, so I can see what’s there. It’s unsettling to have so much unfinished work. I’m looking forward to having some more writing time in the next year-plus.

Your postcard project is pretty far-reaching. You’ve covered a lot of geography, a diverse collection of lives. I love the condensed form, almost like a formal constraint. Is the postcard project ongoing or has it run its course? Bonus question, have you ever written your own life story on a postcard?

Yeah, I loved the postcard life story project. I met a ton of great people and learned a lot about being a human being. I closed the project when the book was published years ago, in part, because I was still getting so many requests, and I never would have written anything else except postcard life stories for probably the rest of my life. My friend Sam Ligon wrote a postcard for my life story (after I had written his) and then I wrote one for myself to be included in the book version of the project. It was difficult being that honest with myself (something that so many other people seemed to find relatively easy).

My last question is a fun one that I always like to ask writers. I’ll focus on Us since the book profoundly affected me. If Us had a theme song, what would it be?

I was obsessed with Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago and listened to it when I revised How Much of Us There Was into Us. I become even more obsessed with that album when I learned that Justin Vernon usually gets his music first, then places sounds with the music, and then finds words for the sounds. His song “Lump Sum” creates a great weird feeling that gets inside me in a way I can’t quite explain, and he pulls that feeling all the way through the song. I tried to do something similar in Us.