Adam Biles is the author of GREY CATS, which was runner-up in the inaugural Paris Literary Prize in 2011 and is published by 3:AM Press. In May 2012, his ficto-essay THE DEEP was published in a bilingual edition by Editions de la Houle. Adam is currently working on his next book, provisionally titled, “Feeding Time.” A Paris Writers News interview.
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Laurel Zuckerman: What was the inspiration for Grey Cats?
Adam Biles: Like most of my stories, Grey Cats had a very long gestation period. It actually began as two stories. The first was a desire to rework a certain Greek myth – I won’t spoil it by telling you which – a myth I liked a lot, but which I also had a few issues with, and which I felt, in that arrogant way common to writers, could do with a few alterations. The second was the idea to write something that explored the reordering that descends upon a city at night. After several aborted attempts to begin both stories, I realized that they were in fact one story, and after that it came quite easily. Perhaps more easily than anything else I’ve ever written
Paris is a central figure in Grey Cats. What is it about this particular city that fuels the story?
I was actually extraordinarily reluctant to write about Paris. As a setting for books it has been overdone, wrung dry, and is extremely difficult to write about without lapsing into cliché. Most writing about Paris is pretty horrible, a fervent box-ticking exercise. Eiffel Tower – check! Croissants and coffee on a terrace at dawn – check! Allusions to Hemingway, Miller, the Beats – check, check, check! I would be damned before pissing into that swamp…
So, it was with a certain despair that I realized Grey Cats had to take place here. I fought the idea for some time before giving in. Once I had given in though, once I had accepted that this tired old muse was, for this story at least, my muse, she actually turned out to be quite generous. I learnt more about the history of Paris in researching Grey Cats than I had done in five years living here. If you’ll excuse a quote from the book, at a moment the narrator talks about “flipping the prize pig onto its back, exposing its pimpled, louse-ridden underbelly and its ugly spit-curl genitalia”. That’s what I wanted to do with Paris.
Why night?
That was all part of it…yanking readers away from the Paris they were familiar – overfamiliar! – with. Cities change at night. Shopping streets, packed during the day, lie empty. Other streets, boarded up when it’s light, spring to life. Years ago I wrote an article about the relationship between Henry Miller and Brassaï that gave me the opportunity to spend a few nights wandering the streets with my friend, the photographer Lea Crespi. It amazed me how different this city, which I thought I knew pretty well, was between midnight and, say, five in the morning. I realized I didn’t know the place at all. Night is also the time for dreams, when nothing is certain and everything is possible. I like the freedom that comes with that.
Where did the characters come from?
I suppose, like all fictional characters, they are a blend of people I have met, and the excesses of my imagination. There’s only one episode in Grey Cats that is taken verbatim from something that actually happened to me – but I’ll leave you to guess which one. Most of the characters in the book tilt towards the grotesque, so if anyone I know thinks they recognize themselves in it, I’d recommend they have a long hard think about their self-image.
You’re participating in a Literary Death Match in London. Are you scared?
Terrified! Who wouldn’t be? I’m going to be standing on stage, reading a story, being judged and then, if I’m lucky – if I’m lucky, you understand! – I’ll be forced to do unspeakable and humiliating things, in front of hundreds of people, with Nerf darts or juggling balls. If they’re reading this, I’d like to thank the people at 3:AM Press with all my heart for setting it up.
Do poetry, slam, jazz and prose writing tap into the same flow? Do you consider yourself to be an improvisationist?
Wow, I’m really not the person to ask. I struggle with poetry, and only have a charlatan’s love for jazz…by which I mean I take great pleasure from the music while knowing, and understanding, next to nothing about it. On the subject of improvisation, I’m afraid I have to disappoint there too. It can take me days to decide even what to write in someone’s birthday card!
Is Paris still a good place for young writers?
It’s certainly too expensive to think you can live here like writers and artists did between the wars, trading your canvases or poems for meals and coffee in the brasseries around Montparnasse. I’ve always had to support myself, and to do so in Paris requires as much compromise as it does in any other big city. Also, as I said earlier, Paris comes with so much baggage. As a young writer, if you’re not careful, this history can easily overwhelm you.
All of that said, I do love this city. For all its faults it is strikingly beautiful, haunting too at times. There is also an enormous respect for writing and literature here, and not just among so-called intellectuals. Drop into any of the Left Bank bookstores on a Saturday afternoon and they’ll be as busy – almost as busy, anyway – as the chain fashion stores that are desperately trying to squeeze them out. I suppose it’s encouraging for a writer to recognize that there are still so many readers out there, even if they’re reading in a language that is not your own.
What brought you to writing?
I was a gifted liar as a child…and I discovered early on that people don’t care too much if you’re lying as long as you entertain them, make them laugh. After a while, though, I realized that the older you get, the more consequences your lies can have, so I decided – for the most part – to channel that skill into storytelling.
After that, I suppose I needed to be pretty deluded to throw myself into writing with the idea that it was something I could make a living out of. After finishing my studies I made no effort to forge any kind of career except as a writer. I never visited a careers service, never enrolled on any training scheme. Every job I had I fell into. It was all in the service of my writing. With hindsight it does seem like appalling chutzpah, though. Now, more than a decade later, I’m of no interest to anyone career-wise, so it’s writing or bust for me… I suppose that’s how it should be, although I must confess it would be pleasant not to always be teetering so precariously over the precipice of financial disgrace.
Is there a special space you like to work? Seek inspiration?
My desk is in the corner of the living room. I’d love to have a study one day, but that can wait. As long as it’s quiet, as long as I’m not distracted, and as long as I have some coffee on the go, I don’t need much else. Routines and rituals can be useful at times, but too many of them encourage procrastination… at least for me. I tend to write first thing in the morning, before the day crowds in with its petty demands and distractions. I find that moment, before I completely shrug off sleep, fertile ground for spinning stories. I’m more open to strange, irrational ideas when I’m not fully awake.
How do you reconcile writing journalism with fiction?
They are two very different things, so one tends not to interfere with the other. That said, I don’t do too much journalism these days…it’s not in my guts. I revere those old newspapermen, people like Walt Whitman, like H.L.Mencken…hard-living, hard-drinking, grizzly old geezers, who’d wrestle a story into submission on the page, but that’s not me. I don’t know how to pitch a story, and my contacts in that world are pretty sparse. So any journalism I do comes about almost passively; people-who-know-people coming to me because they need someone in Paris with certain tastes and interests.
You’re present on social media. Do you think SM is a good thing for a writer?
I only use Twitter, but I must confess to being surprised at how much I enjoy it. I thought being on there was a kind of necessary evil, but you get to engage with people you would otherwise never have met. Some people I chatted with first over Twitter later became friends. It was also online that I first got involved with 3:AM Magazine, and then 3:AM Press, so without it, I’d probably still be shopping Grey Cats around. You’ve got to be on your guard, though. It’s too easy to mistake lots of followers, lots of retweets, with a genuine interest in what you’re doing.
How to you keep the Internet from cannibalizing your creative time and energy?
I find that if I’m really engaged in what I’m doing this isn’t a problem. If my Twitter feed falls silent for a few days you can be sure that I’m working on something, and working well. It’s at those moments when interest in your own work wanes that you have to be on your guard. Getting bored and frustrated with writing is all part of the process and needs to be lived through. It can also be the source of some of the most interesting ideas. If you turn to the Internet for succor and distraction every time you get stuck, you’ll be denying yourself an experience that is crucial for writing fiction.
Who is your all time favorite writer? The least known writer who deserves most to be discovered?
I’m not sure I have favorite writers, but rather favorite books. The holy trinity for me is Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy and Moby-Dick. There’s more life, more guts, more reckless go-fuck-yourself experimentation in these three books than in all of the contemporary books I’ve read. Really, they’re still so fresh it stings.
As for little known, or at least underappreciated writers, can I give you two? There’s Blaise Cendrars, who carved out his own niche of what might be called literary-pulp in the mid-twentieth century. He sits very much in the tradition of the old Boy’s Own adventure stories, with writers like H. Rider Haggard. Except, having fought in, and lived through, the First World War, he carries the weight of that unspeakable horror around with him, but doesn’t let himself get dragged down by it either. I’d also like to mention B.S. Johnson, for the fact that he wrote so-called experimental novels with none of the po-facedness (is that a word?) that most writers adopt when they set about pushing the limits of form.
What are you working on now?
I’ve recently finished a draft of my next novel, which has the working title of Feeding Time. I’d prefer not to say much about it, apart from the fact that it’s a kind of a huit-clos, everything takes place in a single location. I think it should be ready for the eyes of agents and publishers in six to nine months. I’m also writing a shorter work, very much in the same vein as my other book The Deep, which came out this year. This time, rather than nautical exploration, it gives the fictional-non-fiction treatment to the planned communities of the industrial revolution. Sounds like a blast, doesn’t it? New York Times Bestseller list, here I come!
Bio:
Adam Biles is the author of, GREY CATS, which was runner-up in the inaugural Paris Literary Prize in 2011 and is published by 3:AM Press. In May 2012, his ficto-essay THE DEEP was published in a bilingual edition by Editions de la Houle. Adam is currently working on his next book, provisionally titled, “Feeding Time.”
Links:
My site: http://www.adambiles.com
3:AM Press: http://3ampress.tumblr.com
Buy Grey Cats (US): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A1ETDJO
Buy Grey Cats (UK): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grey-Cats-ebook/dp/B00A1ETDJO/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1
Info about The Deep: http://www.adambiles.com/adam/TheDeep.html
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxOZPE5QFTM