Circus of the Grand Design (34 page)

JV: What do you think is the appeal of the circus for a fantasy novel?

RW: Having a bunch of odd, flamboyant characters to play around with. The theatricality. Also, it's a closed community. A newcomer is always an outsider.

JV: Do you see the circus characters in your novel as ultimately alien or unknowable?

RW: They're alien to Lewis. For him to be accepted he has to accept them. They possess their own way of being, and he can't make them conform to his idea of what a person is.

JV: How different is writing a story from writing a novel, for you?

RW: They're similar, in that either way I have no idea what I'm doing or what is going to happen. I usually start with maybe a character and a situation, and keep moving. With
Circus of the Grand Design
, I knew it was a novel. A good bit of the framework popped into my head at once. I thought I knew the ending, but before I got there I realized it wouldn't be the right one. I do think it helps to have more of something, outline, framework, before getting started with a novel than with a story. It's exhausting to keep at it without knowing where it's going. With a story, you get there sooner. When I started
The Painting and the City
, I thought it would be a long story, maybe 10,000 words, but there was more to it than I realized. Certain things led to other things.

JV: Now,
Circus of the Grand Design
was written before
In Springdale Town
, your novella from PS Publishing. Did you learn anything writing
Circus
that you could then apply to
Springdale
?

RW: Yes and no, and more no than yes. With
Circus
, I suppose I learned something about writing a long, simple narrative, but
Springdale
is a shorter, more complex narrative. Aside from learning to write better from the act of writing, I learned a lot about perseverance, learned that it's okay to set things aside and get back to them, to keep pushing with something if you believe in it.
Circus
took shape (and reshape) over a long period, and I wasn't having much success getting anything published. It would have been easy to give up.

JV: What is
The Painting and the City
about?

RW: More of that fantastic brushing up against reality stuff. It's set in New York City in late Spring/early Summer 2001. A sculptor named Jacob Lerner sees a painting by (fictional) 19th Century Dutch artist Philip Schuyler and becomes obsessed. Most of the book is from Lerner's point of view, but I also include two sections of Schuyler's journal, from his visit to New York in 1842, and a later one, from Indonesia.

JV: How is it different from your previous work?

RW: It's more political. I use Lerner's time in the studio to express things that go through his mind as he works, rants about big business, art and commerce, repression, homelessness. Also, I tend to write these man alone stories, so I tried to make him less alone.

JV: You're a book designer, in addition to being a writer, and you did your own interior design. Have you enjoyed that process? Tell me something about it.

RW: I did enjoy it, eventually. With
Springdale
, when I started the design process, I wanted to delete everything. I kept looking at what I'd written (especially the side-notes) and saying, "Who's going to want to read this crap?" I had to separate myself from being the writer and get on with it. The publisher hadn't paid me for a blank book.

For
Circus
, I knew what to expect, and skipped over all the self-doubt and got on with it. I used the typeface Sabon because that's what was used for the U.S. edition of
Nights at the Circus
. Maybe the British edition too, I haven't seen it. For the press release and other typed bits that Lewis writes, I found a typewriter font that I liked. Overall, I wanted a look that would help the reader. Most small press books are ugly. Sometimes large publisher's books, too. A lot of emphasis goes toward the cover and less on the inside. The cover may help sell the book, but an ugly interior can make the reader put it down.

For
The Painting and the City
, I needed separation between the main text and the journals. I set the text in Perpetua, which is a modern font, and for the journals I used Nicolas Cochin, which, to quote from the font house: "Nicolas Cochin (not to be confused with another font named simply "Cochin") was originally designed by Georges Peignot in the early 20th Century. It was based on engraved letters of the 17th Century artist Charles Nicolas Cochin....The new Lanston digitization is the only digital version to retain the idiosyncratic treatment which makes the metal type so alluring."

JV: Are you working on a new novel? And can we hope to see any new short fiction in print?

RW: Yes to novel, no to short fiction in print. I generally work on one thing at a time, and don't write much short fiction. I have a new novelette that I've just started sending out, and I'm working on another story. I've written the first part of a novel and am taking a break from it before going on to part 2.

JV: What can you tell me about the new novel?

RW: It's even more political than
The Painting and the City
. It's also more of an overt fantasy than I usually write, though it's also a real-world setting in which the fantastic intrudes. It's set in Springdale, the mythical New England town from
In Springdale Town
. Currently called either
New Springdale Novel
or
Recollections of a Malleable Future
. I can't say a whole lot more about it right now.

JV: In closing, what's your favorite line in
Circus of the Grand Design
?

RW: I can't think of one offhand. It's weird, looking at the book and seeing different words from different stages of the book's evolution. There are a few sentences that are pretty much original. The
Locus
review quoted from some of the newest stuff, from a few paragraphs early in the book that I wrote right before starting on the layout. Seeing those lines in the review made me happy.

JV: Thanks, Robert.

~

(
This is an updated version of an interview first published on SF Site and is reproduced with the kind permission of SF Site and Jeff VanderMeer
.)