Today’s special guest is short story writer Mathias Freese to chat about his new collection of essays and stories, Again. Again and Again, Awakening into Awareness.
Bio:
Author, teacher, psychotherapist, I just published my ninth book at 81.
What do you enjoy most about writing short stories?
They master time. Like biblical epiphanies, each word counts, feelings are evoked, thoughts posed, and imagination is in the telling of it all. If you read Sherwood Anderson’s, Winesburg, Ohio, that masterful compilation of 20 or so stories with over 100 characters sprinkled throughout, you will discover the vast humanity of the author. Ray Bradbury spoke of how the book influenced his Martian Chronicles, another humane effort. I have learned much from Anderson, just read his “Hands” about a closeted homosexual in the thirties out in the Midwest. Anderson’s considerable humanity makes you feel.
Can you give us a little insight into a few of your short stories – perhaps some of your favorites?
Most literature deals with love and death and time. I work on time. In Piss Pieta I concoct a story about Michelangelo and his fabricated assistant; I cite a real academic article about his Moses; I discuss Oinkum, a heady mead made in Tuscany and still favored there; I throw everything I know about the time and I lie and lie and lie like Kafka and his famed bug (no, not a roach; he never wrote that.) In Soap I write about Hitler’s underwear and how it is a prized relic; I discuss how it is the holy grail for his genitalia was kept within its soft Pima cotton; I laugh as I write about how gloves are worn to handle the shorts, the urine stains on the crotch, all the while commenting subtly about the fanatical looniness of it all. Soap as if written by the great stoneface, Buster Keaton.
What genre are you inspired to write in the most? Why?
I favor the self-disclosing essay because I can be discursive, wax philosophically and be a curmudgeon. I suppose it is the teachery part of my character.
What exciting story are you working on next?
I lie fallow between books of any significant writing; I have been thinking of publishing a fantasy I wrote in the 70’s, three stories having been published in my latest book. Nothing goes to waste. And my ally, my friend, my inherent ghostwriter — my unconscious needs to fill up its aquifer.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I was “koshered’ as a writer in 1974 when editor of The Best Short Stories of 1974 included my short story, “Herbie,” under Distinctive Short Stories of 1974. She had edited Hemingway! So, I was anointed. I was listed with Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer, et al. Even Joyce Carol Oates. I was so green and innocent that I didn’t know who these heavy hitters were. After that it took a while before I considered myself a working professional.
How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for writers?
For about a grand I use a publicist who gets me on book tours, knocks off sell sheets and all the rest. I think it is a good investment. You use a butcher to cut your meats, you don’t do that because you don’t have the skills for it. A writer needs to invest some money in himself. I also browse through hundreds of bloggers on several directories and query. The query should be sharp, acute, and telling. View it as a marketing poem.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I am self-taught, an auto-didact. Consequently auto-didacts waste a lot of time going over things that others avoid. However, I view it as secondary gain, a psych term for an award not expected from an expended effort. I have learned a great deal with my mistakes. To wit: in writing, how long does it take for coffee to boil? The writer deals with time! I learned how to work that.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a child of benign neglect, I had no idea of what I wanted to do when I grew up. I only recall dreaming about being an architect; math destroyed that fantasy, but I have made edifices out of the granite words I set into place and design.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
The task of the writer is to become aware, to awaken his or her intelligence. Work on your inner-directedness. I end with an anecdote. A fly falls into a barrel of milk in a barn. He almost succumbs. However, he manages to gasp and to complete one circuit of the barrel, exhausted. Still alive, he tries to emerge, but to no avail. By this time as fortune has it, an antenna, one wing and his thorax are above the milk as he “swims” about. Luckily he is able to complete two or three of these orbits and he realizes that much of his body has shed the milk. Finally, he gets free and buzzes off. What he did not realize was that all his efforts, his struggles had turned the milk into cheese and he was able to fly off the solid he had made.
Thank you, Lisa, for the review is presented well. If I can reciprocate, let me know. I think of Isak Dinesen: “An artist is never poor.”