Jessica Treat

Conversation with Jessica Treat, upon publication of Meat Eaters & Plant Eaters (2009)

How long did it take you to write the stories in Meat Eaters and Plant Eaters? Were the stories all written after you finished your second book, or are some older?

A few of the stories are older, some of the longer ones, but most of them were written since the last book came out. My first collection (A Robber in the House, Coffee House Press, 1993) was all short-shorts, and initiated their Coffee-To-Go Short-Short Story Series. My second book (Not a Chance, FC2, 2000) had longer stories, some of which I’d worked on since grad school, and a novella.

With this book, I got tired of having my work defined by length, and I wanted to put together a collection that was mixed, where the stories belonged in the book regardless of how long or short they were. And Peter Conners [BOA Editor] thought that the project was more interesting that way, and overall he was very supportive.

I thought when I finished my last book that there might be seven years before my next one, but it was closer to nine. But I also have a child and a full time job. I’ve also had to accept that I write slowly. But, surprisingly, I felt like this book really came together in the last month, when I wrote two new stories, and somehow that helped me figure out how the book should be ordered.

Speaking of the various lengths of these stories, do you have a potential story length in mind before you start writing, or do you find that each story determines its own length as you go along?

I work very much from the idea that the content of the story dictates its form and length. So I try not to start with any preconceived notions about the story. That said, unfortunately or fortunately, I am just not a novelist by nature. When I’m writing, I zero in. I see novelists collecting and weaving plot and character as they go, whereas I tend to be honing in rather than opening out. So sometimes I’ll be writing a story and thinking it’ll be 14 pages, then I come to a place on page 5 where I find that the story ends. I don't usually know how the story will end and just try and let the material show me how long it needs to be. What happens a lot is I get to a final line and then can't go on. It’s the curse of the short story writer.

Would you consider these shorter stories as flash fiction, short shorts, fiction, or do you worry about these terms and categories? Are these distinctions something you apply to yourself, or something that others apply for you?

It's definitely something that other people worry about. I've come to accept the term flash fiction, but I don't really like the word flash, because it makes the work seem flashy, not something that endures. When I first started writing, the term didn’t even exist, shorter work was instead called tales, then later short-shorts.

I was introduced to this kind of work as an undergrad, writers like Kafka and Thurber and Barthelme, writers working in shorter forms. And that was very exciting to me. I kind of found a home for myself there. I still think that a story, regardless of length, needs to satisfy the requirements of a story, but I also believe that short stories have more in common with poetry than novels. This commonality, this closeness between poetry and short stories, is part of why I’m excited that BOA has started moving into fiction, and why I feel like BOA is absolutely the right place for me to be. Even in the novel that I’m working on, the feeling is still claustrophobic. Novelists and short story writers just feel different somehow.

How did you determine the sections for this book? What similarities do you see between the stories in each section?

I felt that there was a thematic and stylistic separation between the different sections. In Drive, the first section, all the stories are quite short, and tend to revolve around one-on-one relationships between people. Teacup and Covered Bridge feel slightly different, but I felt they still belonged.

The Meat Eaters and Plant Eaters section is about family and pets, life and death. I've been living in the country now for 17 years, and it does change your subjects as a writer. Now I write more about living with animals in a way I never would've living in Brooklyn. Close Your Eyes is the shortest section, and those two stories felt more fable-like. Hans & His Daughter is kind of in the style of allegory, and Close Your Eyes is different in that way as well, but I’d consider that one a therapy story, which is another genre entirely.

The last section, Little Bitches, is all about girls and women, their relationships with each other. Although Violin Lesson is a mother-daughter story. But I think it still fits with the title story for the section, Little Bitches, girls and women coming into their own, and often not acting very nicely.

Your story Teacup ends with the line “It was a mystery she would live with.” This ending seemed to capture something for me about the work as whole. Do you think living with mystery is essential?

I like that you picked that line. I think everyone is drawn to mystery. As readers and in life, we like to solve mysteries, but also there are the continuing mysteries of personality and character and situations that happen in every day life. This reminds of how last month someone left a wooden box on my doorstep, and I never figured out who, or why. These things happen all the time. For me the story is meant to retain that mystery. Life is mysterious and wonderful. It’s not about solving it, but exploring it, the mystery of relationships and memory and personality, and trying to retain that richness.

Any forthcoming projects? What's next?

I've got a bunch of projects started, but Meat Eaters and Plant Eaters was a nice marker for me because it took care of a lot of my new stories, and also older ones that didn't belong in my first two collections. So I feel like I’ve temporarily cleaned the slate with my shorter work. I have three big projects now that I’m keeping in mind. The first is a novel. At least, it feels like a novel now, though I can’t say for certain. It looks at the world of cyber relationships. That’s kind of a new frontier, and since I’m already interested in relationships, the cyber world feels like a place worth exploring.

There’s also a translation project with Chilean writer Javier Campos. I’ll be reading some of my translations of his poems at an event in New York City, which also will feature Martin Espada. I’ve been interested in translation and poetry for many years now, and it would be great to translate a full collection of Javier Campos’ work.

The third project is editing an anthology of short stories written in the form of letters. I had a story like that in each of my last two books. You normally associate the task of working in a specific form with poets, so I think it’s interesting to see how fiction writers handle the epistolary form.
© 2008 BOA Editions, Ltd

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:: INTERVIEW following publication of Not a Chance::
Interviewed by Jacklyn Attaway (2004)

What is the significance of Marc's "taste for" ants, baby aspirin, cardamom, and the rose in "Ants?"

Let me say first of all that I don't really believe it's the author's job to explain these things....The answers ought to be in the work itself. I really believe that. And readers/​students of the work can come up with things that the author may have intended but not have been fully conscious of while writing. That said, I'll try my best to answer these very specific (!) questions... That Marc eats ants, baby aspirin, cardamom, a rose--suggest something of an oral fixation. Children often put things in their mouth without thinking; it's a way of knowing the world more intimately. That he continues to do so suggests a child-like aspect to himself, as well as a hunger or need that has gone unsatisfied....

The form of "Ants" is very interesting. You arrange it in nine numbered sections, the first and the last dealing with Marc's childhood and the narrator's relationship with Marc and the middle sections with Marc's previous relationships. By the end of section nine, I got a full-circle sense that, as Caroline turns over to look at Marc after noticing the ants, she is waiting to hear him say, "I used to eat ants." Then we're back at the beginning with Caroline: "My boyfriend used to eat ants." I got the sense of Marc's cycle of relationships being tragically continuous. Was this your intention?

Tragically continuous...no, I don't think so. That this relationship with Caroline comes full circle in the story, yes. But Marc is still young. One would hope he'd be able to grow, face himself, eventually accept his homosexuality beyond the time described in the story.

Have you ever eaten ants?

No! Never! (unless I accidentally ingested one at some point...)

I noticed that your stories depict American females in exotic settings: St. Germain and Mexico City ("Ants"), Mexico ("Not A Chance" and "Nicaraguan Birds"), and the Yucatan (small section in "The Summer of Zubeyde"). Do you enjoy traveling, and did you place the American female in these settings to create a mood of disorientation and "otherworldliness?" Also, do you use the setting as a foil for the American female characters?

I don't so much enjoy traveling as I do living outside the U.S...I was born in Canada, and have lived in Spain, Mexico City and Paris. As a child I moved around a lot (Vermont, New York State, CT, Massachusetts); my father kept changing jobs. I continued this pattern as a young adult (it seemed the best way to solve problems: just move!) and transferred twice during my college years. On the other hand, I felt very settled for the four years I lived in Mexico City following college, and though less so, for the five after that when I lived in Brooklyn. As for my characters: well, those environments described are ones that I know, and the stories also express the sort of alienation and rootlessness many, particularly young, Americans feel.

Almost all of your narrators and/​or characters are driven by obsession, particularly the narrator of "Honda." Do you think that people in general are driven by different types and degrees of obsession? Or does it just make for an interesting character study?

Are people in general driven by obsession? I don't know. I just know that my characters are: driven by fantasy, the pull of their imagination, fear and desire. I've been told my characters suffer from O.C.D., depression, schizophrenia; that they teeter on the verge of mental illness. Nowadays there is a name for everything. They seem quite normal to me, if a little too swayed by the strength of their inner, as opposed to outer, lives....

Speaking of obsession, the narrators/​characters of some of your stories (particularly "His Sweater," "Radio Disturbance," and "Honda") become so consumed by their obsessions, the boundary lines between reality and dreams begin to blur so much so that we, as readers, want to believe even the most fantastic thoughts of the narrators/​ characters. For those subscribing to the school of "consider the source," in writing each story, is it your goal to focus on the perception of the narrator and how she alters the story's reality?

The story is the narrator's. The world described is hers (with the exception of "Ants," where the world described by the narrator belongs to Marc, her lover). You didn't mention the title story, "Not a Chance." Ultimately, the story is the unnamed narrator's, because how can she really ever know exactly what happened to her lost friend? There is no other reality (though there may well be the suggestion of one) but that told by the narrator. Did the narrator actually go into her therapist's home in "Radio Disturbance"? Or did she just dream/​imagine that she did? I'll let the reader be the judge. And I won't be disappointed in his or her judgment.

As I was reading your book, I found a couple of narrators from different stories to have similar voices, especially the narrators of "Walking" and "His Sweater" and somewhat the narrators of "Dead End" and "Honda." Are there any reoccurring narrators of your stories? If not, is there a similar mood/​ mindset of some of your narrators?

I consider the narrator of "His Sweater" a young cousin, or a younger self, of Melanie in "Honda." She is younger, more naive, less bitter and worldly, but surely just as alienated and cut off from the bonds of community. "Honda" originally started as three separate short-shorts, and "Walking" was one of them. I was encouraged by my writer-reader friends to keep going with these stories, that perhaps they were all of the same narrator. Ultimately, "Walking" did not seem to belong. Such was the genesis of "Honda," which grew to 12 "mini-chapters." I did not consider the young woman of "Dead End" to be the same narrator; she's young, a city-dweller, and more involved in the world. She's just very, very angry.

In the story "Radio Disturbance" the narrator is delusional about her relationship with her therapist. She feels that her therapist exists to validate her life and can't imagine her therapist having a life (husband and children) outside of her office. Is this a comment on the validity of therapy in today's society?

I consider therapy to be valid. That said, there are so many therapists in practice, and so few really good ones. It's a very strange relationship: that of therapist and analysand. The patient is incredibly vulnerable, while the therapist is conferred such power.... The relationship, in the wrong hands, has the capacity to do enormous damage: when boundaries are not respected; when a patient is encouraged to believe her fantasies ('recovered memories'), etc. The relationship interests me enormously, because it is so very strange. I don't think it is explored enough in fiction.

In "The Summer of Zubeyde," is Zubeyde's father the man that the narrator witnesses the death of?

Absolutely not. Her father is somewhere in Yemen: either dead or lost to her. She most likely never knew him. Her mother might have even been raped. Hence, the shame.

Moving back to your form, "Dead End" is arranged as a threat letter. I found this story to be the most experimental, as far as form, of your collection. Where did you get the inspiration to try this approach?

Originally the story was written as a letter interspersed with narration. In a writer's group I was in briefly at the time, I was encouraged to drop the narration. I did, and it seemed to work better. Though it still took me a long time to get the "proper sting" in. I love the form of the letter as story. Barthelme has a great one: "The Sandman;" Benjamin Weissman: "Dear Dead Person;" the Catalan writer, Quim Monzo: "The Letter." But I was introduced to these after I'd written my story. It's a wonderful form for desire and revenge. I had written the same story earlier as a short-short. It came out in my first book,A Robber in the House, and I got my first ever fan-mail as a result of it. Here it is in its entirety:

GUNSHOT
She imagined shooting him. One shot through the back of his head, right beneath his bald spot. Blood spattered on the carpet, formed a sticky mass, round and red. Or she'd send a bullet through the mail. He'd open the white envelope to find a single bullet nestled in the empty pocket. The one meant for his head. Or she'd leave message on his machine: the sound of a gun going off. He'd come home to his one-room apartment, see the blinking red light, switch on the machine before he turned on the lights. And then he'd hear it: a gunshot ripping though the dark of the apartment. The bullet meant for his head. She felt sure he'd get the message.

The title of your book and one of your stories is "Not A Chance." I found that not only does the narrator's friend of "Not A Chance" not have a chance (she lets so many issues, even though she is made uncomfortable by them, slide too easily: the fly on the potatoes, her books that her lover attempts to secretly sell, and her overall relationship with her lover), but almost all of the other characters in the collection also don't have a chance. They are trapped by their secrets and obsessions, stifling their emotional growth. Is this why you chose the this title for your collection?

Yes. It was the title I'd originally wanted, but a friend, a poet and magazine editor, told me it was much too negative; the collection would never get accepted with that title. So I had my agent shopping it around, as I later did on my own, with a different (tamer) title. And it wasn't getting taken. So I went to redo things about it: rearrange the order of the stories, take some out, put others in. A new writer-friend who agreed to look at it for me suggested the title, "Not a Chance." Of course I knew he was right, since it was what I'd first wanted. FC2 took it with that title, and then had me make a few further changes. All for the good.

Who are the writers that influence you most?

Do you mean influenced (in the past)? Because I'm not sure how much we are influenced once our 'writer self' is formed. I think the writers we read as children, and are read to us, are under appreciated as seminal influences. Some of these for me were: Roald Dahl, Rumer Godden, Joan Aiken. As a young adult (when one is still impressionable): Kakfa, Celine, Duras, Dino Buzzati, Anais Nin, Proust. Current favorites: Kazuo Ishiguro, Kenzaburo Oe, J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Harvor, Brian Evenson, Rikki Ducornet.

What are you reading right now?

I recently finished Peter Cameron's novels: The City of Your Final Destination and Andorra. I loved them--yes, I fell in love with these 2 novels.

To some extent, are the narrators of your stories extensions/​representations of yourself?

Here's how it works (for me). My characters often begin with some small aspect or quirk of my personality. It is then magnified 100 or 300-fold. Then comes the question: what would it be like to be out in the world if one were like that?

How do you feel about being published through FC2?

It's been wonderful--in every aspect. From the careful editing of my book, to the proofreading, book design, reviews garnered, book signings and parties....Everyone has been such a pleasure to work with. R.M.Berry, Brenda Mills and Tara Reeser deserve special mention.

What is your best advice for aspiring experimental fiction writers?

Keep writing. Believe in what you do. Don't give in to market pressures. We need new forms and cross-pollination in writing and the arts.

Can you name some FC2 writers that you enjoy reading?

Sure. But I have to be honest: there are a number I still haven't read. Ones whose work I have read and enjoyed are: Cris Mazza, Brian Evenson, JonBaumbach, Peter Spielberg, Susan Sternberg, Lidia Yuknavitch, Kate Bernheimer.

Other than "Not A Chance", I've heard you've written a book called "A Robber in the House." Are you working on another book right now?

Well, yes--actually two. But one will be finished long before the other...The first is a collection of short-short stories (a follow-up I guess to A Robber in the House) while the second is a triptych of novellas. As the very short form comes more naturally to me, involves less sweat and agony, the first will be done long before the second....