Luscious Lit: An Interview with J.A. Tyler

J.A. Tyler is the founding editor of the online quarterly Mud Luscious (2007) and Mud Luscious Press (2008), both venues for “aggressive / experimental writing.” However one defines “aggressive” or “experimental” (see J.A. Tyler’s answer below), since the start, Mud Luscious has been publishing authors known or becoming known for breaking, with method, expectations about form, both on a narrative and sentence level. And with determined consistency, Mud Luscious has been fulfilling its goal featuring such authors as Shane Jones, Ken Sparling, Kendra Grant Malone, Michael Kimball, Elizabeth Ellen and Brian Evenson. And in December 2009, J.A. Tyler will expand his enterprise even further with the publication of MLP’s first perfect-bound novel(la), Molly Gaudry’s WE TAKE ME APART (an excerpt of which was first published as a chapbook). Two other novellas, by Ben Brooks and Sasha Fletcher, are also lined up.

MLP’s most recent development is its announcement this week that in January 1, 2010 it will be putting out an anthology of all 43 of the mini-chapbooks it has published thus far–great news for those who missed out on those pretty little chaps, which sell out, unsurprisingly, almost immediately upon production. (See my piece on the mini-chaps here).

In addition to running all arms of Mud Luscious, J.A. Tyler continues to write and publish his own work. He is the author of the forthcoming novellas Someone, Somewhere (Ghost Road Press, 2009) and In Love With A Ghost (Willows Wept Press, 2010) as well as the chapbooks The Girl In The Black Sweater (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Everyone In This Is Either Dying Or Will Die Or Is Thinking Of Death (Achilles Chapbook Series, 2008). He is also currently publishing his novel(la) The Zoo, A Going online in serialized format.  J.A. Tyler was nice enough to answer some questions I had about MLP, serialization and the non-chronological aspects of film.

The Faster Times: What does “experimental” mean to you? I think it is a term that is overused and has lost some of its meaning in any general sense, or rather has a very person-specific meaning.

J.A. Tyler: true, true, ‘experimental’ is often overused and really doesn’t mean much to readers / writers anymore because of its constant use. for me, it means something that I haven’t seen before, something that hits me as profoundly different – that is why I tend towards describing our work as violent / beautiful / pulsing – I want a text that shatters, that buries me in its lines. and I suppose too that I use ‘experimental’ or sometimes ‘innovative’ in order to scare away the exposition-heavy writers, those who spoon-feed actions / events as if readers are not smart enough to discover what a text is doing. I look to the work of james chapman as well as his fugue state books, jesse ball and blake butler, those writers who aren’t afraid to omit the narrative details in favor of descriptive tones and overall voice, those works that reach into me without pandering, hand-holding, without guiding me as if I am blind.

The digestible text size was a bit like water finding its own level.

TFT: How and why did you start Mud Luscious?

JAT: I started the online portion of Mud Luscious because I wanted a hand in editing. I wanted to read as much new writing as I could and to launch myself into the scene, to make a run at working with authors in every aspect of the lit community. Starting my own venue was a simple and readily available answer to those wants. Mud Luscious then gained readership, and I gained experience, and it seemed that print was smart way to expand, so we did, bringing on the chapbook series and now branching into our novel(la) series.

TFT: Your press has a very unique quality. The mini-chapbooks are simple but extraordinarily beautiful and have a unique look. How did you come up with the idea to publish the chapbooks and the particular length of the fiction you publish?

JAT: One Story was a start, but reading their work felt a bit mechanical to me – the texts were lacking the edge I wanted for our series and the production, while high quality, seemed a little less human than we wanted. Futuretense was also a place that showed me, very simply, that beautiful and stirring lit can be made of staples and paper and nothing else. The last factor was that I wanted to produce something that I could do for little expense, at my kitchen table, and yet bring something big into the literary world. The digestible text size was a bit like water finding its own level, and it has been fast forward since then.

TFT: While all the writing I’ve read from the various writers you publish is distinct, there’s a quality that is discernibly “mud luscious” in feel, which is natural, I think, for any good press. How did you begin finding the writers for Mud Luscious? And do you solicit or do you accept unsolicited writing, or both?

JAT: Thanks. I do hope that our writers, collectively, amount to a kind of immeasurable aesthetic – so feeling that in reading our authors is a great compliment. With the online component, issue zero – when no one knew us – was entirely solicited; we wanted to hit the ground running. Since then, we have not solicited anything for any other online issues. As for the chapbook series, I solicit about 1/3 of our volumes and the rest come from the submissions pool. The novel(la)s at this point are mostly works that I have either solicited in part or in full, but new queries are always accepted and read with interest. We have never closed to submissions of any kind and are happy to continue that tradition.

TFT: How many chapbooks do you publish per print-run? And have you ever done a second printing?

JAT: Our first three titles were printed in editions of less than 50 – the next 20 or so had to be increased to 75-100 to accommodate sales – and now, with this latest stretch, we print at least 100 to make sure we can meet demand. We have never done second printings of an individual chapbook, but our new anthology MLP [ FIRST YEAR ] is the second printing of each of our first 43 volumes in one collection – so now they are all wrapped together and fit nicely on the shelf.

And yes, I assume it was fun – must have been great to witness Blake Butler destroying those copies of Scorch Atlas.

TFT: What are Stamp Stories and how can I get them?

JAT: Stamp Stories was an idea we had to foster a more collaborative spirit between indie presses – I wanted people to buy from all of these great presses – I read their work and I love them – so I thought what better enticement than to get some sort of micro mud luscious story distributed for free with these other presses. So we solicited authors to pen 50 word stories, we print them on 1×1 cardstock, ship a load of one particular story to an indie press and have them distribute that story as they see fit. Think lit baseball cards – order from all these cool presses and collect the Stamp Stories that come along for the ride. You can see the full current listing on our website – and any order from those presses should yield a Stamp Story tucked away somewhere inside, a kind of buried lit treasure.

TFT: I recently purchased Scorch Atlas from Featherproof and was pleasantly surprised to get along with it one of your chapbooks. I like the idea of small presses working together in this way. Are there any such upcoming collaborations in the works?

JAT: The chapbook with Scorch Atlas was most likely A Field of Colors by Charles Lennox, a volume that we gave away to every single person who emailed us anytime during the month of June, 2009. We wanted to get that Lennox story out there to everyone – an mlp chapbook for anyone who asked – and we ended up sending that title to a dozen different countries and nearly every state, over 400 copies when all were shipped. But as stories go, this one continues: the wonderful Peter Cole at Keyhole Magazine / Books contacted us about including A Field of Colors with their then current Keyhole volume. We agreed and made more copies. And I believe what copies did not go with Keyhole took a van trip with the Dollar Store Reading Series, distributed widely there, and then the last copies ended up shipping eventually with Scorch Atlas. Quite a journey.

We also, way back when, collaborated with Publishing Genius Press by making extra copies of Shane Jones’ Black Kids in Lemon Trees to ship with the first twenty-five pre-orders of Light Boxes.

And, looking ahead, we have plans to distribute a handful of free copies of David Peak’s Museum of Fucked, the first chapbook release from the newly established Warm Milk Printing Press (Ben Spivey, Jennifer Whitley, Kyle Whitley). Who knows what else, but we are always open to work with another press – we love collaboration.

TFT: Did you take a van trip with the Dollar Store Reading Series, or did the chapbooks alone take that trip? And if you did, that must have been a fun time.

JAT: To clarify: I did not take a trip with the Dollar Store Reading Series, Charles Lennox’s A Field of Colors took a trip with the Dollar Store Reading Series and hopefully found its way into the hands of many readers. And yes, I assume it was fun – must have been great to witness Blake Butler destroying those copies of Scorch Atlas.

TFT: The Zoo, A Going, a “novel(la)” which is forthcoming from Sunnyoutside Press, is currently being published in serialized form, 76 pieces over 76 days, on the internet. What are the pros and cons of publishing it this way?

JAT: There is a portion of this ms coming out from Sunnyoutside Press as a 2010 chapbook, but I decided that I wanted to do some sort of quick serialization, a la stephen elliot’s lending library project, or shya scanlon’s FORECAST – mostly to see how it would be received, if people would follow it along, and how this kind of publication might work. The pros are that it is free to read and nicely pressurized I think, since each piece is only posted for 24 hrs. The cons are the time consumption of loading each individual text into a blog, missing people who want to read but come to the party too late, and of course giving away your lit for free, though that is certainly something I am happy to do if it means more readers of my work, even if only a handful at a time.

TFT: Have you gotten a sense for whether or not people have been following along? What kind of feedback have you gotten? You’ve done it slightly differently than Shya or Steven. You’ve been posting a chapter of your work on one site, and taking each post down after 24 hours. Whereas Shya’s is published on a variety of websites and will be up for the duration of the period of Forecast 42 Project, and well Stephen’s project consisted of physical books being sent around to participants. But Shya’s and Stephen’s are meant to be read straight through, whereas your work seems to be digestible in independent sections.

JAT: I really have no sense of how many folks have been reading, but there have been good comments on quite a few of the pieces and some nice publicity around the blogs / sites as well. Mostly though, Shya and Steven just made me think about how I could somehow introduce an entire ms to the reading public in some sort of free venue. And I made it a brief encounter (the 24 hr. post of each segment) so that the overall ms was not pinned online absolutely or at any loss for future print consideration.

Plus Kimball is a badass, you know how it goes.

TFT: Your life story was written on a postcard by Michael Kimball as part of a writing project he’s doing where he writes life stories on postcards. In your postcard life story, it said: J. A. watches tons of movies and loves the non-chronological aspects of film. Is this connected in any way to what was said further down on the postcard: It should also be mentioned that a lot of people have died during J. A.’s lifetime and that the older he gets the more he thinks about it. It is frightening that we are always aging. This is a leading question.

JAT: Yes I suppose so – nice lead – I just find myself drawn to death in so much of my writing, and I believe it comes from an overwhelming sub-conscious focus on that aspect of life. And movies find their way in because a movie, though it is mostly presented chronologically, is almost always filmed out of order – and I like to think of making writing and language work that way: out of order but in the end creating a whole and engaging narrative.

TFT: What is one of your favorite films? If any of them is a documentary, preferably list the documentary. This is a question that reveals bias.

JAT: I just recently saw the documentary I Like Killing Flies – how fascinating to see this family and how they live and how they approach moving on, growing older, changing times, etc. Plus they say motherfucker like it is going out of style. And, in relation to your earlier Michael Kimball mention, I am so looking forward to seeing I Will Smash You – the clips roaming online have me super intrigued. Plus Kimball is a badass, you know how it goes.

TFT: Now that you mention I Will Smash You, I’ll say Michael Kimball is a badass. He smashed a lot of stuff in I Will Smash You. And now I have to ask: if you could choose one item to smash what would it be?

JAT: I would love to smash anything made of glass, the more glass the better, I love the way it shatters.

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Images:

1) Cover of J.A. Tyler’s first chapbook EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING OF DEATH (Retouched photograph of Angela Landsbury) courtesy of Sam Pink.

2) Home photograph of J.A. Tyler (right, before discovering the non-chronological aspects of film)