Part II of the Erik's Choice interview with Michael Angelo Tata. Photo: MAT with his Mom and Sunni, a stuffed chicken, on Christmas Day 2010 (Courtesy MAT).
EC: What have you been into lately, textually?
MAT: I’ve been on a Wittgenstein binge lately—I think what got me into it was that I was writing a piece about poet Charles Bernstein for the forthcoming Salt Companion to his work, and coming back into contact with his love of Wittgenstein inspired me to give Ludwig another go, now that all the poets have forgotten about him. To be specific, I’m reading The Blue and Brown Notebooks. Their style is so anti-philosophical, even diaristic: rambly, anecdotal and immediate. I’m hooked. They also provide many crucial insights into his published writings and into the divergence of his thought from Logic and Analytic Philosophy and its embracing of the problems of ordinary language in all its gorgeous cacophonousness.
EC: What types of texts do you like to read and who are some of your fave, most inspiration-inducing writers?
MAT: I love reading poetry, philosophy and psychoanalysis--Ted Berrigan, James Schuyler, Jean-Paul Sartre, Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, all the stuff that gives you a migraine. Then of course there’s physics and evolutionary bio—Brian Greene, Albert Einstein, Michio Kaku, Lynn Margulis, Humberto Maturana. Within fiction, which has influenced my structural choices immeasurably, even outside the realm of the prosodic, there’s Jane Austen and Marcel Proust, bitches on wheels if ever there were bitches on wheels. They both taught me so much about syntax, especially about how to encode attitude into it, how to put it to the service of triple entendre and keep it coiled tightly, every word spring-loaded and overdetermined. Proust especially fired me up: who would have thought a sentence could go on for so long, and still be respectable? After Marcel, I was ruined for sure.
EC: Are you working on new texts or other works?
MAT: As usual, I have a few projects going. Poetically, I have been working on a series of numbered zeroes: the series is tentatively called Sweet Nothings, and it focuses on the little pools of nothingness that perforate the everyday. The poems are elaborately lyrical, even to the point of absurdity, and in many ways use what Keats called the Egotistical Sublime as counterpoint to the impersonality and cold procedurality of so much Language School poetry. I’ve also completed my first novel, Scattering Brightly. It’s pretty much a pomo picaresque about the tangled life of a dumpster baby left outside Studio 54. Lastly, I’m nearly done with the sequel to my Warhol book. It’s called Andy Warhol II: Inescapable Da_sein, with Da-sein’s hyphen becoming the cursor’s underscore. It’s a little grammatical trick I’m using to reinforce the notion that Warhol’s work redefines the ‘thereness’ of Heidegger’s ‘being-there’ in terms of mechanism and virtuality. Oh—and I promised Black Camera a piece about Sapphire’s use of the word ‘cuntbucket’ in her Push. That is gonna be loads of fun to develop.
EC: The hardest part of writing is . . .
MAT: The hardest part of writing is not-writing. Stopping. Putting the words away. Being-silent.
EC: Can you give us some kind words of advice about writing and publishing?
MAT: Just keep on going, no matter what. Keep track of who inspires you, and follow their work relentlessly. Reading is as important as writing: you have to consume to produce, as biological gaucherie would have it. Try your stuff out on friends and family. And don’t take rejection personally—use it as an occasion to learn what about your work people actually do like, and then capitalize upon it.
EC: What’s your approach to promoting Andy Warhol: Sublime Superficiality?
MAT: Because smaller presses do not have the widest net of distribution, you have to be inventive. Make lists of all the people you’d like to read what you wrote, and if they’re alive, have your publisher get them a copy. That’s what I did with Danto, and I was shocked to learn that he not only read the book, but loved it, and wanted to help promote it. He was kind enough to put out a call on Facebook, which was quite surreal, and he got it reviewed by the Journal of Aesthetics at Temple by his colleague David Carrier. I was also fortunate enough to have a literary PR guru from Sizzle, San Diego give me loads of advice about how to build up my Amazon author profile, develop some guerrilla marketing concepts, and other helpful tidbits. My friend who dances at the Penthouse Club in NYC is actually supposed to YouTube herself reading my book while up on the pole—I am so praying this happens! I’m hoping to involve Krystal Something Something and Ultra Violet in the campaign, if I can lure them in.
EC: How can interested folks acquire a copy of Andy Warhol?
MAT: The best place to go is www.intertheory.org: just look for the image of the Empire State Building, and click away. You can also check out my profile at Amazon.com by typing my name into the search engine. Or, you can go to my company page, www.ipublishingllc.com, where there’s links to my work, as well as to all the advertising stuff I do to bring home the bacon, as Andy liked to say. Only now it’s turkey bacon—European denim is not exactly roomy!
Today's Rune: Defense.
http://intertheory.org/warhol.htm
2 comments:
I'm with you on the evolutionary stuff. Been reading a lot of that lately.
Both Part I & II of your interview are very engaging. I like what Tata says about writing: "Reading is as important as writing: you have to consume to produce ..." He's spot on with his observations.
Post a Comment