David Keenan is a Scottish novelist who is appearing at WORD Christchurch which starts on 23 August. Books editor Claire Mabey spoke to him about channeling characters, tarot and why he would never take a writing class.

Claire Mabey: The words avant-garde and experimental are often used to describe your novels. I wondered if that’s how you see them? Are you writing in an avant-garde tradition?

David Keenan: Well, I mean, I’m a big fan of a lot of avant-garde literature, but no, I don’t particularly think of my novels as being experimental. I mean, I’m not writing Finnegan’s Wake, by any means. I think that 20th century literature was exciting as it was filled with possibilities. I still think there’s so much that can be done with the novelistic form, so I think that I’m just doing what novels did in the 20th century. 

I’m still very interested in narrative, but one thing that I am trying to do with my novels is to approach the quality of music: there’s a musicality to them. And I guess that one of the things that maybe separates my novels is that they’re not novels of ideas, at all. I never start a book trying to put forward an idea, ever. My books are never there to make points. I think if your book is about making a point, once you’ve got to that point, your book is over. I think my books are beyond ideas. So for me, it’s like an act of faith. I start writing to see what wants to speak, you know, and if it was as simple as an idea, I would be disappointed. I always think if you can kind of sum up your book easily in a sentence then maybe you should just leave it, maybe we don’t need the book to get to that point? 

That’s a refreshing approach. I loved your novel Xstabeth – particularly the disciples or the devotees, the followers of the book, woven through the story, trying to make sense of the core text. But, speaking of ideas… where did Xstabeth come from?  

Well, the honest answer is I don’t know. With my first two books, This Is Memorial Device and For The Good Times, there’s something explicable about them. I always knew I would write a book of gratitude, about growing up in a small town and discovering art and music and the brave people that made art in a small town. And I always knew that at some point, I would write about young men during The Troubles because that’s how my father and his brothers grew up. I always loved their language. They were people who couldn’t read or write but they had an amazing way of telling stories, so I always knew my book would be about young, illiterate men growing up at that time. But those are the only books I’d ever mapped out. 

But after those books I took a break from that, and began writing books that had no point, genuinely no point to make. So what happened with Xstabeth is that a good friend of mine, the late Andrew Weatherall, a DJ, was thinking about starting up a publishing company called Convenanza named after the festival that he put together every year in Carcassonne in the south of France. He asked if I had anything that may be interesting to be the first book. I began looking through my hard drive and I came across Xstabeth. When I began reading it, I had no memory at all of writing it, genuinely no memory. I mean, I’m pretty sure it was me. That I was present when that book was written, but the actual specifics of putting it together or, or even living in that voice…

So it really appeared to me like a magical book. William Blake has this idea of prophetic books. I’m a huge Blakehead, but always slightly misunderstood what Blake meant by prophetic because I mistakenly took the idea of a prophecy. I thought that prophetic works were books looking into the future. But what I’ve come to understand is that prophetic books, are books literally spoken out of the air. They’re like dictation, you become this scribe. I always compare my role to Metatron, the angel that stands on the right hand side of God and takes down what happens. So I’m just basically taking down everything that happens. Xstabeth in a way is almost like giving a name to the entity that was generated in that book. 

It’s an extraordinary book. I read it in one sitting and had never read anything like it before. 

It’s amazing for me, too. But I mean, it’s interesting. You said it talks about the disciples who are basically trying to decipher the text using quite different approaches. Well, that’s me. That’s me also, because I’m still trying to decipher that text. I actually started rereading Xstabeth because I’m trying to find out what it’s about and what’s going on. William Blake’s work is as alive today as it ever was because these things are like organic systems, or entities. And I think one of the reasons they stay alive is because they’re not making a simple point that you’re going to get to the bottom of. They’re living entities that seem to shapeshift and change according to where you are in your life when you’re reading them. So I continually go back to my own books, and find a lot of revelation in them. I always hear about writers who say, “Oh, I can’t, I could never read my own books. I could never sit through it and once they’re done, they’re done.” And I always think well then don’t fucking inflict them on someone else! You can’t push through it and yet you expect someone else to? No, all my books are never done, because there was no point to be made. 

I was curious about the comment made in Xstabeth about naivety, how important it is. Is that something you believe, as an artist?

Yeah, I am totally naive. I mean, I could never teach a creative writing class because I wouldn’t know what to tell everyone because I don’t really bring any skills to the table except listening. Ultimately, I’m always trying to get out of the way of the story and let it speak without me involved whatsoever. But yeah, I think naivety is the enlightened state. I think you weigh everything equally. In Xstabeth the father is a beautiful, naive character but he’s caught up in an identity as an artist. And for me I think the whole point is to try to cure yourself of art and walk out the other side of it, which is what is attempting to happen in Xstabeth. But Aneliya, who is the central character, has a much more artistic approach to life in general. She is genuinely naive: she asks these incredibly endearing, obvious questions all the way through – she’s just very open. She’s open to experience and I think that state of naivety is the one I probably aspire to and also live in a lot myself, especially when it comes to the making of my own art.

I love openness. All my books are attempts to say yes. Can you say yes to everything? I don’t mean to say yes to, like, having fun. I mean can you say yes to suffering? Can you say yes to every aspect of your life? The yes that life asks you is the yes in everything. The characters in my books are struggling or attempting to say this great yes. 

We talked about experimental fiction, and, perhaps as you know, the ending Ulysses is the line “Yes I said I will yes.” I think that’s amazing after this huge avant garde novel. Boom, that the final demand that the book makes of the characters and of you is to say yes. I hate cynicism. It’s really fucking easy to say no. But it’s very very difficult to say yes to everything. But that’s what I tend to do in my life. And in my books they’re all begging, Yes, even in the face of difficulty and the suffering and violence and all these things. Can you say yes in the face of that, because that’s what life demands. I’d like to think that my novel, all my books are big yeses, even in the face of suffering. I’d like to think my novels are as big as life itself, that we’re all we’re up to life, that we are capable of that, and can create in the face of all these difficulties.

That’s what makes your novels experiences: the shape of them, the syntax, they do impress a sort of flow that feels like the book is mimicking the patterns of natural, fragmented speech and thought. Are there specific 20th century novelists who you draw upon as influences? 

Well, I don’t draw on anyone. I don’t read for inspiration for writing. I read to enjoy other writers. I try to clear my head when I write so I’m never thinking of any writers. I’m never even thinking of conventional syntax. I’m not even thinking of the traditional structure of a novel. When I’m writing I’m trying to get down this voice that is speaking in all its eccentricity and all its rhythms. 

I can tell you novelists that I love, like the novelist Clarice Lispector. Agua Viva is probably my favourite book of all time. Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano is huge for me. I’m a huge fan of 20th century poetry, especially people like Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan, and Jack Spicer. You know, I’m fans of all these people, and I read them as fans, but I count them as spiritual compatriots, especially someone like Clarice, who I feel very close to in my heart. Lispector said in one of her books that is is the only word you can trust and I said that in one of my books before I’d ever read her work. So I realised we’re at the same place. My writing is non representational: it doesn’t stand in for something else. It is not standing in for an idea, it is not making a metaphor, it is not pointing you to somewhere else. And so I love to hear that when you talk about how the sentences transport you. 

I learned this from 20th century poetics, that there are combinations of word and syntax and rhythm that can transport objects through time, and place. I really believe it’s comparable to magic. And I think if you can catch that rhythm, and those words, and that magic syntax, then you are there, you are in the presence of the thing in itself. 

If you’re a writer and you’re writing a passage, and you feel that you’re writing a description, well, then that’s all you’re doing. You’re merely describing something, you’re not presenting the thing itself. So I don’t describe things. I’m not one of these modernists who has lost faith in language at all. I have complete faith in language. I believe that these are the magical building blocks of a reality. 

But my books aren’t stories. I am really fucking sick of stories. And there’s always that sort of condescending sort of pat on the head thing where people in literature are always talking about, we need more stories. Your story is important. And I want to say who gives a fuck about your story. Your story in itself is uninteresting. The quota of suffering that you experienced in your life is banal! Everyone experiences suffering. Everyone has a story. Everyone has been wronged. Everyone has had struggles in their life. That does not make it interesting. It’s the way we tell the stories. We do not need more stories. But we need better storytellers of the stories. That’s where the magic is, not the story itself. I think it’s Edna O’Brien who said that story and plot is what you grow out of in your teenage years.

That makes me wonder about the relationship between books and their readers. What are your books to you? What is a book without a reader?

Well, I’ve written a lot of books that I haven’t published. I don’t think that every one of my books requires readers. There are probably four or five books on my hard drive that will never be published because they were more spiritual exercises for myself. But for other books I feel like I make a pact with the voice of the book. In a way, it’s almost like a sort of demon. I say OK, demon, I’ll write this book with your inspiration, and when I’m done I’ll send you out there to have a life of your own. I love to talk to other people about those books because quite often, I will have a revelation when people will say something about them and I’ll have never have put those things together. So I think they are entities that need to go out and have a life. They’re books to be experienced. Like music. What’s a piece of music about? It’s about the experience of music itself. I talk about my books aspiring to the status of music, and there’s that classic quote about not being able to dance about architecture. That’s bullshit. I think dancing to my books is probably the greatest response I could ever have. 

That sounds like a collaboration waiting to happen with a choreographer.

Wow, you know, I don’t really know a lot about dance but it’s something I do want to get involved in. It’s pure affirmation. I got to a point in my life where I realised, well, am I going to spend my whole life swapping out all these ideas for new ideas? That just seemed like madness. I’m not a seeker anymore in my life. I’m not looking for anything. I’m interested in what is. I think the world is sick with ideas. I got into dance pretty late through people like my editor, and I still remember the first time I had ecstasy to acid house at a music festival. It was amazing. I felt like it changed my DNA and now dance music speaks to me in a whole different way. 

I feel like this is a good time to talk about tarot. Your books seem to me to be a constant negotiation of symbols and meaning making. I love reading the tarot and know that you have done a tarot book, and you use a tarot reading almost as a structural tool in The Ministry of Light & Sound. Is the tarot a storytelling tool for you? 

I can’t understand why any novelist wouldn’t be fascinated by the tarot in a way, because when you’re doing tarot reading, you’re dropping these symbols and coming up with a story. My inspiration for tarot comes more from probably 20th century avant garde poetry. Charles Olson says, whatever happens in this moment, has the character of this moment. That totally blew me away, it explains tarot, because tarot, when you turn the cards, they have the character of the moment. So what the skill of the tarot reader is to read the moment. 

And you know, everyone’s reading the moment. This is what human beings do. They’re always saying, what are the possibilities? What’s going on? What’s there? What are they up to? What could happen here? What may be about to happen next? So imagine if you had this repeating grammar, or archetypes that operate in everyone’s lives suddenly opening everyone’s psyche? You have a grammar with which to accurately read the moment. But that, to me, seems to require no supernatural explanation whatsoever. 

Yes, I have never really thought of them as divination at all. I’ve always just thought of it as a way to create a channel between you and the other person. I love reading for other people because it’s surprising, and often emotional. The unfolding is so similar to a novel.

Yeah, totally. I agree. It’s, as you said, it’s not a predictive thing. But a possibility. We’re reading the possibilities of the moment. I never bring my decks to festivals anymore, (I will bring them to New Zealand) because you get no peace – everyone wants their cards read! But like you said, it’s amazing to read for people. I have had so many incredible experiences and intimate, emotional, revelatory moments. Two people asked each other to marry them after one reading. I think because you get intimate with someone who’s a complete stranger. 

Does writing feel like that for you? I imagine that it fluctuates from book to book and passage to passage but is writing for you a joy, or painful, all the things? 

It’s hard to answer because there’s no separation. There’s no person to report back and experience what it was like, because that person has been subsumed by the voice of that book in that moment. So I think the reason I can write books that I don’t remember writing because I’m not really present. And the writing is no longer a person and an experience. It’s a sort of thing that’s happening that doesn’t involve a sort of observer. I mean, what it feels like, honestly, is books are writing themselves, and it’s an amazing feeling because I’ll write, I’ll stop and I’ll read back and I will be like, well, how did that happen? Where did that come from? How can this possibly all be coherent? Without a single organising thought, in my head? 

That sounds like you’re describing a supernatural happening… 

I’m wary of using terms like supernatural because it’s real. It’s just like a real experience and a zone that you can enter into as an artist. But I think it’s that goal of so many spiritual practices, to get to this kind of egoless state. It’s a yogic moment where the presence of me is no longer there because it’s an experience of complete union, and it’s experience of the union with the voice of the Muse. My books report back from this terrain that we can access. Blake talks about what he calls the Mansions of Eternity, and that when he’s making it feels like this landscape, this eternal wordscape.

Is that why you returned to this specific place, Airdrie, in The Industry of Magic & Light? Was the muse not done with you there? 

Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I started writing this book, as soon as I’d written that fourth paragraph about the caravan, I was like, wait this caravan is in Airdrie. And this seems like the generation before This Is Memorial Device. And then I began to get excited because I began to think, well, who’s going to show up? I can’t force anything to happen. But near the end of the book at that festival at the Battle of Catherine Park, I realised that Sinew Singer was going to turn up who was the 50s rock star in This Is Memorial Device, and I was like, he’s here! And I got excited. But then Mary Hannah shows up and she’s Sinew Singer’s daughter and I wept! I wept to see Mary Hannah as a young girl because I had no idea that Singer was a father or that she was going to show up. And that’s the only glimpse I got of her.

And there’s another example of that in Monument Maker. The narrator is going to visit a woman who he’s fallen in love with who is a sculptor in secret. And I’d never put two and two together at this point. So he goes to see her. And I open the door of the garage and I walk in and it’s fucking Mary Hannah! I was like oh please, hang around! Spend some time. She only hung around for 5000 words and then she fucked off again, which is so Mary. But I was so touched and blessed to spend the pages I did get to spend with her. 

These characters are alive. I’m not a puppet master. This idea comes from creative writing classes (I have never been to a creative writing class, I despise the things) they say that even if your characters don’t understand their own motivation you as the writer must. That is fucked up. I mean, now that’s really puppet master shit. What person understands anyone’s motivation? What person understands their own? I refuse all that crap. I watch my characters behave in all sorts of crazy ways. I mean, often they’ll let you down. Or they’ll do something that makes you ask why the fuck did you do that? Now I have to deal with the repercussions of that. But I never judge them, ever. I forgive them no matter what they do. I understand that they’re struggling as much as any other human being or person. I try to love all the characters, regardless of how badly or poorly they behave, and take them seriously as human beings and not as, again, my characters are not representational, do not stand in for ideas, they are entities, organisms, living people.

It’s refreshing to hear you speak like that. Do you have more advice for writers?

The one thing that got me on the road to being a writer was my first novel. It was really fucking awful. It was so bad. Every cliché you could possibly imagine, it was absolutely dreadful. And I got to the point where I was like, you know what, this is worthless, this is worthless, you’re a cliché, you will never be a writer. This is the worst crap of all time. But then I caught myself and I was like, wait a minute. This is the moment where everyone gives up. This is the moment where they say, Oh, this is crap, I’m not going to be able, and they just give up. So I was like, this means more to me, I’m not gonna give up. So as I took a vow. I said to myself, don’t give up on this terrible book, complete this terrible book, finish this worthless book, take it to the end, give yourself a year, and finish this book. But once you finish the book, take a vow right now, once this worst ever novel is completed, you will destroy it. So you will write this book in the full knowledge that you’re writing hopelessly. At the end, this book will be destroyed. 

So I deleted the manuscript from my computer. I actually smashed my laptop using a hammer, so it can never be recovered, to rationalise the destruction of my first book. And then I started again, and the next book I wrote was This Is Memorial Device. Because I think I cured myself of all the clichéd ideas of what a book should be. I exorcised it in a personal, ritual destruction and that allowed me to start again, completely fresh. So that made me thing the one thing you do need as a writer is the ability to write hopelessly. You have to convince yourself that you’re writing for the right reasons. I was writing for the art itself. 

David Keenan is appearing in a three events at WORD Christchurch between 23 – 27 August. You can purchase his books at Unity Books Auckland and Wellington.