Happy September everybody…
And thanks to all of you who have registered for this labor of love of mine. It’s refreshing and encouraging as a writer to see so much interest in cutting-edge literature and Latino writers, considering how “out the door” reading (in general) is considered during these times of “digital dependence”.
Trebor Healey, who is gracing the cover of the September 1 issue of Ambiente, has been writing for a long time and is one of the first “independently minded” writers I met before embarking to Southern California and Baja Mexico Norte in 2004, to finish my self-published novel, Buzz and Israel, in imaginary exile. Trebor and I have continued to keep in touch and have had the unusual luck of running into each other in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Portland, Oregon, and New York.
Trebor agreed to chat about his favorite Latino writers, editing the breakthrough volume Queer and Catholic and more…
As published in Ambiente http://www.ambiente.us
Queer and Catholic editor Trebor Healey’s Perfect Scars
Writer, poet, and Queer and Catholic (Routledge, 2008) coeditor Trebor Healey’s debut novel Through It Came Bright Colors (Haworth, 2003) followed the melancholy and eye-opening rite of passage of Neill Cullane, a sensitive and withdrawn young man whose brother has been diagnosed with cancer. Through this experience Neill meets a punk/radical thinker who has also been diagnosed with cancer, Vince. Vince and Neill become doomed lovers, meeting in private at Vince’s San Francisco “junkie” hotel room, where their dynamic relationship unravels.
Through It Came Bright Colors was followed by the poetry collection Sweet Son of Pan (Suspect Thoughts, 2006) and Rebel Satori Press has recently republished Trebor’s short story collection A Perfect Scar (2009). Trebor lives in Los Angeles and agreed to answer some questions regarding his new fiction collection and the groundbreaking, iconoclastic volume Queer and Catholic, which I highly recommend to any LGBT person who has experienced the painful condemnation Catholic culture has unleashed on us for being who we are.
CV: You co-edited the impressive volume Queer and Catholic (Taylor and Francis, 2008), which broke new ground in queer academia. How does your Catholic upbringing inform your fiction writing? As a Latino reader (and fellow ex-Catholic) I found myself entranced by your depictions of Mexican towns and religious ritual and artifact.
TH: One of the reasons I did that book is because I think one’s Catholic upbringing does inform one’s image base if you will, and to some extent, one’s world view. I globbed onto Kerouac when I was young because of his Catholic imagery and always wanted to explore how Catholicism influenced writers—especially queer writers. On the one hand, I value the very old world poetry and philosophy of Catholic culture, which is so unlike the predominantly Protestant American culture, but I also disdain the cynical abuse of catholic theology that destroys lives through apathy, alcohol, sexual abuse and fascism (the full flowering of catholic shadow). For those who shake it off, it makes for very good comedy and for those who connect to its earthy, pagan subculture it’s quite beautiful and profound.
CV: You mentioned that you wanted to “explore how Catholicism influenced [queer] writers”—what’s the verdict now that the collection is done and published?
TH: Well, I was really amazed how varied the influence was. For some, it provided a sort of mythic ancient framework that they morphed into their own queer world view (Pansy Bradshaw, Nora Nugent, Charlie Vázquez). For those folks, it seems they were reading between the lines at a young age that Catholicism was in essence a highly erotic queer pagan religion that was just subtle about its queerness, but blatantly erotic. Some were even motivated to remain in the church and change it from within (Jane Grovijahn’s amazing essay on the body of Christ). Many were somewhat embittered or felt betrayed or like a bad joke had been played on them, which often led to a humorous take on the absurdity of it all once they got wise to the game (Tom Spanbauer, Austin J. Austin). And for others it resulted in a deepening of their “Catholicness” that was queerer and more inclusive (Anthony Easton). Catholic does mean universal, so in some sense, any homophobia in the church is essentially heretical. What I saw in all the essays was a sense that there were some good things to keep—or perhaps a weird sort of nostalgia for a beautiful corrupt artifice—from the experience (or culture) and some to throw away, but overall one was Catholic like one comes from a particular culture. You can take the queer out of Catholicism, but you can’t wholly take the Catholicism out of the queer.
CV: Are you aware of Queer and Catholic’s being used in any particular institutions of higher learning?
TH: I know they’re using it at Wesleyan and Western Montana State, last I heard, but not sure where else.
CV: I fondly remember reading your debut novel Through It Came Bright Colors back in 2004. Some of the short stories in A Perfect Scar evoke a similar mood and sentiment; a dark San Francisco-based, AIDS-battered subculture inhabited by magical and desperate characters dealing with very serious problems—things I doubt your “average” American could even imagine. Are you drawn to struggling people, as bases for character building in your stories?
TH: Oh yeah, I think people in crisis show their true colors—it brings out the best and worst in someone and their essential character. I like people with a sense of nobility, trying to do the right thing, aspiring to being a good solid person and then meeting with folly and all bets are off. This can be tragic, comic or tragicomic. My novel was fairly solemn about all this, but in my short stories in A Perfect Scar I really tried to be a little more comic than in the novel, as I think it makes for a more exciting and entertaining story, while still offering something profound and meaty. Half the stories in the collection are comedies, while the other half deals with fairly dark things, people ominously up against their edge.
CV: Were the stories in A Perfect Scar written around the same time (as the novel) moving forward, and were they written with the intent of being a collection?
TH: They were all written after the novel, and two of them actually began as novels, one of which I’ve since completed (Faun). The others were a way of writing about all sorts of things I was interested in, without writing a whole novel about each one. I’ve really come to like writing short stories and usually I send them off to anthologies, so I never had any intention of doing a collection. But now I think a short story collection is a great way of introducing oneself as a writer because you can show all these different aspects of your writing and your interests, which isn’t really possible via one novel. I constantly pick up short story collections now as a way to familiarize myself with a writer. If I like their stories, I’ll usually go on to like their novels.
CV: I was very humored by the story “Captain Jinx”. Your portrayal of an Irish immigrant woman living in the United States was cleverly layered. Does being a queer man give you an advantage in being better able to dispense with gender expectations—to open up and feel the character as if she were you?
TH: Yeah, I’d say so. I grew up in a family of four boys, all of them jocks, so it was all about gender and proving I was a “boy” as opposed to a “girl” in their conventional standards vis-à-vis gender. I’ve always felt the two-spirit idea made a lot of sense, so that’s how I experience my own gender. I am very much Constance from “Captain Jinx”, the Irish maid, not only because she feels like the kind of woman I would have been in 1890, but because my family is full of old Irish aunts and their stories about how their grandmothers and aunts came over from Ireland as maids. These ladies were mostly tough and scrappy and the men around them were generally buffoonish, drunken louts and miscreants, so the story was a way of digesting and recreating all of that the best I could. I really have to thank Stuart Timmons (author of Gay L.A.) for that story, as he was doing research for his book and kept feeding me these great stories about 19th century queer life in Los Angeles. Captain Jinx was a real woman who passed as a cowboy and I developed a crush on her.
CV: As an editor and prolific poet and author, what do you suspect the future will bring for queer writing—fiction and non-fiction—as reading seems to be declining and with the publishing industry in a semi-crisis?
TH: There will always be those hardcore queer book fans—that’s a small, but strong market. But with trends in publishing it doesn’t look great right now. I try to remain optimistic, but I think the large media companies controlling publishing is not good for literature at all, queer or otherwise. Small presses are where it’s at for art and lit and I think that’s how it’s going to continue in the future. And that will keep queer lit alive. I think there will continue to be mainstream gay stuff—just look at TV and film—but the edgier stuff is moving to other places. This might be a silver lining—I mean look what’s happening in film and music—internet niche marketing is huge and it’s growing.
CV: Do you have any favorite Latino writers and what do you admire about their work?
TH: My favorite poetry has always been Spanish-language poetry—and I like it for its imagination and connection to the earth—not just that term ‘magical realism,’ but the comfort with magic and spirit that is so lacking in American lit. Juan Rulfo and Octavio Paz and Sor Juana from Mexico; Neruda of course. I like Ana Castillo—So Far From God had a big influence on me and on my own voice. Garcia Marquez of course and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima. More recently, from right here in L.A.: Guadalajara-born Salvador Plascencia’s People of Paper is an amazing book. And of course, I love the poetry of Emanuel Xavier and his vibrant queer poetic voice. Jaime Cortez put together a great anthology of queer Latino lit I recommend: Virgins, Guerrillas, and Locas. I’m hoping he does another.
You know, to get back to Queer & Catholic, I often feel that being Catholic, I am drawn toward Latino lit and it’s closer to me somehow than the predominantly Protestant American lit. I always notice a Catholic voice right away: Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Louise Erdrich, John Rechy. I just read Our Lady of the Assassins by Fernando Vallejo, an awesome book and movie. I’m heading to Argentina soon and I’m on a reading bender of Argentines: Aira my favorite so far and I like Borges’ poetry and the novels of Sabato.
CV: Why is it important for queer people to support queer writers and literature in general? Imagine that you’re trying to convince a queer non-reader why they should explore queer literature.
TH: Well I never ask people to support it just for political reasons. I just ask them to look at it and they always find something that they like that they didn’t know was there, since they’re inundated with the usual hetero marketing stream. My main argument to a non-reader is to point out what they’re missing. Gay mainstream culture is banal like the rest of mainstream culture and there are amazing books that have been written that will deepen one’s queerness and one’s understanding of what it means to be queer. Literature has always existed for the more sensitive, the more awake, the seeker. We need to let people know it’s there and to encourage them to look toward it for knowledge, beauty and a wider consciousness—queer wisdom. The books of Mark Thompson, Tom Spanbauer, David Wojnarowicz, Michel Tournier, Genet, Guy Davenport and dozens of others will expand your mind and that’s a beautiful thing that we can’t lose. The fact that literature is becoming a kind of “esoterica” is just another indication we are living in a dark age.
CV: What might we expect next from you, in terms of what might be published next?
TH: I’m doing another short story collection, probably called Eros & Dust, which will have more of these crazy comic tales I’ve been into of late. It should come out next spring. And I just finished my novel Faun, so I’m shopping that around with agents. And since I’m in Los Angeles, I’m doing screenplays of both Faun and Through It Came Bright Colors, as there is some interest. But it’s Los Angeles, so you never know what interest means. But it’s a good, fun exercise and I encourage all novelists to do screenplays of their books, as eventually someone will want to see one.
Trebor’s website: http://www.treborhealey.com/
You can view/purchase Trebor’s books here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Trebor+Healey
For a list of my upcoming events and readings go to: http://www.firekingpress.com
Watch this short clip of me reading in NYC, courtesy of WepaTV: http://blip.tv/file/2478867/
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So as I did a few postings ago, I’m going to backtrack a bit, to books that I completed before revamping this blog’s format last spring. I perused my newly organized “Latino Studies and Latino fiction” bookshelves and found two jewels—although very different jewels—that deserve some blog “airtime.”
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