Dean Monti is the author of the new novel The Monosexual. His other work includes the novel The Sweep of the Second Hand. He lives in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.
Q: What inspired you to write The Monosexual, and how did you create your character Vincent Cappellini?
A: I think my novels evolve from multiple inspirations. Certainly, one question I was asking was: If we have soulmates, what happens if the relationship ends? Can you still call that a “soulmate”? And even if you can, where do you go from there?
But there were other things bubbling in my head early on like fear of change and fear of air travel that inspired some of the early work on it. Sinatra was also an inspiration. The power of those love songs and songs of longing.
In the beginning, I was mostly writing scenes, putting Vincent in a series of conflicts and seeing how he responded to them. Then it just evolved organically from there, with new inspirations coming every time I sat down to type. Different and escalating problems became catalysts for moving the story further.
The book is fiction, but I’m sure people I know will see and hear some of me in Vincent, since we share some things in common, like jazz, cocktails, and being easily embarrassed.
But, like my last novel, The Sweep of the Second Hand, it’s steeped in exaggeration. It’s a bit like how a comic approaches everyday experience for material. Like “what’s the most absurd choice one could make in this moment,” or “what is interesting about this bit of minutia?” etc. But I always keep it grounded in reality so that it seems like it could have happened.
The name “Vincent” means “conquering” but in the sense of persevering and prevailing. That fit for me. And it’s a form of my father’s name.
I don’t know where Cappellini came from. The side of a pasta box, perhaps. Cappellini is a very specific pasta shape among many, much like Vincent is a very specifically shaped kind of person. I frequently spelled his last name incorrectly while editing. There’s no spell check in Word for Cappellini.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The invented term “monosexual” is about singularity, a one-ness of romantic and sexual attraction, and romantic idealism. The classic “hopeless romantic.” It’s like monogamy but taken to a higher degree because the main character doesn’t believe it involves choice. It’s more like a condition.
And I like the clinical sound of it. I love unusual words and I like that there are specific terms for specific kinds of love.
For example, there are sapiosexuals, a term for people who are attracted to smart people. The New York Times recently wrote about “polycules,” a structure of people with overlapping attachments: romantic, sexual, and platonic. Something for everyone, I guess -- and it can get very complicated. So, the idea of “monosexual” seemed to me like a word that didn’t exist, but certainly should or could. For Vincent, anyway.
Q: The writer Jonathan Dee said of the book, “Vincent's need to pathologize his own lost love with a self-diagnosis involving a made-up clinical term...strikes a nice 21st-century note and makes The Monosexual seem wittily suited to its times.” What do you think of that description?
A: Well, for a start, Jonathan Dee is a wonderful writer and does an excellent job of describing in a few effective sentences what took me several pages to explain to myself!
But yes, he’s absolutely correct. Vincent treats it like a pathology. He’s “afflicted” with monosexuality. But it’s also a badge of distinction. He’s very protective and proud of it.
Vincent would like to believe his love is so strong and special that no word exists for it – that indeed he needs to create a word for it himself. And once he latches on to this idea, he can’t let go of it. It’s the core of his being.
And while self-identification is very much a part of today’s culture, the idea of monosexuality in 2000 makes Vincent a bit eccentric. No one is asking Vincent about his romantic or sexual identity, but he feels the need to declare and explain it.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I never know how a novel is going to end. It wasn’t until I completed early drafts that I got my beginning.
Some writers need to know where it’s going, or they need an outline and I completely get that for some forms of writing, but I like to come at it fresh every time I write, react to what I see on the page, and then create whatever comes next in my head. It’s very in-the-moment and Zen-like for me.
And then the universe helps by pointing to odd and random things along the way that may be interesting. And then many changes occur as it takes form. Not so much to the story itself, but in how to tell the story and in the details. Some writers hate revision, but I enjoy it because I’m open to new ideas in the process. And that often happens.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have several novels that I’m completing and revising. As a literary author, I don’t have a fictional “lane” or genre that I work in. So, I’m all over the map.
I have a novel about a man with Jesus’s fingerprints. I have a darker, twisted work about a man who seeks out his childhood bully. I have a novel about a man who may have been an ant in his last life. It’s quite an eclectic mix.
And now I’m also working on my first screenplay. I see these things – in my mind’s eye – very cinematically, and recently I’ve been working on a novel with a screenplay adaptation. The story involves several real-life events that took place in and around New Jersey in 1915, including a small, abandoned town, the first adult film, and the birth of Frank Sinatra. It’s all woven into a very absurd, fictional novel and screenplay.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: As much as I look forward to publication and the satisfaction of being able to put it out into the world, I really enjoy the creative process. I thrive on the flow experience of getting lost in these stories. Allowing the ideas to come out of me freely and onto the page without any pre-conceived plans. But I also enjoy the act itself -- the sound and rhythm of the keys as I type (I often start on a manual typewriter).
I enjoy when the universe provides little facts and items. Like when I read about albino shrimp, or details about Frank Sinatra, or the fact that James Madison was the shortest president. These are all very random things that came into my consciousness during the writing of The Monosexual that ended up in the book. But they are also the fun elements that make the book unique.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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