P.J. Blumenthal is the author of the new story collection Self Portraits. His other books include Winston Hewlett's Impotence. He lives in Germany.
Q: What inspired you to write Self Portraits?
A: I fear it’s easier to ask this question than to answer it. Self Portraits is a collection of 23 stories, each with a unique etiology and unaware of and uninterested in the existence of its literary neighbor – although they sometimes do have elements in common.
Each was the result of some barely describable urgency experienced periodically by the author. Maybe that’s what’s meant by the “creative process.” Suddenly, some image or notion or character surfaces, and soon I am pulling on something like a thread – destination unknown.
In no time, words, lots of them, are clustering around this initial impulse and, voilà! A story is born, better said, a first draft – because characters and circumstances usually take form long before the proper words do.
What follows is the writing and rewriting which may demand several drafts. It’s hard work but also pleasurable. In my case, it’s also a fight for the logic, the intrinsic architecture at work in the ideas and the language itself.
At some point I stop. Probably exhaustion. And once something is published, I never look at it again…well, unless a new edition is planned. Then the fussiness begins all over.
Heine edited his Book of Songs five times, and Auden was always looking for better solutions. Paraphrasing Valery, Auden once said: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” That same yearning for perfection applies to prose, of course – at least it should.
Q: You write, “Self portraits, which is to say, portraits of selves. Of many selves.” Can you say more about that, and about how the book’s title was chosen?
A: The title Self Portraits was an afterthought. It seemed a fitting common denominator for this diverse collection of stories, tales and sketches. Frankly, I can’t recall when it first came to mind.
At any rate, I felt comfortable with it when it did – though for a while some doubts crept in after someone pointed out that readers might assume I was obsessed with some endless solipsistic portrayal of myself from various aspects, vomiting up the kind of things you might want to heap on your analyst.
I’ve heard that in some creative writing programs instructors encourage students to “express themselves” as a font of literary motivation. I don’t know if that’s really true. I’ve never been to a creative writing course.
My Self Portraits is not a collection of 23 reflections of my own face in the mirror. In fact, I might have preferred calling the book “Portraits of Selves” but those four syllables sound awkward to my ears.
The three syllables of my title may risk being misunderstood, but as compensation they are rich in irony. I decided to take my chances, and now I am sure I made the right decision.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories collected in this book?
A: Uh oh, now this gets personal because it demands revealing biographical information if I am to answer your question honestly. I am referring to the number of years I have roamed the surface of this fascinating planet.
But what the hell. Anyone really interested in a fact like that can look up my age in the WWW (which I prefer to call the WoeWoeWoe). I guess I worry – perhaps unnecessarily – about the bias of ageists.
But back to your question. The earliest piece in this book, “The Ice Rose,” was written in first draft 50 years ago – though it has been revisited and polished a few times since. Other stories came about between 20 and 35 years ago. Some are maybe five to 10 years old. The most recent, “The Translation Center,” is approximately two years old.
Nevertheless, they all underwent a final polishing when I understood that they constituted the content of a single book entitled Self Portraits.
Q: The writer Elfriede Jelinek said of your writing, “When you book Blumenthal, your trip is fully guaranteed. Adventure galore in the unknown known: first-class entertainment, funny and serious--just as it should be.” What do you think of that description?
A: Yes, I like that: “first-class entertainment, funny and serious.” Elfriede Jelinek, an old friend, knows these stories since “The Ice Rose.” Granted, the humor in Self Portraits is not raucous In fact, usually, it remains sequestered behind intense irony.
By the way: I might add that I originally intended to write my stories in German. Elfriede Jelinek suggested a long time ago that I stick to English. And it’s true: they need my voice in English.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Last year, I translated what I consider my best book, Hieron’s Banquet (Hierons Gastmahl), from German into English. It takes place in ancient Greece and is a work whose source I still don’t quite understand. Suddenly, it insisted on coming into being.
In addition, I have been translating into German a play I initially wrote in English 40 (!) years ago based on the Hippolytus story. Since I live in Germany, it will probably be easier for me to find a theater for the German version than the English.
Otherwise, I have no new project at the moment. Occasionally, I write a poem. For the past two years, I have been aware of a stirring, and certain images and situations keep surfacing. Occasionally, I make notes but still sense no urgency. I only write when there is no alternative.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Writing is my vehicle for communicating the ineffable. I am passionate about music too but alas I will always remain an amateur. I would experience a painful loneliness if I weren’t able to find words to clothe certain impulses that reach me from a very deep place in my soul. I never know when the urgency will strike.
Nevertheless, in 1986, I abandoned my greatest passion, poetry. For some reason, I saw no more need to write it. Twenty-five years later, in August 2011, within three weeks, a book of poems, The Caedmon Songs, exploded out of me. Since then, I have been writing poetry when the urgency strikes.
Whenever I finish a project, I feel empty, silent and sometimes a little sad. That’s part of the creative process, I suppose.
One additional point: Readers will have a difficult time differentiating between my recent and my early works. The author, i.e., myself, and the source of the urgency that impels him to write, have always remained the same.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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