AM: I must say that this setting, your farm here in Costa Rica, is stunningly beautiful. How did you find it? What brought you here?

AM: Ah, well, that is an interesting story—but a very long one. I’m afraid if we went down that path, your interview would be scuttled. [Laughs]

AM: A subject for another novel? I’m feeling denied: can’t you give the reader a brief sketch?

AM: No. They tell me I’m supposed to wrap myself in a cloud of mystery, it’s in my publishing contract. Don’t make me compromise my commercial instincts.

AM: Heaven forbid. What inspired you to write erotica?

AM: I perceived a dearth of good stuff.

AM: Before Lofting, had you written any stories, or perhaps a novel that remains unpublished?

AM: Neither. I’m a rank amateur.

AM: On the contrary, your work seems rather polished—indeed at times even overly so. Did Lofting come easily to you?

AM: Not easily at all. It went through five-thousand rewrites. But I don’t mean to imply by “not easy” that it was an unpleasant experience. I had quite a lot of fun writing it. I can’t stand writers who complain about how hard they work. The same thing with “writers block.” Who’s asking you to write? The continuity of culture is guaranteed with or without your scribblings, thank you. “Block” is God’s way of telling you to take up another hobby.

AM: Did you ever study writing formally, or attend workshops?

AM: No formal studies, just attentive reading of the authors I admired. As for workshops, never: I can’t imagine writing with all those lathes and drills buzzing about, and sawdust gives me rhinitis.

AM: What erotica do you like?

AM: Frank Harris’s memoir My Life and Loves. Fanny Hill. Story of the Eye.

AM: Not the Story of O?

AM: No. Not O. I realize how much all the shindigs at Roissy resonate with a lot of people, but I find O’’s psyche uninteresting and hardly credible. My main beef with the book, however, is its poverty of orgasms. You have to search hard for actual sex in The Story of O. I guess I’m a traditionalist when it comes to smut. Arousal and titillation are fine, but eventually I want fulfillment.

AM: On that score Lofting could be said to deliver generously. It’s got very little non-sexual “filler.” Indeed some might criticize you for giving the reader too little, for holding back on your descriptions of your characters. Do you think that plausibility in erotica requires that the characters—or at least the protagonist—be presented with some sort of psychological history?

AM: No. I think that plausibility in erotica depends on the same sorts of things that impart plausibility to any other sort of story. Are the characters consistent in action? (I mean, unless experiencing a psychotic break or under duress.) Is there continuity to their logic of ratiocination? Do their emotional reactions jibe with their personalities? What I want from erotica isn’t a Freudian analysis of causation, but a story that unfolds in believable ways, that’s populated by human beings whose ways of being in the world are recognizable to me.

AM: And lots of prurience, it goes without saying. Which leads me inexorably to the question I’m sure you hate to answer, namely, What do you believe is the difference between erotica and pornography?

AM: There is no difference. You judge a work on the quality of the presentation and the lucidity and discernment of the artist. Period. And these criteria apply to visual erotica just the same as to literature. People inevitably strive to locate a distinction between erotica and pornography within the subject matter. That’s a futile endeavor because it’s not there. We can see how the mere attempt leads to inanities: politicians and judges playing art critic; feminist academics elaborating confused theories of “objectification” and “phallic imperialism.” But it also leads to something that, in my opinion, is less patently idiotic, but more disturbing and insidious. What I’m talking about here is the tendency among otherwise intelligent and fair-minded critics to use “pornographic” as a pejorative. Time after time you’ll see reviews where sexual depiction in serious fiction is described as “verging on the pornographic”—as though traversing that verge would instantly negate the validity of the work in question. At play here is a stubborn residuum of Puritanism that still infects the literati and its cohorts, despite their liberal affectations. When confronted with this prejudice, the thing to ask yourself is, Why is the deliberate incitement of sexual feelings in a reader by a writer less respectable or high-minded than the incitement of pity, or laughter, or hope, or fear, or horror, or any other human emotion? Isn’t that what poets and writers are supposed to do? Isn’t it exactly the poet’s job, as Philip Larkin says, to write so as to recreate emotional states in the reader? The assumption here is that erotic feelings are somehow more base than others. And that’s simply an unsupportable bias. It’s an aesthetic question, and one that can only be answered by the reader. It’s up to her to determine what feelings she’s looking for, what emotions she wants stirred up. In literature, the erotic or is no less sublime than, say, the cathartic or the inspirational. The reader determines what’s good for her at any particular moment; she chooses from among a wide range of subjects and genres in response to her shifting desires and tastes: sometimes she wants to be entertained or distracted, others to be informed or edified, and on occasion to be turned-on. I think that this disdain for “pornography” stems in part too from a notion that what erotica is meant to evoke—i.e. lasciviousness—is much easier to for a writer to accomplish than other affects. Now, this may be true when the intended audience is adolescent boys, but it hardly applies if that audience consists of adults in possession of the least sort of sexual sophistication. If anything, the creation of compelling literary erotica means a constant struggle against cliche’, and a treacherous walk along the thin line that separates the obscene from the ridiculous. Even from a strictly technical standpoint, erotica demands from the writer a high degree of resourcefulness. A quick viddy at Roget’s will demonstrate the paucity of English synonyms for things like lust, sexual excitation, and genitalia. Of course in the case of the last—genitalia—there is a multiplicity of slang terms, but most of these aren’t available to the author, being either too anachronistic or too comical to be of service.

AM: Go on.

AM: No, I’m done.

AM: If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask why you chose to interview yourself rather than having someone less personally involved do the interrogating?

AM: Mostly because I think that a journalist would be too circumspect; too easy on me. The auto-interview is conducted by someone who is much less liable to be charmed into unwarranted indulgence. Also I know where all the feeble parts of my writing are located, and the pilfered bits.

AM: You’ve plagiarized?

AM: You know I have. And from sources various and divers.

AM: I notice that you’ve interpolated some of these stolen passages into your sex scenes. Was this just by way of a private joke?

AM: Well, to some extent, yes. But in general it was a case of my coming upon examples of great writing that fairly begged to be re-contextualized as pornography. I’ve learned not to deny my inner wag. Did I really say “re-contextualized” just then?

AM: Yes, unfortunately. The problem with doing parody is you can’t help but be contaminated by so much intimate contact with your ostensible target.

AM: But I’m more self-parodic than anything.

AM: You think?

AM: Sure. I mean, I take pot-shots here and there at academic cant and the like, but it’s really the conventions of erotica that I play off of in Lofting.

AM: There’s a tension in your novel between parody and earnestness. You seem to want to have your smut and eat it too, as it were. Do you ever feel that the ironic distance you often inject in your descriptions of debauch might undercut their effectiveness? After all, there is very little erotic fiction that is also intentionally funny, and there’s perhaps a reason for that. By interjecting a comic perspective, don’t you risk dousing the flames you’ve worked so hard to ignite?

AM: Only the reader can decide if I’ve been successful in marrying humor and sex. I’ve always thought they went together rather felicitously and I don’t really understand why most erotica is so serious. Of course most erotica is also extremely ridiculous, but as you said, not often intentionally. By the way, if Lofting were ever to get reviewed in print, the reviewers would nearly universally miss the comedy. They aren’t all that bright.

AM: I notice you’ve got more than a little chip on your shoulder about folks in the publishing industry. Don’t you think your snide remarks about agents and reviewers is self-defeating? It makes you come off as peevish.

AM: I am peevish. So what? Chalk it up to my naive belief that the narrow-minded shouldn’t be in positions of influence. I still get incensed over the little injustices the world inflicts on me. Probably more than I get incensed over the enormous injustices the world inflicts on most of its inhabitants. This is shameful, but I’ve grown to accept it as part of human nature—or at least my own.

AM: Do you consider yourself a political person?

AM: I’ve always thought of myself as “political,” though I’ve nearly resigned myself to the fact of being disenfranchised. I’ve refined “Think Globally; Act Locally” to a point where “local” means my own household and circle of friends. I’ll get involved again as soon as democracy returns. I long for real citizenship, in the sense of having actual decision making power: a forum for debate, a chance to persuade or be persuaded, a vote that counts. I’d take it at the municipal level, but the city in which I live is as much an oligarchy as the Federal government.

AM: You sound like an anarchist.

AM: I am an anarchist, as you well know. A philosophical or spiritual anarchist: I’m not much for programs. It bothers me that nobody reads Paul Goodman any more. Maybe he’ll make a comeback. It’s nice to see Richard Brautigan has been resurrected from the near oblivion of “no longer in print.” So there’s always hope.

AM: Thanks for talking with me.

AM: You bet. It’s been a pleasure

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