"How They Begin, How They End": An Interview With Robert Lopez

Robert Lopez is the author of Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River. A collection of short fiction, Asunder, was published by Dzanc Books in November 2010. He teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute and Columbia University. He is a 2010 Fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

His story "Family of Man on Isle of Wight" appears in Issue Thirty of The Collagist.

Here, Lopez speaks with interviewer Joseph Scapellato about his work.  Enjoy!

1. Can you tell us about the origin of “Family of Man on Isle of Wight”?  Where did this piece begin for you, and how did it get to here?

The piece began in Brooklyn on a day that was every day. I’m not sure what “here” refers to in this question. The end point? The Collagist? All of it’s a mystery to me. The questions, the answers, the origins, the families, the stories, how they begin, how they end.

You’ll have to forgive me. After a while one gets asked the same questions over and again. I understand there is nothing to be done about this and I’m grateful to be asked any questions at all, ever. Still, answering the same way over and again seems boring, colorless. Were I a politician I would refer you to statements I’ve already made on the subject. Here, though, I will say it started with the first line, as always.

2. This piece is one sentence, one paragraph; commas are the only punctuation.  I love the way these formal decisions make the work feel like one side of a one-sided conversation—at moments, this magnetic narrator comes across as desperate, confident, earnest, deceptive.  By the time I reached the end I felt as if I’d just read the speech of a dying man.  What went into your decision to structure the work this way?

It seemed appropriate, that it should be one sentence, that there should be no stopping. One should trust intuition.

3. Many of your stories in Asunder are in first person, as is your novel Kamby Bolongo Mean River.  What is it that draws you to first person?  Has your approach to this mode changed over time?  I’d love to hear about what you do to honor the narrator, to discover and follow voice.

I suppose for me first person feels more authentic, a testimonial. Here is this I and this I is telling us what’s happened, what’s happening. It feels closest to how we perceive the world, through our own consciousness. Third-person by its very nature has a different texture. Every fiction is a construct, there is artifice involved in the story itself and the telling of it. Every fiction we encounter we know is written by an “author”, but third person can seem very written by an author in a once upon a time-like way. Sometimes this construct feels less compelling to me, less urgent. Here’s another so and so telling me a story, like it’s something I haven’t heard before, like it makes a goddamned bit of difference. But first person has an immediacy somehow, this happened to me and I have to tell you about it. This is why I employ the first person most often. For me it feels like a performance, like an actor playing a part. Discovering that character/voice and following it, trusting it, is the fun part.   

4. From your bio I learned that you teach/have taught for at least three universities.  Has this range of teaching experiences affected your writing?

I don’t think so.

5. What other writing projects are you working on right now?

Stories toward another collection. There are two finished plays, as well, that might well be worked on again soon.

6. What great books—or sentences, or paragraphs, or pages—have you been reading in this new year? Are there any upcoming releases you're excited about?

The new issue of Unsaid will be great. Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby will be great. Brian Carr has a new one coming out that will be great. Others, too, I imagine.