A lost world, forgery, Norse mythology, ninjas, a celebration and a murder mystery are all apart of Dustin Long’s first novel Icelander, which was published by McSweeneys earlier this year. It has been aptly called “A Nabokovian goof on Agatha Christie; a madcap mystery in the deceptive tradition of The Crying of Lot 49; The Third Policeman meets The Da Vinci Code and it recently climbed on to the Los Angles Times Bestseller List. Dustin graciously took some time away to answer a few question about his new book.
Every writer dreams of the day that their novel gets published, how did you react when you got the news Icelander was going to be published? What was it like seeing your work in print for the first time, let alone having it appear on a bestseller list?
Well, it happened in steps. First I found out that McSweeney’s was “maybe interested,” and it wasn’t for another nine months that I got a definitive “yes, we’ll publish it.” My general reaction to each step towards publication was “Yes! Please let this be true!” followed by a nice dinner out somewhere with me wife for a mini-celebration. Seeing the actual book was probably most exciting, and consequently it entailed the most expensive dinner. The bestsellers list was a bit unreal. I heard about it via phone call. As happy as I am to have made it, I still don’t know quite how to react.
Having written four novels before Icelander, what do you think you did differently that made it more successful?
Well, the first two especially were just me getting my legs, figuring out what it took to sustain a long narrative. The next two were better, but I think I was worried about the wrong things. I started off with themes, jokes, and set-pieces that I wanted to work in rather than starting with character or plot. Also, those two were more “ambitious” (pretentious) than Icelander, so I think scaling back and trying to do a small book as well as I could definitely helped in creating a book that was worth reading. And I think the lessons I learned writing Icelander have made me ready to stretch again and try something bigger.
Icelander’s been primarily compared to the work of Pynchon, Nabokov, and Agatha Christie. How do you balance creating a layered puzzle that doesn’t become too tedious and disengaging for the audience with enough character development? Which takes precedence as you construct a story?
That’s the trick, isn’t it? I think I can only answer this very vaguely. I’m not a fan of Theodor Adorno; I want to be an entertaining writer. But I also want to be a serious writer. I don’t think these desires are incompatible. I hope I managed not to be tedious in the more literary aspects and not to fall into egocentric navel-gazing in the more “personal drama” based portions of the story, but whatever success I had was largely instinctual. It can be hard to read your own work, especially after a couple years of working on the same thing, but I just tried to get a sense of rhythm that seemed natural to me. I wanted Our Heroine and Blaise, at least, to be “real,” and some of the other characters helped me work out some of the more “literary” impulses. I’d say that writing engaging characters takes precedence. That’s the thing that stops puzzles from being tedious, in my mind.
There are a few spots within conversation where “…” is used to indicate a pause or stop in the dialogue. Do you consider this to be dialogue or an abbreviated pause?
I interpret it as a response of silence. Each ellipsis is definitely attributed to a specific “speaker.” It was a way to have a character pointedly say nothing. So I suppose I’d call it dialogue.
Do you think visually when you write?
To an extent. I see the important details. The most evocative aspects. But I don’t stop to envision every physical detail of every setting. Sometimes as I’m writing I start acting out what the characters are doing, though. Usually without getting up. One hand will be typing while the other gesticulates or something.
Do you have a set approach to writing a story? Do you start with outline or you just allow the work to take you wherever it may?
It’s evolved over the course of my writing “career.” I’m tending to outline quite a bit these days, but I also tend to deviate from the outline according to the needs of the story. The outline rarely tells me where, in fact, I’m going to end up. My fourth novel was heavily outlined, and I didn’t deviate at all. It was pretty bad. But so was my third novel, which had no outline whatsoever. I think I’ve reached a happy compromise.
How would you define a good editor?
Short answer: Eli Horowitz. Longer answer: someone who figures out what the novel is trying to accomplish, identifies spots where it fails to meet its goals, and is supportive in thinking up remedies for those failures. I think a good editor questions rather than declares.
How do you handle writer’s block if or when the beast may strike?
With me, writer’s block has always been self-imposed. It happens when I think too long about how to proceed with a scene rather than just writing the scene. I’ve found that a sure fire way to overcome writer’s block is to just sit down and write. It doesn’t matter how bad or aimless I think it’s going to be. And usually, in writing, however bad or aimless it is to begin with, I arrive at the solution to whatever has been blocking me. That said, I still occasionally let myself be blocked against my better judgment.
You’re bio indicates that you’ve worked in construction, at a used bookstore among others jobs, has having a diversity of jobs helped or hindered your writing?
It’s given me a broad range of experiences to draw from. I think my more tendentious works of the past arose out of the fact that I’d never been anything but a student. So I’d say the diversity of jobs has helped. That said, it was hard to get any writing done at all when I was working construction. I was just too exhausted at the end of the day.
How organized and focused a writer are you?
Left to my own devices, I tend to be pretty disciplined. I try to write at least a few pages every day, and though it may take a warming up period of procrastination (browsing the Internet or reading a chapter of whatever I’m currently reading), once I get going I tend to be able to go on indefinitely. It’s definitely “work,” though. I’m motivated largely through the fact that I feel incredibly guilty and unproductive if I DON’T write rather than from any particular pleasure in the act of writing itself.
The foot-notes throughout Icelander have a tone and purpose that reminded me of editor notes that appeared in the earlier days of Marvel and DC comics. How have comic books influenced your work? What/who do you read?
The footnotes are definitely similar to editorial notes in comics to the extent that they orient the reader within the fictional universe, indicating a particular issue or Memoir volume in which the backstory can be found. And yes, comics have been a huge influence on my life as a writer. I didn’t have a lot of books in my house growing up, but my older brother read comic books, and so that was really my first exposure to reading anything at all. I read them from the ages of 5-15 (1982-1992) and then abandoned them completely, though I don’t recall what the exact reason was. In 1999, I shared an apartment with a guy who read comics, and he connived me to start reading them again by showing me the work of Alan Moore (which I’d completely missed in the 80’s, having been a Marvel Zombie) and Kurt Busiek (notably Astro City), both of which showed me just how amazingly sophisticated comics writing had become while I wasn’t looking. I’ve been buying new issues every Wednesday since then.
I’ve become a fan of a lot of black and white independent stuff, like Box Office Poison, Hicksville, and Scott Pilgrim, and my favorite series of all time is Cerebus.
That said, my heart will always have a soft spot for superheroes.
My five favorite writers doing work in that genre at the moment are:
- Brian K. Vaughan (who writes human beings better than anyone in comics, independent or not, Dave Sim POSSIBLY excepted)
- Alan Moore (no one besides Dave Sim can compete with him in terms of innovation)
- Grant Morrison (he’s a little kooky, but he has a great sense of what makes comics fun)
- Dan Slott (he’s just funny)
- Warren Ellis (when he’s on, he’s on)
honorable mention: Mark Millar, Robert Kirkman, Erik Larsen, Joe Casey, and Brian Michael Bendis.
Icelander essentially is a murder mystery, and while writing it were there any genre cop-outs that you wanted to avoid? What ones bother you the most?
I didn’t want the solution to come out of nowhere. I wanted readers to be able to reread the book and see how the details really do add up to the ending.
With the way in which the publishing industry has continued to embrace the memoir craze, have you experienced more challenges continuing to get more literary fiction published?
Well, this has been my only publishing endeavor. But yes, there does seem to be a divide between the people who want more memoir-based work and people who are open to things that might be a little different. I’d like to see those two camps resolve their differences and just worry about finding good prose. We’ll see what challenges I face in the future.
What tips would you give to aspiring writers?
This has been true for me, at least: If you want to write novels, write novels. By this I mean two things.
Don’t concentrate on writing short stories, thinking you’ll build up to a novel. They’re completely different animals. I still can’t write short stories very well, and I don’t feel that writing one has ever taught me much about the craft of writing a novel.
Actually write a whole novel. Don’t begin a novel, decide it’s bad, and then begin another one. Finishing a novel, however bad, taught me much more about novel-writing than beginning a novel ever did.
