The result is her book The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. Of all the books that he stole, the only book that Gilkey actually read was Lolita (which, he proclaimed, was disgusting). But he does share one trait with Humbert Humbert: The slippery use of language. Gilkey referred to his method of acquiring books as “getting” (he used stolen credit card numbers) and “going away” was his code for going to jail.

Another book lover figures prominently in the story, and that is Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sanders Books in Salt Lake City. He is the rare book dealer turned detective who was determined to bring Gilkey to justice. Bartlett first wrote about John Gilkey in this article published in San Francisco Magazine, which ended up in the anthology Best American Crime Reporting 2007. This interview was conducted by email.

The Rumpus: As of now [March 2010], when was the last time you heard from Gilkey? In your Booksmith appearance last fall you said that Gilkey had emailed you congratulating you on the publication of the book, but had not read it and at that time didn’t have an address for you send to a copy to. Do you know if he’s read it now and if so, what was his take on it? If not, any idea how you’ll inscribe it to him when you can send him one?

Allison Hoover Bartlett: I did send Gilkey a copy of the book, with an inscription thanking him for sharing his story with me, but I have no idea whether or not he’s read it. At the time, I warned him by email that he might not agree with my perceptions of him and what he had done, but his response was very professional. He wrote that he would respect my work even if he didn’t agree with my views. The last time I heard from him was a few months ago. He emailed me about a book idea of his (a novel, based on a dream he had), but still there was no mention of whether or not he has read the book.

Rumpus: This book grew out of a magazine article, and you’ve said that Gilkey enjoyed reading it. How did your research evolve into a book? When did you know you had enough material? What impact did the publication of the article have on your relationship with Gilkey? Did it make him more forthcoming with information?

Bartlett: The first time I looked up rare book theft online, I found an astonishing number of stories. In one of them, an Interpol agent was quoted saying that this type of theft is now more widespread than fine art theft. I was immediately hooked and, given the prevalence of the crime, its centuries-long history, and the fact that some of the thieves, like Gilkey, were motivated by a love of books not money, I was certain there was more to dig into. So I knew this story was rich and complex enough for a book even before I began writing the magazine article.

Days after the article was published, Gilkey was released from prison and called to tell me he enjoyed reading it, so I suppose it did make him willing to continue talking to me. I’m never out to “get” people in interviews, to trap them in corners, or lead them to contradict themselves; I’m guessing he sensed that from the start.

Rumpus: How much of your own life did you reveal to Gilkey? Any conversation is a give and take and I wonder how much he came to know about you. At one point you mention that he addresses you as Mrs. Bartlett, and that you in fact felt comfortable with a certain distance in your relationship, but I wonder how well he eventually got to know you. Was it ever a concern of yours that he’d try and infiltrate your life? Or did he not ever show any curiosity about you (being that he’s such a narcissist)?

Bartlett: The relationship between a writer and her subject can be difficult to navigate, for both parties. An interview can seem like a friendly conversation, particularly so to the interviewee (who is not taking notes, and usually not hoping for more than understanding), but it is a professional relationship, a business partnership of sorts, in which the product is information and the currency is interest, validation, and a promise to publish that information. I wanted Gilkey to understand that however easy our conversations became, and however many times we met, ours was and would remain a professional relationship. I reminded him a few times that while I was taking down his story, I was also recording the stories of his victims, the police, and others, and that ultimately I would be writing my version of what happened. It was important to me that he not believe otherwise.

Occasionally, details of my life — my family, the town I grew up in, et cetera — surfaced when they were relevant to our conversation, but that happened rarely. I don’t remember Gilkey asking anything personal about me, but he did ask about writing and publishing. Given his interest in books and authors, his doing so wasn’t surprising.

I did have some concern that he might show up at a reading after the book was published, which would be awkward, especially given how most booksellers feel about what he’s done, but so far, he’s shown better judgment than that.

Rumpus: Did you ever talk books in general? Any conversations like, “I remember the first time I read To Kill a Mockingbird” or “I had such a hard time with Faulkner at first”?

Bartlett: At the time, I was reading mostly non-fiction, and he was reading 19^th century fiction, detective novels, etc., so there wasn’t a lot of overlap. Often, he would ask if I’d read a book he was reading, or if I’d heard of its author, and he wanted to know my opinions, which I would share, but only briefly. I was always eager to return to the subject of that day’s interview because I never knew if he’d be arrested again soon, which would make future meetings difficult, if not impossible, to arrange.

Rumpus: Gilkey seems lonely to me: he doesn’t seem to have any friends. Did he ever express or reveal feelings of loneliness or isolation?

Bartlett: No, he never mentioned being lonely. It was my impression that he had always spent a lot of time alone, even as a young child, so perhaps he was used to it, or did not see it as an unusual way to live.

Rumpus: What were your greetings and partings like? I don’t expect you to tell me you hugged, but did you shake hands, say, “See you soon? Keep in touch”? Were your greetings and partings awkward or at all stilted?

Bartlett: Our meetings were always friendly, so, yes, we shook hands, and yes, I asked him to keep in touch, which he did. There were months when we met every week, and there were stretches of time when I was writing, so we didn’t meet. During these times, he would occasionally call or email me to see how the book was coming along. Whenever leaving an interview, as I mentioned, I did fear that he might be imprisoned again, in which case it could be a long time before we would meet again. Fortunately for me, even when he went back to prison, it was never for more than a few months. Even so, the next meeting would have a sense of urgency. I needed to catch up, and my fear of his disappearing was stronger.

Rumpus: Toward the end of the book he is giving you writing advice, maybe not on prose per se, but on the overall arc of your book and his story. So in a sense he was trying to step into a role in your life that your writer peers fill. Was he just trying to make his own life seem more action-packed and less, I don’t know, dismal?

Bartlett: I got the sense he respected me and my work, so he was not giving writing advice the way another writer would. His suggestions were aimed at making the narrative I was writing more interesting. This was his life, after all, and my impression was that he wanted it to be as good a read as possible.

Rumpus: I’m not sure I understand the wet yarn method described in the first chapter. Can you elaborate on that?

Bartlett: A Swiss dealer explained this method used to remove valuable pages, such as maps, botanical illustrations, et cetera, from books. Since you’re not allowed into libraries’ rare book rooms with scissors or razor blades (or even pens, for that matter), thieves have been known to smuggle strands of wool yarn tucked into their mouths. Fortunately, it’s not common, but here’s how they do it: The thief opens a book to a page he wants, lays the wet yarn along the spine’s edge of the page, closes the book and leaves. As the yarn dries, it shrinks, cutting into that edge of the page. Several days later, the thief returns and slips the page out of the book and into his coat. Ingenious, but despicable, especially when the mutilated books are one of a kind and very old. There’s no way to make them whole again.

Rumpus: You’ve said you suspect book thieves are coming to your events. Do you think they’re scoping you out? Or wondering if you’ll turn your attention to them next?

Bartlett: At one of my first readings I noticed a tall, thin man sitting in the corner, grasping a bag in his arms. He scowled at me through the entire reading. After everyone left, I mentioned him to one of the booksellers. “Oh yeah,” she said. “He had book thief written all over him.” Then she called over to the other owner, who [was standing] behind the counter, “Hey, out of everyone here tonight, who do you suppose was the book thief?” He answered without hesitation: “The tall thin guy in the corner.” After decades working in bookstores, they could spot a thief. I hadn’t even considered that thieves might be attracted to my readings, but I’ve seen other suspicious looking men (book thieves are almost always men), so I do wonder about them. If they are thieves, I suppose they’re there to hear what I have to say about what they do. They are a curious lot. Once, after interviewing a bookseller at Green Apple Books, during which I asked him about book thefts, I left the store, and a man who’d been eavesdropping ran up to me and confessed that he was a book thief. He told me this right before asking, “So, are you a cop or something?” I was tempted to suggest he ask that before he confessed, but I was a little stunned, plus I wanted him to tell me more.

Rumpus: What was the event like at Ken Sanders’ store last fall? He figures prominently in the book and though he is not the protagonist, he is the hero; he’s the antagonist who’s the hero. I know you had your differences during the course of your writing and research, but was he pleased with the end result? I imagine The Man Who Loved Books Too Much being prominently displayed in his store as a show of pride, or maybe as a warning to would-be thieves.

Bartlett: I think Sanders is pleased with aspects of the book. He would have preferred my being more overtly judgmental about Gilkey, but that was not my intention. Still, he has sent me hundreds of copies of the book to sign and return to his shop in Salt Lake City. A few weeks ago he emailed me to say he was going to mail another box of books for me to sign, so I gather he’s still selling a lot of them.

When I was at Sanders’ shop, I read from a chapter in which he plays a role. It’s awkward to quote someone who’s standing a few feet away from you, so I apologized to him in advance. But he seemed not to mind my portrayal — in fact, he had a big grin on his face as I read.

Rumpus: Gilkey more or less admits to you that he has a hard time occasionally differentiating between right and wrong. Were there any other times like that? Did you two ever discuss any sort of rehabilitation for him? A way to break his cycle of prison and release?

Bartlett: Yes, we did talk about what Gilkey considered right and wrong, his culpability, and other philosophical and legal issues that interest me very much. I would need more space than I have here to do them justice, but I do discuss them in the book. Gilkey’s getting caught, going to prison, being released, then getting caught again—this cycle repeated itself many times, and, as is the case for obsessed people, ending the cycle seems to be nearly impossible.

Rumpus: To your knowledge he never just picked up a book and walked away, and I can’t see that happening either. It’s too blatant — too low-rent — and he might have a hard time justifying it. But maybe if he had actually done that, he’d see the black and white of it more clearly.

Bartlett: He constructed elaborate justifications for his crimes, all of which amazed me. But you’re probably right, he could not use them if he were to simply grab a book in a store and walk out with it. One of the things he told me about certain thefts, where he would have someone else pick up a book he’d stolen through credit card fraud, was that since he had not physically walked out with the book, he was innocent.

Rumpus: Beyond his rampant narcissism, why do you think he spoke with you? Usually when a criminal opens up to a reporter it’s a confession, or he or she has already taken steps toward rehabilitation, yet Gilkey is resolute to the end. Maybe just “getting” books isn’t enough for him.

Bartlett: People like to tell their stories. Gilkey was no different — plus, he is a bibliomaniac whose story was going to appear in a book. That must have been mighty motivation. Also, he didn’t have friends or fellow collectors with whom to talk about books, so I believe he enjoyed our conversations.

Rumpus: One of the few books that Gilkey “got” and actually read was Lolita, which he proclaimed disgusting. Could he see beyond Humbert’s character to the lyricism of the writing?

Bartlett: We did not discuss the literary merits of Lolita. What he loved about the book was its renown and its physical qualities (he described lovingly its cover and the clamshell box it came in). This is typical of collectors — not that they don’t appreciate literature, but that the book as an aesthetic object is key. It’s often what makes them fall in love with a book.

Rumpus: Were you ever at all concerned about writing an unsympathetic or unlikable character?

Bartlett: I wasn’t concerned with writing an unsympathetic or unlikable character. What concerned me was writing a true character. Like anyone, Gilkey has good and bad qualities; I wanted to present them in balance, in a true balance that would reflect who he is. Or who he seemed to be, which is all any writer can offer.

Rumpus: You visited Gilkey’s mother’s house, his childhood home, which you describe as “every corner, wall, table, and shelf was hectic with collections” and one thing I wondered about when I read that was difference between collecting and hoarding. Do you have any insights after your visit? Is it a fine line or larger chasm? I found it cute that he had a metal detector, which his mother made sure you noticed.

Bartlett: I just happened to hear (on NPR) an interview with a couple of authors who’ve written about hoarding, in which they drew a distinction between hoarders and collectors. With hoarders, the objects they hold onto cause them shame, so they don’t want others to see the objects. Collectors feel the opposite: they’re proud of their objects, and showing them to others is one of the great pleasures of collecting. There is no question in my mind that Gilkey’s mother was a collector, not a hoarder.

Rumpus: True confession: I have a stolen book. A twice-stolen book, actually. It’s a New York Public Library book that one of my sister’s college friends checked out, had never returned, and it was left in a box of other books in my sister’s apartment one summer. I was reading my way through the box and found this book, a young adult novel, and I loved it, so I never put it back. The last date on the checkout card is March 8, 1979. I still have it and I still feel bad about it, but I’m not giving it up. It was already years overdue by the time I got my hands on it — at this point I’ve had it longer than either the library or the friend who originally stole it. But back then, somehow I convinced myself that I loved this book more than she did, and that for so many reasons, I deserved to have it. The whole time I was reading your book I could understand Gilkey, and somehow his story even made me feel better about my theft — at least I didn’t bilk credit card numbers.

Bartlett: You are not alone. When I was writing the book, dozens of people, some of them authors, told me about how they had stolen books, and usually not in the innocent way that you came by yours. Book thievery is rampant. I found that over the past 400+ years, most of the people who have stolen them are librarians and clergymen, no surprise really, when you consider that they love books, they have access to the finest, and they’re trusted guardians. I included some of their stories in The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, but there were many more.

Rumpus: Can you see Gilkey with a Kindle?

Bartlett: He would probably like a Kindle, but I’m sure it would have no effect on his desire for the real thing. One of the reasons I was so drawn to his story is that I love books, not just their content, but the thingness of them, and I wanted to explore what that was about.

Rumpus: Adaptation is one of my favorite movies from a book. I love the book as well, but the movie is partly about the act of writing itself. And your book is about books—a product of writing. My question is, will Meryl Streep be playing you in the movie? Are you willing to speculate on who could pull off portraying Gilkey?

Bartlett: Meryl Streep? I wish! As for Gilkey, he told me that he thought the magazine article I wrote about him had scenes that were very cinematic, and offered a suggestion for who could play him: Nicolas Cage. So, Meryl and Nicolas, what do you say?

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I first became aware of illustrator Sophie Blackall when I stumbled on photos of her home on Design*Sponge, which had a link to her blog where she paints (in Chinese ink and watercolor) scenes from New York City’s Missed Connections posted on craigslist. Blackall is a successful children’s book illustrator, most notably for the Ivy + Bean series written by Annie Barrows, Red Butterfly by Deborah Noyes, and Meet Wild Boars by Meg Rosoff. She also wrote and illustrated Are You Awake? forthcoming from Henry Holt in 2011. She started the MissedConnectionsNY blog in March of 2009 and has been selling prints of her paintings in her etsy shop. You Probably Won’t Read This: A Year of Missed Connections will be out next year from Workman Publishing.

Blackall is a native of Australia and moved the United States in 2000. She shares her Brooklyn home with her two children and lots of Depression-era dolls, some with limbs attached. Here’s what she had to say about bear suits, eye contact and the optimism of Missed Connection posts.

***

The Rumpus: Do you listen to music when working on the Missed Connections? If so, does the tone of the listing determine the genre of music?

Sophie Blackall: I usually draw in silence, but listen to music or public radio when I’m painting, after all the important decisions have been made. I can often look at a picture and remember a particular song, or a story I was listening to at the time. I did a children’s book set in 5th century China called Red Butterfly, but whenever I look back through it I think of Moby Dick, which I was listening to as an audio book at the time. They are forever oddly linked.

Rumpus: I’m curious why you started the Missed Connection paintings in the first place. You were already a very successful illustrator, but clearly some aspect of your creative needs weren’t being met with art that you were paid to do.

Blackall: I’ve illustrated sixteen or seventeen children’s books and I feel awfully lucky to be able to do something I love so much, and yes, to be able to pay the rent, but there was a yearning to do something more grown up, and something where I didn’t have to cater to anyone; I was just waiting for the material. I toyed with making portraits based on people’s discarded shopping lists found on the street, or old diaries bought on eBay, or other forms of borrowed stories. When I stumbled across the Missed Connections listings, I knew immediately I’d found it.

Rumpus: What struck me when I first saw the site is that you are taking a moment that was fleeting—over in a minute, yet one person (at least) is left with a longing feeling. It’s actually not over for them. Then that person solidifies the moment by posting it on craigslist or somewhere public. It’s like a quick retelling of a moment, maybe to let go of the regret of letting that moment pass.  And then drawing and the act of making the interaction public again, in a different medium, takes the energy away from the original poster and turns it on its head. It opens it up.  Do you ever feel like you are inserting yourself into the mix? I ask this partly because in preparation for this interview I scanned the Missed Connections listings in San Francisco and in one of them, the last sentence read, “Now we can be in a Missed Connections painting too.”

Blackall: The fellow who wrote the post about sharing a bear suit with a girl at a party saw my illustration and emailed me, which was kind of thrilling. He sent a photo taken on the night, and that was a dream-like experience… but even though I’ve seen the “real” bear suit, my image of it feels real to me, and his photo the interpretation. There’s arrogance for you. I think all artists insert themselves into their subject matter. I look for ambiguous messages to illustrate…I like some detail but not too much detail. I dismiss posts where one or other of the couple was wearing anything named by brand, or you know, baseball caps, or sweat pants, because I don’t like drawing them, and I don’t have to please anyone but myself. On the other hand, I’m drawn to top hats, and spats, and mustaches. I haven’t read a Missed Connection yet with someone wearing a monocle, but rest assured I’ll snap it up if I do.

Rumpus: Did the bear suit guy ever say how he came to share a bear suit with someone who he didn’t know? And did he hear from the girl?

Blackall: He didn’t really explain the circumstances leading up to sharing the bear suit, and no, he never heard from the girl, sadly.

Rumpus: Reading your blog I started to feel that many missed connections postings were, in their own way, a plea for more friendliness and boldness. Do you agree?

Blackall: Or at least a personal regret for not being bolder, and for missing an opportunity. Many messages are just thanking a stranger for a kindness…I love those ones, because I imagine everyone else reading them feels encouraged by such examples of humanity and generosity and tenderness. And if they encourage us to reach out to strangers more often, that’s a good thing. There are more than a few messages from lonely people wondering why they never find themselves described…I illustrated one, “How come no one ever misses me?” They kill me, those. There are also dozens and dozens of success stories; many couples have emailed me with their original posts. I love reading these stories, but confess I am not as interested in drawing them as the unfinished, elusive ones.

Rumpus: Which brings me to my next question, what are some criteria for choosing which ones to illustrate? Obviously, the more visual they are the better. But do you ever pick one, start the drawing and then abandon it because it’s not happening?

Blackall: I glean a few times a week, and it’s all about the subject line. I look for the lyrical, “Billowy Red Scarf Girl” or the funny, “Hipster Chick Who Passed Gas,” the unintentionally funny, “Looking for the Hot Girl in Pink Dress,” ones that immediately suggest images, “Furry Arms Under a Yellow Umbrella,” or the plain odd, “Seeking Girl Who Bit Me Twice…” I don’t think I’ve ever abandoned one… the images usually arrive fully formed in my head as soon as I read the message, and I decide whether to draw it or not.

Rumpus: Due to popular demand you are selling the prints of the paintings at your etsy shop. Have you noticed a geographical location where people tend to buy them more? Is it primarily east coast? New Yorkers?

Blackall: This has been the most amazing thing. I have had people come to the site from all over the world. The US and Canada predominantly, but also Brazil and South Africa and Greece and Indonesia and Hong Kong and Ireland and Argentina and Spain and Israel and Australia…

Rumpus: Have any of your friends forwarded you listings with notes like, “Sophie, I think you could do a great job with this one?

Blackall: Not so much friends, but I get those messages from strangers all the time.

Rumpus: I wonder if anyone has ever posted a MC then sent it to you with a suggestion to draw it. Do you know?  Has anyone outed themselves?

Blackall: I don’t think so. The ones people send me are usually bizarre in some way. I did have a couple of people asking me to illustrate their MC in a hope to widen the exposure, unfortunately the messages weren’t a good fit, so I couldn’t oblige. And I didn’t really want to become a matchmaking service. Someone posted a missed connection “I like your blog” which was directed at me… that was kind of fun to stumble across.

Rumpus: Did you paint that one?

Blackall: No, it felt too self-referential. Someone wrote to me recently asking me to illustrate a missed connection that “hasn’t happened yet.” This guy has seen the same girl waiting at a bus stop on his morning commute for weeks, and has been trying to find a way to approach her. He thought it would be fun to put up a Missed Connections poster [of my painting] on the corner where she waits and see what happens. It is kind of an intriguing idea but there’s something a bit too manipulative about it for my liking. It’s a fine line between being creative and stalking!

Rumpus: I was telling a friend about your blog and she has a friend who reads the local Missed Connections a lot. One day she happened to mention to this friend about an interaction she had with a stranger who was waiting in line behind her at a very busy popular bakery and her friend said to her, “That was you? That guy posted a Missed Connection about you and that day.” Do you know of any connections made from Missed Connections that you’ve drawn?

Blackall: Some people have recognized their friends in my paintings, but I’m not directly responsible for any hooking up as far as I know!

Rumpus: My friend is also an identical twin and one day one of her friends asked her, Were you and your sister at such and such a place over the weekend at such and such a time? She said yes. Someone had posted about them and the friend recognized her (our) friends. I wonder if things like that happen in NY or if they’re more likely in SF because it’s so much smaller, less populated.

Blackall: Odd things happen in New York, which is why it’s such a great source of stories. Once I read a Missed Connection which took place on a train… a boy was reading a book, watching a girl writing in her notebook. He got off before her, began to walk up the stairs, hesitated and turned back down to see her through the window as the train pulled away. Three messages along, there was one posted by a girl who was on a train, writing in her notebook, watching a guy reading his book… the guy got off, walked up the stairs, hesitated…etc. That was one of those exciting Craigslist moments!

Rumpus: Did they ever meet?

Blackall: I don’t know. I wrote to them both, but didn’t hear back.

Rumpus: I want to talk a little about a few specific paintings. One of the funniest ones is the girl undressing in the Laundromat and the guy who thinks she’s beautiful but he can’t look at her—he’s got his head in the dryer. Laundry rooms are just gold mines for these kinds of awkward moments. Rarely do people interact while there and you’ve literally got your dirty laundry with you. They’re lonely places.

The other laundry room painting that is so poignant is the recent one about the guy who is about to have a missed connection. His posting is so lovely. I have a feeling that every single woman in NYC of a certain age has developed a crush on him. There’s a rush at Laundromats in Green Point! But it’s sad.  I do think people want to talk more, but in a space like that, they’re hesitant. It’s like getting stuck next to a chatty person on an airplane. You wouldn’t mind talking for a few minutes, but not for the whole flight and you need to size up the other person pretty quickly. Will they want the conversation to go longer than you? And I guess so many times people make the wrong decisions. They back off.

Blackall: I loved that line from the guy in the Laundromat… “Unfortunately I hardly looked up, but I’m pretty sure you were beautiful”… it just makes you go “What??” I found that message very funny. The other Laundromat one is a little sad, but it’s also beautiful and optimistic in a way… I mean he’s doing something about his desire to meet someone, and there’s something gentle and sweet about his post.

Rumpus: The other one I want to talk about is the girl with freckles and bruises. Here are these two people— one with bruises, busy with her homework or whatever. She’s not taking in her surroundings at all. And then this guy writes how he would never let anything happen to her and ends it with “I read a book once.” I keep wondering why he wrote that.

Blackall: Yes, that line was odd, and kind of a lighthearted ending to a fairly heavy message… although it sounds wistful too. I think that’s part of the enormous appeal of Missed Connections for me, the mystery and ambiguity. Nothing is known for sure, even the person who was there isn’t entirely sure he or she had the same response as the other in that moment. One person might have fallen head over heels, the other might have been thinking about what to have for dinner and inadvertently making eye contact. But mostly I think two people do share a moment, and we all know that feeling, and it can put a spring in your step for the rest of the day.

Rumpus: The girl who posted for the boy who tapped her on the shoulder in the library and tells her she’s pretty. Now there’s an interaction that’s just fraught with momentum and possibilities. It’s clear she liked the attention he gave her. These two are so close to connecting again. It makes me wonder what the very first missed connections were. Cave drawings maybe?

Blackall: On Valentine’s Day this year, The New York Times ran some classified ads from the late 1800s, which were exactly like Missed Connections. Here is one:

If the young lady wearing the pink dress, spotted fur cape and muff, had light hair, light complexion and blue eyes, who was in company with a lady dressed in black, that I passed about 5 o’clock on Friday evening in South Seventh Street, between First and Second, Williamsburg, L.I., will address a line to Waldo, Williamsburg Post Office, she will make the acquaintance of a fine young man.

Jan. 19, 1862

Rumpus: Have you painted any of those? You could really go for it with the top hats and everything.

Blackall: I’m thinking of painting one of the Victorian messages for the book. I’m a big fan of spats.

Rumpus: Finally, we like to ask everybody this question: What was the last book you loved?

Blackall: Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist.

***

Visit Sophie Blackall’s site, MissedConnectionsNY.

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Daniel Alarcón, author of War by Candlelight and Lost City Radio, on the book piracy industry in Peru.

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Rumpus: So how was the tour for So Many Ways to Sleep Badly? What is one of the weirdest look or comment someone said to you on this tour?

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore: Well, the weirdest thing was when I had these really attentive audiences that stared at me like they didn’t know what was going on, and then everyone asked questions about politics but not about the book. But reviewers said much stranger things just before the tour. There was the Publishers Weekly review that said something about “the narrator, who may or may not be genetically female.” Genetically female! I mean, really, let’s not stop with the more common but still problematic “biologically female” – the invasion must go into the microscopic!

Rumpus: You were in Canada on Election Day. How was that?

Sycamore: I loved Canada on election day—anything to get away from the U.S. obsession with false hope!

Rumpus: So Many Ways to Sleep Badly is your second novel, and is written in a very stream-of-conscious voice, but there is a narrative arc, and I’m wondering, how deliberate was that choice?  Was it difficult to know when to end the book?

Sycamore: Well, I decided to write two paragraphs a day because of chronic pain that left me unable to write in the way that I used to do it—like I would die if I didn’t get all the information onto the page right away. I wanted to continue writing, and also expand the possibilities of my writing. I did originally write with no intention of plot or structure, and I would take any random thing that seemed interesting and put it on the page — quotes from the radio, things people said on the street, phone conversations, all the minutia of daily existence — something that sounded interesting because it rhymed, a good read, all sorts of things. As I started to write, I did notice themes that emerged and so I would focus on those items — roaches, rats, pigeons, the interactions of sex for play and sex for pay and when you can’t tell the difference, chronic pain, Whole Foods, exhaustion, war, music, incest memories, moments of hope, the overwhelm of the everyday — and so I definitely focused on the repetition of these elements, and it’s that repetition that I think gives the book its narrative arc. Of course, I also edited it at least nine times, from start to finish, and what’s most important to me is voice and so I was entirely ruthless about what I cut out that didn’t further the voice, anything that felt like it impeded the flow. I did keep writing and writing, so actually I have maybe 200 more pages of something and I wish I could tell you how exactly I decided to end it where it ends but… it was mostly about the crescendo of the language and the way you’re surrounded and can’t get out.

Rumpus: I know you recently wrote about Proposition 8 on your blog, and you’re probably sick of talking about it, but if you could indulge me a little, isn’t the question a semantic one? In other words wouldn’t it be preferable to remove the word “marriage” from this debate completely? Wouldn’t it be better to replace the word “marriage” with a universal legal term to represent both kinds of unions?

Sycamore: What would be preferable is to fight for universal access to the benefits that marriage can sometimes help procure – housing, healthcare, food, someone to hug you at night, citizenship – everyone should have access to these basic needs, it shouldn’t be conditional on any sort of state contract whatsoever.

Rumpus: Not everybody is a rebel.  (By the very definition of the word, not everyone can be.) Some people are fine being part of the status quo. Isn’t it their right to remain complacent just as it’s your right to fuck shit up?

Sycamore: Complacency isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. I’m interested in accountability and I’m interested in building a culture of defiance. I think it’s perfectly fine if people choose conventional life choices but it’s important to figure out a way to do the least damage rather than the most. We all make horrible compromises in order to survive in this monstrous world but the point is to make the fewest compromises possible, not to push everyone aside in order to grab any privilege we can get our hands on and then police the borders to keep out those who have less access. If the status quo is a rabid, militaristic, imperialist project camouflaged by the illusion of everyday normalcy, then yes, it’s definitely a problem if you’re a willful part of it.

Rumpus: I wanted also to give you a chance to talk about Prop K. It received so little media play. It would protect prostitutes and sex workers from abusive behavior and it failed. Do you think another Prop K will resurface?

Sycamore: Prop K would have decriminalized prostitution, certainly a first step in safety and empowerment for the widest variety of sex workers – and yes, this is an issue that will certainly continue to resurface.

Rumpus: How doomed is San Francisco? Any recommendations for how the city can pull itself back from gentrification?

Sycamore: It’s sad to me that San Francisco as a destination for marginalized queers, freaks, outsiders, and outcasts to find each other and figure out a way to cope has almost disappeared. I can think of a lot of things that would help – converting most of the downtown skyscrapers into permanent collective housing for people with inadequate living situations. Banning cars except for accessibility or emergency issues and  building a subway that goes everywhere instead of just to the suburbs. Running those criminals out of City Hall and turning it into a collective sex space. I could go on and on. It’s important to dream. Sometimes dreaming is our only weapon.

Rumpus: Anything else you’d like people to know?

Sycamore: Feel free to check in on me via my blog, or my homepage.

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