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MO: Well it did. But I got the impression you were also put off by it.
JK: Well yes, of course I’m put off by it. Again, if I don’t make myself feel something, I’m not going to make you feel something. So in this case, I wanted to make you feel repulsed. So I had to repulse myself. So I used those kinds of words, and I used that kind of dialog, where for example at one point he’s telling this rape victim to talk back to him like he’s Daddy, like he’s the best fuck she’s ever had and all that shit. They do that. Most of this dialog was taken straight out of transcripts. And that’s what they say. And yes, it turns me very, very off, so to turn you off, I used it.
MO: Anything else you’d like to add about the perfect story?
JK: Okay. About the perfect story—it’s got to be about people. It can’t just be about story. It’s got to reach you on a very gut, human level. Or I don’t want to write it. It’s got to make you think about yourself . . . bleed a little.
MO: Do you prefer to write novels or short stories? Which do you find easier?
WRITER JACK KETCHUM AND EDITOR
ELLEN DATLOW
Photo by Monica J. O'Rourke |
JK: Short stories are a piece of cake. They’re a busman’s holiday. They’re fun things to do once you get the idea, once those things again come together.
MO: A lot of writers can’t do short stories well.
JK: I just enjoy the hell out of them. I’ll get a short story idea, once it coalesces, and I don’t get them that often. They have to coalesce, but once they do, I’ll spend three days just having a ball writing these short stories and then it’s done.
MO: And unlike your novels, your short stories don’t tend to be about real events.
JK: That’s true.
MO: Maybe your short stories are more experimental.
JK: Possibly experimental. Because you’re not married to a short story the way you’re married to a novel. So you can mess around a little bit, and if it doesn’t work you put it back in your drawer. Maybe take it out in ten years and try again. Which I’ve done. But it’s fun to do because sometimes they just wonderfully fall into place. I love three shots: sometimes you get beginning, middle and end and it’ll just coalesce so beautifully. “Returns” comes to mind. I happen to like “Returns” a lot. “Returns” was done in one day. A fucking day. And then I just revised it and tuned it up. And it was such a pleasure to write that, so much fun to know that you had all that stuff together, you had all those licks together, you had the emotional context in there that you wanted to have, and it just flew out of you. Like you wrote poetry when you were a little kid, it was that kind of thing. An almost adolescent sense of, I’ve got to get this out of me because it’s there, and it’s flying, it’s going.
MO: One of you most anthologized and well known stories is “The Box.” How long did that take to write?
JK: That was a quick one too. I walk into a bar one day and my friend Neil (McPheeters) is scribbling on a cocktail napkin and I said “Hi, Neil,” and he said “Shut up, I’ve got this idea,” and he gave me basically the entire idea of “The Box.” His notion was that this was the Depression, and he was thinking about people starving themselves during the Depression, when people were starving because they had to. So Neil handed me this cocktail napkin and said, “Look at this.” And he explained what this idea was. And I took it home and as I do with most things I put it on my bulletin board and let it sit for a little while. And then I thought, “What about this isn’t about the Depression? What if it’s about Christmas? What if the box is a Christmas present?” Undefined Christmas present. And what if for some unexplained reason they just start starving themselves? Every now and then I do a little foray into the surreal, and “The Box” is one of those. And because it’s very realistically written, it doesn’t feel surreal. Yet it is. I mean, there’s no reason for these events to happen whatsoever.
MO: It has an almost other worldly element about it.
JK: Yes. It’s not supernatural, and it’s not realistic. It is surreal. I’ve done that a couple of other times. “The Chain Letter” is a surreal story.
MO: Are you superstitious? Do you use any talismans or good luck charms when you write?
JK: I’m not superstitious. Not at all.
MO: A lot of writers tend to be.
JK: Nah, not at all. I mean, I walk under ladders, I don’t give a shit. I guess I’m sort of spiritual. I can find a lot of spirits in the woods and in strange places, lonely places. But that’s not the same thing. One of my favorite books this year was The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Which posits that the world won’t be a safe or reasonable place to live in until all of our modern gods go the way of Thor and Loki and Zeus and the rest. I’ve believed that since I think I was about eighteen years old. So I don’t have a whole lot of superstitious baggage to carry with me. The only reason I wrote She Wakes, which is the only supernatural book that I’ve ever written, was because I felt a lot of spirituality in Greece. Which had nothing to do with religion either. I used religious images. I used Apollo, Hecate, etc. but that’s just because I wanted to talk about renewal in Greece.
MO: These unusual spiritual encounters that you’ve had, such as in Greece . . . there’s no better way to ask this. Were you under the influence of anything? (laughs)
JK: Uhh, Greece. (laughs)
MO: I have a cousin who swore he saw the devil on a rooftop. He and his friends saw this demonic thing that they swear to this day was the devil. But they were all raging alcoholics . . .
JK: Monica, I took a lot of LSD and mescaline when I was a kid. I never saw God or the devil, but I did see some things in Greece, and not under the influence of anything, that made me feel the world is bigger than I think it is. And I don’t mind that at all. I do mind when people translate that into some sort of faith. It doesn’t take faith to look at a pine tree that’s a hundred and fifty years old and want to worship it. And want to just touch it.
MO: So you’re spiritual but not religious.
JK: Not religious, but spiritual, yes.
MO: What other genres would you like to work in? Have you written outside the horror genre?
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