By Chelsea Laine Wells

Memphis Movie, freshly released by Soft Skull press, is the latest book from prolific poet, novelist, and all-around Renaissance man Corey Mesler. This novel spirals deep into the moviemaking process, the chaotic world of stardom, and the increasingly unstable tectonic shifts of director Eric Warberg’s psychology. Human relationships are handled at times delicately, at times callously, always with honesty, in this masterful synthesis of fiction and reality set in the richly contradictory landscape of Memphis.

Corey Mesler has published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Good Poems, American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published 8 novels, 4 short story collections, numerous chapbooks, and 4 full-length poetry collections. He’s been nominated for many Pushcarts, and 2 of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife he runs a bookstore in Memphis. He can be found at Coreymesler.wordpress.com.

Chelsea Laine Wells: If someone asked me to pare down this book and describe it in a phrase – which, by the way, is impossible – I think I would hand them the words human nature. The choices made throughout, both knee-jerk and agonized over, by Eric, Sandy, and Dan specifically (but really every single character no matter how bit the part) concerning relationships, creative integrity, life trajectory, appetites of all types, and so on – to me, they were the driving current of this novel. The fallibility and beauty of human nature and how it builds and destroys, framed within the context of making a movie. Was this a strong impetus for you, to explore human nature through these very human characters, or a lovely result of developing the story line?

Corey Mesler: I don’t think I start out with the idea that I am going to comment on human nature in any of its Steppenwolf, kaleidoscopic mirror-sides. I believe that all people are not only fallible but often wayward, drifting, stuck inside themselves, and struggling to find balance where there is little to be had. If an examination of human nature has come through, and I guess your question suggests that it has, then I thank you for the compliment. What happened, for me, in the writing of a book based on character – and this is my most character-driven novel – was that I found my newborn folks’ existences both absurd and meaningful, both grasping and generous, both joyous and isolated, just like people in what we want to call the real world. I hope that the empathy I have for my creations comes through. Peter DeVries said, “Human nature is pretty shoddy stuff, and we all need forgiveness and redemption and upward of a thousand second chances.” I try to keep that in mind when I write.

CLW: The empathy definitely comes through. Your handling of your characters, especially at their most difficult and unsympathetic moments, is compassionate always. So Memphis Movie is of course in large part a tribute to Memphis, the culture and history and the contrasts – such an incredible city. In the book, it operates almost as its own character. How did Memphis factor into your development of this entire storyline? Was it the impetus or did it rise to the surface as you wrote? I know you live in Memphis – are you from there, and does it hold the same implications for you as for Eric?

CM: I was born in Niagara Falls, New York, but moved to Memphis when I was five. Actually, I moved to a suburb of Memphis, Raleigh; the difference is notable if you are from these parts. I grew up in Raleigh. I didn’t really begin to understand, love and revere my hometown until I moved from Raleigh to Midtown Memphis in the 1980s. There is a saying here that Midtown is Memphis (and Cooper Young, where both my house and bookstore lie, is the heart of Midtown). Memphis is a town of great soul – the pun is crucial – and the city’s creative necromancy runs like a chthonic river underneath the surface of the everyday. I think you have to live in Memphis a long time to really appreciate what is enchanting about it. I love the city much more than Eric does. Eric wears Memphis like a yoke. I’d like to think I wear it like a lei.

CLW: I love that – the contrast between how you wear the city and how Eric does. I daresay it wouldn’t have been possible for Eric to write this book, as autobiographical as it feels, because his focus on the city is too myopic. You, on the other hand, are able to pull back and craft a response that draws on your love of the city but very accurately conveys Eric’s feeling of suffocation. Now as for the pacing – this book is breakneck. I started it and was swept up instantly and pulled along by the wrist – that’s how it felt, in a wonderful way. The dialog was a big part of this, mainly Eric’s. It read like a script, the immediacy, the unadorned realness of his language. Is this your voice normally, this razor sharp quickness that Eric affected? Or were you influenced by the script/movie subject matter of the novel?

CM: Most of my writing is forged through dialog. If dialog isn’t the drive it’s at least the navigator. I believe that you can delineate a lot more about a character by the way they talk than from a description of their hairstyles or clothes, their homes or their furniture. Voice connects. My first novel, Talk, was written entirely in unattributed dialog. Conversation is probably the thing I do best, in my fiction, and for that reason I should be making millions in Hollywood, instead of fumbling in a greasy till in Memphis, Tennessee. However, as I said above, Memphis Movie is more character-driven than my previous books. I felt immediately as if I knew these people though I’ve never set foot on the set of a motion picture. Yet, as you so perspicaciously noted, dialog became crucial to the writing since some of the book limns the idiosyncratic art of the screenplay. I would like to note, however, that my favorite character, Memphis poet Camel Jeremy Eros, is hired by the movie folks to add punch to the script, and he is simply unable to accomplish it. Writing for the movies is anathema to my dear Camel. It is soul-death, and he rises above it by the sheer force of his insouciance and grace.

CLW: You know, I could feel your affection for Camel. It radiates. He is so tenderly drawn. I could also feel your connection to every character so it doesn’t surprise me that this was a character-driven novel for you. No spoilers, but in a conversation about your characters, we have to touch on magical realism. I was enraptured by the element of the paranormal and spirituality and the way that it gained strength as the story grew – sly and almost with an eye roll at first, and then increasingly powerful and legitimate as the story progressed. The contrast was profound: this hard-edged story about hard-edged people imbued with a mysticism, with an unapologetic magic. Is this common in your work? How did that develop for you as you wrote this story?

CM: Yes, some form of magical realism is in most of my fiction. I was raised on Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and the local Saturday night horror movie, presented by Sivad, your Monster of Ceremonies. Early on in the writing of Memphis Movie, I discovered that I wanted the ghost of Elvis Presley, Memphis’ most famous son, to appear to the movie folk. He is, to put it fancifully, conjured by the Merchants of Fancy. I also wanted Eric to wrestle with his father’s ghost the way Hamlet did. At various points in the story Eric may want to cry, “O that this too too solid flesh would melt.” And then there is the obvious connection to movies as dreamland, an art made of sortilege and light. As the story unspooled for me, more and more paranormal elements entered in. I blame it on the Hollywood celebrities in the book’s cast. Those new-agey actors made me do it.

CLW: Ah, the concept of movies as dreamland – that hadn’t even occurred to me, but of course that makes sense. Hollywood, in spite of itself, is a very spiritual (or at least quasi-spiritual) place. I would say the same for the south, being southern myself. So that came together perfectly. On the subject of spiritualism, let’s talk a little bit more about Camel. I saw him as the beatnik Buddha, sort of the calm heart and moral true north of your story. His scenes served as an emotional cool down for me from the stress and noise of Eric’s world. Was this intentional? Can you discuss what you see as his role in the story?

CM: Exactly. Do you read all writers this well? Camel is the counter to the Dream Importers. Camel is Memphis, a part of Memphis that is pure, humble, and inviolate. I like the phrase ‘beatnik Buddha.’ There is a great tradition in my hometown of modest geniuses. Everyone knows Elvis, but Memphis is also the home of Jim Dickinson, William Eggleston, Shelby Foote, Sam the Sham, Carroll Cloar, Big Star and Stax. There is something that ties them all together, something I can’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps it’s humility. Perhaps it’s an elegant way of staying human and centered. That’s real Memphis mojo. Camel was born in my collage-novel, We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, and he’s dear to me. Don’t tell anyone but I am working on a new novel based on his life.

CLW: Consider yourself told upon because I’m leaving that in the interview. I wish I’d thought to voice this instinct – I KNEW Camel predated this novel. He is very third-dimensional. I actually thought he might be a real beat poet and spent a bit of time researching him. So on the topic of poets and poetry, let’s get into the language. Your language was just one more example of contrast that struck exactly the right note for me. You’re a masterful writer. This novel felt at once intensely complex and effortlessly done – what a feat. The dialog, as I mentioned, is quicksilver, very real. The upsetting moments of the story are recounted with a bald starkness that pulls no punches. And yet – there are speeches, turns of phrase, and imagery that encompass the dense, luminous beauty of poetry. And in fact, of course, you are a poet. Can you talk a little bit about bringing together these two elements of your creative ability – the straightforward storyteller and the more unconfined poet?

CM: Masterful? Blimey, thanks. If it appears effortlessly done then I have achieved something exceptional, something I set out to do with only a wobbly prayer that it would be achieved. One of my guiding-light artists is the director Robert Altman. His movies are rich experiences precisely because they are complex but seem effortless. There is a flow to Altman’s best work that is pure cinematic poetry. Watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller or Nashville more than once and you realize just how keenly his alchemy works. Hugely entertaining movies that work on you like hypnotic trances. So, yes, the goal is poetry that tells a story. I would say one of my weaknesses as a writer is that I am more interested in style than story. My hope, in Memphis Movie, is that I’ve employed both. That being said I still subscribe to the great Vladimir Nabokov’s statement, “All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.”

CLW: More interested in style than story – fascinating. That seems to me (speaking from lack of experience because I am no poet) that it could be an interesting effect of you being a poet as well. I do think you achieved a seamless synthesis of the two here. Synthesis is probably an apt word to describe this novel as a whole. You also synthesized reality and fiction. What I see as perhaps the most special aspect of this novel (and that’s hard to pin down so I say that with reservation) is the way you brought together reality and fiction. Your main characters are fictional. But the story is peppered with references to actual actors, directors, and writers. For me, this made the entire story feel extremely real – whereas with a writer less masterful of his craft, it could feel disingenuous and forced. But you pulled it off in spades. Your biggest dip into reality is the inclusion of actress Hope Davis as a major character in the novel. Can you talk a little bit about that? Does she know? At the risk of getting you in trouble, is Eric’s infatuation with her in any way familiar to you? What was it like to write a real person into a fictional story?

CM: Ha. Yes, I am outed. I love Hope Davis. I might not leave my wife for her but I would certainly think about it. What you are asking is central to the structure of the novel. Verisimilitude, in this book, if it is accomplished, is accomplished by mixing real life movie people with the novel’s fairy tale creations, and with real Memphians and Memphis locales. In the movie within the novel I wanted to include one actual actor and I chose Ms. Davis, not only because I am infatuated with her, but because she embodies what is good and honest about acting. She is down to earth and believable in every role. I feel the same way about Amy Adams. When they make the movie of Memphis Movie perhaps Amy Adams can play Hope Davis. Hope (and you gotta love the ready-made metaphor of her name) is the antithesis of the fantasy world which descends on Memphis in the form of the Hollywood cast and crew of the movie. While some of them are larger than life, Hope Davis, in my version, is modestly human, a sort of honorary Memphian. I guess I’ve always adjoined real people to my myths, because I am a hero worshiper and because they are a cheap way to ground your make-believe. In other stories Camel’s best friend is the poet and novelist, Richard Brautigan. The singer-songwriter and novelist Richard Farina makes an appearance. I put some real musicians, out of our city’s bottomless history, in my Beale Street book, etc.

CLW: My hope (see what I did there?) of course is that Hope Davis would play herself, since I also love her. I had the same feeling about her character as I did about Camel’s – that she provided an oasis from the furor surrounding Eric. One last note on how real this novel felt. When I think back over Memphis Movie, part of my brain swears it was written in first person, even though I know it’s not. I think this is an effect of how incredibly clear you made Eric’s psychology, his devolution throughout the story, his mercurial emotions. To that end, in crafting my interview questions, I truly felt like I was setting out to interview Eric Warberg, not Corey Mesler – and in fact, I’ll admit that I Googled Eric Warberg just to make sure he wasn’t real. That’s how genuine Eric’s story was for me. So do you and Eric intersect, and if so, how steeply? Have you felt the same creative struggle as Eric? I could go on all day asking these kinds of prying questions.

CM: Though Eric is not me he became my ‘voice’ for the duration of the creation of the novel. Though Altmanesque in its circus-like cast and tangled skeins of narrative, Eric is at the center of the web. It is his story, his efforts, his failures, his emotions, which the book is most concerned with. Every artist struggles the way Eric struggles, perhaps not with precisely his flaws, but the creation of art, even in moviedom, is a lonely labor. The director of a movie is like a novelist, except the novelist doesn’t have a billion dollars and 250 people collaborating with him or her. The success or failure of the best movies are due to one person’s vision, and that person is usually the director. Or so I believe.

CLW: He is most definitely at the center of the web, and after finishing Memphis Movie, as a reader who bought into his existence utterly from cover to cover, I hope that he will forge on and continue to direct. Much like you – you are highly prolific, which as a reader, I love. What are you working on now? We are dying to know.

CM: Well, I just spilled about working on a novel about Camel. It’s still on the breast. Currently I am more invested in the novel I just finished, a 250,000+ word semi-autobiographical beast. I both love it and hate it right now.

CLW: You’re referring to A Trip to the Falls, correct? An excerpt of this was published on Hypertext – an energetic and irreverent read. The completed novel, whenever it comes out, is already on my reading list. In the meantime, assign us a reading list. What books in this world are unmissable, in your estimation?

CM: Oh, I could go on forever here. I have been a bookseller my whole life, so an evangelist for books. Here’s a quick 20 off the top of my head, all novels:

1. Ulysses by James Joyce
2. Little, Big by John Crowley
3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
4. The Trial by Franz Kafka
5. Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser
6. Darconville’s Cat by Alexander Theroux
7. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
8. The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
9. The Philosopher’s Pupil by Iris Murdoch
10. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
11. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
12. Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
13. Something Happened by Joseph Heller
14. Seventh Heaven by Alice Hoffman
15. The Sotweed Factor by John Barth
16. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
17. White Noise by Don DeLillo
18. Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell
19. The Stranger by Albert Camus
20. The Angel of Forgetfulness by Steve Stern

CLW: Thanks so much for this interview, Corey. You’ve earned yourself a staff full of fans at Hypertext.

---

Corey Mesler has published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published 8 novels, 4 short story collections, numerous chapbooks, and 4 full-length poetry collections. His new novel, Memphis Movie, is from Soft Skull Press (April 2015). He’s been nominated for many Pushcarts, and 2 of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife he runs a bookstore in Memphis. He can be found at Coreymesler.wordpress.com.

Chelsea Laine Wells is a graduate of the Columbia College of Chicago Fiction Department. She served twice as a co-editor of Hair Trigger, Columbia College’s yearly literary anthology, as well as a judge in Columbia’s Young Author Writing Competition for many years. Her work has appeared in Third Point Press, The Other Stories, Litro, Cease, Cows, The Butter, PANK, wigleaf, Heavy Feather, Change Seven, Split Lip, Molotov Cocktail, Paper  Darts,  Little  Fiction, and others. Honors include first place in the Columbia Scholastic Press Association Awards, first place in the Guild Complex Literary Awards, finalist in Heavy Feather’s chapbook contest, nomination for two Pushcarts and four Best of the Nets, and a 2015 Best of the Net win, among others. She is also founding editor of Hypernova Lit, an online journal dedicated to publishing the writing and visual art of high school students, which she runs with her husband Bryan Lindsey. Chelsea works as a public high school creative writing and English teacher and lives in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, TX. Her work is represented by Maria Massie of Massie McQuilken. Find out more www.chelsealainewells.com.

---

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

We have earned a Platinum rating from Candid and are incredibly grateful to receive partial funding from National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Humanities, Chicago DCASE, and Illinois Arts Council.

We could not do what we’re doing without individual donations. If independent publishing is important to you, PLEASE DONATE.