New American Dream

THE NEW AMERICAN
DREAM INTERVIEW

Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist, and activist living in Burlington, Vermont.

His books include:

Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Sams
The Lamentations of Julius Marantz
The Annotated Nose
The Education of Arnold Hitler
Golem Song

And his newest: Skulk.

Marc Estrin's "Skulk" is the sixth of his critically-acclaimed novels for lovers of intelligent fiction.

Radical prof Richard Gronsky is swept off his feet by T.L. Skulkington, a sassy, right-wing superstar, during one of her liberal-bashing talks.

Their romance struggles with political polarity until a run-in with Homeland Security brings Miss Skulkington's libertarian impulses to the fore, and "Skulk" is won over to Gronsky's causes — secession of the Free State of Kansas, and 9/11 Truth.

So begins the twosome's mad escapade to stage an Event and awaken the Sunflower State to The Issues of the Day.

Joining forces with a mysterious Santa, they take flying lessons, and steal a Cessna to crash into Santa's department store.

The reader is treated to a sophisticated parody of American political reality, a wild ride full of ironic twists and a stunning ending.

In the Afterword, Estrin discusses his strategy in "Skulk": to use comic fiction to probe dangerous real-world fictions parading as truth.

_____________________________

"His world line approximates a cross between a fungal mycelium and a Rube Goldberg device.

"Biologist, theater director, EMT, Unitarian minister, physician assistant, puppeteer, political activist, college professor, cellist and conductor, he is baffling, even unto himself.

"Estrin was hired to teach theater at Goddard College, but in this departmentless utopia, wound up also teaching music, writing, "Finnegans Wake," math, physics, medical self-help and "crazy courses" like Philosophy for Dishwashers, an audio-based lecture/discussion series to sweeten the life of cafeteria volunteers. Such are the fruits of liberal education.

"Estrin grew up in a small apartment so full of books you had to walk sideways in the hall.

Of these, he read not one — till age sixteen, when he gave up his literary virginity to Franz Kafka.
"The Trial" was his introduction to the larger life. This explains much. A mediocre student in high school, he was teased by his father into reading "The Magic Mountain" during the summer before college.

"Epiphany.

"The book was for him a topo-map of western thought and culture. With Mann as his guide, he sailed through college and grad schools, making a Hegelian leap out of graduate science into the richer, if iffier area of the arts.

"The Vietnam war and Bertolt Brecht were his siren callers into political activity, and his professional theater work dissipated into organizing, college teaching and communal living.

"When these ceased to put food on the table, he reached back into a past life to study and practice medicine. With the computer came the possibility of writing without retyping — a stimulus sufficient to have resulted in his current crop of manuscripts, published and unpublished."



NAD:

Hello, welcome.

When did you start writing?

Why?


MARC ESTRIN:

Started writing fiction at age 60 after getting a phone call from someone I know asking me to send him "a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight."

Why?

So he could shoot black people from his window in the upcoming war between blacks and Jews in NYC.


So he could shoot black people from his window in the upcoming war between blacks and Jews in NYC.


The whole thing was so weird that I wrote down the phone call, then just developed that: what else might a guy like this think or say or do?

The result was my first novel ms, which ended up as "Golem Song," published second.



NAD:

Do you have a "real" job.

Do you make your living as a writer?


MARC ESTRIN:

I was downsized from my real job, and we took a fifty percent salary cut without much change in our way-simple lifestyle.

I now live off my good wife: she works while I play all day being a writer.



NAD:

What are the topics of your books?


MARC ESTRIN:

Five so far are comedic dealings with different, serious cultural/political topics — among them, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, religious hysteria, the contemporary plague, 9/11 truth, the pathology of "chosenness".

My last finished ms is my first non-comedic one, my death-penalty book, a historical novel-with-essays on the first use of the guillotine in revolutionary France.

The ms I'm currently working on is a study of the controversial death of Tchaikovsky, also not too funny.

The contents of all of them can be seen on my webpage.



NAD:

You are a musician.

In what way does that enhance or add to your writing style?


MARC ESTRIN:

Absolutely.

I am constantly thinking in musical terms: sonata form, theme and variations, key, modulations, melody.


I am constantly thinking in musical terms: sonata form, theme and variations, key, modulations, melody.


I'll be using some printed music as part of the Tchaikovsky book, as I did in a still unpublished novella about God living on the street in a '96 Hyundai.

I like very much to try to write about music as the ultimate challenge for prose. My first wondering if "I could ever do that" was back in college, reading Thomas Mann's descriptions of music, especially the remarkable chapter on Beethoven op 111 in Doctor Faustus.

It took forty-five years for me to actually try it, but you'll find big music sections in most of my novels.

Music also keeps me sane, unlike politics which makes me crazy.

Together they balance out so I can have some neutral space to write.



NAD:

What do you hope to accomplish with your books?


MARC ESTRIN:

Get my readers, small in number though they may be, to think about some things they may not have thought about, and to share with them some things I love or find really interesting.



NAD:

What do you think of the recent presidential election?

Are you hopeful?


MARC ESTRIN:

Four more years.

Obama is only a more presentable face for the ongoing project of American corporate capitalist militarist hegemony.


Obama is only a more presentable face for the ongoing project of American corporate capitalist militarist hegemony.


Like Clinton, whose administration he is raiding like crazy, he may be as dangerous as Bush because more subtle and "acceptable" in the world.

He wants 100,000 MORE troops in the military, with a concomitant military budget increase to sustain them.

He wants to invade Afghanistan and Pakistan for a more successful pursuit of the War on Terror. He voted for the Patriot Act.

He is for the death penalty and No Child Left Behind. He is against single payer health care. He was the major arm twister in getting Dems to vote for the bailout.

He doesn't give two shits about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian.

His post-election appointments are mostly appalling.

What's to be hopeful about?



NAD:

What are you working on now?


MARC ESTRIN:

Finishing up the guillotine novel, taking a million notes for Tchaikovsky, pondering a non-fiction book about how come I ended up being a comic writer.

Lots of cello playing and choral singing.



NAD: How do you know Mike Palecek?


MARC ESTRIN:

Hmm. I don't really remember. I've read some of his books, blurbed one, and was a great fan of his travels. I share his politics, I think, and also his frustration with both politics and the future of politics in literature.



NAD:

What else would you like to talk about, anything we should have asked, but didn't?


MARC ESTRIN:

Hard to say since I don't know what all this will be used for, what format, what audience, what the website wants to focus on.

The whole question of "political fiction" is quite interesting to me.

My faithful editor is trying as hard as he can (if not totally successfully) to keep politics out of my books.


My faithful editor is trying as hard as he can (if not totally successfully) to keep politics out of my books.


He and I share much of our analysis, but his feeling is that — at least with literary fiction, my genre — current politics limits the shelf-life of the work, and reduces its dimension.

It's a constant struggle against the notion that art and politics don't mix. I would think this is an issue that might interest the folks I imagine to be your readers.