On Obsession, Revenge and the Savage Highway, a Conversation with Richard Godwin

Richard Godwin's novels have been a regular feature on this blog for the last couple years. He is the wildest, most ambitious and adventurous writers in the game and his enthusiastic journey into the human psyche has been an endless source of fascination to me. I've interviewed him a couple years ago, but I decided to give him another go after reading his latest novel Savage Highway because he is that much fun to talk to. By the way you can buy the book here and here. Make sure to also check out Ersatz World here and here. 

Now, the man of the hour. 

Richard, I've been reading your novels for a couple years now and it always amaze me how your novels confront a lot of subjects people don't even want to think about. You usually do it in brutally honest fashion. I think the subject you master the best is obsession. One Lost Summer is still my favorite novel of yours and it tackles obsession with great honest, intensity and accuracy. What about obsession fascinates you so much?

I think despite our avowed rationality, a post-Enlightenment legacy that is part propaganda and part widespread delusion, we are irrational. Obsession is the most widespread form and illustration of that. Its literary use is also a means of displaying and excavating characters and their motivation, a key part of a writer's work and a useful dramatic tool since it intensifies actions and views, much like a distorting lens. I think we live in obsessed times, from our focus on consumerism, to our need for the cyber space mirror of the internet and all its attendant obfuscations, it ultimately caresses our ideas about ourselves, not the reality of identity, and is a distorting mirror that appeases and engineers the modern irrational human into an object of political manipulation despite its claims.

Well, that's a pretty cynical statement, but it does reflect the spirit of your novels. Would you say that the sexual obsession of your characters are a statement about consumerism? They need to have, they need to own. They're irrational, like you said. We are irrational, our needs are sprouting out of nothingness. Do you think all of our obsessions eventually lead us towards sex or death? 

I would not say it is cynical at all:

'cynical

adjective

1.

distrusting or disparaging the motives of others; like or characteristic of a cynic.

2.

showing contempt for accepted standards of honesty or morality by one's actions, especially by actions that exploit the scruples of others.'

That is a dictionary definition of the word you use here. 

I would say it is realism, I write realism sometimes and in the cases you cite I do. Not always. Not in my satire. Not in Meaningful Conversations or Paranoia And The Destiny Programme. Not in Ersatz World or Mr. Glamour. But no, my statement is meant as an honest analysis, it is interested in the motives of others as I am. There is no contempt for standards of honesty in it since they do not exist in the world of cyber manipulation. That is the ultimate piece cynicism, a means of objectifying us all. It is a stark truth and one that bears reflection. We are all pornographised. Ever wondered why porn soared on the net? A cynic would say because it sells. I say because it is politics. Politicians need pornography to get votes. They are the real cynics. But I am not talking about sex here I am talking about objectification, and its subtly crafted code of body and desire, the redeployment of desire that Foucault talks about in his History of Sexuality, that the deconstructonists touch on in their explorations of the text and its adherence to the dictates of the covert control program.

 I would also urge you to reconsider the spirit of my novels since they are ultimately romances of the post modernist era, satires of habit and excavations of desire. It has been observed that a cynic is a failed romantic. I am neither, but I know that what I say may disturb those who need the internet and its mirror. Do you think we are really being offered freedom? I write in microcosms, I address and reflect the macrocosm. My characters reflect your own distress and imprisonment. What I am saying about my characters' sexual and other obsessions is beyond consumerism. It is about the need for refraction. It is about the essence of desire. It is about the manipulation of our goals. It is about the  freedom of anarchy and desire. Everything leads us towards sex and death. Remember the Elizabethans called orgasm the little death. The Romans said 'post coitum omne animalum triste sunt.' I say seek your ecstasy.

You're right. lack of idealism is not necessarily cynicism. Your brand of realism though is fearless and extreme. You are one of these guys who gaze into the abyss without an once of fear or confusion. At least, it's the way I see it when I read you. Certainly the way I felt when I read Savage Highway. The way you discuss sex in your novels is a never-ending source of interest to me as you're very apt as discussing the matter in all its beautiful and all its ugly. I think you nail a very important point when you say it's about objectification and to a certain degree commodification. A mean to satisfy the bottomless pit of desire. Do you consider yourself an extreme writer? I often refer to you as an extreme writer because the very idea of taboo is absent from your novels and it tends to scare people off. Do you receive hate mail from readers?

I think idealists are dangerous because they lack reality. You cannot fight a war on idealism. War is necessary for survival. We need a defense mechanism or we perish. I am called extreme by many people. I do not see myself that way. I believe I am an explorer of the human condition. In order to do that efficiently you have to venture into those places that scare us. If you give into fear you are lost. Never let it in, kill it at the gate. Sex is ultimately a reflection of who we are. Therefore it is ugly and beautiful depending on whom you are fucking. Fuck is not a bad word. Only the moralists would have it so. I am not a moralist. Hamlet said there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Then again he saw ghosts. Or did he? The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

I don't think you are an extreme person, you are way too gleeful and enthusiastic to be so, but I believe your stories can be and I understand what sometimes when you infuse characters with precise desires and motivation, they will lead you wherever they will lead you and complete fucking chaos might ensue and I think that your willingness to let them destroy one another honors you. It is very Takashi Miike'esque as it is sometimes both grand guignol and terrifyingly realistic. The situations aren't, but the characters' reactions are. Who or what shaped that desire to coldly expose reality the way you do? Is it an artist? Is it something in your past?

It is the composite sum of my life and my experiences. It is Art and it is Shakespeare and Caravaggio, Jonson and Dickens and all of them. It is the Book Of Urizen. Blake and Kafka's theory of Art. It is time itself and my own dark rebellion against it and its configurations.

What do you think are the responsibilities of the author in the 21st century, whether it's for novelists, screenwriters, playwright, etc? Are there any? You said earlier that art was a dark rebellion against the tyranny of time, which I think is very interesting. What do you think of the so-called socially engaged crime fiction being written these days?

There is only one responsibility for an author at any time in history and that is to explore the human condition honestly and outside the prevailing cultural program. I am not sure what you mean by the so-called socially engaged crime fiction being written these days, if you mean genre strict fiction that is formulaic and that is aimed at tick boxing cultural themes and appeasing social unease it is formula, well written well constructed maybe, it is not Art, it lacks the necessary rebellion.

What would you call it if you wouldn't call it art? Would you say that artistic rebellion is inherently idiosyncratic and therefore free of obligations?

I would not call it anything else, it is the only means of exploration beyond social programming, which has imbued all other areas to different degrees. Art is beyond idiosyncrasy, which is part of the sense of an individual identity, and while it explores identity it is engaged in a deeper excavation, it is not free from moral obligations but it has its own morality, not the one that is conditioned by society.

What were your preoccupations when writing Savage Highway? Lawlessness is a theme fascinating to me because I believe it's always closer than we think. It's what made J.G Ballard's High-Rise so goddamn fascinating. So what was it you were trying to say?

Revenge is lawless justice. I placed my characters firmly within the satisfactions of the revenge tragedy. There is no justice none at all despite the lies of our crooning diseased politicians and the judicial system and its vast and plotted corruptions. There are no ideals, in the US everyone inherits the frontier.

So revenge is a tragedy and not a romance according to you?

I was referring to the Jacobean revenge tragedy. It is more of a narrative form.

What is in the cards for Richard Godwin in 2016? What are your upcoming books and what are the themes you wish to explore in the near future?

Next up is Disembodied published by Ektsatis Editions in June, about state surveillance. Then in October Buffalo And Sour Mash, by Down And Out Books, run buy the enterprising and brilliant Eric Campbell, then Locked In Cages published by Black Opal Books, then next year Crystal On Electric Acetate by Down And Out Books. I have about fourteen novels right now about to be published.