Life is meant to be experienced

Chris Dankland: hi luke ! thanks for talking to me :) 

i really enjoyed the prose style of ‘Kill Dick.’ i loved how the sentences are always on the move, manic & fast, constantly on to the next. 

i’m gonna give the reader a couple examples of what i mean. this paragraph is from one of my favorite sections in the book, in which the main character Susie is at an elite los angeles sex party, this weird illuminati eyes wide shut type thing: 

The city shone out there just waiting to be loved, to be given the gift of my art that could be used to save the world, somehow, the animals, the people, the entire planet, the trap and strange phenomenon of being, rescued from total ruin. I wanted to help. I wanted to love the world. I wanted to be able to look into the eyes of all, homeless, rich, average. I wanted connection. Maybe it was from watching the skin of nudity, the fucking, the shadow and reveal of genitals, animal poses, force and movement, approaching, reapproaching, the smell, that made me think of the eyes of the people in the world and how they seemed trapped: wanting, waiting, hopeful, desperate, but also locked inside from all the years of hatred and hurt, from toxic messages, and programming from the pervasive endless information era about how wrong everything was, the systems of oppression, each macroaggression and microaggression, each bomb, each murder, the sad trap of our minds and bodies, and the indominatable perserverance of hope. What was hope but a word ruined by the Obama run? 

& a smaller example: 

Light reflected from the surface of the pool floating in the dark of the grass beyond the path of potted fishtail palms.

i love that sentence as an example of how the book’s center of attention is always moving. 

how did u maintain that momentum through multiple revisions? if ur feeling low energy when u sit down to write, how do u build up or access that speed? where do u think that wild type of verbal energy comes from, for u? 

Luke Goebel: I don’t do low energy. It doesn’t happen. I am either high energy or olympic sleeping for the gold medal. I guess it’s just a trauma response, according to my therapist, who wants me to stay off my meds and tell myself I’m unconditionally loveable and not take vitamins from the vitamin maker who I was dating after my wife left me. She made 1.75 billion off vitamins, and they’re good vitamins, but my therapist, former therapist, she doesn’t like the idea of me taking those vitamins at all. 

I didn’t just revise KILL DICK multiple times. I re-WROTE the novel four times. Then I revised it a million times. Even after they said no more revisions, basically, I turned in 17 pages in a word doc of line by line instructions. If a sentence isn’t doing everything a sentence can do, why write it? Why would I ever write a treatment for a movie masquerading as a novel? Why would I ever write a sentence that tells something you can’t feel? Why would I underserve my reader? It’s not like I wanna get rich off writing books. I want to make people want to run around naked in the night when they read my novels. Todd Snyder, who was my dead brother’s favorite song writer and now they’re both dead, and I miss my brother, man, I do, and I miss Todd being alive too and he had a song called “Framed” about the first dollar bill on a bar wall or something. Good luck getting this interview placed by the way. I really appreciate that you want to talk to me. But I don’t know if it’s gonna get placed. 

Here’s the song: “FRAMED” by Todd Snyder. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5-qKUpy_lc

“Over serving my country under General Malaise 

Said he wasn't making peace until they paid him a raise 

He said that killing was paying like I didn't know how 

If peace paid, we'd have it made by now 

We'd have it new and improved by now 

If it paid any 

I took a better job pouring fluoride in the water 

For the son of the Bilderberg's only daughter 

I said "How do you know?" She said "You know how you just know Somethin' in your gut that you just gotta trust? 

Well it's nothin’ like that 

We’s just a-rich as all fuck is all"

I guess I’m part crazy, part not-lazy, part overserving my country because I’m afraid that I will ever write something boring that doesn’t make you wanna start a revolution. I mean, you know, it used to be about that. It used to be about driving everyone wild, wanting to whip everyone into a frenzy, and trying to start a revolution. Because the alternative was watching everyone getting sad, old, dead, tired, and lonely, while they blew everyone up overseas. I guess that hasn’t changed. 

CD: as i read & reread ‘Kill Dick’ i kept asking myself: how did he structure this? it’s such a vast & tangled book. u’ve got twin brothers who use each others’ names as aliases, a bunch of mysterious murders in which several characters are potentially implicated, & a main character who is writing the book herself, switching back & forth between first person & third person. additionally, the main character is a drug addict who is fucked up for most of the book. she blacks out, she gets confused…the book embodies a chaos that seems to have infected everything. how did u organize all this into the shape u wanted? 

LG: I have not the foggiest fucking idea how I did it. I JUST did it. Like Nike said to do. I just did it. I kept trying, and freaking out, and changing things, and having meltdowns, and standing outside of doors hyperventilating, and writing every day, and rewriting, and changing things, and losing my mind, and then finally, somehow, after massive revisions and reconstruction, even after the book had sold, I just, somehow, woke up, one day, after all these days of miracles day in and day out of little figuring shit out moments, and I had a novel that worked. Except when I think about it, really think about it, and ask myself, is the narrator, Susie Vogelman telling the truth, I think…I don’t know. I just don’t know. I think maybe not. And then I think: “Oh shit, I’m gonna have to make more decisions when I adapt KILL DICK for screen. Oh shit! But what I do know: Susie gets about 15 million bucks from her dad, plus fame and fortune in her work. Her best friend, DICK Sickler’s daughter, opiate heiress, gets billions. Some shit definitely went down we aren’t getting the whole story on. That’s gonna have to get on screen. Lucky hot punk genius sapphic radicals. 

CD: do u see ‘Kill Dick’ as promoting counterculture, or being in a tradition of counterculture? i feel like a lot of the characters in ‘Kill Dick’ have a longing for some kind of place, some community, where they can be free from this awful vampire world built by Dick Sickler & other elites.

LG: HELL YES IT’S COUNTER CULTURE. IT’S CALLED KILL DICK. IT’S about decapitating a guy who made billions making a drug that contributed to more than half a million dead. It’s definitely counter culture. It’s about the only counter culture thing I’ve seen in a long long time. I think that’s why people are drawn to it. They forgot what counter culture really meant. 

CD: what would a truly impactful or “dangerous” counterculture look like, to u? if someone walked away from ‘Kill Dick’ wanting to resist the world it depicts, what would you want that resistance to look like? 

LG: I’d want them to sit down with a flower and cry their fucking eyes out. Then pray to God for forgiveness. Then help everyone. That’s what I should do. It’s all just a metaphor for self. 

CD: a big part of ‘Kill Dick’ concerns a secret society called ‘The Church of White Illumination’ which teaches its mega-rich & mega-powerful members that: “...all you had to do is forget the value of everyone else in the world in order to self-actualize.” 

they teach that everyone else in the world is: “...a slave, a plebeian, a choiceless user of worlds designed by others, unaware of the enormity of [their] own complicity.” 

i came away from the book with the feeling that we’re all addicted to this awful vampire world that billionaires & their lackeys have made. complicity seems like a major theme of the book. the addicts in ‘Kill Dick’ are all customers of Dick Sickler, putting money in his pocket & adding to his power. 

do u think the book points to a way out of this dynamic? how do the characters in ‘Kill Dick’ free themselves from an addiction to things that want to ruin us? 

LG: Yes and No. It’s the same dilemma as always, on steroids and acid. You have to fight for your soul. The empire of Babylon is a dancing perverse spectacle of illusions. Somehow you must find a heart, a soul, and a truth inside yourself. And I haven’t done it yet. I wrote the novel and now I know the challenge. I don’t know how to do it. I know I’m all traumatized and freaked out from being in the delicious perverse show. I don’t know how to find peace. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Right in our hands. But in order to experience it, you have to unclench your fist. I don’t know how. I can do it sometimes. Holding hands helps.

CD: can u tell me more about yr plans with Tyrant Books? can u describe for readers what Tyrant Books was like under Giancarlo DiTrapano, yr history working with Tyrant, & why u felt it was important to buy 50% of the press? 

LG: I plan to take back the publishing industry from the forces of greed, AI and Algorithms, and to make books radically beautiful again. I’m going to work really hard and try my best. I did it because, as I said, I didn’t want it to fall in the wrong hands, I wanted to continue my counter culture ambitions, and I want to help writers–the ones who are with Tyrant and the ones who will be. I miss Gian, too. I am a sucker for nostalgia, hoarding, and sentimentality. 

CD: i’m very curious to hear yr thoughts on the current state of “indie lit” – which i guess is any literature that isn’t published by one of the big five corporate presses? do u agree with that definition, or it too broad? 

LG: I have no idea. I am mostly not liking it. I’m happy to be part of it. I’m happy to make it better. When it’s good, it has more power than the big 5 these days. The BIG 5 aren’t as big as they tell everyone. They’re just a bunch of people who went to Yale while I went to Jail. I’m pretty sure I can take them. 

CD: in my opinion, there are so many amazing books being published these days that i feel we’re living through a golden age of literature. but i feel like the big corporate presses are contributing maybe only 10% of those great books. smaller independent presses, in my opinion, put out way better stuff. 

so there’s this glut of amazing books out there…but i keep hearing from writers how hard it is to get anything going over on that side these days, the corporate press side.

for those who believe in good books – writers, editors, publishers, whatever – what attitude should we have toward mainstream publishing? should it be antagonistic? should a holy war be waged? should we be trying to reform & improve corporate presses? should we just ignore it all & let that world continue to die a slow death? is it misguided to divide the book world into these two major camps? 

LG: I think it’s the writers who need to step up their game. If all the writers only wrote amazing books, then there would be no division. Wage war with yourself until you can declare peace through total victory. 

CD: what should indie lit be doing to improve, in yr opinion? i feel like indie lit is drowning in incredible work, but small presses are not always great at getting these books into the world & spreading the gospel. 

A: Birds in the trees, flowers in the field, adorned in finery beyond Solomon; give away your possessions, make friends with the best minds of your generation in publishing. If you really love your book, find a way. Come to me. Or keep working on it until it’s done everything you ever dreamed. And then, if all else fails, paint your poems on the walls. I have no idea. Every path is different. Don’t think, don’t plan, don’t lament. Just keep growing. 

CD: fuck money, marry money, or kill money? 

LG: Rich or poor, money is nice. Without it, the struggle is very very very real. But, you can’t fuck it. You can’t kill it. So I guess marry it. But as Joni Mitchell sang, Be Prepared To Bleed.