My fellow Substack writer Felix Purat and I are collaborating — starting next weekend — on a series of posts about the great 20th Century writer Vasily Grossman. Before we do so, I thought you'd like to know a bit more about Felix. I've very much enjoyed Felix's keenly perceptive and insight-rich posts here on Substack since he began posting in March. I suspect that Felix is not only going to become the leading essayist to emerge from Central and Eastern Europe in our time -- he's already on his way -- but that he may very well produce some of the best of what Adam Kirsch calls "the global novel". Felix Purat is, in my view, a young man of promise and destiny, and it's an honor to collaborate with him and a pleasure to interview him.
MGW: Felix, how long have you lived in California and how long in Poland? Did you attend college in California, and in what field are you earning your doctorate degree?
FP: I have only had two homes in America: Berkeley, CA (plus Oakland) where I was born and raised and Humboldt County, CA, where I got my BA in International Studies. I continue to call myself a Californian not to be facetious: it's the only place I've ever called home in North America. But fate took me on a different path and I ended up in Europe studying literary translation; I've been in several countries in Europe for ten years now. I am close to receiving my doctoral degree in American Literature. That way, our credential-loving world won't treat any nonfiction I write with too much suspicion. (Chuckles)
MGW: Surely not too much. (Grins) In your role as an essayist and literary analyst, do you see yourself as a specialist in European literature or a truly global analyst of literature?
FP: Both! But the more countries you read literature from, the longer your book list becomes. Thankfully I've had some success at setting aside reading time in my life. I recently finished The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Amazing novella! Or short novel? The jury's out on that one.
MGW: Your range of interest in literature is rather fascinating as I read your Substack posts. So you started your Substack in March. What do you see as the advantages for us writers and readers interacting on Substack?
FP: The writer has more leeway over their lifestyle. While Substack can't defy the one-size-fits-all closed garden rules of the Internet, it can allow for more flexibility within its own closed garden. This is good for reclusive writers - of whom I count myself as one to a degree. While Substack doesn't make it possible to completely escape traveling salesman obligations, it's a lot better than the alternatives.
MGW: Flexibility, for sure. What can we expect from you on Substack over the next year?
FP: Two treats I have planned are an essay series about dystopian lit and a second series about the deeper side of American culture.
I get lost on foreign and international topics a lot. But while I hope to win over readers around the world, my readership will always be Americans first and foremost.
MGW: Excellent. Given your superb posts here on Substack, some of us are eager to see you bring out your first book of essays. When do you think that might be, and what will you bring out: a collection of your best essays or a collection of essays focused around a theme?
FP: 2024 will be the thirty-fifth anniversary of freedom in the former Eastern bloc. Where I can now read a book by Kundera, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn or Milosz in public without being arrested by the secret police. I want to celebrate that freedom. As someone who only recently started thinking of himself as an essayist, I think thematic essay collections are most appurtenant to this stage of my writing "career."
(Milan Kundera)
MGW: Can’t wait to read it. So, what vision and values matter most to you in fiction writers?
FP: I tend to hold the most respect for writers who are independent-minded, anti-ideological and fully fleshed human beings - not automatons - who are spiritually and/or philosophically attuned and who put their art before all else. Gombrowicz is probably number one, much to the relief of the conceited Varsovians who melt like the Wicked Witch every time someone has the audacity to compliment the mighty Sienkiewicz.
As a California author I value authorial autonomy the most: if I write a comedy the first time and a tragedy the second time, it would be a waste of time for someone to come to me and say "well, you know, for career purposes, you must stick to comedy." I don't judge other authors too much if they find a good formula any more than I would judge the Ramones; some authorial visions can't be expressed by a single novel alone. But I do wish authors would shake things up a bit more often the way musical artists do. Be more like a bar with many cocktails to choose from rather than the ubiquitous cocktail itself. One can always come up with a new pseudonym, as Mircea Eliade once advised.
MGW: Interesting. So, you are a Catholic writer. Who are your three favorite Catholic writers of all time?
FP: Dante Alighieri, J.R.R. Tolkien and Shusaku Endo. Ask me again in a week or two and I'd have to list four since The Interior Castle, by St. Teresa of Avila, is proving to be an exceptionally spiritual read.
MGW: I haven't read Endo, but as a non-Catholic Christian, I'd have to agree on your other three. Which of your current three is your favorite Catholic writer, and why?
FP: Subjectively I can't answer. But objectively no one holding a microscope over my life would dispute that it's Tolkien. When I first decided to write, I wanted to be a fantasy writer. I haven't given up on that plan.
MGW: The Lord of the Rings remains my favorite novel of all time. So what does it mean to you personally to be a Catholic writer? How does being Catholic shape and impact your writing?
FP: Writing, literature, storytelling, songwriting -- all of it has been a spiritual act from the primordial beginning. And still is: the lack of spirituality among many writers today doesn't change that reality. Rather, reality places different demands on the author than before; demands that also require different literary expressions of spirituality than in the past. And it goes without saying that the tremendous artistic and philosophical heritage of Catholicism is immensely empowering.
MGW: As you can tell from my recent posts about the Renaissance, I emphatically agree with you on that. So who are your five favorite novelists? And who is your favorite European novelist and your favorite American novelist?
FP: I came up with a little formula to answer an otherwise impossible question.
I see myself as following in the tradition of Franz Kafka who, in turn, followed the path of Heinrich von Kleist. So Kafka is number one. Mix that with the Californian literary heritage that is my birthright and we can add John Steinbeck as number two. California is in the United States, so if we expand the borders we can add Cormac McCarthy as number three. My native language comes from a part of the British Isles called England, meaning we can add Graham Greene as my fourth. And as a nod to reclaimed Polish heritage, I will lovingly add Henryk Sienkiewicz as number five. In truth I like Witold Gombrowicz equally but I have to say Sienkiewicz just to stick it to the snobby literati of Warsaw. To make it interesting, let's factor in my passion for the Czechs: that way, we can include Milan Kundera as number 6.
I don't know where to fit Hermann Hesse into that formula. But I will roll with him as a favorite European author. Lucky number seven.
MGW: An outstanding selection. Why is Cormac McCarthy your favorite American novelist?
FP: McCarthy is the only contemporary author -- well, contemporary until a few months ago -- who had a vision that could resonate with me in any way. The writing world of today is an alien world to me: I don't feel like I have anything in common with the suit-wearing, self-marketing authors of today. Glancing in another direction, I had no compulsion to be like -- let alone respect -- postmodernists who hated (and continue to hate) what I value and framed it in the language of indifference and unseriousness to pretend they are sophisticated intellectuals rather than petty haters hiding behind jargon. (Kurt Vonnegut is a very strange exception)
McCarthy was none of those things. He wrote as if postmodernism didn't exist, while writing novels very pertinent to our times; he also showed that a writer doesn't have to be petty and stoop to cheap deconstruction where genre is concerned. The vacuous penchant for genre-bending isn't very impressive to me, give or take an exception or two. And I don't think it was impressive for McCarthy either: be it Southern Gothic, Post-Apocalyptic or the Western, he could reinvent himself in his own way and enrich the genre rather than trying to destroy it. He took the hard way over the mountain and was all the stronger for it.
All quality authors should be ready to cross mountains. Excuses and shortcuts don't mean a whole lot.
MGW: Interesting. Why is Hermann Hesse your favorite European novelist?
FP: As far as literary individuality is concerned, Hesse is second to none. Steppenwolf is the default manifesto of literary individuality (though to my surprise, big-time individualist Jack Kerouac didn't like it). Substackers will notice I have a quote from his minor novel Knulp on my profile page. I saw myself in that novel to a palpable degree. It being what we'd call a "minor work" didn't change that; philosophically it's top notch Hesse and is only a "minor work" on the basis of craft.
MGW: Hesse was my favorite novelist in my twenties and thirties, into my forties, so I can relate to your esteem for him. What are your aspirations for yourself as a novelist?
FP: I have a lot more story ideas. Enough to where I need to cultivate as many habits that gear me toward prolificity as possible if I am to realize a satisfactory number of them. My aspirations are: write as much as I can within reason. Try to reach George Simenon's level of prolificity without, to quote the author, "crossing out all the big words."
Substack is very helpful in this respect: I can write an essay a lot faster than before.
MGW: You also love short stories. Who are your favorite short story writers?
FP: Here too I see myself as a Kafkaite. But I also hold Stefan Grabinski, Johannes Urzidil, Paul Bowles, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Edgar Allan Poe in equal or near-equal regard. Of course I don't count Anton Chekhov in any of this because he occupies a category of his own. Something similar can be said of Bruno Schulz.
MGW: Which of these is your favorite short story writer?
FP: Kafka all the way! I should add that while stories like The Hunger Artist and In The Penal Colony get their just due, his animal stories like Investigations of a Dog, The Burrow and Josephine: The Mouse People are tragically underrated. But I think Kafka himself would have found their relative lack of a legacy fitting. The former stories have "public" plots; the latter less so.
MGW: And you are a poet. Who are your favorite poets?
FP: I have a Council of Nine comprised of Fernando Pessoa, Marina Tsvetaeva, Olav Hauge, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Vladimir Holan, Frank Stanford, Ivan Martin Jirous, Walt Whitman and W.B. Yeats. I will upgrade it to a Council of Twelve soon. Candidates so far include Tadeusz Różewicz, Dane Zajc, Leopoldo Maria Panero, Cyprian Norwid, Bohuslav Reynek, Sakutaro Hagiwara and Janko Polić Kamov.
Różewicz is already cleared: his poems meant a whole lot to me during the COVID lockdowns. Almost like they were destined to find me at that dark time. Anyone reading this who felt miserable during the lockdowns should add a collection of his poems to your survival stash if the lockdowns look like they'll return. I mean that sincerely.
MGW: Which of these is your favorite poet?
FP: Yeats for heritage reasons. But Fernando Pessoa in pretty much every other respect. He really was the archetypal modern poet.
MGW: In 2023, how much time have you spent writing nonfiction and how much writing fiction?
FP: Not sure of an exact ratio but mostly nonfiction for sure. I cannot write fiction at anyone's speed but my own, so nonfiction was the logical choice for Substack output followed by poetry. I'm hoping to change that with my serializations. Another plus for Substack: it's a great platform to relive the 19th century age of serializations.
MGW You'll soon be bringing out your second novel, Tale of a Muse That Fought AI. What's it about?
FP: Tale of a Muse is an upbeat affair. The simple story is that a poet with writer's block discovers that his personal AI has abducted his Muse. And he must free her. The story at heart is about creativity in the era of machination: Man becoming homo machina, or robots like in Karel Čapeks play, while believing ourselves to be homo deus. All of this is relevant. Other themes include life in gentrified capital cities.
Tale of a Muse is the first in a cycle called Tales of Unicity. The unifying factor is the setting: a gentrified 21st century city that is basically what we're trying to do with every city. Without giving away influences, I see the project as following in the footsteps of three specific authors I admire and/or respect. One's a Czech, the second an Italian and the third a science fiction author. I'll say that much.
MGW: Intriguing. You are also serializing your novel Escape from Starshire. What is your third novel about?
FP: Escape From Starshire is the beginning of a cycle, or series of cycles, comprising a great space opera about the Amantissima Sector. The sector is comprised of quadrants of systems that are the extensions of nation-states from Earth - the Anglo Quadrant, Franco Quadrant, Sino Quadrant, etc. - making this a rejection of the Star Trek vision of a single Earth that somehow maintains cultural diversity in an environment not conducive for that. A vision that may have been realistic in the 60s but is wholly unrealistic today as space travel is no longer a strictly Russo-American affair and globalization objectively destroys Terran cultures. While we might not want it in reality, I think literature does a disservice to society by not contemplating the current rise of a multipolar world that doesn't care for America. Stories like Escape From Starshire do that in a laid-back, humorous way without denying the seriousness of that reality.
MGW: Lastly, do you expect to come out with a book of poetry within a year or two?
FP: Most certainly! I have a few collections in the can. Depending on each collections' artistic demands, poetry lovers can expect more than a few collections in 2024.
It's nice to hear all of this from Felix in unbroken back-and-forth, after having pieced it together from here-and-there pieces in essays and email exchanges. Honestly, the array of writers and their justifications named and elucidated here is a dizzying joy (as are the upcoming projects!).
Glad y'all are collaborating on Grossman!
Wonderful! Thank you both. PS I'm devouring Grossman to prepare for your collaboration.