Writer on Writer: Mary Hamilton vs. Ben Tanzer

Mary Hamilton thinks Theo Huxtable is cute. She works as an optician. And co-hosts QUICKIES! Chicago. She digs circus freaks and Bull Shannon from Night Court. She once worked as a barista. She once had long hair too. I remember it. And I miss it. She doesn't do dialogue and she is currently obsessed with the weather, though she may or may not have once been obsessed with Tootsie Rolls. Mary Hamilton also has a new collection out, We Know What We Are, the winner of the Fourth Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest, which is filled with blasts of sometime surreal short fiction that is equal parts obsession, an ode to freaks and outsiders, sadness and celebration of pop culture as a filter for all that bangs around Mary's still shorn head.

Theo Huxtable. What up?

I think his character is amazing. First off, in his family he's the outsider. He's the only male child. He doesn't think he's as smart as everyone else (turns out, he has dyslexia). He's not popular like Denise. He's not a star athlete like his dad. So he had a lot of struggle throughout the show. But he was always a really nice guy. His character was one of those rare teen characters who is outwardly flawed (remember the episode where he made fun of the girl because she was overweight?) and he's aware of those flaws and they make him feel bad. But he's always trying to be something better.

Also, he seems really neat, so I'd like to be his friend. He's also cute.

Theo was definitely cute, but your response reminds me of something I've been thinking about as I've read the stories in the collection. They seem to be filled with outsiders, or maybe even oddballs or freaks, do you think that's accurate, and if so, why do you think you are drawn to these kinds of characters?

I think I am these characters so being drawn to them is pretty much the way it is. There are writers whose creations are completely the opposite of who they are. Then there are writers who basically write their own life and change just enough to make it fiction. I think I've always been the kind who walks both sides where the emotions and intentions are very much me, but the characters (birds and elves and scarecrows and giants, etc etc) are not me.

Also, who isn't drawn to freaks?

Yes, freaks are good, and somewhere Jamie Iredell is smiling. Let's talk dialogue. A lot of the stories are comprised of exhortations and bursts of thought, and please feel free to comment on that, but there isn't much dialogue per se, was this a conscious decision, do you think its influenced by reading live so often, or maybe something to do with the BP oil spill? Any and all thoughts would be appreciated.

I hope this answer isn't disappointing, but the truth is, dialogue just doesn't interest me that much right now. Maybe in the future, I'll be all DIALOGUE, but not right now.

Let me begin by saying that I'm not disappointed, nor would I expect you to someday be all dialogue, what I want is to be encouraging and supportive. That said, I know you're interested in freaks and inspirational sports movies, but what else interests you, and assuming you do have some other interests, do they find their way into your work?

Right now I'm super-fascinated by weather, thunder and lightning in particular. If that counts as weather. Don't worry, I don't sit around watching the weather channel. But I am doing a lot of Wikipedia browsing. I get interested in kind of random things, but I don't think that's unique to me. Like if I hear someone tell a story about tootsie rolls, I tend to go home and look up on the Internet-web how the Tootsie Roll was invented and then I Google the inventor and then I Google the town he/she's from (I haven't actually researched Tootsie Rolls) and so on and so on. I got on a huge Egon Schiele kick from a series of musings after listening to a song by band I liked. I think my answer to your question is that I get temporary obsessions and they find their way into a particular story and by the time it's time to write the next story I'm on to the next obsession. Right now I'm cat sitting (feeding the cats and giving them love, cooing and saying "you're so pretty!") and the friends I'm cat sitting for have cable so as soon as I'm done with this I'm going to find myself some Shark Week.

I know for myself, that much of the time when I'm writing a story I will have some nugget of an idea and as I develop it I will wrap and interweave any number of my compulsions or obsessions into and around the story. Is that what you're describing here as well, or are you more likely to be obsessing about something and soon find yourself wondering what sort of story you might wrap around it?

It's the latter. Like with Egon Schiele, I read that he died of the Spanish flu shortly after his pregnant fiancee died. So that evolved into a story I wrote, not included in the book, about a person being consumed by the flu and then dragonflies while the bar below the apartment is being consumed by fire.

To choose an example from the book, I was obsessed with Goliath and being a giant so I wrote the Bull Shannon Goliath story. I was obsessed with the videos on Youtube about "circus freaks" so I wrote "We Know What We Are." It's almost always obsession first. Like with this new lightning obsession. I read, on Wikipedia of course, about a man who had been hit by lightning seven times and then died when he shot himself over an unrequited love. I mean, holy shit.

Holy shit indeed. And speaking of being hit by lightning, I want to be sure to not only congratulate you on We Know What We Are winning the Fourth Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest, but ask you to comment on what it's been like working with Rose Metal Press on this project.

Sorry for the delay, it's been too hot to think lately. Thanks for the congrats! Rose Metal Press is a pretty kick-ass operation. First of all, I was super-excited I won because having seen Geoffrey Forsyth and Sean Lovelace's books, I was anticipating a book that would be an extraordinary object. Which I think is important. With their chapbooks, you get a real sense that love goes into the making of the books. I'm not saying that to be cheesey or anything, but I sincerely think that's important. They've also been really patient with me and my tendency to not respond to emails very quickly, if at all...heh heh.

Agreed, this is not good interview weather at all, still, we must persevere, so one more question, and its an easy one, mostly. What else do we need to know about anything, and since this is an Orange Alert interview please feel free to reference music and/or coffee in your response. Cool?

Oh, Ben, asking me to comment on music and/or coffee is like asking Keith Richard to comment on drugs and women. Too much! I will say that many stories start from songs, the most significant example in this collection, for me, is the Nuclear Disaster story which started as an attempt to mimic the exact pattern of a song (one of the movements from Bach's unaccompanied cello suites). I sketched out the pattern of the song with dots and dashes and then wrote over them and listened to that movement until my ears bled and then I listened some more.

I also have three favorite coffee drinks (I used to be a barista):
1) An Americano
2) The classic Red-Eye
3) Put a packet of Equal in some milk. Steam the milk/Equal. Pour about 1.5 inches of the steamed milk into a mug. Add light roast coffee. Add one shot espresso. Enjoy. (Especially during a hangover!)

Honorable mention: a well-made cappuccino is pretty fantastic.

Ben Tanzer blogs at This Blog Will Change Your Life. You should check out his new collection 99 Problems.

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