Valencia (Seal Press, $13) is literary genius cleverly disguised as gossipy dyke drama. It's all about Michelle's search for love and high times in a world of girls where everything and nothing matters. Along the way we meet Petra, who's into knife-wielding radical sex, self mutilators, tormented poets, yuppie prostitutes; Iris, the lovely boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama; and Iris' ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart.
As one customer reviewer wrote on Amazon.com, Valencia "makes you want to write... for a long while after, I sort of looked at everything around me a little differently--like there was a story waiting to be told in every nook and cranny."
Are you in need of a safe house these days?
I have been feeling a little under siege since the book came out, but most of it is my own paranoia and insecurity. Someone wrote anonymous mean little things about me on a flyer [posted] on my street, so I was feeling like, you know, the whole world hated my guts and I should never write again; but I am melodramatic and a baby also. I've gotten great feedback, mostly. I think there is only one ex-girlfriend portrayed in my book who wants me dead. The others have a sense of humor, and, beyond that, I think they just liked being written about.
Valencia is classified as fiction.
I don't know why.
In Japan, they have a whole genre that is neither fiction nor memoir called "I-novel." And apparently, everyone has agreed not to ask or worry about the distinction between author and narrator, fact and fiction.
I love the I-novel! That is fabulous! Maybe we can get everyone here in America to agree not to give so much of a shit about the genre thing.
Valencia is refreshing in that you don't seem to make even a half-assed attempt to make yourself look good.
I really wasn't trying to paint a grand mural of all the bad girls who ruined my holy heart. I totally participated in every aspect of all those relationships, and brought all my own fucked-up ways of communicating and coping, and all my illusions and dumb expectations. I think everyone always tries their best, and ultimately, I didn't want to make anyone look bad. I wanted to present myself as honestly as I presented anyone, and I can be a stupid jerk, of course.
There's a lot of graphic sex in your books--I read your first one on a plane to Kansas City and the girl who met me on the other end was shocked.... "You read it on the PLANE?" Like reading your work was an intrinsically intimate act.
That's funny--I don't think of the sex as being that graphic, but I guess it is. I like writing about sex that's honest, not all dolled up to get someone off. I'm most interested in the awkward or weird sexual moments. I'd prefer, of course, to have sex that is not awkward and is weird in a great, perverse way. But it's hard for me to write about great sex, especially in a sexy way. It's not my strong point.
Somewhere in Valencia you say you don't believe in true love anymore. Do you think that long-term relationships are something people settle for, settle into, accept?
I think that the way people communicate is so complicated, and so many compromises need to be made to stay with people sometimes, that for me, that really wore down my belief in true love. I thought it was a concept to grow out of. But... I'm with a girl now who I believe is my soul mate; she makes me believe in and feel all these great, crazy, magical things I thought I was over, like past lives and forever and stuff like that. We actually eloped this past winter. I feel like she really rejuvenated my brain and the way I thought about love. I hadn't realized how jaded I'd become, and how I'd really, in many ways, settled for settling, and gave up on my ideal because I thought it was childish and unrealistic.
Ariel Gore is the author of The Hip Mama Survival Guide and The Mother Trip; she is also the editor of Hip Mama (www.hipmama.com).
