A Visit with Aleksandar Hemon
Given the theme for Slice's current issue—Going Home—I was hoping you could speak a little bit about how the idea of home and how so many of your characters are either displaced or detached from it.
Most of the stuff I write is about being separate or away from home in one way or another. And in some ways I realize that if I were home I don't know how much I would be compelled to write stories. I mean home, if there was such a thing for me I would just sit around and enjoy it. Home is something that connects you to—I need more than just a nuclear family to be connected to the world, as much as I like my nuclear family. In The Lazarus Project there is a reoccurring motif. Brik [the protagonist of the novel] says, "Home is where someone notices your absence." And when I wrote it initially—this is in fact how I felt once in Sarajevo because I went back and they asked me, "Where have you been? I haven't seen you for a while." They noticed I was absent though I didn't live there anymore. So it was heartwarming for me but then I realized when I was writing it that if you say, "Home is where someone notices your absence," it can only be defined by your absence—it is where you are not. So that sort of hit me big and hard. I realized if you're home you might not know when you're home, or you might not be so fully aware of what it means to be home. Quite literally people who go from place to another carry their stories with them. Not to mention the move itself creates stories. One of the things I wanted to do in The Lazarus Project with the Brik and Rora story was show they're on the move at all times. It's not that they're not at home because they're displaced, it is that they're being displaced from chapter to chapter and it's exhilarating to them. It's exhilarating to me. To be moving.
How do you plan to keep moving? How do you plan to keep on acquiring the energy that is necessary for your writing?
Coffee [laughs]. It seems to people on the outside that once you're a writer you just churn them out, like Phillip Roth—"Give me a month, I'll get you a book." It's a good life if you can do it. But as for me, at this time, I never know how I am going to do the next story—I really have no idea. Party because you enter a trance-like state when you're writing. At the exact moment I'm writing my adrenaline goes up. Also in the process of writing, those people in the book are constantly present. Constantly. They are like spirits. Possessed. Possessing me. You always think about what you're going to do. And once it's done, they're gone and then I don't know. I am not sure what the next thing would be, but then I can't imagine it yet. I always think that this could be the last thing I write but probably not because I have a track record of starting up again. I don't know. I guess at some point language and anger and whatever else accumulates and something has to come out.
You currently teach a graduate-level creative writing class at Northwest University. What advice do you give to aspiring writers?
Read. The creative writing industry suggests implicitly and explicitly you need to practice a series of technical skills to be a good writer, which works for some people and can in fact improve writing in many ways. But it makes some people and some students think that, "Alright, what I need to do is write and not read." But all I know about writing I've learned by other authors and reading their books, not taking their workshops. So when I teach I teach reading. So that's the advice. In order to writer you need to read. Voraciously. Incessantly. Cereal boxes. Newspapers. Phone books. Novels. Great novels. Bad novels. Crap. Everything.
Given the theme for Slice's current issue—Going Home—I was hoping you could speak a little bit about how the idea of home and how so many of your characters are either displaced or detached from it.
Most of the stuff I write is about being separate or away from home in one way or another. And in some ways I realize that if I were home I don't know how much I would be compelled to write stories. I mean home, if there was such a thing for me I would just sit around and enjoy it. Home is something that connects you to—I need more than just a nuclear family to be connected to the world, as much as I like my nuclear family. In The Lazarus Project there is a reoccurring motif. Brik [the protagonist of the novel] says, "Home is where someone notices your absence." And when I wrote it initially—this is in fact how I felt once in Sarajevo because I went back and they asked me, "Where have you been? I haven't seen you for a while." They noticed I was absent though I didn't live there anymore. So it was heartwarming for me but then I realized when I was writing it that if you say, "Home is where someone notices your absence," it can only be defined by your absence—it is where you are not. So that sort of hit me big and hard. I realized if you're home you might not know when you're home, or you might not be so fully aware of what it means to be home. Quite literally people who go from place to another carry their stories with them. Not to mention the move itself creates stories. One of the things I wanted to do in The Lazarus Project with the Brik and Rora story was show they're on the move at all times. It's not that they're not at home because they're displaced, it is that they're being displaced from chapter to chapter and it's exhilarating to them. It's exhilarating to me. To be moving.
How do you plan to keep moving? How do you plan to keep on acquiring the energy that is necessary for your writing?
Coffee [laughs]. It seems to people on the outside that once you're a writer you just churn them out, like Phillip Roth—"Give me a month, I'll get you a book." It's a good life if you can do it. But as for me, at this time, I never know how I am going to do the next story—I really have no idea. Party because you enter a trance-like state when you're writing. At the exact moment I'm writing my adrenaline goes up. Also in the process of writing, those people in the book are constantly present. Constantly. They are like spirits. Possessed. Possessing me. You always think about what you're going to do. And once it's done, they're gone and then I don't know. I am not sure what the next thing would be, but then I can't imagine it yet. I always think that this could be the last thing I write but probably not because I have a track record of starting up again. I don't know. I guess at some point language and anger and whatever else accumulates and something has to come out.
You currently teach a graduate-level creative writing class at Northwest University. What advice do you give to aspiring writers?
Read. The creative writing industry suggests implicitly and explicitly you need to practice a series of technical skills to be a good writer, which works for some people and can in fact improve writing in many ways. But it makes some people and some students think that, "Alright, what I need to do is write and not read." But all I know about writing I've learned by other authors and reading their books, not taking their workshops. So when I teach I teach reading. So that's the advice. In order to writer you need to read. Voraciously. Incessantly. Cereal boxes. Newspapers. Phone books. Novels. Great novels. Bad novels. Crap. Everything.