An Interview With Rick Moody

Since his debut in 1992, writer Rick Moody has garnered acclaim for his sharp observations, rhythmic prose, and darkly cathartic plots. Best known for his novels, including the searing portrayal of suburban sexual revolution in The Ice Storm—adapted into film by Ang Lee—he has also released a memoir titled The Black Veil and a collection of novellas called Right Livelihoods. This fall, he added to this repertoire with an album of original songs. Along with the other members of his band, The Wingdale Community Singers, he has assembled a collection of bluegrass and country-influenced music that sounds distinctly new. Here, he talks with Barnstorm about the intersection of writing and music, the pressures of performance,  and what advice he'd give a musician hoping to get into fiction.+++Barnstorm: Okay, settle the question once and for all: which are better, books or music?Rick Moody: Books! But music is very splendid too.B: Stephen King, Amy Tan, Ken Follett, and Nick Hornby have all either recorded or performed songs. I've even heard an audio clip of Molly Ivins performing with Jerry Jeff Walker. What do you think draws writers to performing music?RM: The same stuff that draws everybody else to perform music. I should say in my own case that it's only recently I felt any interest in performing. I've always written songs. I think I wrote my first one when I was twelve, and that was before I ever tried to write prose. The performing part, about which I am uneasy, came only recently when I began playing with people who were good at it, and, therefore, the possibility existed that I wouldn't suck quite as bad as usual. Writers are just like everyone else: they like attention. And they spend too much time alone, so it's natural for them to want to get out in the world a little bit.B: So how did you “get out in the world?”RM: A few people—like [bandmate] Hannah Marcus and [singer] Syd Straw, for example—helped me get over the crushing anxiety of it. As I say, I still don't like doing it much, performing, but I recognize that the music probably won't get heard if we don't play it now and then.B: You mentioned the "crushing anxiety" of performing. Is that any different from reading your fiction publicly?RM: I have no anxiety when I read, or not usually. But I did at first. Singing is just another order of experience entirely. I am getting better at it. You should have seen me the first night I tried to sing with [singer] Syd Straw. I really could barely sit still backstage I was so anxious. It was misery. But there is nowhere to go with that feeling except through it. And I am starting to come out the other side. And yet people have asked me to perform solo recently, and that is still very, very hard for me.B: Has recording this album helped you with your writing at all? If so, how?RM: Playing music forces me to use my ears. And language, as employed in prose writing, is inherently musical, in that language is phonemic, is made out of sound. Most writers treat the material of their craft somewhat indifferently. But writers who play or sing (Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Thomas Bernhard, for example) listen better, and as a result their prose sings a little bit. Listening has that effect on me, though I am a remedial case so my prose doesn't sing as well as the above-named examples.B: Is there a point for you at which music becomes a distraction from writing?RM: The lyrics distract. If I'm listening WHILE I write, it's usually got to be instrumental music, or the lyrics need to be in another language. Otherwise the song distracts me from doing my job. There was a time when it was not so, when really loud punk could create the need in me to write, but that only works occasionally now that I am in my dotage.B: What do you listen to while you write, nowadays?RM: For one reason or another, I have been writing a little bit about minimalism lately (see my music blog at therumpus.net, for more), and as a result I got on this jag with Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. Armies of electric guitar is I guess what I mean. And I got a string ensemble recording of Lou Reed's METAL MACHINE MUSIC that I like a lot. And I just checked "recently played on iTunes:" Ali Farka Toure is on there, and Biber's Rosary Sonatas. See, it's all stuff without lyrics!B: Most of your songs on this album seem to be about characters. Why do you think that is? How much was taken from your life?RM: The confessional aspect of a lot of singer-songwriter stuff kind of bores me. Especially it it's all love song, love song, love song. I find that formula tiring and somewhat hollowed out. Since I use characters for most of my prose writing, it is natural for me to use that approach in songwriting too. And it's also favored by some songwriters I admire: Randy Newman, for example. Warren Zevon. Therefore: very little, if any, of the lyrics that I wrote on this album have anything at all to do with my life. I can't answer for Hannah Marcus's lyrics. But she likes completely detached lyrics sometimes too. This comes out of the folk tradition, too, you know, where most of the old ballads are in the third person. That's an interest that she and I share as writers.B: Even though the lyrics don't have a lot to do with your life, they have a lot of references to your hometown, Brooklyn. Do you think the location influenced the music much?RM: Oh yeah. Place is essential to our writing. I think there are a couple of songs set in other places (there's one set in San Francisco, because Hannah and I were both there for a gig once, and we wrote a song while we were there, and then there's one set in West Texas, where both Nina Katchadourian and I were at one point), but by and large we see ourselves as using very old musical forms to write about the people and places that we see around us now. You can't reproduce OLD folk music anymore. That train has left the station. But you can still use songs as a newsbringing medium, in the way that Pete Seeger prescribes, and we have tried to do some of that. That's where the title SPIRIT DUPLICATOR comes from. We're trying to get to the spirit of folk music, while acknowledging that the reproduction is inexact. None of us grew up in Appalachia. But we all live in Brooklyn. So the lyrics reflect that.B: Your novels have been widely acclaimed, but like any writer you've faced your share of criticism too. How has having your music reviewed compared to having your prose reviewed?RM: I don't read the reviews with my books, but I read some of the music reviews, just because they are infrequently focused on me personally, so it agitates me less. I sort of like reading the music reviews, actually. I can tell when people dislike the Wingdales exactly what kind of person they are--usually not the kind of person I would want to talk to all that much. Indifference is another matter. Hating in public always appeals to a certain kind of hardened heart. This is the case with books and music. I think most people who hate my work have some kind of compassion deficit. It's okay. I have to keep making the work anyhow. They can go read something else. Or play some other album.B: Any albums you particularly recommend they play?RM: I like Old Time, early folk, acoustic blues, gospel, jazz, but I also like early punk rock, mid-eighties hardcore, experimental serious music, baroque music, some prog, Central Asian music, and so on. I like just about everything that does not come out of Nashville. Some stuff is probably obvious in my writing: Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, the Velvet Underground, the Byrds. But I don't think of those things as being any more important to me than Sun Ra or La Monte Young or Robert Wyatt or Brian Eno.B: What new writing/music projects are you working on now?RM: I made a solo album last year, The Darkness Is Good, which is really solo. There's almost nothing on it but me, and there are very, very few overdubs. It'll come out at some point, I guess. And my next novel, The Four Fingers of Death, is all done. It graces the shelves next July. From Little, Brown and Co.B: Okay, one last question. Singer Nick Cave put out a novel this past fall. Do you have any advice for musicians like him looking to dabble in writing?RM: The apprentice period is very, very long. Get into acting instead. Or something where you can make some real money.