Last year I sat down with Clive Scully to talk about
Lost Angeles and the egotistic/self
loathing nature of the writer. Now, with
a fresh book to whore, I’ve sat down with him again to go over the progress of
the past year and to discuss the idea of a bone idol.
CS: Hello, again.
DL: Hello yourself.
CS: So the last time we chatted you told me you were going to name a
character after me…
DL: [opens two beers] Right.
CS: …and I thought it would be a main character but it turns out to be a
barman who’s in like three pages.
DL: [chuckles to himself] Yeah, I kinda stiffed you there man. I didn’t mean to but if it’s any consolation
I’m really lazy with names so there’ll be another Clive coming up shortly and
you can be that guy. How’s that?
CS: [takes a beer] Better I guess.
So answer me this, what’s a bone idol?
DL: Straight into the plugging, I like that. You’ll make someone a good whore one of these
days.
CS: Thanks.
DL: I’m from a stretch of tarmac in North Belfast
that’s referred to as The Bone. It’s working class in ethos…and only
moderately working in practice but it’s got this real sense that art, and
creativity, and expression are for other people. It was kinda difficult to overcome that but I
always wanted to…even as a child. And I
felt conflicted about it Clive, I felt like I wasn’t a good little bone-head
for wanting more than a clock to punch twenty times a week or a disability that
was hard to disprove, or a street corner to sell bad marijuana on. But I did.
I wanted more, so a bone idol is someone from The Bone that wants more from life.
DL: More or less. I mean, if
anyone knows me there’s bits they’ll read and go that’s bullshit and bits that smack of oh fuck I remember that but that’s what it is. It’s basically Doug Morgan’s life from the
age of three up until he hits about nineteen…thereabouts.
CS: The last time we talked you were working on something completely
different, what happened there then? Did
Doug call to you?
DL: No.
CS: Care to elaborate?
DL: I didn’t want to write another Doug Morgan exploit. I was a little tired with all the emotion
that Lost Angeles kicked up so I
started writing this third person piece about a woman who comes home to Belfast to bury her father
and gets caught up in this mystery but my fucking computer ate it and after
three months of writing I was left with nothing.
CS: Fuck man, that sucks.
DS: Copious amounts of cock, Clive.
It sucks major dick. Anyway, I
started rewriting it but every line I punched out was bullshit. I preferred the original, I couldn’t remember
what the words were exactly but I just knew I preferred the original…it was
probably its energy. So I stopped. [drinks beer and stares off somewhere for a
moment] I started thinking what do I want to write? And I started thinking about Doug again, and
about how even though I gave him an ending it wasn’t the ending to his story because he’s a fucking misfit…
CS: Are you a misfit?
DL: I was. I was a broken toy for
sure, now I don’t know. You’ll have to
ask someone else that question. Anyway,
I got thinking about what happens to misfits when they try to fit in and I kept
thinking about road movies because traditionally misfits are forced out on to
the open road in these movies because they have no place in society. This got me thinking about Jack Kerouac,
which got me re-reading On The Road
and by about sixty percent in I had decided I was going to write a completely
fictional Doug Morgan story. It was
about Doug trying to make it in LA, working on Swasucka and chaperoning this old exploitation actor around
town. This guy is a god-damn degenerate
but he gets to talking about his life, about his kid…this kid who must be forty
now and living in Oskaloosa, Ohio. She’s
got the sickness. She’s an alcoholic
like her old man so Doug and this guy, George, set off across country during a
two week break in the movie shoot to visit his daughter…and that’s it. East to
Oskaloosa.
CS: Sounds great, how’s it coming along?
DL: It’s dead, Clive. It’s dead
like Hemingway, like Dylan Thomas. I got
a draft out of it. I was working on a
way of making it feel real so I mirrored Doug’s relationship with George to
Doug’s relationship, as a child, with his dad Jack. It didn’t work. I let the missus read it and she was kind but
it was pretty clear that East to
Oskaloosa was a dry cumshot…
CS: Nice.
DL: [winks] So I set it down and I went back to reading. I read Bad
Boy by Jim Thompson and Bukowski’s Ham
on Rye back to back and suddenly remembered working at a dog track as a
kid. I mean I had completely forgotten
about that and suddenly I could smell the kennels again. I sat down and read East to Oskaloosa again and she was right. It was bad.
Formulaic bullshit but the earlier moments between Doug and Jack had
some heart in it. So I pulled them all
out and got to thinking about my childhood.
The conflict between art and work, relationships between parents and
kids and what happens when even the slightest connection is seemingly impossible. I got to thinking about the fears I grew up
with, my fear that I was inevitably growing up to be just like him.
CS: I think we all fear that.
DL: Some of us worse than others baby, my old man was a piece of
shit. I got the idea into my head that
starting a novel mid-sentence would be cool.
Like we’ve just dropped in on someone so I sat down over Christmas
through Easter last year and worked my way through the remains of East to Oskaloosa. I wrote page after page of new stuff and
eventually came up with a first draft that would ultimately become Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l].
CS: I got a Ham on Rye feel
when reading it. Was that something you
were striving towards?
DL: Striving in the sense that it was the quality level I was shooting
for but it wasn’t an attempt to replicate.
There’s always an internal conflict between striving to achieve high-art
in the two tone mundanity of the everyman life and packing in as many dick
jokes as possible. Not many people
achieve that but Hank could do that in his sleep.
CS: How are sales?
DL: In the toilet, though Lost
Angeles was selling pretty well for a while.
CS: [opening two more beers] Oh yeah?
DL: Yeah. December was pretty
good actually. Made a few greenbacks
from it and obviously I’ve the compilation thingy…thank you for that by the
way.
CS: You’re very welcome. So if
Doug Morgan is kinda you, is Jack Morgan kinda your dad.
DL: Yeah. I mean, there are more
friendly interactions between Doug and Jack than there ever was between me and
my old man but I found it interesting to go back and showcase how someone like
Doug could be made.
CS: Like nature versus nurture, huh?
DL: With dick jokes.
CS: The book is split into three parts, and there’s three important
deaths in the piece. Was that
intentional?
DL: The three deaths were intentional because they’re real and it goes to highlight how Doug is incapable of holding on to real connections. I was trying to figure out a way of
demonstrating time passing without writing two
years later and having a story end and then a page with part II written across it felt like a
nice, clean break.
CS: The last time we chatted you were struggling with this idea of
wanting to be a writer. Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l] is clearly you
exorcising this demon. Do you find it
easier saying I’m a writer now?
DL: No. I mean, yeah I’ve allowed
myself to come to terms with it a little more but there are still times when
I’m a fragile little child about it.
CS: For example?
DL: [chewing on his finger nails] Like when someone I actually know in
the real world stumbles upon my dirty little secret life. That’s a real panic attack moment. I want to rush home and burn the internet to
the ground. I was having beers with a
friend and he said, so what’s this about
a book? I freaked out and made him
promise he wouldn’t read it. I told him,
it’s a piece of shit, stay away from it. [laughs] Or
when I’m getting ready to release something new.
CS: You get the fear when Bone
Idol [bohn ahyd-l] came out?
DL: The brown shorts were absolutely being rocked when Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l] came out. I had read and re-read and re-wrote and
tinkered and finally got myself to a point where I found it tolerable but the
second it was in the public realm I read two lines and fucking hated it. I was Venom spitting, bone crushing, ball
tighteningly frightened of anyone reading it.
CS: What do you do when that strikes?
DL: When
Lost Angeles was first
out there and I hated it, I drank. Now I
know it comes with the territory. I
still drink, but this time it’s recreational rather than medicinal. I posted a short story on my blog called
Death RRP $19.99. At the time of writing it I thought I was God
with a fourteen-incher. Then I posted it
and someone read it and I felt like a fraud.
CS: And do you still feel like a fraud?
DL: I am a fraud. We all
are. Every day we climb out of bed to
work towards fulfilling someone else’s dream for money we’re defrauding
ourselves. Every day we punch a clock we
don’t want to punch, take a meeting we don’t want to take, have to apologise
for something we don’t feel sorry for, simply because the customer is always right.
You ever read Laurence Lipton’s The
Holy Barbarians?
CS: I can’t say that I have, no.
DL: Do it. It’ll make you
understand the trade off. Yes, sure I
have to work for a living but that doesn’t mean I can’t also do my own thing
while I’m doing it. Lipton and those
guys stole time from their employers all the time. Sneaking to the can to write a poem, or a
short story. There’s beauty in
that. I’m not always proud of what I do
[for a living], I’m not always proud of what I write but at least it’s honest. Lost
Angeles I can read now and it’s a documentation of who I was then. Who I was in 2012 when it was pushed out. The fears I hate, the emotions and scars I
was working through.
CS: And what about Bone Idol [bohn
ahyd-l]? Have you worked through the
issues of that?
DL: In its own time. I’m looking
forward to being proud of it. I like the
cover if that’s something. I know we’re
not meant to judge on that but still. I
think I’ve dealt with some. I mean I’d
be full of shit if I said yeah, nailed it. Because I haven’t. I’m not as retardedly backwards now as I was
but I’m still not doing everything I could be doing to get Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l] out there.
I still live the secret life and I haven’t even bothered with any
readings or anything like that.
CS: Why do you think that is?
DL: It’s a confidence thing.
CS: You’re telling me you’re low in confidence?
DL: I’m an infant, don’t let my height fool you. I’d love to be a public speaker, I’d love
nothing more than to be able to be proud of what I’m writing. But I don’t see it as something to
necessarily to be proud of. I still feel
like I’m purging myself of something that needs to come out.
CS: You’re going to have to overcome the public speaking issue soon
though.
DL: Fucking right I am. I’m getting
married in April. One way or another I’m
going to have to untie my tongue and form sounds with my mouth. That’s not as scary though because I know all
the people that’ll be there.
CS: It says on your blog that Death
RRP $19.99 is part of a work in progress called Short Stories That All Definitely Happened, is that what’s
next? A collection of short stories?
DL: Who knows. I mean I thought
my Belfast
mystery thing was next [after Lost
Angeles] and look how that turned out.
I thought East to Oskaloosa was
next and that was slaughtered to make the foundations for Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l]. I
like the short story, it gives you freedom to leap in, tell a quick tale and
nip out. It lacks consequence. It might be next, then again I’m kinda
working on a noir film idea set in Belfast
and if that works out I might be busy with that.
CS: A noir in Belfast? What’s that about?
DL: Everything Clive, it’s about everything.
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