[Interview] Mathias B. Freese

Mathias B. Freese lives in Henderson, Nevada in the United States. He has worked as a teacher and a psychotherapist and has been writing for over 42 years.

His books include a Holocaust novel, The i Tetralogy (Wheatmark, 2005); a collection of short stories, Down to a Sunless Sea (Wheatmark, 2008); the mixture of memoir and essay, This Mobius Strip of Ifs (Wheatmark, forthcoming) and a second collection of short stories, I Truly Lament (___, forthcoming).

In this interview, Freese talks about his writing:

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

In 1968 I wrote a short article, “Is Content Enough?” for an education journal of some note. It was my first publication, but not a literary one, although I devoted a few months to perfecting the article. I had no idea that I would become a writer, much like I had no idea that I would become a psychotherapist, or have children, or lose my wife in an accident. Often such happenings are made randomly or we just walk into them. Much of life is a wild run through a corn field like Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

By 1974 I was listed in The Best American Stories of 1974, with such writers as Joyce Carol Oates, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Hawkes, etc.

Me?

Martha Foley, who had edited Hemingway, among others, was the editor and through a series of errors my name was mixed up with H. T. Kirby Smith, a poet. To make a long story very short, Mensa Bulletin, 2011, just published my award-winning essay, “To Miss Foley, With Gratitude,” which is the tale behind “Herbie,” the first story of note that I ever had published, and credit given to Kirby-Smith. That’ll show you.

As I look back, it was a terrific gift to a new writer. To know you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to hear it from others. The inner-directed writer needs no acclaim.

As an English teacher I wrote stories during lunch breaks, study halls, during the evenings late into the night and over the week-ends; my trusty second-hand Smith-Corona was repaired several times as the letter “e” got an intense battering. Rejections were rife, but as an autodidact I continued to self-learn. I had to feed my family and had no time for "conferences", and all that folderol.

I made a promise to myself during these difficult years as a husband, father and as a teacher who loathed the mediocrity in high schools, that whatever stories I could not get published I would publish someday. I waited about 30 years for that to happen. In 2008, I self-published Down to a Sunless Sea and won the Finalist Indie Excellence Award. I persevered. I am the turtle behind the turtle racing against the hare. Think on this for a moment and you can get a handle on me!

How would you describe your writing?

All my writing is visceral and passionate. I favor the passion of the mind as well as that of the soul.

As to my "target audience", that is part of the marketing world and I do not respond to that at all. I have always written for myself, believing that if I do it well the person reading it will connect to me. I have a conversation always with myself. Apparently some people like that.

All literature is an internet among people. To understand this about me is to understand why I take risks and dare in my writing. What I really do know is that fearlessness makes for authenticity in writing. I do not write to be remembered. I write in the now and for the interaction and discussion it might bring about. I have my close ones to remember me. In short, I write to give off my scent.

Which authors have influenced you the most?

Authors have not influenced me. I read to be moved.

Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ and his Saint Francis are intensely, vividly splendored works; his Report to Greco is one of the great confessionals of the last century. His existential epitaph has served as a guiding light for me: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” He wrote a two volume sequel to The Odyssey in verse and by all accounts he equalled Homer.

Have your own personal experiences influenced your writing in any way?

In all my writing I try to make the reader feel – as a psychotherapist with over two decades experience, in this culture we are conditioned not to feel.

Having lost a wife in a horrific automobile accident, my daughter being terribly wounded but surviving, her boyfriend dead, and the early death of an older daughter by her own hand have devastated my life and all of this has impacted upon my writing. What is that impact? To weigh carpe diem with tempus fugit on a moment to moment basis, to live in the moment, right now, to deprogram myself of this rather decadent society’s need to swallow us up through conditioning. I step aside and askance of the writer’s world, for often new writers sell their souls very early on. Older writers as well. I revel in being a stranger in a strange land; in America I am an ex-pat.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I really don’t have main concerns as a writer. I don’t view myself as a "writer". I am Matt who happens to write. Being a writer is a role and with that comes all kinds of delusions and mischief. I am not my occupation! I do my best at what I am doing, no more, no less. I strive not to write a glorious sentence. If anything, I struggle to engage you, the reader, to shake you, turn you upside down, rub your face in my own grit. I teach you nothing. I observe.

In my graphic and violent Holocaust novel, The i Tetralogy, the work of a lifetime, I engage the inherent violence of this species-devastating event, the lens through which we all can observe man. As a psychotherapist, writer and human being I struggle for two things:

1. to see 
2. to struggle to be psychologically free.

The triumvirate for me is – Krishnamurti, a remarkable spiritual teacher, Kazantzakis, and Freud.

Do you write everyday?

There are no rules for me as a writer. I think in fractals. I write when I am moved to do so. I spent years learning the craft and am still a novice. The serendipitous consequences of being self-taught is that one may venture into areas loaded with landmines and emerge safely, perhaps wisely so. To write 500 words a day or more does not a writer make. Ask Homer, ask Joyce, ask Dickens. Thank god they never went off to schools to learn how to write.

I believe with conviction that the very next book I will write is already being assembled in my unconscious. My unconscious has rarely failed me; indeed, I get really excited when it makes its appearance in my writing and I go on for pages. When I teach writing, I urge students to tap into that, to not censor it.

I wrote an early version of i in about one week; it entirely poured out of me. It was a remarkable event and changed everything in how I approach writing. In short, I channel it all.

How many books have you written so far?

As to the books I have written, The i Tetralogy (Wheatmark, 2005) explores the relationship between victim and perpetrator during the Holocaust in great depth as well as the relationship between the perpetrator and his own family in the States after the war, where he fled to. Very intense and graphic, it has been described as both “pornographic and holy.” High praise in my eyes since it was reviewed by a survivor.

Down to a Sunless Sea (Wheatmark, 2008) is a collection of stories dealing with the deviant and damaged. Duff Brenna, novelist and editor, considered it Proustian.

At this time I have two books readied for publication:

I Truly Lament is a collection of short stories about the Holocaust, ten of them published last year to my joy. I can never let go of the Holocaust, although I am not a survivor.

This Mobius Strip of Ifs will be published in early January 2012 and is a series of related essays over the past four decades of my life, a kind of Bilsdungroman of my psychological life as a writer, spiritual seeker, teacher and curmudgeon. It is a mixture of memoir and essay, with me breaking the rules again. It is my happiest effort in years. Not bad for this 71 year old.

To come full circle, the essay on Miss Foley leads off the collection for it is emblematic of my experience as a writer. I self-published the book and I find Wheatmark more than capable of producing a fine product. Working with the editor is for me a growing experience, not something to resist. After all, the whole art of writing, for me, comes down to revising. When you revise, you sharpen who you are.

The Mobius Strip of Ifs is a compelling compilation of observations, psychological insights, and reminiscences for those possessing the requisite courage to feel and think, to struggle against cultural conditioning, and to create artistically inspite of an environment that impedes the awakening of intelligence. I summed it up: “Although we are passing ephemera, human lint on this planet in transit, it is a powerful and nourishing feeling for me to have paused long enough to have observed the passage of time and my place in it.”

What will your next book be about?

At this time my next effort is at the starting gate.

I Truly Lament is a varied collection of stories, inmates in death camps, survivors of these camps, disenchanted Golems complaining about their tasks, Holocaust deniers and their ravings, and collectors of Hitler curiosa (only recently a few linens from Hitler’s bedroom suite went up for sale!) as well as an imagined interview with Eva Braun during her last days in the bunker.

The intent is to perceive the Holocaust from several points of view. An astute historian of the Holocaust has observed that it is much like a train wreck, survivors wandering about in a daze, sense and understanding, for the moment, absent. No comprehensive rational order in sight.

I am seeking to find a publisher for this.

In the meanwhile, I will be entering contests.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

The most significant achievement as a writer, you ask, makes me reply: It is in the totality of who I am. I work on myself to hope for nothing, to fear nothing, so that I can be free.

Related books:

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Related articles:

• Mathias B. Freese [Interview], by Derek Alger, Pif Magazine, June 16, 2008
• The i Tetralogy by Mathias Freese [Book Review], by Christopher Frost, Neon Literary Magazine
• Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese [Book Review], by Carol Reid, the short review

[Interview] Maureen Myant

Educational psychologist and novelist, Maureen Myant was born in Glasgow where she currently lives and works.

Her first novel, The Search (Alma Books, 2009) has been translated into Spanish and Dutch.

In this interview, she talks about the challenges posed by juggling writing, studying and work:

When did you start writing?

My first attempt at writing a book was when I was about seven. I was in the garden and had just finished reading an Enid Blyton book (I think it was about fairies) and I thought 'I could do that.' So I ran inside, got some paper and a pencil and wrote about three pages. Then I was called inside for my dinner and when I went out again I found that the pages had disappeared - a wind had sprung up. I thought all I had to do was search my memory and what I'd written would come out again fully formed but of course it didn't.

After that early start, I didn't do much writing for years apart from some very bad poetry during my teens and some terrible attempts at short stories during my twenties and thirties.

I was 42 when I decided I really wanted to write. I also wanted to be published. I had spent much of my adult life studying and was about to embark on a professional doctorate when I had a 'lightbulb' moment and realised that if I was ever going to finish the book I'd started at seven I'd better get on with it. So I ditched the doctorate and started an evening class in creative writing. A writer called Janet Paisley was the tutor (Penguin have just published her novel, Warrior Daughter set in the bronze age and it's a terrific read) and she was inspirational.

A few more evening classes and I was confident enough to apply for the MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. I did this at the time when Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and Tom Leonard were the professors. It was a very exciting course. I have a strong belief that you can be taught creative writing. I think there has to be some sort of spark there to begin with but you can definitely improve what you have with good teaching. I can't remember who it was that said that writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but that is something I do agree with.

It's been a long road to publication though. I have a drawer full of rejections from magazines and agents but I kept on trying and eventually my lovely agent, Diane Banks, signed me up. I think it's essential to have an agent who believes in you and your work and I would recommend this to any writer. Agents have so many contacts and can cut out so much of the waiting for publishers to get back to you.

How would you describe your writing?

I'd love to say that it's literary but I'm afraid it's not. Strong narratives which are well written and are psychologically true... that's what I aim for.

I think my target audience is me. By that I mean people who like reading, who want to be drawn into a story and live with and believe in the characters.

Which authors influenced you most?

That's a really difficult question. I have very eclectic tastes and sometimes I feel I'm very easily influenced by whatever I read.

I do like writing which is full of psychological suspense though and with this in mind I'd say that I've found certain novels of Ian McEwan's very influential, specifically Black Dogs and Enduring Love. In particular the opening chapter of Enduring Love was something I had in mind when I wrote the first chapter of The Search. The way it draws you in to the story, I loved that and I would hope that my first chapter also draws in the reader although the subject matter is of course very different.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I'm not sure that I use specific personal experiences much in my writing. The Search is not at all autobiographical and I think that's perhaps because I started writing properly when I was much older.

I think if I'd persevered with my early writing it would have been much more autobiographical. Having said that though, I do think that as someone brought up in the west, in the shadow of WW2 and the cold war, that this has influenced my writing in general ways.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I want to write as well as I can. I worry that I write too quickly sometimes and that I'll let something sloppy slip past my internal editor. I tend to rewrite a lot, going over passages again and again until I'm happy with them. And even then...

My biggest challenge is finding time to write. I have to be very disciplined. When I'm working on a big piece such as a novel, I tend to write in the evening from 7 til 9 and one day at the weekend.

Do you write everyday?

I think I write pretty much every day, whether it's to continue with a story or write a brief review of what I've been reading or (very recently) to add to my blog.

The best piece of advice I was given was when I was doing the MLitt in Creative Writing was to write something every day and if that meant keeping a journal then do so. I started keeping a journal then and I have to say it's a pretty self pitying piece of work! It catalogues all the rejections and setbacks and it can be rather depressing reading it. Since getting the contracts for The Search however, I haven't written much in my journal I'm pleased to say.

I always write in my living room, with my laptop on my knee. I have a bit of a time wasting habit in that I'll play a couple of games of solitaire before getting started. I kid myself on that it's helping to clear my mind. As I said earlier, I work from 7 til 9 in the evening (sometimes 10 if I have a deadline) so the clock stops me. It's rare that I work beyond that time -- I have to speak to my family sometime!

How many books have you written so far?

The Search is my first novel. It was published by Alma Books in September 2009.

The Search is based on what happened to the village of Lidice during WW2. Following the assassination of Heydrich, the Nazis destroyed the village after having executed all the males above the age of 15. The women were sent to Ravensbruck and some of the children who looked Aryan enough were sent to Germany mainly for adoption. It's unclear what happened to the majority of the children but it's thought that they were gassed at Chelmno. The Search follows two of the children, Jan and Lena, who were sent to Germany to an orphanage. Lena disappears and Jan finds out she's been sent to a farm in Germany. There's a subplot which concerns the ordinary German family Lena has been sent to and how the war affects them.

I started the novel when I was in the middle of a PhD in creative writing and wrote about 30,000 words before putting it aside to finish the thesis. When I got an agent on the strength of another novel, I showed her what I'd written of The Search and she encouraged me to finish it. I think in total, it took about nine months but spaced out over about two years because of the interruptions.

It was first published in Spain as La Cancion de Jan (Jan's song) in September 2008 by Grijalbo Press (Random House Mondadori), then in the Netherlands by Arena Press as Zoeken Naar Lena (Searching for Lena) in February 2009. It's now been published in the UK by Alma Books.

My experience hasn't been that I choose a publisher -- more that they chose me! Seriously, the choice of who to send the novel to was up to my agent. I did a lot of googling though and I did like the look of Alma. I thought their list looked really interesting and now that I've read some of the books they publish I'm really chuffed to be published by them. Having said that, I'm very happy will all three of my publishers. Big publishers like the Spanish one have the advantage of a large organisation behind them but I do like the personal touch of small publishers like Alma Books.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into The Search?

I wanted to ensure that I was as accurate as possible in writing about a time and place foreign to me. I had to read many factual books about WW2 and the Holocaust. That part was emotionally demanding. I'm not sure how I dealt with it -- I suppose I just saw it as something I had to do.

Another thing I found very upsetting was that sometimes when I googled something, a Holocaust denial site would come up. This happened again very recently when I was trying to find the name of a film I'd seen as a teenager about Lidice. Up popped this ghastly link to a site which claimed the whole story of Lidice had been made up. I was livid. I've been to the memorial site, I've seen the photographs, listened to the testimony of those affected, watched the film that the Nazis made at the time. And yet here were these idiots claiming it didn't happen.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

I love writing. I love finding out what's going to happen to the characters. But I also really enjoy rewriting. It's great going back over stuff you've written and tweaking it until you're happy with it.

In what way is The Search similar to other things you've written?

The novel I wrote for my PhD is also set partly during WW2 and the Holocaust. In addition, there are common themes of separation and loss in most of my work.

The novel I'm working on at the moment is about a British tour group visiting the USSR in the late 1970s and the cultural differences they encounter there. There's much more of me in this novel as some of it is based on my own experience of visiting the USSR in 1979. At the time, I knew I should be writing down my experiences because it was so different to anything I'd ever experienced before (though I was only 24 at the time and quite naive) but I didn't and I really regretted it when it came to writing this novel. However it's been good in one way because I have to rely much more on my imagination.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

I started writing The Search while I was doing a PhD in Creative Writing. I look back on that time and can't quite believe how much I juggled: the critical aspect of the PhD (which was extremely demanding as my first degree is in psychology), a novel for the PhD, starting The Search and working full time as an educational psychologist.

I want to sleep for a week when I think about it!

Possibly related books:

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Related article:

[Interview] C. Y. Gopinath, author of 'Travels with the Fish', Conversations with Writers, September 18, 2008