Spencer Dew is one of the best the internet literary scene has to offer. He's been published in Juked, The 2nd Hand, and Thieves Jargon, among others. His book Songs of Insurgency just came out in 2008.

Everyday Yeah: Let’s
do an interview?

Spencer Dew: I'd love to do an interview, absolutely…And
thanks for the nice review.

So, how did Chicago
become a literary hotbed? How did you get roped in to the whole thing?

Mark, Sorry this took me so long; I was out of town, reading
in Louisville.

Chicago is Ben Hecht's city, Nelson Algren's, the city of
Studs Terkel -- if you know Liz Armstrong's tongue-to-socket columns for the
old Chicago Reader or Joe Meno's trick-with-lighter prose, you get a sense for
a real literary lineage to this place. The slant of those diagonals
through the urban grid, the mix of industry and the
cosmopolitan, subterranean spider-holes like the Billy Goat, and the weird
mythology of hard scrabble and hard luck -- there's a distinct flavor here in
this beneficent dictatorship on the lake. It's also simply a good place
to live, to get by, and that always makes a difference when it comes to artists
making art. I'd say, too, that Chicago's core working-class ethos gives
birth to writers who work like hell, who cook with five pots going -- novelists
who are also critics (I'm thinking of the great Gillian Flynn) or who are also
journalists, photographers, painters, philosophers (and I mean this in a
credentialed sense, thinking of my friend and mentor Jeremy Biles) or
performers (as far as "hotbed" goes, the best "scene" I've
seen in town is the new "Quickies" reading series, at Innertown Pub,
run by the impressive-as-hell duo of Mary Hamilton and Lindsay Hunter).

How'd I get roped into the "scene" here?
Through Jeb Gleason-Allured and Todd Dills of THE2NDHAND, who invited me to
represent their journal at the Museum of Contemporary Art's "Literary
Gangs of Chicago" reading series, through the hustling, hyperkinetic Nick
Ostdick of Ragad, who's had me out to read repeatedly, and through an
invitation to do a reading for Jessa Crispin's top-notch "Bookslut Reading
Series."

I should also wedge in a shout-out to the folks at
Literago.org, an organization that's done a hell of a lot to suggest a
"scene" or twenty at play in this city, plus raising the profile of
literary events writ large.

No need to feel
pressure to answer these questions. When you get to them you get to them.
I'm curious how the weekend in Louisville went. Best food you ate?
Worst food? Creepy people you met traveling? Good conversations you
had along the way? Unnecessary things you packed? How many times
you changed your socks (I only ask this because I haven't changed my socks in
three days and I'm starting to get worried because they don't smell)?
Basically, I'm just curious to hear your views on Louisville.

There was a lot of bad food, to be honest. One very
nice hotel bar. I changed socks daily, twice daily on the days I went
running. I packed nothing unneccessary, though I brought along
a copy of the Oxford American that contained a number of unneccessary
pages. I attended a surprise birthday party for my mother, who does not
live in Louisville. The last time I was in Louisville, my father was
having sections of his spine fused together and metal bars implanted.
Louisville is a pleasant town, and the staff at Carmichael's bookstore were
extremely friendly and nice. I met up briefly with Louisville writer
Jason Jordan, author of "Powering the Devil's Circus." There
were lots of Hunter S Thompson bumperstickers for sale. Everyone seemed
excited about Big Brown.

I was browsing some
of your bios on various lit sites and came across this one at Pindeldyboz:
Spencer Dew lives in Chicago, where he studies rabbinic conceptions of
language, text, and identity. He also works at the writing and assembling of
novels.
Can you talk a little about your interest in studying rabbinic
literature. Also, how's the novel assemblage going?

"The writing and assembling of novels"?
That's a nice phrase.

And, yes, I'm interested in midrash, Talmud, in rabbinic interpretation
and commentary in general, how such texts function, the seriousness and
playfulness with which they treat their task. One figure I find
fascinating, a Kabbalistic fellow, a mystic in the city of Safed, in the 15th
century, Hayyim Vital, he's driven, in part -- and tortured by, really -- this
concern, this anxiety, that maybe, perhaps, he's the messiah, or maybe he's
here to immediately prepare the way for the messiah. I mean, this is a
man of radical piety, living in a radically pious community, and the messianic
expectation is there, is present, and he thinks, wow, this is really a
consideration... So what does he do? I mean, he's in a situation
where EVERYTHING could be significant, could SIGNIFY. So all of his
dreams, right, and everything he sees and experiences during the day, and,
ultimately, the dreams of OTHER people -- in his case, of gentiles, of Muslims,
Christians, women, strangers -- all of these things need to be studied,
interpreted, examined. He's worn out by it, obviously, it's a white-heat
sort of existence. But fascinating as an example of what it means to take
the act of reading utterly seriously, right? The Christian Church Fathers
had a similar approach, the idea that God, as author of the world, left God's
mark on everything, that a grub or a fallen leaf or whatnot could be read back
as relating to its creation and Creator... This is a long way from what
you asked me, I understand, but it's worth mentioning, this hyper-significance,
the idea that everything can be approached as having a meaning, however inscrutable
or covert... It's an idea I play with frequently in my fiction, I
think. There's an awareness of mystery and awe and the sheer scope of
things in such an attitude.

Spencer, I apologize
it's taken me so long to get back to you. I've been away.
Unfortunately it was only New Hampshire and not Louisiana. It was a
barbeque not a book talk. Oh well.
Okay, sorry to get really off topic, but Indiana Jones opened this weekend and
now you may not be the type to run to the theater on opening weekend, but your
previous answer with all its religious talk vaguely reminded me of the first
three Indiana Jones movies. So if you've seen it, what was your reaction
to it?
If you haven't seen it then what was your favorite movie as a child and what
movie had the greatest effect or influence on you?

I haven't seen it, no, though the earlier ones certainly had
an effect on me, as a child, sure.

Yeah, I'm not quite
sure what I was thinking with that question. It probably would have been
best to ask about what books you've been reading lately (anything good?) or
something like, when you finish a book do you ever have the desire to read it
front to back again? Do you have any desire to read it at all (aside from
book talks)? If you were in a band would you listen to your own band's
music?

Well, I'm working on a couple of projects, criticism or
something like it, on Adrian Tomine, whose work was hugely influential on me,
an extraordinarily clever, really real writer, and also on Zora Neal Hurston,
who is such an absolute powerhouse when it comes to voice, this
ultra-confident, barbed and honey-dripping voice that saunters around
proclaiming. She's got an essay, from 1928, "How it Feels to be
Colored Me," which, among other things, has a description of jazz, of
being at a jazz club, of responding, in this wildly hyperbolically yet
viscerally accurate way… Well, she's a writer who, as she says rather
dismissively of someone else, "knows her way among words."
Tomine, of course, deals in situations, in subtleties; he's an artist who deals
as much in the absence of words, in slant glances and slight wrinkles around
the eyes, as he does in explicit statements. He can convey incredible
tension, and the trajectory of it, the slide from banal domestic scene to
relationship catastrophe, in a matter of, like, five panels, three inanimate
objects, and a couple of interrupted statements.

As far as my work, it's written very much for performance,
and I do, more or less, by and large, enjoy performing it, at least certain
pieces, at certain times. I can't see myself sitting down and reading the
book from start to finish, but I think listening to performances has its own
value, just in terms of performing better, ironing out the kinks.

And I didn't mean to blow off your previous question, it's
just that there's so much to say, really, about the representations of religion
in those earlier movies, both of Judaism and Hinduism, and the use of the
Nazis, etc. I wrote an essay a few years back about movies using Nazis,
the risks of that, taking actual historical horror and making it into a kind of
cartoon, a hyperbole. I'm a little divided on it, frankly. The
second, not-so-good movie is an example of even more of an issue, I think,
because it has these absurd images of "India" and "Indians"
and this crazy take on Kali worship, the Thugee cult, all that. And I say
this because, one, the logic is just a little weird – Nazis chasing down sacred
relics makes sense for an adventure plot in a way that people worshipping a
goddess that people always worship just doesn't – and because I know from my
own experience, of being a kid from Kentucky who went to India for studies back
in, what, 1995, that people would always ask, "Oh, did you eat snake
surprise? Did you have monkey brains?" and that's just crazy, it
makes no sense… It would have been such a better movie, and more in line
with the other two, if it had been more serious in its premise. We go,
you know, from the Holy Ark hunted by Nazis to the Cup of Christ, likewise with
the Nazis all after it, and then in the middle there's this cheap pastiche
cabaret show, but it's not as sophisticated as a cartoon, even. Bugs
Bunny and the Thugee cult would have had better laughs, better chills, and a
more frighteningly realistic treatment of the human slave diabolism thing.

I should also say, in terms of me thinking about these
things, I had a roommate, in college, who was only – or was at least primarily
– an archaeology student for that reason, because of those Indiana Jones
films. He quoted them a lot, which maybe makes him sound silly, but the
thing was he was a deadly serious archaeologist, spending all his summers
covered in dirt over in Cyprus or some place, digging with a toothbrush or
whatever they use. But then he would quote the movies all the time.
He was a good man, and his situation always seemed to be to me so
understandable, just a slight exaggeration of how it is for all of us, how
these sort of cultural mythologies work.

I must say it is a
treat to read through your answers. I'm not just saying this. It
really is enjoyable to read what you write. I know it probably makes you
blush and say "aww shucks," but after seeing a few of the above
responses I'm starting to believe you've got that knack to take just about any
subject and make it interesting. I'm almost tempted to throw out various
random objects and ideas just to hear your thoughts on them. Okay I will,
but feel free to pass on the bait: snack packs, Richard Wright, the fact that
if you google 'giraffe' the first thing that pops up is an image of two
giraffes humping, and Diane Lane.

Mostly though I'm
interested at the timetable for these various projects you mentioned. I
know it can kind of be a cruel thing to ask a writer what he's working on and
then ask when his next book is coming out (especially when he just put one
out), but it's always nice to have a general idea. And hopefully you're
not the type to have five year dry spells in between works, but if you are then
at least I'll be able to brace myself somewhat.

"Amorous giraffes," the caption says. That's
likely inaccurate use of language. Speculative, at least, imposing
whatever specifically human thing "amorous" means. I'll pass on
Richard Wright and Diane Lane, though I will reference "Ladies and
Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains," a movie worth seeing. One thing I'm
working with, an image or factoid floating around, is how there are these new
masses mid-Pacific, archipelagos of plastic trash, and how these new detritus
islands are altering ecosystems, becoming nesting sites for birds, shark
grounds, etc. I mean, there's your snack packs, no?

I'm working on a book, yes, a novel-in-stories, about a slew
of things, and I'm working on nonfiction projects, mainly this treatment of
Kathy Acker's novels, a reading of what I see as a pedagogical mode within her
texts, teaching her readers how to read, how reading and writing relate to the
larger revolutionary political struggle she wants us to undertake, bringing
about new human relations, a better world, etc. But, yes, I hope I don't
have a five-year dry spell, either.

Switching gears a
little, I'm curious about your thoughts on myspace. It seems you're
reluctant to have a page, but probably feel forced to do the whole social
networking thing. Do you have any guilty pleasures that you'd care to
share? Also, on a similar note how much time a week would you say you
devote to your internet persona?

Well, sure, reluctant. I devote about probably ten
minutes a month to my scabby MySpace page, which pretty much just links to my
real website, and my sparse Facebook page, the difference being that my
Facebook "friends" are people I actually know and my MySpace
"friends" are dead writers or people who self identify as
vampires. I think there are contexts in which social networking sites
probably work wonders, but I think MySpace is pretty ghetto and much of
Facebook is consumed with cutsie pet eggs and quiz games. So, neither is
a place for me, though obviously there is an impressive potential to spread the
word about your book or your band or your cd, which is why I opened such pages
in the first place.

As you probably know
the cutsie pet eggs and quiz games of facebook have taken over academia for the
most part. The landscape of our institutions seem to have drastically
changed in the last ten years. Everyone has cell phones that chat, text,
and take pictures. Contact is easier. Hooking up seems
easier. You graduated in the late 90's when probably everyone still had
phone lines in their dorm rooms. Did you have a specific routine for
hooking up? Actually, I now realize this is kind of a stupid
question. Not much has probably changed when you really think about
it. Alcohol is still the number one motivator for sexual exchanges.

Did you have an email address when you went to college?

I was in undergrad for three years, the middle year of
which, '95/'96, I was in India. When I came back to the states, there
were ads on television with web addresses. I'm not sure that I ever used
either the internet or email before college, but, yes, had an address by my
freshman year, and was introduced to not only the idea of internet porn but,
specifically, animated porn involving bestiality, rape, and extreme forms of
violence, which I mention because the capacity of this technology to convey,
propagate, and shape specific fantasies and kinds of thinking is of interest to
me -- and plays a role in my book, specifically the story "After Art
School," which began as an essay on disturbing visual subtexts in internet
porn, on the idea of doing actual close reading of these images, which reveals
not only cultural information about the audience, their demands, but also the
means of production, which, when it comes to porn, is frightening. To
return to your question, in college there was also some sort of technology by
which people could do the equivalent of instant messaging, across campus, each
dorm having a server, each machine existing as an alias which could be changed
at random. I could probably say more about that, the sort of
proto-technology of it, the risks and masquerades, or early IRC systems,
etc. The changes brought about by what Kathy Acker called, long ago,
"the Net Age" are massive. I think, for instance, of how hard
it was to obtain information or, specifically, certain books, or even the
knowledge that certain books existed, when I grew up, in small town
Kentucky. At the same time, "the Net Age" allows us to easily
access subcultures, practices, predilections that otherwise most people would
never encounter (insert your own extremely elaborate perversity, for instance,
but also insert anything that, before, you had to KNOW someone in order to obtain,
and had to know ABOUT in order to want to obtain it). I have some worries
about this, or, specifically, about some economies of abuse that come along
with it. I think it's great that there are e-zines and on-line retailers,
for a variety of reasons, but I think the move toward "amateur"
pornography has some extremely disturbing undercurrents to it, as does, I'm
afraid, the general move toward hyper-revelation and documentation. It's
only a few clicks on Flickr till you find some "candid" images that
are profoundly creepy, and, of course, MySpace and etc are petri dishes for
similar stuff. I'm working on pieces dealing with some of these issues,
and I think the real riddle, in terms of policy, is how to draw any kind of
legal limit. Can I post pictures of my neighbor, and if not, why not, and
if so, is there any check on the comments I'm allowed to post, etc., etc.
I don't relish the idea that crimes will literally be inspired and facilitated
by new technology. And one reason I don't relish it is because I don't
want such things to happen, but another reason I don't relish it is because I
fear that any functional legal restrictions will need to be overly wide in
scope. This maybe has gone afield from your question about email
addresses. I'm also, of late, increasingly concerned about the world as
at once post-national and, well, NOT: the United States is building
border fences patrolled by, among other things, drone planes.
"Immigration" is a hot button issue, with people calling -- fairly
rabidly -- for restrictions, for closure of borders. But at the same
time, borders are, in so many ways, obsolete. I'm trying to learn more
about immigration law. I wish there were easier paths for people,
especially folks already here illegally, as I am friends with many folks in
that situation, all of them with their own complicated and unique, tangled
reasons for ending up where they are now. Anyway, this is too long an
answer. The contemplation of new communication technology just seems like
a trap door into ALL of these issues, though. The world is shrinking, and
that means the distance between decent citizens, sheriffs, and perverts is
shrinking, too. As the world shrinks, we can feel BOTH parties breath
down our necks, you know? The police and the criminals.

That was an amazing
answer. It's had me thinking the last day or so. Not so much
focused on the ideas you brought up, but they've somewhat become a constant in
the back of my head. I mean I've always kind of thought these types of
things, but you stated it clearly. And with that I think here is a good
place to end the interview. If there's anything you want to add feel
free, otherwise thank you very much for your time. I think there was some
really good stuff in here. Thanks again.

Hey, that was really a pleasure. It was very nice
talking with you, and I'd love to do so again. I'm glad you like the
book, too. Take care.