{"id":111566,"date":"2017-06-06T14:19:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T18:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=111566"},"modified":"2017-06-06T15:20:16","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T19:20:16","slug":"game-of-second-guessing-an-interview-with-gabe-habash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/06\/game-of-second-guessing-an-interview-with-gabe-habash\/","title":{"rendered":"Game of Second-Guessing: An Interview with Gabe Habash"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Photo: Nina Subin<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sometimes an epigraph offers you a serving of Plato, some Ecclesiastes, or perhaps a few fine lines from an obscure Eastern European poet. To welcome readers into <\/em>Stephen Florida<\/a>, his first novel, Gabe Habash has picked these five words from Arnold Schwarzenegger: \u201cThe mind is the limit.\u201d Sitting alone on a page, floating in negative space, they feel like a frightening prophecy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stephen Florida follows a college wrestler in his senior season. It is written as if the ghost of Laurence Sterne watched a lot of ESPN before returning to his desk. Stephen\u2019s voice draws momentum from his attempts to leave a mark on the world. Like the voice in<\/em> Tristram Shandy, it obsessively digresses from that central aim into ideas of human failure and misreading. We learn that even his name has its foundation in a mistake: Stephen Florida was supposed to be called Steven Forster. An unfortunate clerical error occurred.<\/em><\/p>\n

Habash has a great eye for the ways in which our public identities and private insecurities are shaped by happenstance. <\/em>Stephen Florida is full of vim and invention, good jokes and built-up bodies, unexpected sentences. He and I discussed his love of Barry Hannah and Roberto Bola\u00f1o, the common pitfalls of books about sport, and how frustrations with writing may have fed into his narrator\u2019s preoccupation with completion.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What was it that drew you to write about wrestling in Stephen Florida<\/em>, and held your interest? Are you a sports obsessive?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

I really only love basketball. LeBron James is the greatest human being on the planet. But what drew me to wrestling was how demanding and unforgiving it is. It seems to exist in an adjacent world that not even other sports inhabit. Like other sports, wrestling can give you so much, but it seems to take more, to ask more of its participants. It was necessary for Stephen\u2019s pursuit of a championship to exist in the periphery. He\u2019s in the lowest division of college wrestling at a school in the middle of nowhere. I wanted readers to feel like they were watching something happen that no one else was paying attention to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Are there sportswriters you admire? It\u2019s a tricky thing, bringing wordless grace or mute power to life with words, and you do it unusually well.<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

I have a tough time with sportswriting because usually I\u2019d prefer to just watch sports, whether it be narrative or a documentary. For example, the best basketball movie\u2014and best sports movie in general\u2014is Hoop Dreams<\/em>. Compare that with something like The Breaks of the Game <\/em>by David Halberstam, which is frequently cited as a classic basketball book.<\/p>\n

The Breaks of the Game<\/em> is good, but Hoop Dreams<\/em> is just on a whole different level. And with a \u201csports\u201d novel like End Zone<\/em> by Don DeLillo, the most boring part of that whole book is the extended football game in the middle. So often, sportswriting starts to read like a screenplay without the dialogue\u2014it\u2019s just, \u201cHe does this, his opponent does that.\u201d In film, you can get away with just showing the sport. Sports are inherently dramatic from a visual standpoint\u2014you instantaneously absorb the athletic forces competing. But if you just try to transcribe that on the page, you\u2019re dead. I knew that if I found that kind of writing boring, someone who wasn\u2019t a sports fan definitely would, and the book would fail. So I tried to give it as much life as possible.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Was it important to you to try and capture a range of tones within the novel and battle against any temptation toward restraint or safety?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

Well, I wanted there to be the sense that anything could happen. Stephen\u2019s voice is the book\u2019s engine. It\u2019s unpredictable and kept me from ever being bored as I was writing. I started the first draft knowing where it would end and knowing the major points along the way, but frequently I wouldn\u2019t know what would happen until it was happening. The sense of uncertainty was really important to me in the early stages. I hope the book never feels safe.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Why write a book? Is it, as your character Stephen says of his own daily grind, \u201cto prove to yourself you can do it [and] to prove to everyone else you can do it\u201d?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

For me, that\u2019s a part of it, yes. My reason for writing is different from yours and yours is different from someone else\u2019s, but I think back to when I was writing the first draft. I was writing only for myself. I hadn\u2019t shown it to anyone. It becomes this secret that relies on you to live. To me, that\u2019s incredibly motivating. If you believe in and love the work, you feel like you can\u2019t neglect it or it\u2019ll fade into obscurity and eventually die. And you don\u2019t want something you love to die, do you?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Are there the corpses of abandoned Gabe Habash novels lurking under this debut novel, and did they inform the story you eventually told?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

Yes, definitely. As I was writing the book, it\u00a0was often a container for my frustrations, both writing frustrations and broader frustrations. Stephen Florida<\/em> would be very different or might not exist at all if there weren\u2019t the failures beforehand. It\u2019s the third novel I\u2019ve completed. The first one was bad and I never tried to publish it. The second one was rejected thirty-seven times, and we never found anyone who wanted it. Stephen Florida <\/em>was rejected thirty times. Coffee House was the only publisher who wanted it.<\/p>\n

When I was writing this book, some of the motivation was frustration at the previous rejections, but it was also frustration with my shortcomings as a writer. I feel like most writers are frequent second-guessers to begin with, but the problem was exacerbated after no one wanted the second novel. And Stephen\u2019s confidence in the novel sort of gets chipped away at\u2014he starts the book very confident and arrogant but then as he approaches the end of the season and the uncertainty of what comes after, he becomes more doubtful. So I was able to incorporate a lot of what I felt about my writing into his story. It was helpful to have a container.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to ask you about mistakes. The idea of what it means to be mistaken, or unsure of the facts of any given matter, seems to recur throughout the novel. It\u2019s there in your very first sentences\u2014the idea that the narrator\u2019s strength may be a kind of mistake, resulting from the fact he was supposed to have a twin. And even his name, Stephen Florida, is a fuckup. Was there something about the nature of chance, or error, that you wanted to explore in this novel?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

Some of the instances of mistakes and chances weren\u2019t conscious choices. The twin thing was not me thinking, Ha! This will nicely tie into my theme of mistakes! Writing a novel is a tangled ball of conscious and unconscious decisions. Sometimes you decide to write something just because it seems right and you don\u2019t know why. And you\u2019re writing a novel over a long period of time, so sometimes you won\u2019t remember why you made a decision because it was fourteen months ago. But you are right that chance and error play a big part in the book. Without giving anything away, some pretty significant plot moments rely purely on chance.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What was the first scene or moment in the novel that you put down on paper? I wonder in particular whether the idea of the protagonist feeding off two placentas\u2014cancelling out his twin\u2014was always there at the start.<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

The opening of the book is the same as it always was, except for that very first paragraph about Stephen\u2019s mother having two placentas. That came later after I read an article about Marshawn Lynch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What excited you about the article?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

I just knew when I read it. The idea that someone could have a mythology before they\u2019ve even exited the womb\u2014that the double placenta situation gave them Paul Bunyanish strength\u2014and that that mythology comes from the mother herself, like the mother is the child\u2019s hype person, I loved that. It\u2019s so strange and specific.<\/p>\n

Also, Stephen\u2019s parents have died in a car accident by the time the narrative starts, and so much of the novel is about what Stephen is missing, so immediately, in the first sentence, it establishes Stephen\u2019s connection to what he\u2019s lost.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What have been a few of the books you\u2019ve been obsessed with at different times in your life \u2014in high school, in college, during your M.F.A., as a young editor at Publishers Weekly<\/em>?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really read in high school. I thought I wanted to make movies, so I was busy doing these goofball movies with my friends. Also, I played a lot of video games. I didn\u2019t start reading until college. I think Sometimes a Great Notion<\/em> was probably the first book that, you know, you say to yourself, Oh, okay, wow. I read All the King\u2019s Men<\/em> shortly after that and had a similar head explosion. Letters to Yesenin<\/em>, 2666<\/em>, Journey to the End of the Night<\/em>, A Severed Head<\/em>, Sweet Days of Discipline<\/em>, This Boy\u2019s Life<\/em>, Revolutionary Road<\/em>, Remainder<\/em>, The Known World\u2014<\/em>I\u2019m still obsessed with all those books.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Tell me a little about your process for revision. How heavily do you work over each page, and what\u2019s the most difficult aspect for you?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

As you get further into the revision and editing stage, you just get increasingly tired of the work, so it becomes increasingly easy to edit. By the end, you\u2019ve hopefully minimized the amount of the work that causes repulsion and disgust in you. Then you feel better about letting it go and letting readers have it.<\/p>\n

The structure for this book was fairly straightforward, so probably developing the characters was the most difficult aspect, especially the secondary characters. The book is first person and Stephen\u2019s perspective is specific and distorted, so making the characters be able to stand up under the intense pressure of his voice was a challenge. Also, incorporating the wrestling aspect without bogging it down. I knew that needed to be relatively streamlined but also hold the weight of how much importance Stephen gives it.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

This is often said without cause, but in your case holds true\u2014your sentences often have an aural quality. Was it important for you that we should be able to hear the rhythms of Stephen\u2019s voice as we read?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure I can give a coherent answer to that. The \u201crhythm\u201d of the sentences came from inhabiting Stephen\u2019s voice. It\u2019s like anything else you get overly familiar with\u2014there\u2019s less and less hesitation until it\u2019s second nature. The sentences would just start spilling out and I wouldn\u2019t worry about shaping them until the revision process.<\/p>\n

I think maybe the biggest influence on the book on a sentence level is Barry Hannah. He\u2019ll often begin sentences and you won\u2019t know where they\u2019ll end. They will take sudden and sharp turns and land on an unexpected image or thought. Airships <\/em>is the best short-story collection I\u2019ve ever read, and probably the most surprising, as well.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Is there a particular story of his that stays with you above others?<\/p>\n

HABASH<\/p>\n

Ray<\/em> is a masterpiece, and you could basically pick any story from Airships<\/em>, but I\u2019ll pick \u201cGreen Gets It.\u201d I think part of what I love about Barry Hannah is you can\u2019t really summarize his stories or his novels. They just sort of unspool in front of you, and you miss fundamentally important things just because the language stuns you. In \u201cGreen Gets It,\u201d the main character, Quarles Green, repeatedly attempts suicide, but the first attempt, which is the opening of the story, is, \u201cUnable to swim, he had maneuvered to fall off an old-timer\u2019s party yacht in the Hudson River … He couldn\u2019t swim. But he did. He learned how.\u201d Green makes it to a dock by the end of the seventh sentence, and I don\u2019t think I even realized that he was attempting suicide until a page or so later, when he tries again.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not doing a good job selling the story, I know. But that\u2019s because you don\u2019t really read Hannah for plot. You read him for sentences that\u00a0twist and shift and are surprising and beautiful and challenge what you think language can do. On the last page of the story, Green dies on an airplane. It says, \u201cHe sat there awhile and died.\u201d I still haven\u2019t gotten over how good that is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jonathan Lee\u2019s novel <\/em>High Dive<\/a>, picked as a best book of 2016 by the<\/em>\u00a0New York Times, the<\/em>\u00a0Washington Post, the<\/em> Wall Street Journal, the<\/em> San Francisco Chronicle, the<\/em>\u00a0Chicago Tribune, and the<\/em>\u00a0Guardian, is now out in paperback from Vintage.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI wanted readers to feel like they were watching something happen that no one else was paying attention to.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":616,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[13152,5235,27501,18947,29085,893,1889,7012,18231,29083,29086,1132,22604,13729,747,29087,85,29084,1322,19431],"class_list":["post-111566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-airships","tag-barry-hannah","tag-chance","tag-coffee-house-press","tag-david-halberstam","tag-debut-fiction","tag-don-delillo","tag-doubt","tag-first-novels","tag-gabe-habash","tag-hoop-dreams","tag-interviews","tag-laurence-sterne","tag-novelists","tag-novels","tag-placentas","tag-sports","tag-stephen-florida","tag-tristram-shandy","tag-wrestling"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGabe Habash Discusses His Debut Novel, 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