{"id":114429,"date":"2017-08-24T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=114429"},"modified":"2017-08-25T11:46:38","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T15:46:38","slug":"whats-wrong-with-us-an-interview-with-j-m-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/24\/whats-wrong-with-us-an-interview-with-j-m-holmes\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Wrong with Us: An Interview with J. M. Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Photo by Julie Keresztes.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

J. M. Holmes\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d appears in our Summer issue (no. 221)<\/a>; it\u2019s Holmes\u2019s first published story. Next year, it will be included in the collection\u00a0<\/em>How Are You Going to Save Yourself.\u00a0Like the other stories in the collection, \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d follows a group of friends, four young black men\u2014Dub, Rolls, G., and Rye\u2014as they\u00a0navigate the tangle of sex, race, and class. The story opens with Dub pressing Rye with the question \u201cHow many white women you been with?\u201d Rye shies away from answering amid the group but later tells G., in confidence, about a sexual encounter with a white woman that left\u00a0him at once ashamed and exhilarated.<\/em><\/p>\n

I spoke with Holmes over the phone recently, just after he\u2019d returned to Milwaukee from a trip through Portugal, Italy, and Croatia with his mother and sister. He was laid back and cool, despite admitting that he was nervous. (\u201cThat was my first interview,\u201d he told me afterward. \u201cI feel like I just asked my girl to prom.\u201d) We talked openly about intimacy in interracial relationships, the black body as sexual fetish, and shadeism.<\/em><\/p>\n

(NB: Some of the story\u2019s details are purposefully left out, so as not to spoil the experience for our readers. But you can\u00a0<\/em>read \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with\u00a0You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d here<\/a>.<\/em>)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the most obvious question. When did you start writing?<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

As a little kid, I wrote fantasy and poetry and stuff, but I didn\u2019t start writing seriously until college, at Amherst. That\u2019s where I met Judith Frank. She was the first person to take me in and say, You can do this, you\u2019re good at this thing. Then Amity Gaige. Then I took a bunch of creative-writing classes.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You went to Iowa.<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

Yeah. But it\u2019s a revolving door over there. So many people come through\u2014it\u2019s fucking huge. Well, twenty-five people in every class, and then you\u2019re there with sixty other writers, and people have a tendency to really hang on. They go there and they don\u2019t ever want to leave because they have access to these brilliant writers and agents and everything. I enjoyed parts of it. I think the best part was getting to meet the professors, the writers who care about your work, and being given the money and the time to write. I got my agent through Iowa, and I think \u2026 well, I obviously wouldn\u2019t be talking to you if it wasn\u2019t for Iowa, so in that regard I love it. But socially, it\u2019s a bit draining. You have a lot of talented people in a small space competing for resources. It\u2019s not a recipe for a lot of friendships or good times.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Who influences your work as a writer?<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t stop listening to Frank Ocean. He cuts to the center of sentiment in a good way. And Kendrick Lamar\u2014I think he\u2019s a genius. I definitely listen to music more than I read books. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I read a lot. But I grew up rapping. Like, really, truly rapping. The most hurtful comment I got at workshop was from a woman who wasn\u2019t a fan of mine, for another story in the collection where G.\u2019s freestyling. She said, I just don\u2019t think this narrator could rap like that. And I was like, First of all, that\u2019s not really<\/em> a critique. And second of all, you know what? That\u2019s bullshit. I was so offended.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big fan of Walter Mosley, too\u2014he\u2019s just so unmistakably himself. I\u2019ve read a bunch of his detective fiction.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In one of your stories, a character wants to get a tattoo of the line \u201cPeople are trapped in history and history is trapped in them,\u201d from Baldwin\u2019s essay \u201cStranger in the Village.\u201d Did Baldwin factor in?<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

Baldwin, yeah. Was it Mosley who said that he wishes he could be like Baldwin, so cool in his hatred? I had never come across a thinker like Baldwin. He\u2019s a big-time motivator. I wrote \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d before I read \u201cGoing to Meet the Man,\u201d but \u201cGoing to Meet the Man\u201d overlaps a lot thematically with this story. So when I read it, I was like, Aw, shit, Baldwin already did it. It was great \u2026 better<\/em>. He got there before everybody, and we\u2019re all still in conversation with him. If you\u2019re black and you write something of merit\u2014especially if you\u2019re a black man\u2014he\u2019s automatically going to come up in conversation. I wouldn\u2019t say he directly influenced my work, but anyone who picks him up and reads him \u2026 he stays with you.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Where did \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d come from?<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s not really new in the black community. I think the story will be shocking for a lot of people, but it won\u2019t be shocking for black readers. I sent the collection to some friends of mine, and one of them said, I like the collection, but I hate the first story. It\u2019s kind of been played out. Like, she\u2019d just heard it too many times. It hurt my feelings, but to a certain extent I agree. It\u2019s all over the Internet, it\u2019s a major narrative in porn. It\u2019s everywhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So why write it?<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

I consider myself very American. I might not love this country, but it\u2019s the only one I know. And the entire collection is meant to explore an American point of view, our psychology \u2026 or psychosis. With this story, what\u2019s more important to me than pointing out that black people are fetishized\u2014though all of that is in the background or the foreground, or however you want to put it\u2014is the question of how someone maintains a genuine, truthful, intimate relationship with someone else if they\u2019re afraid that that\u2019s in the back of their mind, the back of their throat, you know? Can<\/em> someone maintain that relationship?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you think it\u2019s possible?<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

I think so \u2026 I hope so. My girlfriend\u2019s white. A couple years ago maybe I thought you couldn\u2019t or that it\u2019d be too hard, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s one size fits all. If a relationship is going to fail, it\u2019s going to fail on a lot of fronts. You\u2019re probably not going to be blindsided by something like that.<\/p>\n

I have a lot of liberal friends who will argue that sex is just sex, then you go about your business. But at what point is that not true? There has to be a line somewhere. In Rye\u2019s case, for someone to be able to do this to him\u2014to go there, to say that<\/em> \u2026 You can\u2019t just put that away, I don\u2019t think, unless you have a steel-trap mind maybe, but even then I don\u2019t think you can. It\u2019s pervasive, it spills over into your everyday thoughts.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

But at the end, Rye tells G. what happened and says he \u201cloved it,\u201d that it made him \u201charder,\u201d that he \u201cwanted her so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a psychologist. I try to be, but I have no training and I don\u2019t know how much I believe in psychology. What I do know is that I wanted everyone to be complicit. I wanted everyone to be guilty. \u201cGuilty\u201d isn\u2019t the right word, but I didn\u2019t want anyone to come away squeaky clean, as if you could say, Oh, she transgressed and he was a strong black man, or, He became violent and she\u2019s the victim. It\u2019s a lot messier than that. A lot of it gets internalized. You don\u2019t have time to reason your way through it and say, Oh, I shouldn\u2019t enjoy this, or, This is demeaning, or ask yourself why it\u2019s getting you off. You\u2019re just left to think about it later.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

As Rye says earlier, \u201cI been conditioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a riff on Chameleon Street<\/em>, which is the only movie in history to win Sundance and not get picked up by a major distributor. And it didn\u2019t get picked up because white distributors didn\u2019t know what to do with this black film that wasn\u2019t, like, a Blaxploitation film. It\u2019s a Catch Me If You Can <\/em>type. But the opening scene is two guys talking about a woman with good hair, and one of them says, Man, I\u2019ve been conditioned \u2026 Even my conditioning\u2019s been conditioned. So it was meant to be a joke, but jokes don\u2019t entirely cover up truths either, as much as they try. So yeah, it\u2019s definitely supposed to read that way.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

G. seems to wonder if this is in the back of his girlfriend Madie\u2019s mind, too. If she doesn\u2019t also have a \u201cblack appetite,\u201d to borrow a\u00a0phrase from the story. He says twice to himself, in quick succession, \u201cI wasn\u2019t on an auction block in front of her.\u201d As though he needs convincing.<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a little heavy-handed to say he needs convincing, but for me, that\u2019s exactly where the heart of the story lies. It\u2019s not so much that race play happens, that sexual fetishes happen, but again it\u2019s, How do we return to what is \u201cnormal,\u201d how do we return to intimacy? So for G., that\u2019s definitely a soul-searching moment, trying to figure out whether or not this is in Madie\u2019s head, too. And if it is, how to compartmentalize it.<\/p>\n

There were a few black women at Iowa who really hated the way white women were portrayed in this collection. They felt the heavens parted when white women were on the page\u2014like when G.\u2019s in the shower with Madie, washing her hair, or when Rye\u2019s looking at the photo of G.\u2019s aunt, stuff like that\u2014and there aren\u2019t really any black women in this story. So they saw the collection as a deification of white women. Some of that\u2019s intentional, but some of it\u2019s probably my own lack of awareness, too.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Where do you think that comes from?<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

Shadeism is a very, very real part of my life, and it\u2019s a subtle motivator in a lot of my work. It\u2019s another common trend that is as old as racism itself. We grow up looking at whitewashed models and all that. I feel like even Queen B was criticized for not wearing her hair naturally or for using makeup to appear lighter\u2014I can\u2019t remember. But even when we are aware of the issue it doesn\u2019t mean that some of that pathology hasn\u2019t already seeped into our thinking. So when white women get deified on the page subconsciously, it doesn\u2019t surprise me, but it\u2019s something I try to be aware of.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

A friend of mine read \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d and wondered if the girl at the end, with Rye, was Madie, which hadn\u2019t crossed my mind, but now I can\u2019t stop thinking about it. You know, since Dub is joking\u00a0about Madie sleeping around while G.\u2019s away at school and egging Rye on to say how many white women he\u2019s been with \u2026<\/p>\n

HOLMES<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a dark-ass<\/em> twist. It was supposed to be ambiguous, for sure. But it never crossed my mind that that<\/em> would be the situation. What Dub says is definitely supposed to have some validity, to make G. sweat, but \u2026 damn, that\u2019s a dark read.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Caitlin Youngquist is an associate editor at\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  J. M. Holmes\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d appears in our Summer issue (no. 221); it\u2019s Holmes\u2019s first published story. Next year, it will be included in the collection\u00a0How Are You Going to Save Yourself.\u00a0Like the other stories in the collection, \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with You? What\u2019s Wrong with Me?\u201d follows a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18642],"tags":[10665,30270,30269,12887,30275,30274,17072,26603,30273,15601,1607,29157,881,30271,30267,30277,17303,179,30276,30272,5243,30268],"class_list":["post-114429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inside-the-issue","tag-amherst-college","tag-amity-gaige","tag-are-you-going-to-save-yourself","tag-beyonce","tag-catch-me-if-you-can","tag-chameleon-street","tag-fetishes","tag-frank-ocean","tag-going-to-meet-the-man","tag-intimacy","tag-iowas-writers-workshop","tag-j-m-holmes","tag-james-baldwin","tag-judith-frank","tag-kendrick-lamar","tag-queen-b","tag-race","tag-sex","tag-shadeism","tag-stranger-in-the-village","tag-walter-mosley","tag-whats-wrong-with-me-whats-wrong-with-you"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat\u2019s Wrong with Us: An Interview with J. 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