{"id":90096,"date":"2015-09-29T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=90096"},"modified":"2015-09-29T11:16:27","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T15:16:27","slug":"a-polar-wind-robert-kloss-and-matt-kish-in-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/29\/a-polar-wind-robert-kloss-and-matt-kish-in-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"A Polar Wind: Robert Kloss and Matt Kish in Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A detail from Matt Kish\u2019s illustration for the cover of The Revelator<\/em>, by Robert Kloss.<\/p><\/div>\n

On the relatively short list of authors and artists who have collaborated on multiple books, there are few who so perfectly mirror one another\u2019s sensibilities that it becomes difficult to imagine art and word as separate entities. I\u2019d place Aleksei Kruchenykh and Olga Rozanova, A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard, Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake in that select group. And now I\u2019d add author Robert Kloss and artist Matt Kish. The pair have, to date, worked together on two novels (<\/em>Alligators of Abraham<\/a> and <\/em>The Revelator<\/a>), a hybrid novel written with Amber Sparks (<\/em>The Desert Places<\/a>), and an ongoing project they call the \u201cBestiary.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The two have published work independently\u2014Kish, notably, has illustrated every page of <\/em>Moby-Dick<\/a> and <\/em>Heart of Darkness<\/a>\u2014but their joint efforts are of a different order, primarily because, being of like minds, one\u2019s work influences the other\u2019s in the course of making. <\/em>The Revelator, which was just published this month, is a psychologically brutal tale about an itinerant zealot in nineteenth-century America. In the opening paragraphs, a group of forlorn sailors, \u201ctheir faces blistered and their minds bleached and weary,\u201d espies a mountain: \u201csome named it the \u2018Finger of the Evil One,\u2019 and some called it a tower of soot, dreamed it an ancient citadel misshapen by flame, the horror of all trapped within.\u201d Kish\u2019s illustrations, sprinkled throughout, are correspondingly prophetic, alien, and apocalyptic.\u00a0 \u00a0
<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Kloss recently moved from Boston to Boulder, Colorado; Kish lives in Ohio. The two have never met. Earlier this month, they conducted a conversation via online chat about the nature of collaboration and working in the shadow of Melville.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Nicole Rudick<\/em><\/p>\n

Kish:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been thinking about this conversation for some time, alternately veering between excitement and intimidation. Aside from our numerous e-mails, this will probably be the most in-depth communication we\u2019ve shared, at least on a sustained level.<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> Let\u2019s start with Melville then, since I don\u2019t think we would be having this conversation without his work. <\/p>\n

Kish:<\/strong> That\u2019s an intriguing way of looking at this relationship. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever viewed it through that lens before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> I think about it that way constantly. Melville\u2019s shadow is always there. Have you read Moby-Dick<\/em> since you finished your illustrations?<\/p>\n

Kish:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been working around the edges of the book. There were a number of things I was not able to address as an artist that have been nagging at me like a broken tooth. My current project, illuminating the eighty Extracts from the novel\u2019s front matter, is a big part of that. And I\u2019m revisiting the Cetology chapter as well, including the \u201cuncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous\u201d whales Melville appends to the end, since that appeals to the mythic in me. As for rereading the great book\u2014what will be my tenth trip through\u2014I still need some distance.<\/p>\n

I do find myself drawn to his lesser-known work. Or, at least, the work that is less well-known to me. I\u2019ve got something in mind for Benito Cereno<\/em>, and I\u2019d love to work my way through Bartleby<\/em> with ink and brush. His poetry is a great unknown to me. Have you read his verse?<\/p>\n

\""Aye,<\/a>

From Matt Kish\u2019s Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> I read through everything of his last year. I\u2019d read some of the poems before\u2014a chunk of them in Penguin\u2019s Selected Poems<\/em>\u2014but I tracked down everything and worked my way through them. It was an intense period for me. Clarel<\/em> is one of the most difficult books I\u2019ve ever read. I think you\u2019d love the sea poems\u2014\u201cMaldive Shark,\u201d if you haven\u2019t read it yet, is a strong place to start.<\/p>\n

Kish:<\/strong> I was recently on a panel with Dr. Elizabeth Renker of Ohio State University, who is a Melville scholar and wrote the introduction to the Signet Classics paperback edition I used as the map for my illustrations. She considers his poetry the last, great unexplored territory in his body of work and believes that his centennial, in 2019, will usher in a vigorous exploration of the poems from scholars, artists, and other creatives. It will be interesting to see if that occurs. I\u2019ve heard a bit about Clarel<\/em>, but the size alone is daunting. I\u2019m quite impressed you were able to master it. Or, at the very least, grapple with it.<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> Grapple<\/em> is the word. Maybe struggle<\/em> is better.<\/p>\n

Kish:<\/strong> Melville, to me, seems, especially in Moby-Dick<\/em>, to be a profoundly humanist writer. Has that influenced your work? I am a great admirer of your writing, but it has always struck me as savage, which is partly why I find it horrifically magnetic. Reading your books requires a great deal of courage, and if a reader does not feel that way, they\u2019re not reading it properly.<\/p>\n

Kloss: <\/strong>I see Moby-Dick<\/em> as being a novel about humans colliding with and trying to master forces greater than themselves\u2014the mystery of the ocean, the brute horror of the whale\u2014and I may respond to those mysterious forces more than to the human element, but I do think my novels are mostly about people trying to understand<\/em> the mysterious and brute forces they are subject to. And while there\u2019s a warmth and exuberance to Moby-Dick<\/em>\u2019s early pages in particular that I\u2019d love to capture, I\u2019m drawn to it as a savage book. There\u2019s that quote of Melville\u2019s that I think is an ideal description\u2014\u201cIt is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships\u2019 cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.\u201d Yes, it\u2019s a deadly book, and I appreciate that you read my work that way. I think a work of literature should require a little courage to confront it. A polar wind should blow through it.<\/p>\n

Now that you\u2019ve spent some time with so many Melville scholars and fanatics, I wonder if you have a sense of why Moby-Dick<\/em> and Melville are so popular, or at least why the novel inspires such devotion.<\/p>\n

\"Illustrations<\/a>

Illustrations by Matt Kish for Heart of Darkness<\/em>, by Joseph Conrad.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kish:<\/strong> I\u2019ve occasionally used the word magical<\/em>, which is rather silly perhaps and a bit too light, but Moby-Dick<\/em> seems to show me something new and something familiar on every reading. There is an almost-impossible-to-believe richness and complexity to the book, and our own slightly differing takes on it are a good indicator of that. The scholar comment is also an interesting one. I\u2019ve now rubbed shoulders with more Melville scholars, and literary academics in general, than I ever imagined possible. Those experiences have run the gamut from deeply enriching to absolutely infuriating. With the best of them, at least the ones I trust, I think they, like me, appreciate the richness of the book. Reading Moby-Dick<\/em> even once is an education in what it means to be alive. Even now, more than 160 years later, that calls to readers. The book gives back what is put into it by the reader in equal measure.<\/p>\n

Which is also a reason illustrating it, and illustrating Conrad and illustrating your work and Amber Sparks\u2019s work as well, has been a terrifying endeavor every step of the way. Honestly, it was a bit easier with Melville and Conrad and Calvino. They\u2019re dead. In a sense, I can do what I want with the writing. But you and Amber are alive. I\u2019ve been impressed with the way in which you seem to have little problem relinquishing some control over your words to an artist.\u00a0In recently rereading the final revision of The Revelator<\/em>, I was struck by how much had changed from the first version I read and how those revisions were subtle but significant. As the architect of story, do you have any misgivings about seeing your work interpreted visually by someone who was not a part of the bloody and brutal business of its creation?<\/p>\n

K<\/strong>loss:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s necessary to relinquish control. The text is the text and the story is the story, and I do obsess over every word, but I would rather look at your illustrations than at my text. I\u2019m not even sure how to put this into words, but there\u2019s something thrilling and terrifying about your illustrations of my novel. I\u2019ll say this\u2014when J. A. Tyler [publisher of Mud Luscious Press] mentioned he\u2019d contacted you to illustrate the cover for The Alligators of Abraham<\/em>, I was thrilled. I had admired your Melville blog from afar, so I couldn\u2019t wait to see what you\u2019d do with the text. I don\u2019t want to say that I thought you\u2019d improve on my words, but I think I had a sense that you could take what I had in my head and realize it in a way that I simply cannot\u2014partly because we work with different languages and partly because your imagination goes places mine doesn\u2019t and partly because a novel has restrictions that an illustration does not.<\/p>\n

But for the last two books, Desert Places<\/em> and Revelator<\/em>, I was concerned that you wouldn\u2019t approve or wouldn\u2019t find the material inspiring. Revelator<\/em> in particular, since it is more realistic than Alligators<\/em> and Desert Places<\/em>. And with our \u201cBestiary\u201d project as well\u2014Did I go far enough? Am I close enough to meeting Matt\u2019s vision? It pushes me, more than anything.<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/a>

Matt Kish\u2019s cover and an interior illustration for Alligators of Abraham<\/em>, by Robert Kloss.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kish:<\/strong> I have to admit that of our three and a half collaborations\u2014I count the \u201cBestiary\u201d as a half, since we are only halfway through\u2014The Revelator<\/em> was by far the most challenging, intimidating, and terrifying. And that was largely due to the more realistic nature of the book. Yet that connection with reality, that hard and specific connection with real individuals and real beliefs, was the rocket fuel I needed to push me into the spaces I needed to inhabit in order to create the illustrations. My art is, in so many ways, how I \u201cread\u201d and make sense of your work. I see what I do as a kind of translation of Kloss into Kish. I tend to read your work, and, really, all authors I respect, very jealously and selfishly. I rarely look into what others think or have written about them. I read for myself and myself alone, and these images are the reflection of what I read. Your writing pushes me as hard and as far as my art seems to push you\u2014which is the very essence of the best kind of creative collaboration.<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> I was curious if you saw your illustrations as an interpretation of my writing or if you use my work as inspiration\u2014or is it something else? Because, to me, your covers and interior illustrations are as much a fabric of the books as the words are. I wouldn\u2019t accept a version of The Alligators of Abraham<\/em> without your work, for instance. And that goes for The Revelator<\/em> now, too. I don\u2019t know if the reader receives my text through your illustrations or your illustrations through my text or if there\u2019s something else going on there.<\/p>\n

Speaking of our relationship, when people think of Hunter S. Thompson they often also think of Ralph Steadman\u2019s art. It\u2019s very exciting to think that people will think of your illustrations before my words.<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/a>

Illustrations by Matt Kish for The Desert Places<\/em>, by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kish:<\/strong>\u00a0That cuts to the central dilemma of illustration. Being an illustrator is essentially a process of making choices. Are you choosing to depict the text or to interpret the text? Are you trying to elevate the text or do you want to transform the text? As an illustrator, do you have that right? If so, who determines that? There are choices to be made, too, about how the illustrations relate to and communicate with the text. What details must be shown, which details can be left out? With your work, I\u2019ve seen my role as creating a parallel visual narrative that shows the writing but in ways that make the ideas real.<\/p>\n

When I was asked to do the cover of The Alligators of Abraham<\/em>, I printed the entire manuscript out and put it in a huge binder so that I could read it in the car during commutes and at work on breaks. And from the first page, I was overwhelmed by the urge to draw what I was reading. That experience has repeated itself with The Desert Places<\/em> and now The Revelator<\/em>. There is something about your writing, your language, your ideas that resonates very deeply with me. That doesn\u2019t make the process of illustrating any easier, but it does make it more necessary.<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> I\u2019ve mentioned this to you before, but creatively I started out as an \u201cillustrator.\u201d Before I could write, I drew\u2014little picture books and little comic books. I had my mother fill in the speech balloons. And even after I could write\u2014and once I could write, that\u2019s really all I did with my time, other than read comic books\u2014I always illustrated my stories, until I reached a point when I knew my illustrations were not sophisticated enough. I didn\u2019t have the ability to create the images I saw, so I stopped. But even now I would say that I write visually, and I would say that I\u2019m more drawn to films than I am to novels. So the foundation of my writing is the image\u2014the attempt to create image out of word and rhythm.<\/p>\n

\"Illustrations<\/a>

Illustrations by Matt Kish for The Revelator<\/em>, by Robert Kloss.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kish:<\/strong> I am absolutely certain that the visual nature of your writing is a huge part of why I respond so strongly to it. And why I find my way into it, and out of it, through images.<\/p>\n

How has your new home in Colorado affected your writing? You recently posted something about \u201cdroning blue skies,\u201d which I thought was simply perfect.<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> The other day, my wife and I and some friends hiked up a mountain. This was a completely new experience for me. Our friend pointed out another mountain nearby and said that it wasn\u2019t a very nice hike because it\u2019s been scorched and charred by forest fires\u2014and I can\u2019t wait to check that out. And I can\u2019t wait to go to the desert\u2014I\u2019ve never been to a desert before. I have to assume that those experiences will shape my perspective in a way. I know Cormac McCarthy\u2019s writing changed after he moved West. But I\u2019m drawn now to write more about the East, in particular Boston and New England and the ocean. But before I moved out here from Boston, I wrote frequently about the West. There was a freedom to writing about it because I could rely more on imagination. And now that I\u2019ve been on a mountain and I\u2019m starting to do these things, I wonder if writing about the West will become too close for me to build on imaginatively.<\/p>\n

Kish:<\/strong> That\u2019s another fascinating parallel between you and me. When I was a child, we visited my grandparents in Florida frequently, so I have seen the ocean many times. But by 2009, when I began the Moby-Dick<\/em> illustrations, it had been more than twenty years since I had seen the ocean in anything other than films, photos, or my mind. And I didn\u2019t see anything larger than an Ohio pond or river for the entire 542 days that I worked on Moby-Dick<\/em>. But that sense of being disconnected from the sea made it more mythic and freed me to illustrate Moby-Dick<\/em> in ways that proximity to the sea or to New England would not have.<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> Have you ever been to Melville\u2019s home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts? I found standing in his writing room very moving, particularly the view of Mount Greylock he insisted on having from his writing desk. At the time, I didn\u2019t really understand how staring at the mountain would help him write about a whale, but I understand it more now.<\/p>\n

\"...the<\/a>

From Matt Kish\u2019s Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kish:<\/strong> I\u2019ve had, unfortunately, almost no direct connection with Melville beyond his books. But I think that worked for me in the same way that, for you, writing about the West while living in the East did. There is a very solid and defined Melville that exists in my mind, and I am sure there is enough of the real Melville, the facts and stories that are known and documented, in my own Melville to make him close to the real thing. But the rest of the details have been filled in by my imagination and are based on my own life. In a strange way, my Melville is probably a synthesis of him and me, which probably seems idolatrous to some but may also seem perfectly iconoclastic to others. While working on the Moby-Dick<\/em> illustrations, my studio was a closet that measured about four feet by seven feet. Pinned to the wall in front of the drawing table was a xeroxed photo of Melville, and I used to stare at it incessantly while working on the art. That black-and-white image became my Mount Greylock in a sense. I am sure there is an imaginary Matt Kloss in my mind as well. I have no photo pinned up anywhere, but we have had many conversations and I\u2019d bet there is much of me in my conception of you as there is you. It will be interesting to see how this evolves and ultimately resolves as our collaborations continue.<\/p>\n

Kloss:<\/strong> I agree. And I do want to meet, but I\u2019m also reluctant, more or less for the reasons you mention. But I think it\u2019s probably certain that we will meet at some point in the future, and I\u2019m looking forward to that time.<\/p>\n

Kish:<\/strong> Same here. Now back to work for me, and presumably you. Melville beckons.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the relatively short list of authors and artists who have collaborated on multiple books, there are few who so perfectly mirror one another\u2019s sensibilities that it becomes difficult to imagine art and word as separate entities. I\u2019d place Aleksei Kruchenykh and Olga Rozanova, A. A. Milne and E. H. 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