No Submission: Christopher Nosnibor interviewed by Stuart Bateman, March 2008
We meet at the Tap and Spile. Christopher Nosnibor likes his real ales and isn’t one for loud or trendy watering holes. Even so, it seems an odd choice of place for a man who is quietly and single-handedly mounting a crusade against literary conformity and who has, in the past twelve months gone from unpublished unknown to underground cultural revolutionary with several printed publication and a number of short stories in e-zines. But insisting on a venue outside the city walls and off the beaten track is emblematic of his ethos more generally: avoid the obvious and the mainstream. It’s an approach that’s clearly evident in his work to date: Bad Houses, the collection of short stories that surfaced at the end of 2006, C.N.N., and, most recently, A Call for Submission, which was available for the month of February only, attack the mundane, the mediocre, and, well, pretty much everything, actually. It’s a strategy he acknowledges may well prove a significant barrier to his achieving ‘success’ as a writer, but he’s fine with this and prefers to operate on his own terms rather than ‘sell out.’ Were here to talk about his writing – a subject he’s on record on-line via his website and his increasingly popular blog as saying he finds difficult to discuss.
CN: I’m happy to write about it, but talking is another matter altogether. And that goes for other subjects too, not just writing. I’d much rather write more and talk less – a lot less. I have a habit of opening my mouth and spouting shit, and not using properly formed sentences, whereas in writing I have time to consider, edit, revise, delete before it’s in the public domain.
SB: Doesn’t everyone do that? Talk shit, I mean?
CN: Yeah, chronically. I love listening in and writing it all down, other people’s conversations. I love that live dialogue. Some people probably think the dialogue in my fiction’s crap and incoherent, badly written or whatever. I’ve had comments from readers, particularly in America, saying ‘no-one would ever day that.’ But the point is that most of it’s real. Just as it happened. People speak badly, people talk over one another, tail off, change direction mid-sentence. I use that. It’s one of my objectives to use credible, real-life dialogue. And if people find it incredible, then that just proves that truth really is stranger than fiction.
SB: Ok, so we’re here to talk about your recently-ended project, A Call For Submission. Where did the idea come from?
CN: The story or the strategy, the project itself?
SB: The story?
CN: Not much to tell. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. The central character’s a fuck-up, riddled with issues that all spring from, as I see it, contemporary culture, which promotes self-obsession. The supporting cast are fuck-ups, riddled... yeah, etc. I see, have known, trendies, wannabies, in with the incrowders. They’re not cool. They’re screwed up, deranged, unpleasant, scramble over their grannies’ corpse and empty the purse on the way to make it in media, PR, whatever. It’s horrible. Submission’ was written as a swipe at all this image-obsessed, stop-at-nothing type, to rip the lid off it and to show that it’s not the upper echelons of society, the ones you see in TV dramas that are the most fucked up and competitive, but those who aspire to this high-living and ‘celebrity’ lifestyle.
SB: I think you just explained it there.
CN: I think I did, didn’t I? Don’t start me on the simultaneous sections toward the end...
SB: Go on...
CN: Get the beers in and I’ll consider it.
Nozzer drives a hard bargain. But he’s not nearly as difficult as he often pretends, and in the production of our collaborative work, C.N.N., he was very accommodating of my ideas. (‘Yeah well I’m not a complete cunt,’ he explains, ‘and if someone comes along with a good idea, I’m not going to reject it out of hand.’) I return with 2 pints of Hibernator – which at 5% lives up to its name after a few – and prompt him with the issue of simultaneity, which is one of his current obsessions, as a number of recent pieces demonstrate.
CN: In this instance I wanted to tell the same story 2 different ways, from 2 different but equally fucked-up and unreliable perspectives. Which is the ‘real’ story, the truth? I don’t even know if I know. I’ve used the twin-column approach for other purposes elsewhere, like in ‘Heading South’ which will be out soon.
SB: Why the 29 days of February and what was the relevance to ‘A Call for Submission’?
CN: None specifically. I was in the shower or taking a pee – I often seem to be inspired when in the bathroom, I’ve no idea why – and I decided to use the Leap Year as a hook, part of the sales pitch. And I wanted to continue exploring the marketing tactics more common to music within a literary context. But instead of a limited edition, numbered, whatever, which is pretty standard in both music and publishing, I thought I’d try a time-sensitive limited edition, which meant that, by using print-on-demand, the numbers sold would be determined by the market. It wouldn’t sell out if I undercalculated, but there was no danger of being saddled with stacks of unsold copies for months and years either. And of course, the number in circulation isn’t publicised, it’s an unknown quantity
SB: And did the strategy work?
CN: To an extent. Units shifted. I’d have perhaps liked more, but then I’m never going to sell thousands and if I’d done it in five years’ time it’s probable I’d sell more. I did putout lots of press releases on line via various channels, and I think if someone had picked up on it, I dunno, contacted me, interviewed me, run a feature, whatever, it could have gone a lot bigger. But that didn’t happen. That’s cool. Maybe in the future it will be reflected on as an exciting moment in literature that everyone missed and those who were there and did get a copy will be able to say ‘I was there.’ I also like the idea that one day a copy might turn up on eBay or whatever there is in ten, fifteen, twenty years time and it going for a fortune. Because in art and music it’s all about future collectibles, and I liked the idea of using a book – pamphlet – as a way of getting onto that subject and engaging in the issues of art as commodity and so forth. It was as much an exercise as anything else. And as for using that story... well, I would have written something new, but when I conceived the idea of doing something in February there was simply not the time to produce something of what I considered an appropriate length – long enough to be meaty, short enough to be punchy and to put out cheaply – and do the design and start planning the promo, and I’m currently sitting on a lot – and I mean a LOT of unpublished work (which, he informs me, runs to three novels plus another 2 or 3 in progress, one completed novella and another 2 in various first-draft stages, a number of short stories and 2 other book-length non-fiction projects) so I thought ‘Submission’ might do the job. It was homeless, sitting around doing nothing on my hard drive, so.... yeah. ‘Submission’ it was.
SB: Do you think you’ll republish it at any point?
CN: No. I have no plans to put out ‘Submission’ again. I may gather the short stories I have scattered about at some point, but I don’t intend to include ‘Submission.’
SB: So what’s next?
CN: Well, one of the novellas is written using dual narrative the whole way through and I need to get it into shape for a submission deadline in May. Whether it’ll be selected for commission is entirely another matter. But whatever happens with that, THE PLAGIARIST will be coming out in the Summer. I’ve a few tweaks left to make and need to sort out the ISBN and stuff, but yeah, I’ll be putting that out.
SB: Sounds like a lot of work. Wouldn’t it be easier to not go the self-publishing route?
CN: It is a lot of work. But while my hit rate with shorts in e-zines is getting better, longer works in paper form no-one’s willing to chance it, to fund it. So now although I still want to go the conventional route and am holding onto some things like Exiled [in Domestic Life], Rusty Bullet Wounds and Destroying the Balance in the hope of this, but for now the self-publishing aspect’s become an integral part of my strategy. I’m independent, have control and if it doesn’t sell it’s due to my own limitations as a marketing man. And what else... oh yes, more beer. Isn’t it your round?
