INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

10/10/2016509

Conversation with Jessica Wolfe, editor at William Wilson & Co

A: Thanks again for agreeing to speak to me, Jessica. I’m just trying to get a better understanding of the reality of the book’s development, outside of Daniel’s account – the story behind the story, so to speak.

J: As I said before, I’ll help if I can, but this has to be completely off-the-record. I’m talking to you as an individual, not as an employee of William Wilson.

A: I understand…Clearly there was a breakdown in the relationship between Daniel and the company that eventually led to a parting of the ways. Can you tell me any more about this?

J: He missed deadlines, ignored messages, refused to come in for editorial meetings, and spent a lot of company money without explanation. This went on for the best part of a year until the situation was intractable. The end was inevitable.

A: That must have been very frustrating.

J: It was, especially because I really believed in the book. The chapters he did share with us had a huge amount of potential. He was trying to do something very ambitious, but I think there was a lack of understanding elsewhere in the organisation and Daniel reacted quite badly to their interference.

A: What kind of interference?

J: They wanted to change the direction of the book considerably, cutting back on the first-person narrative, the New Journalism, the fictionalised elements, to focus more on the biography. Daniel saw the present-day chapters as a meta-detective novel, but they didn’t understand what place this had within a biography and thought the detective elements were clichéd.

A: What was your opinion, as his editor?

J: I understood what he was doing, and I defended him. I think if you look back at previous examples of Daniel’s writing, especially his fiction, there are several repeating elements – a damaged hero, an antagonist-double, a missing person, an impossible object, a woman in trouble – film noir and neo-noir tropes, which are reordered, merged, subverted, and disguised, in his writing, like puzzle pieces, in the construction of a narrative that not only explores epistemological questions, but actually embodies ontological indeterminacy.

J: I don’t think my director every really understood what Daniel was trying to do – and if he did, he didn’t like it. He said it was a detective story without any detecting and that he found the details of Daniel’s personal life and relationships unnecessary. He wanted all of that cut from the book and considered it a slap in the face. He seemed to think Daniel was laughing at him.

A: In what way?

J: Basically, that Daniel was misusing the company’s money to live out some sort of noir-author fantasy. More than that, I think he was worried about the potential PR fallout of publishing a book which, in his view, seemed to endorse reckless behaviour.

A: Did you agree?

J: No, I didn’t. In some ways, I think it was intended to do the opposite. I never met Daniel, so I can’t comment on his personal life, but from a literary perspective I think it’s clear he was acutely self-aware of the different genres and styles he was engaging with, from postmodern detective fiction and biography, to New Journalism, auto-fiction, and encyclopaedic narratives. Detective fiction is a prime example. My director didn’t understand why there was no detecting, no murder, why the clues that Daniel’s character uncovered appear meaningless and unconnected. This is, of course, exactly the point. In metaphysical detective fiction, the conventions of the genre are subverted to play a game with readers who have come to expect certain rules to be followed. By doing so, the author explores epistemological and ontological questions, regarding interpretation and subjectivity, the nature of reality and the limits of knowledge. Daniel employs every characteristic theme of this specialist genre – the failed detective, the double, the missing person, the world or text as labyrinth, the purloined letter or embedded text, the meaninglessness of clues, the circularity of the narrative, the absence of closure or explanation – in some ways it’s a logical extension of his interest in the classic noir tropes I mentioned earlier, but he has taken it to another level of complexity.

J: Similarly, he writes about other issues with a high level of self-awareness. The hedonism in the book is carried out with an almost tyrannical desperation, and is shown to be miserably hollow, an exhausting obligation that he is compelled to repeat in an unending, Sisyphean loop. It’s an existence haunted by melancholia, like a party that has gone on too long, where everyone has drunk themselves sober. Sex and relationships are another part of this cycle. For me, it was a portrait of damaged people in a damaged world.

A: But your boss didn’t agree? You said he wanted this cut from the book.

J: Yes. They wouldn’t publish the book unless Daniel agreed to rewrite it and, of course, he wouldn’t change a word.

A: And how did Daniel react?

J: How do you think? Badly.

END

Note

509. Note to reader: I conducted this interview in order to find out what happened between Daniel and his original publisher, William Wilson and Co, and also in the hope of acquiring an additional, objective perspective on the manuscript’s development, beyond the account presented in Daniel’s notes – Anonymous.