IN THE MAGAZINE

POPPY Z. BRITE IS THE KING/QUEEN OF NEW ORLEANS - PART 2

The Vice Interview

INTERVIEWED BY AMY KELLNER, PHOTOGRAPHED BY TONY CAMPBELL

Is there a type of writing that really annoys you?

I don’t much care for those cutesy culinary mysteries that include recipes and have punny titles like Crime Brûlée. I suppose they annoy me because, thanks to an inept marketing job by a publisher I’m no longer working with, that’s what a lot of people expect my recent work to be. I enjoy reading mysteries—mostly the thriller/police procedural type—but I have no interest in writing them, and I don’t care anything about the lives of caterers, lady restaurant critics looking for romance, or the other protagonists who seem to people this genre. I’m interested in writing about the lives of working cooks in New Orleans. Not mysteries, not “food porn,” just the truth about the lives of people who work hard and care about what they’re doing.

Do you have a favorite out of all the books you’ve written?

I think a writer tends to be in trouble if his most recent book isn’t his favorite. For me, that would be D*U*C*K, a novella I wrote for Subterranean Press not long after we returned to New Orleans after living in post-K exile for eight weeks. It’s set in the same restaurant world as my recent novels Liquor, Prime, and Soul Kitchen, but it’s slightly… askew. I don’t like to explain this too much. I touch on it in the foreword, but of course the reader must make what he will of it. For me, it is dear to my heart, and so far no New Orleanian reader I know of has read it without crying at the end. A few non-New Orleanians have failed to get it, but while I usually hope my work will be understandable to everybody, D*U*C*K isn’t really for them. If they like it, I’m thrilled, but it’s for New Orleans.

Well, I read it and even though I’ve only been to New Orleans once about ten years ago, I did get a bit choked up on the last page. But I was wondering, what were you like in high school?

Not very happy. I don’t think most people are during those years, even the ones who pretend to be. But I managed to sell my first story to a professional market before I graduated, so that’s something.

Do you think that unhappiness led to your interest in horror and vampires and goth culture? Like as a means of escape?

To be honest, I never really had a special interest in vampires. They sort of slimed their way into my first novel because they were an essential icon of goth culture at the time—they’re kind of passé now, I think—and after Lost Souls was a success, people expected me to be much more interested in them than I was. But as for horror and goth culture, I’d been reading horror fiction since I was a young kid, and I think I got interested in goth due to some music my first boyfriend introduced me to. I wouldn’t say either one was a particular escape from the rigors of school. The closest thing I ever had to that was an underground newspaper I published in my sophomore and junior years, The Glass Goblin, which helped me to meet a bunch of the other “weird” kids I hadn’t known before.

Have you ever had a vision or seen a ghost?

No. I am totally insensitive.

What was the scariest moment of your life?

I guess when I had to take my husband to the emergency room one night for chest pains. It turned out to be muscle strain from reaching up to a shelf above his station to get dishes (he’s a chef), but for the hour or two that I thought he might be having a heart attack, I was frozen to the bone. The only thing that rivals that would be the days following the storm and the failure of the federal levees, when we realized how long it might be before we could get back into New Orleans, but as I say, a lot of that time is mercifully hazy.

You mentioned that since the hurricane you’ve been getting panic attacks. How do you deal with them?

My husband helps me a lot. He’s the stability in my life. And I take Xanax.

Thank God for Xanax! I read on your website that you’re now “tired of all this pale-faced goth stuff.” Considering you are the literary goth queen to many, how and when did that happen?

I don’t consider myself to have ever been “the literary goth queen” to anybody. Writers aren’t responsible for the idiotic ways in which publishers choose to market them. When I was interested in goth culture, I wrote about it. When I became interested in other things, I wrote about them. I don’t have anything against goth—after all, it’s been good to me—but I’m no longer familiar with the bands, the fashions, the parties, etc., and I’m about as well equipped to write about them as Tim Conway would be.

Do people ever stalk you?

Yeah, I get the occasional weirdo. I’ve got resources to deal with it—not money, but friends who can find things out and take action if necessary. My rule of thumb is that the stalkers who “love” you tend to be a lot scarier than the ones who “hate” you.

I love your essay, “Enough Rope,” about having gender dysphoria and feeling like a gay man. You wrote that about ten years ago. Do you still feel the same way?

Minor things about my life have changed since then, as well as a few major ones—I now find it extremely easy to be monogamous, and what a relief that is—but as a statement of my overall experience with gender dysphoria, I think “Enough Rope” still stands up pretty well.

For those who haven’t read it, could you summarize your experience with feeling out of touch with your gender and the way you’ve dealt with people who don’t get it?

I identify as male, and as gay. Some people would call me a non-operative transsexual, since I’ve never made any attempt to transition or even to appear male. I’m pretty comfortable with who I am now—having a partner who understands all this helps tremendously. I don’t really make much attempt to deal with people who don’t get it. If their ideas about gender and sexuality are too narrow to include me, I hardly need their approval.

Right on. And finally: If you had to pick one outfit to wear when you’re 60 years old, what would it be?

A custom-fitted tuxedo.


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Comments

Anonymous, on Aug 24, 2009 wrote: i miss those fag-fuck days too! but alas, she’s grown up, taking care of cats and writing stuff about chefs.

Anonymous, on Nov 7, 2008 wrote: I quite like Poppy’s books, having read everything thus far, but I long for the ol’ gore n’ fag-fuck days, even though she doesn’t care about that "genre" anymore.

Anonymous, on Oct 20, 2008 wrote: stuuuuuuuuupid