Herrle Interview Continued
D:. . .Could it be that, as you’ve said, “chaos has order to it”? Reactions?
MATT: I am not into systems, although there are about 250 different kinds of therapies. As a therapist I struggled for years for a way to how-to, a method, which is using something to do something to someone else. I kept evolving and changing, and I never did capture the elusive butterfly. How i struggled! There is a part of you, David, I see, from this question and from our correspondence, that casts a very large net into the sea, like some indonesian fisherman trying to make his day’s wages. I cast smaller nets, for I have discovered in my journey that seeking transcendence is serendipitous; in fact, I hope it is. It might be very sweet that way, as the girl kissing you before you make your gentle moves. Perhaps I have been conditioned by early readings in Existentialism, for it is a very courageous philosophy, in part, a product of W.W. II. What if no one comes for you while a nazi bastard is pulling out your nails? Who do you go to? Who do you call out to? I am essentially alone in this world, and in some interesting way I draw some internal strength from that. I think metaphorically Judaism gave that also to me. Can one imagine millions of people hating your very being? Now we can. And what is one to do?
The character “i” is a denominator, the world is his numerator, and it crashes into his total sum; he is very much the way I might respond to such horrors. In the better ways we think of ourselves, he represents the way I face life. I wish I were as strong as him and perhaps I am. (Our fictional selves are always better than our real selves.) The only way out for “i,” as I see it is for him to fall back implosively upon his own self; he is a questioning man, a doubting man, a secular man conditioned as a Jew, but also free of that. And so he screams about the chaos he feels. He is impaled with a stake through his mouth to the wall. He is my better self, he is the self I choose to be if I were faced with ultimate horrors — I need no god, no system, no belief. I need whatever my DNA has given me, whatever I have learned. I refuse, at least cognizantly so, to be conditioned. I suppose I am only concerned with the awakening of intelligence, as Krishnamurti phrases. it. And my task is to be free of him as well. To be a disciple sucks — just take a gander at Christ’s dozen.
D: You don’t hold back in your sexual scenes and fantasies in your writing. Some readers may consider many passages to be pornographic. Do you believe in such a distinction: “pornography” or “sex scene”? Tell us your thoughts on explicit sexuality in literature and in actuality.
MATT: I did not set out to write pornography or sex scenes. I endeavored to get into the minds of men and women whose only pleasure was in the body — and its parts. In the concentrated world of the concentration camp what pleasures existed? The constant use of the body in porno flics is curious. It is as if no other pleasure in the world existed except getting off. Men are often props, so are dildos, chains, fucking machines. Pornography is a land of portals and descents. I feel, at moments, it is a defense against feeling dead. I am surprised that many in the porno business do not do away with themselves. Perhaps the beating and pulsation of flesh and its liquids keep one sustained.
With thoughts and conjectures such as these, I felt there was an intimate link between the rabid violence in the death camps and sexuality. I explored that. As I think on this now, I feel that pornographic desires create a split between what is real and what is not real. In other words, one atones or expunges the committal of horrors to other human beings on a daily basis by washing away these sins in total and ravishingly lustful sexual acts. At least, in the sex one may feel, an antidote to not feeling, as one whips a prisoner to death. In short, the pornographic passages in book serve a literary purpose, as if brothels did not exist in the camps and ashtrays were not made from skin.
D: What are you up to lately? Any writing projects following your The i Tetralogy novel?
MATT: About 25 years ago I made a writer’s pact with my self. I would only publish short stories in a book if they were accepted and published. And so this small body of work came to be. In the summer of 2007 I will publish about 10-15 stories in a book titled Down to a Sunless Sea. It is a line from Coleridge’s “Kublai Khan.” My son will do the cover; my companion will do the introduction which she informs me will be an exploration of the pain in me and the pain in the stories themselves. Once we write something we never own it. Some stories are traditionally crafted, others are experimental, some are sui generis; one is an attempt by me to get into the mind of my daughter’s disease which, only in part, led to her suicde.
I will give away copies to friends without the pressure of marketing them; i have done my life’s task. One other book is a science fiction fantasy which needs real editing but essentially is the tale of a creature on a desolate planet awakening to intelligence within his grotesque corporeal presence. It is a story really about my becoming aware. After that, I may try my hand at poetry, for it is the most concise of writing.
D: Matt, you’re a balls-to-the-wall, important writer/thinker, and I appreciate having become acqainted with you. I wish you blessings on your path. Have you any closing words for readers/fans?
MATT: If I have any readers out there, struggle with Kazantzakis’ injunction: “Reach what you cannot.”
