I’m thrilled to share the seventh interview of the Bizarro Books as Resistance series, this one with Rick Claypool. When I thought of this series, Rick was one of the first people I knew I wanted to have participate in it. And I’m so glad he agreed. Rick is a fantastic writer and activist, and I hope you find his words, both here and in his numerous books and stories, inspiring.
Andrew: Hey Rick! First, would you please tell me a little about your background and how that has influenced your own writing?
Rick Claypool: Hey Andrew! Thanks for inviting me to talk about this with you. Big question. I grew up in a steelworker family in little factory towns around Pittsburgh. I was always drawn to doing creative things. Drawing demented comics, playing guitar, writing bad goth poetry. Writing is what stuck.
The work of fiction most responsible for awakening my interest in writing was probably The Machine Stops by EM Forster. I was a teenager at the time. I wasn’t reading much besides the basics, like Tolkien and Anne Rice and stuff.
The Machine Stops completely blew my mind. It’s such a powerful and succinct work of speculative fiction from like, 1910. It imagines humanity in the far future so enfeebled by dependence on technology that we essentially lose our humanity. And so, we die. It’s brutal, and it makes a political point with its devastating ending, which to me seemed so much more real than any story that takes pains to tie things up nicely with a satisfying conclusion.
From there, I also got into writers like Poppy Z. Brite, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Donald Barthelme, and so on. I was in a weirdo, Dada-inspired grindcore band in college, and my bandmates and I were constantly trying to find the most far-out movies we could find to watch while we were hanging out – John Waters stuff, and Troma, and Jan Švankmajer shorts, and so on. So the description of bizarro fiction as “literature’s equivalent to the cult section at the video store” when I first stumbled on it was immediately exciting to me.
A: Oh fuck, wish I could’ve heard your band back in the day! And I’ve never read The Machine Stops, but it sounds so relevant. But yeah, so now that I better understand where you are coming from, can you tell me what political resistance means to you?
RC: In grad school, I became obsessed with French theorists who were interested in how political resistance manifests in everyday life – workers stealing back their time on the shop floor, refusing to let bosses dictate how they think, that sort of thing. Michel de Certeau. Henri Lefebvre. For my research, I also got very into fieldwork, essentially interviewing people to collect their stories.
I did my big research project on stories people tell about their cars breaking down. The idea was to search, in this disruption of people’s everyday lives, for hints in their stories of yearning for something radically different, a better world, freedom unconstrained by the forces of capitalism.
Seeing that latent spark of resistance in people who were just living their lives, who were not particularly politically engaged, nurtured my belief in the possibilities – and limitations – of mass political movements.
A: That’s a fascinating thesis angle, and I love how small moments and insights of resistance like that have influenced your work. Do you see your own writing as a form of political resistance, or do you view your work as an author and your work as an activist as separate endeavors?
RC: They are separate, but complementary. I’m very much in the Emma Goldman camp – “if I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.” Except instead of dancing, it’s, “if I can’t watch bad movies and read weird books, it’s not my revolution.” Escapism should not be a dirty word. Everyone needs enjoyment in their lives, to recharge, to take a break.
I believe revolutionary culture is a necessary, but not sufficient, precondition for political resistance. And for me, I know my generally anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist mindset was just as much a result of exposure through culture to narratives of resistance as it was to my first-hand experience with family members striking to improve working conditions, struggling with chronic illnesses, and enduring devastating workplace closures.
I guess I see myself, writing on the small press scale, as engaging in political resistance simply by making art, and by making weird art that reflects my working-class experience with careful attention to the ideological implications of the stories I write. Primarily, I think the writing is about self-expression. It helps keep me semi-sane, protects me from burning out. But of course, when anyone says they read and enjoyed something I wrote, inwardly I’m like, “Ok, wow, now this person is my comrade for life.”
A: Oh, absolutely for life. And yeah, expressing creativity, in any form, is such an effective way to help mitigate resistance burnout. How important is it to you to incorporate your politics into your writing, and how do you balance the story as its own standalone creature with the story as a tool of resistance?
RC: The most important thing, for me, is to take the reader on an emotional ride. It’s true that I try to do so in a way that’s politically sensitive – but subtlety is important. Nothing ruins a story like overt preachiness or didacticism. But, that said, there’s a deep-down anti-corporate, anti-capitalist rage fueling a lot of what I do – and which I think a lot of people can relate to – so that shows up in my writing in all kinds of ways.
Sometimes, it is enough for a story to express what it feels like to live in the imperial core under late capitalism, which is what some of my more recent stories, like Update and Fist Fight, attempt to do.
But like in my novella The Mold Farmer, a lot of what I put into that is my rage against worker exploitation under capitalism – but like, it’s also basically just about a dad with the shittiest job in the post-apocalypse dealing with a horrible boss who is controlled by tentacled beings from beyond.
In my first novel, Leech Girl Lives, you have a dystopian situation where the people of the future are actively exploiting the people of the past.
And in my newest novel, Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War, one of the main characters is a person-sized slime mold who also happens to be a socialist collective – the Socialist Labor Organization of Proletarian Plasmoids, or SLOPP, who is constantly internally engaging in democratic deliberations about who they should or should not eat.
All that said, I’m not sure if I ever really think of any story of mine as a “tool of resistance” – though, once a story is finished, I suppose it can make sense to frame it that way when building solidarity and community with fellow writers and leftists.
A: I love how resistance shows up throughout your work, and how natural it comes to exist in the strange and magically moldy worlds you create. Since its inception, the bizarro genre has always been viewed as underground, outsider literature. How do you think its counterculture nature (where just about anything goes) can inspire the genre into being an outlet where books of resistance flourish?
RC: What I love about the bizarro genre is the celebration of unbridled creativity, a certain “fuck you” attitude toward limitations, and a general orientation to world that does not insist on taking things seriously.
Bizarro fiction offers an antidote to the seriousness. Yes, we’re all very sad and also full of rage about the rise of fascist billionaires, their increasingly brutal systems of oppression and applications of state violence, and the tragedy and trauma they are inflicting on immigrants, protestors, transgender people, and anyone who speaks out about Isarel’s scorched earth genocide in Palestine. But also, the people in power who are carrying out this evil stuff are deeply stupid and ridiculous.
I think bizarro, counter-intuitively, offers something that helps people make sense of these oppressive forces, and also has the power to knock them down several notches in a way that helps people understand that our enemies are not super-powered. I mean, they have the power now and a shit-ton of cash, but they are defeatable.
A: That they are. Thank you so much for your time, Rick, and your insights. With those in mind, which bizarro books are your favorite examples of resistance literature?
RC: I don’t pay a ton of attention to what self-identifies as bizarro, so this is just like, my opinion.
And none of these are like, works of political agitprop or anything – but they are books with stories with powerful political implications.
Anyway, some favorites:
Ghosts of East Baltimore and Ghosts of West Baltimore by David Simmons
Inside-Out by Lor Gislason
Soft Fruit in the Sun by Oliver Zarandi
Lars Breaxface: Werewolf in Space by Brandon Getz
Bonding by Maggie Siebert
And your All Hail the House Gods, I’ve gotta say, is an absolute banger as well.
A: Hell yeah! Excellent list. Why Ghosts of East Baltimore and Ghosts of West Baltimore? How do they act as books of resistance?
RC: I just love what David Simmons is up to. The books follow this guy named Worm who is released from prison and is kinda trying to just meet the bare minimum expectations of his parole, and he gets sidetracked into this adventure involving weird cults, demonic cops, extradimensional abominations, and so on. They are hilarious – and they depict the deeply fucked-up-ness of this system of oppression in a way that, for me, is way more powerful than like, a super serious, ultrarealistic depiction of post-prison life. Simmons’ books also have that special something I’m looking for when I pick up a book that can be characterized as “bizarro,” in that it truly feels like anything could happen.
A: Thank you again, Rick. I’ve been excited to hear what you would have to say since I came up with this series, and I so appreciate you sharing your perspective.
Now, if you’re still here, go pick up one of Rick’s books! And, as always, check back in next week for another interview, and if there’s a particular author you’d like to see featured in the future, comment their name below for consideration.
If Andrew J. Stone were a dinosaur, he’d be an Apatosaurus. If he were a superhero, he’d be Marx. If he were to have a cat, her name would be Alice, and he’d be living in a residence that allowed pets. He is the author of the novellas The Mortuary Monster (2016), All Hail the House Gods (2018), and The Ultimate Dinosaur Dance-Off (2020). His short stories have appeared in Hobart, New Dead Families, and DOGZPLOT, among other places. His work has been translated into Spanish by the Colombian publisher Ediciones Vestigio. He lives in Los Angeles, surrounded by beauty and dread.
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