The Real United States: A Conversation with Matthew Baker

Named one of Variety’s “10 Storytellers To Watch,” Matthew Baker is the author of the story collections Why Visit America and Hybrid Creatures and the children’s novel Key Of X, originally published as If You Find This. His stories have appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, One Story, Electric Literature, and Conjunctions, and in anthologies including Best Of The Net and Best Small Fictions. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center For The Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, Prairie Center Of The Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, he has an MFA from Vanderbilt University, where he was the founding editor of Nashville Review. His other projects include Early Work. Born in the Great Lakes region of the United States, he currently lives in New York City.

I’ve been a fan of Matthew Baker’s work since 2013, when, as an editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, I was introduced to his story, “Goods.” A year later, the journal published another of his stories, “Html,” a story partially written in code.

When I read “Goods” for the first time, I was a first-year MFA student, writing a series of unsuccessful stories and struggling to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be or could be. Baker’s stories were playful and idea-driven, but simultaneously had heart, had the ability to move me. He provided me with an example of the sort of writing I might want to do.

I jumped at the opportunity to read Baker’s new collection, Why Visit America, forthcoming in August, and I was not disappointed. The stories he tells are funny and heartbreaking and familiar and surprising all at once. In this interview, Baker discusses writing high-concept narratives, how speculative fiction can allow us to grapple with controversial topics more genuinely, and the films that inspire his writing.

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Dana Diehl: Many of your stories seem to be driven by “What if…?” questions. What if men became obsolete? What if children were raised by the government instead of parents? What if people could become data? I love how deliciously high-concept this collection is. Did all of your stories begin with a concept? Did any of them begin instead with a character or image, for example?

Matthew Baker: I’m embarrassed to say that every story began with a concept. The book itself began with a concept: thirteen parallel-universe stories (one for every stripe in the flag) that would span all fifty states of the country, and that together would create a composite portrait of the real United States: a Through The Looking-Glass reflection of who we are as a country.

I once submitted a story to a prestigious literary magazine, and the editor rejected the story with a note that said: “too high-concept for us.” For a writer like me, what that note actually said was: “don’t submit to us again.” I can only do high-concept.

DD: What was it like to write a short story collection with an overarching concept already in mind? Did it make it easier? Did it ever feel restrictive?

MB: It was a tremendous challenge. I loved that about it though. That was what made the writing fun.

DD: Despite these stories being very high-concept, they are also movingly character-driven, grounded in an individual human experience. Do you think character is key to writing narratives that move beyond a concept and become stories? What advice do you have for writers working in a similar genre, who struggle to move beyond their initial concept and develop character or find their inciting incident?

MB: I think about storytelling less in terms of “plot” and “character” and more in terms of “idea” and “emotion.” Strategically, I don’t approach a story thinking “how can I develop a plot?” or “how should I develop this character?” I approach a story thinking, “Given this premise, what combination of events and desires will maximize its emotional impact?” In my experience the nature of the work becomes very clear very quickly when plot and character are viewed as ingredients in an emotional reaction in the reader, rather than simply as necessary elements of a story.

DD: Was there a story in this collection that especially challenged you? What do you do when the right ingredients are difficult to find?

MB: “To Be Read Backward” was the greatest challenge conceptually—trying to imagine the physics of that universe accurately, and to be consistent in how the narrator uses language, especially verbs, to describe the events of the story. But the story that was the greatest challenge narratively was “Testimony Of Your Majesty.” I wrote about half of the story and then got stuck. I knew the emotional reactions that I wanted to synthesize, and I had assembled some reliable ingredients, but I still couldn’t quite figure out how to achieve what I wanted. I set the story aside for a couple of years, came back to the story, struggled with the story, set the story aside again, came back to the story, struggled with the story, set the story aside again. That was the process. Years of failed experiments. That story was a work in progress from 2013 through 2018.

DD: Were there any concepts or ideas or stories or experiments written for this collection that ultimately didn’t make it in?

MB: There were a number of concepts that didn’t work on the page. And there’s one story that I actually completed and even published—a story called “The Eulogist” that appeared in New England Review in 2012—that I was still planning on including in the collection as late as 2018. Ultimately, though, I decided the story was just too rudimentary and clumsy. Also, I wanted the collection to have a neutral emotional pH—there could be stories that were depressing and there could be stories that were uplifting, but I didn’t want the collection overall to register as depressing or uplifting—and “The Eulogist” would have given the collection an overall unneutral pH. So that story got replaced by “The Sponsor.”

DD: The issues tackled in these stories are painfully familiar. You explore violence against women, parents struggling to accept their transitioning child, and flaws within the justice system, just to name a few. But by placing these issues within parallel universes or dystopian (or utopian) futures, you allow readers to see them with new eyes. Why do you prefer speculative fiction for these stories instead of straight realism?

MB: In any human society, having a constructive conversation about social or political issues can be difficult, and we live in a country so radically polarized that at times it seems to be on the verge of a civil war. If you try to have a conversation with somebody about a topic like climate change or gun control, immediately these walls come up, these psychological barriers as thick as brick. It’s become impossible to talk about anything important. There’s no way to do it—unless you disguise what you want to talk about, cloak the topic in a seemingly harmless form. I turned to speculative fiction in hopes of giving readers a space to genuinely grapple with the ideas behind these issues and to genuinely access the emotions involved.

DD: If you had to live inside one of these futures you’ve imagined, which one would it be? Why?

MB: “A Bad Day In Utopia.” I wouldn’t mind having to live in a menagerie, and I honestly do think the world would be noticeably improved.

DD: How would you spend your time in this hypothetical menagerie?

MB: Probably reading, writing, napping, and trying to convince the guards to play chess with me.

DD: You’ve also written a really wonderful children’s book titled If You Find This. Can you talk about the experience of writing this novel and how it differed from your experience writing short stories for adults? Were the experiences surprisingly similar in any ways?

MB: Well, If You Find This was also high-concept: a children’s novel narrated partly in music dynamics and math notations. And like Why Visit America, If You Find This is a book that’s about place. It’s a Michigan novel, a Great Lakes novel. But If You Find This was also a very personal book for me. It’s not autobiographical, but in that book I was writing about my childhood and about my family and about my friends back home. Why Visit America is different in that I wasn’t writing about my own life in any of the stories in this book. In Why Visit America, what’s personal are the issues.

DD: Who or what are your inspirations outside of the literary world? Are there any filmmakers or artists or musicians who influenced the stories in this collection?

MB: The films Her and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind had a tremendous influence on the book, as models of emotionally rich sci-fi. The anime Sword Art Online, which for me was a master class on sincerity and vulnerability and the virtues of sentimentality. The video games BioShock and BioShock Infinite, which deliver social and political commentary with such supreme grace and skill.

But—I hadn’t thought of this until just now—maybe the biggest influence was an old VHS tape that I discovered at my father’s house when I was a child. Written on the tape in my father’s handwriting were two words: “The Wall.” I distinctly remember watching that tape later that afternoon, alone in the basement, lying on the carpet, gazing up at an old cathode-ray television. It was Pink Floyd — The Wall, the film adaptation of the rock opera by Pink Floyd. Seeing it was a revelation for me. I hadn’t realized until that moment that a music album could be more than a collection of random songs—that together the songs could tell some larger story. From the beginning I’ve thought of Why Visit America as a concept album, and that old VHS tape is what taught me what a concept album is.

DD: Is there a short story collection that you feel like does this especially well?

MB: Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, although that’s composed primarily of nonfiction. And Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, along with Invisible Cities, although that’s technically considered a novel. I especially adore The Periodic Table.

DD: Who should read Why Visit America? Who is your ideal reader?

MB: All true Americans.