BookView Review

Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.

Recently, we interviewed Yarrow Paisley about his writing and his recently released book, Divine in Essence, a collection of darkly imaginative tales that dissect human nature with unflinching precision. (Read the review here.)

What does literary success look like to you?

I will be successful when my words have infiltrated a number of minds with formative effects. I don’t know the exact number, but it will be gained when a consciousness emerges organically from the Culture that reaches back to love me.

How often do you read?

I read EVERY DAY, if possible. Reading is a way of life. If you’re not reading, you’re not a writer.

Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

With all my love, I try to fuck the readers over. The best readers don’t KNOW what they want, they’re waiting for their Truth injection: those are the readers for me. The readers that demand safety, conformity, and fealty from their authors have plenty of other options in the Marketplace. Pass on by.

What authors do you like to read? What book or books have had a strong influence on you or your writing?

Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day) and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita, Pale Fire) are my lifetime pinnacles for linguistic magic. Robert Aickman (Cold Hand in Mine), Michael Cisco (Celebrant), Witold Gombrowicz (Bacacay), and Thomas Ligotti (Teatro Grottesco) were influential at the inception of several of the stories in Divine In Essence.

What’s more important: characters or plot?

Character and Plot compose a Möbius Strip of Sentience. They do not exist independently of each other, but flow together as one inseparable entity. The plot of a story is not a recounting of events; it is a compendium of consciousness. A character experiences plot, and a plot proceeds from character. Whenever one is weighed over the other, a false note rings—the true reader’s attention falters, distracted by the brassy noise.

Are you a feeler or a thinker?

I feel, therefore I think. Thinking is fun, but feeling is truth.

Tell us some more about your book.

Many of these stories were written toward the purpose of publication in journals and anthologies. My previous work had been more in the experimental vein, and I had seen it published in various lit journals, online and in print, but I developed an interest in Horror and the Weird (so hospitable as they are to the dream sensation), along with a desire to publish stories in the journals and anthologies of those genres, which tend to be very classy and well-produced. I’m happy to report I managed to appear in several of those publications over the years, including some gorgeous hardcover anthologies from the UK, which hosts a thriving book culture.

What inspired the premise of your book?

I write to dream. Whenever I compose a story, I keep Beauty on one side, Truth on the other. As long as I’m between the two, I know I’m on the Path. I don’t create the Path—I follow it.

Each of these stories was composed in this manner, for its own sake, not toward this collection in particular…and yet, once the pieces were gathered, Divine In Essence emerged vividly as a totality—not simply an assortment of stories—just as a human body is a totality of organs performing distinctive, necessary tasks aligned to support the function of the whole. For Divine In Essence, that function is to imagine a dream of the world that replaces the world: for the time that you read the words, you live in the dream. The words you imbibe from the page become your own words, and the dreams they describe become your own dreams.

What dreams? Sometimes, a fanciful surrealism emerges, as in the pan-telluric ontological upheavals of “The Great Event” or the fantastic voyage through the id of “Icarus in Bardot.” At other times, a heavy-lidded hypnagogia prevails, as in “I in the Eye,” which relates the observations of a boy imprisoned in his stepmother’s glass eye, or “Your Mother Loves You,” a survivor’s memoir in four dimensions. Occasionally, we float into some pleasant reverie tinged with sorrow, as in the perambulations of the gently damned in “Nancy & Her Man,” or the sweet, meek fortitude of “Mary Alice in the Mirror.”

What makes this book important right now?

Divine In Essence is important because it will seed every mind it touches with new dreams AND new philosophies, Horatio, you ingrate.

How did you decide on this title?

Divine In Essence is a drawn from a phrase that appears in “The Great Event,” the opening story. I thought it was an apropos title for the collection, as it reflects a theme that pervades all the stories: what is the nature of consciousness? Is the world a prison for numinous beings? Is dreaming a genuine means of escape for those prisoners?

What’s next for you?

Next, I’d like to do some more fine writing! I start from scratch every time. “Every angel is terrifying.”

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