Mark Sarvas is the author of “Harry, Revised” and “Memento Park,” and his latest novel is “@UGMAN.” Sarvas hosted the popular literary weblog The Elegant Variation, and his short fiction has been published in The Drawbridge, Troika Magazine, The Wisconsin Review, among others. He teaches advanced novel writing in the UCLA Extension Writers Program and lives on the Monterey Peninsula.
Q. Please tell readers about your new book.
“@UGMAN” is an updated re-telling of “Notes from Underground” for the Twitter age. It’s a slightly unhinged, darkly comic cautionary tale about what happens when you mistake your social media bubble for the real world.
Q. Can you talk about your book blog, The Elegant Variation, which was how many readers came to know your work?
Ah, a history lesson from Interwebs 1.0! The funny thing is I remember back in the day (2003) having to explain to people what a blog was. And now, I have to once again explain what a blog is. But essentially, it was a free-wheeling record of my literary enthusiasms and unvarnished opinions.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
Oh, so many; but it depends on the reader and what they want/need. But I suppose my most frequently recommended book for the last few years has been Max Porter’s “Grief is the Thing with Feathers” (which also happens to be a key influence on “@UGMAN”).
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Q. What are you reading now?
I’m one of those who always has several books going, though only one novel at a time. The novel is Solvej Balle’s riveting “On the Calculation of Volume I” – think a literary “Groundhog Day.” I’m also reading a collection of letters between Picasso and Getrude Stein; I’m reading Philip Norman’s Paul McCartney biography. I’m reading a work of philosophy called “Playing Possum” by Susana Monsó, which theorizes about how animals conceive of death.
Q. How do you decide what to read next?
I am a slave to my whims. But always have a lot to choose from, my TBR pile spans three bookcases.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
“The Great Gatsby” is the novel that made me want to write.
Q. Is there a book or type of book you’re reluctant to read?
I don’t care for any of the hard genre stuff, especially speculative and fantasy. No judgment, just not my cuppa.
Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?
I absolutely loved “Practice,” a wonderful debut by Rosalind Brown. I thought it a fantastic representation of a day in the life of a mind.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
I read some poetry every day, and I’ve been having a Wendell Berry moment. I love the closing lines of his poem “Our Real Work,” which goes “The mind that is not baffled is not employed/The impeded stream is that one that sings.”
Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?
Novels are it for me, literary fiction being my go-to. I’d like to keep adding to my reading in translation, I’m more desperate than ever for a global perspective.
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
I re-read “Gatsby” every year, have done so since college. The first Sunday in January I sit in a comfy armchair and read it through. I have the opening and closing lines tattooed on my arms.
Q. Which books are you planning to read next?
“Perfection” by Vincenzo Latronico has bubbled up to the top of the list. But see aforementioned whims.
Q. Do you have a favorite character or quote from a book?
This quote is up there. It’s from John Banville’s “The Book of Evidence” and although it’s the narrator Freddie Montgomery speaking, Banville told me in an interview some years back that of all the things he’s written, this is the one thing that essentially speaks in his voice, represents his point of view:
I have never really got used to being on this earth. Sometimes I think our presence here is due to a cosmic blunder, that we were meant for another planet altogether, with other arrangements, and other laws, and other, grimmer skies. I try to imagine it, our true place, off on the far side of the galaxy, whirling and whirling. And the ones who were meant for here, are they out there, baffled and homesick, like us? No, they would have become extinct long ago. How could they survive, these gentle earthlings, in a world that was made to contain us?
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
My mother always encouraged my reading – the probably apocryphal family lore is that I ate the frontispiece portrait of Shakespeare from a collection of his plays when I was one. And my high school creative writing teacher, Ms. Finnegan, encouraged me along the way.
Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?
Language. Sentences. The representation of consciousness. I don’t care overmuch about plot, I am looking for exciting language, surprising structure. Hernan Diaz’s “Trust” is a recent favorite.
Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?
I remember reading “Ulysses” on an airplane some years back and I was laughing pretty hard – it’s quite a funny book – and another passenger was staring at me with ill-concealed hostility, like I had to be the world’s biggest poseur laughing at Joyce. It’s entirely possible they were right.
Q. Is there a book that tapped into an emotion you didn’t expect?
I was knocked out in every way by Katie Kitamura’s novel “Intimacies,” and it really gave me a deeper and more dimensional understanding of the hassles women constantly endure from men, and the destabilizing fear it engenders. I’d understood intellectually, but I experienced it in that novel.
Q. Are you someone who must finish every book you start – or is it OK to put down ones you don’t connect with?
No, life is too short to persist with books that aren’t cutting it – that TBR pile constantly beckons.
Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?
In NYC, it would be Three Lives, where I first saw Banville reading and my mother’s cell phone kept ringing. In L.A., it would be my home bookstore, Diesel in Santa Monica – where I will launch @UGMAN on July 9. And in Paris, it’s the now-defunct Village Voice, where I once saw Michael Ondaatje in conversation with Mavis Gallant.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
The wittiest thing I’ve ever written (he said modestly) is a line that will be missed by everyone except perhaps Dostoevsky scholars.
Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
Please help spread the word. There’s nothing better for a book than word of mouth, especially when you’re with a scrappy, independent publisher. If you enjoy it, please get out there and say so.
The author will be in conversation about the book with Benjamin Dreyer and signing books at Diesel, A Bookstore on Wednesday, July 9th at 6:30 p.m.
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