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As The Worm Had Wished: A Conversation With Brian Hodge

by Thomas S. Roche

Brian Hodge has long been a favorite of horror insiders, both for his audacious themes and his impressive facility with language. In such Hodge novels as Deathgrip, Nightlife, The Darker Saints, and Prototype, and in his widely-anthologized short stories, you can hear the music in Hodge's prose, a kind of euphony that, at its best, is reminiscent of Brite, Koja, Gaiman, or even Roger Zelazny - while remaining totally unique.

Reading Hodge's short fiction, much of which is collected in two knockout collections, The Convulsion Factory and Falling Idols, you might be astonished at the range of styles he has mastered. But it's with Wild Horses, Hodge's latest novel, that he expands his repertoire even further - and offers us a gritty slice of vintage American desert noir.

ROCHE: What's the response been to Wild Horses? Have your longtime fans been pretty pleased with it? How about new fans - do you feel like you're reaching new people you might not have reached when your work was identified as "horror," or is it the same kind of crowd?

HODGE: I couldn't have hoped for any better response. Across the board, there's been absolutely no downside. From the outset, the reviews were uniformly raves, and from very diverse sources, too: Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus, Carpe Noctem and Locus, various newspapers. Quite a few indie/specialty bookstores, the kind that hand-sell to a very devoted and loyal customer base, got behind it. A few days ago I learned that it's been an official success, too. My agent called because he'd just gotten the first royalty statement, and pronounced himself delighted with the sales figures. Perhaps best of all, I've not heard one word about any longtime readers feeling betrayed - you know, "How dare you not write the same book over and over." Their feedback has been really enthusiastic, and at the same time I've heard from quite a few people for whom this was their first exposure. And it's not even out in paperback yet. Probably one of the most gratifying sidebar moments was when I walked into the area's biggest used bookstore, after Wild Horses had been out awhile, and in the horror section, where my earlier novels had been, there was just this empty hole. So I hope I'll prove to be backward-compatible with those who got them.

ROCHE: A number of celebrated authors within the horror field - you, Joe Lansdale, and Norm Partridge, among others - have written works that were marketed as crime-noir or mystery. Do you think there's a connection between the two genres? Or is it just happenstance of a sort?

HODGE: They're close relatives, most definitely. Noir is horror's alcoholic cousin that smokes too much. So it's a natural extension for some writers. In proferring a world view, it's the same language, really, just different dialects. They're both, on some level, concerned with the darker side of the human heart, human existence, the social engine, why we fall short of our potential. They both concern themselves very strongly with the choices we make between good and evil, but - and this is a gross generalization, but you get the idea - in horror those choices tend to have metaphysical ramifications, whereas in crime/noir it comes down to the essence of a person. Personally, I'm good and bored by the good and evil dichotomy, and think it's rather useless except as reference points on a sliding scale. Strict polarities really aren't that interesting. I was delighted that so many people looked at the characters in Wild Horses and responded to them all while still realizing "Hey, there are some real gray areas here." But I've liked blurring those lines for quite some time now. It's no coincidence that in two earlier novels, Nightlife and The Darker Saints, the main character's last name is Gray.

ROCHE: When you're in the middle of a writing project, do you share what you're working on with people or do you prefer to keep it private?

HODGE: I tend to play it close to the vest, except for Doli - she's usually privy to most everything. But certainly I don't say much at all about anything in a public forum. I may speak in generalities to a few close friends, and maybe one or two end up seeing fragments of things - like recently Sean Doolittle and I have been swapping amusing gun scenes - but that's about it. It's not that I'm afraid it'll be jinxed then, nothing like that. Maybe I just like hanging onto a secret awhile.

ROCHE: What authors have you been reading recently?

HODGE: At any given time, it's a real ricochet of material. At the moment I'm reading an early William Faulkner novel, As I Lay Dying. In the past few weeks there's been Peter Straub's new one, Mr. X. And Three Month Fever, Gary Indiana's biography and docudrama-style account of Andrew Cunanan and his killing spree. A book about Anton LaVey's Church of Satan. A very offbeat and acerbically funny British novel called Man Or Mango?, by Lucy Ellmann. A history of Apple Computer. A study of medieval music, from antiphons to the rise of polyphony. Not a whole lot of consistency.

ROCHE: What authors do you read simply for pleasure - not necessarily having any connection to your work?

HODGE: Whoever writes the little entries in the weekly TV guide, I guess. Really, I find it hard to make such a distinction. I suspect most would, unless they no longer feel they have anything to learn from anyone else, and I should hope I'm never that arrogant. If I enjoy someone's work well enough to keep coming back to it, chances are I'll be looking for lessons in it. It could be John Steinbeck, it could be Kathe Koja, it could be Elmore Leonard or Alice Walker or Charles Bukowski, and it just won't matter . I'll be watching for how they do things. Now, nonfiction might fall into a different category. Matters of style and structure tend to be more transparent there. In which case, for purely personal edification, I very much enjoy the works on Northern European paganism by Edred Thorsson and Nigel Pennick and others.

ROCHE: Do you have other influences or hobbies that might not be immediately apparent in your work - i.e., something readers would be shocked to know you're into?

HODGE: Well, I have my doubts as to how shocking any particular revelation could be. I suspect the readership for this tends toward a rather high shock threshold. Besides, whenever I get interested in something, it always seems to start creeping into my work anyway. It's sort of like while I was on book tour for Wild Horses . I'd made plans months ahead to get an armband from a tattoo artist in Santa Barbara, Celtic knotwork that ends like a torque, instead, with a raven's head and a wolf's head facing each other. And afterward the artist, Pat Fish, said, "Now that you've got this, I bet tattooing will find its way into your work more." And she's probably right, it likely will. After I aligned myself more overtly with paganism a few years back, more or less hybridizing Celtic and Teutonic elements, I found that I very much wanted to utilize and explore particular motifs in stories. "Cenotaph," from In The Shadow of the Gargoyle, the anthology you edited with Nancy Kilpatrick, is a prime example of that. I'd begun wearing a Green Man pendant around my neck, and it wasn't any time before the Green Man wanted a story told about him. This summer I wrote two stories whose titles are lines from Beowulf that I find especially evocative: "Far Flew the Boast of Him" and "Now Day Was Fled As the Worm Had Wished." It's not that I intend to proselytize, and certainly the stories don't do that, but at the same time the outlook does furnish a different perspective that simply isn't found in work that defaults, implicitly or explicitly, to dualistic Judeo-Christian monotheism. Odin makes a splendid deity for those of us who are ill-inclined to bow. He demands no worship, just provides the worthy example of a neverending resolve to continue improving and building yourself, learning more and making the most of your natural gifts, and to strive to live with as much autonomy as you can. As you may surmise, this is an insurmountable challenge for millions.

Beyond the writing, people have been a bit surprised lately to find that I've been accumulating a small digital recording studio, mostly keyboard-oriented . synths, piano, sampler, and so on. Appropriately enough, I've dubbed it Green Man Studio. Just this afternoon UPS brought the latest couldn't-resist acquisition. I picked up a Memorymoog on eBay. Wanted one for years and years, and there are only so many floating around out there. It's the last instrument Moog made, from the early '80s, and it's often regarded as the most monstrous sounding polysynth ever. To hear these near-subsonic bass notes in eighteen-oscillator unison mode? It's like a religious experience you could use for doing demolition work.

ROCHE: Where do you see the music going? Is it just an avocation, a hobby, or do you hope to start a band or release your music some day?

HODGE: I've become enough of a gear slut that it's surpassed the hobby level, at least in intention. I've got nearly a thousand dollars' worth of didgeridoos alone. Fact of life: If you actually know how to play a didge, and haven't just bought one for decoration to stand in a corner, you can't have only one. So yes, it's in my head to work toward releasing something. Not on the same level as the novels . but as a completely separate sideline, sure. It's feasible now like it would never have been ten years ago. One of the biggest obstacles in the past for anyone was the enormous expense of studio time. Well, now, for around a thousand bucks, you can get a 20-bit digital workstation that's roughly the size of an opened dictionary, with twice as many tracks as the Beatles used to record the Sergeant Pepper album. Or you can record into your computer. You've got lots of tech learning ahead of you, and it'll never compete with Trent Reznor's Nothing Studio, but the point is you can take charge of your own creative output for a tiny fraction of what it once would've cost. There's a very good reason why indie labels are flourishing now, why the majors are shitting themselves and have mostly resorted to grinding through disposable flavor-of-the-moment acts that won't even be remembered in trivia questions. But turning toward more of a niche audience.? I just figure why not? Why not pursue this too? Who says I can't? Anytime the word "can't" enters your vocabulary about yourself, it's time to ask what's stopping you. A few months ago I read this hilarious quote by Rob Zombie, referring to his own increasing diversification: "The thing that gives me the confidence to do stuff is when you meet the other people that are doing it. You think, 'Jesus Christ, if that retard can do it.'" I loved that. The whole DIY ethos started with punk, but nobody said it has to end there.

I really don't see myself in a band situation, though. I draw a lot of inspiration from Sweden's Cold Meat Industry label. They send me review copies of probably 90% of what they release, so I get to hear nearly all of it, love most of it. And a majority of the artists there are one or two people working by themselves. That said, I'm not at all averse to the collaborative process. Another one of my inspirations is Tony Wakeford. He's the nucleus of Sol Invictus, but there's this revolving door of people he works with, and you can't help but grow as a result of bouncing ideas off others you respect.

ROCHE: What's your very favorite novel that you've written? By someone else?

HODGE: Invariably, my favorite is always whatever I'm working on at the time. But of the extant novels, I'd have a hard time choosing between Prototype and Wild Horses, because they're so very different from each other. Prototype was, to me, the epitome of a bleak vision of our failings as a species and a society. It was as grim as grim can be, and the pinnacle of what I was trying to achieve, what I'd been working toward over a series of novels, and after it was finished it felt as though something had been put at peace inside. That I could go play somewhere else for a change. Which is exactly what happened. And what Wild Horses has done for me career-wise would be enough to endear it to me forever . but in its peripatetic careening between humor and pathos, it became a much more balanced view of life that I needed to convey. Plus I love the characters so much it's as though I no longer matter to them. They're completely independent creatures.

Other writers' novels? That's even tougher to narrow down. Probably my earliest favorite was Glendon Swarthout's Bless The Beasts & Children. I read that over and over in junior high. And still have the same copy I stole from the school. Others . Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. John Irving's The World According To Garp. Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

ROCHE: Your favorite short story you've written? How about by someone else, if you have one or a few?

HODGE: I often think that, on the level of pure artistry, novelette/novella length is optimal. You can still have that concise and incisive impact of a tale that can be read in one sitting, but you have enough elbow room to get into more layered complexity, as you can with a novel. So my own favorites, the ones I feel are the most accomplished, tend to be the longer ones. Like the pieces I wrote to close out each collection: "Liturgical Music for Nihilists" for The Convulsion Factory, and "As Above, So Below" for Falling Idols. And "The Dripping of Sundered Wineskins," from Poppy's Love In Vein 2 anthology, I really like the way that one came together, and it turned into my first World Fantasy Award nomination, which amazed me, given the subject matter.

Others' short stories? By the same token, they're often longer ones. Quite a few by H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker fit the bill, like "The Colour Out of Space" and "Rawhead Rex." Harlan Ellison's "Grail." Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales." Some of Joyce Carol Oates' would certainly be up there. Keeping in mind, of course, that I usually vapor-lock at list-questions like this.

ROCHE: What works do you have coming out in the near future - what comes after Wild Horses? Any sneak previews of what the next book will hold?

HODGE: There nearly always seem to be a few short stories coming down the pipe, and it's no exception now. As for the next novel, it's underway, and it's titled Mad Dogs. Appearances to the contrary, I'm really not working my way through the animal kingdom - it just seemed to fit. It's very much in the same vein as Wild Horses, but on a bigger scale. They're fettucini westerns, really, is what I call them. Modern westerns as filtered through a cinematic sensibility. I mean, sure, they're very much contemporary crime/noir, but beneath the surface it's as though certain characters periodically wake up and realize "Good god, I'm in a western."

ROCHE: How about the far future - do you see a direction that your writing is going?

HODGE: It's gotten to be a bit schizoid. Multiple directions. Certainly I'd like to keep going in the direction that I started with Wild Horses, and am continuing with Mad Dogs, and see how I can broaden that over time. I really admire what James Ellroy has done for himself - started off with these smaller, punchy police procedurals and gradually built up this grand-scale dynastic vision that takes in the whole of society. Different approach, maybe, but I have similar aspirations. At the same time, I still very much like doing the quote/unquote darker fiction, and even there I've evolved toward several different aesthetic approaches that I've worked hard to try to refine, at least in shorter form where you needn't bow to the structural demands of the novel. Some stories and novellas are very much industrial-influenced, others more gothic or baroque, some unabashedly pagan, others are kind of like Bradbury with more of a vicious streak, and still others have something of a postmodern approach. And so on. I like having these various routes open - need it, to be honest - because it means I don't have to feel that I'm tromping about the same territory all the time. It keeps things fresher, and nothing's ever wasted.