Spiritual Chapter 11

Novelist David Gates talks about his overeducated, self-tormenting characters, the genius of Dickens and the seductive pursuit of perfect taste.

By Michele Scarff

Aug 27, 1999 | In "The Wonders of the Invisible World," the new collection of short stories by David Gates, hell is not down there. It's not even out there. Hell is in our own psyches, a '90s version of Dante's "Inferno." And the demons are restless.

Know thyself, but -- oh, the horror! Gates' protagonists are, more often than not, spiritually bankrupt middle-class people who live in the suburbs, Manhattan or upstate New York. Most of them are straight couples on the verge of separation (from their spouses, their lovers, their selves). These are people trying to maintain -- with a lot of help from dope and alcohol. When those escapes don't work, self-delusion will suffice. As for self-awareness, well, yes, they're clued-in, and therein lies a huge part of the problem.

It's been almost a decade of instant, continual critical success for Gates. His first novel, "Jernigan," was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. "Preston Falls," his second and latest novel (short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998), was one of only three novels selected as an annual Editors' Choice in the New York Times Book Review. In a publishing environment that revels in packaging writers under 40, this late bloomer -- who once said, "I did yoga and still turned 50" -- is a testament to the relevance and worth of age and experience.

A musician's ear for rhythm, a connoisseur's taste for detail, a sorcerer's mind for unexpected twists -- all of these culminate in "The Wonders of the Invisible World."

The title story in your new collection reveals that the "wonders" are demons. Your collection is about inner demons: our failed ambitions, prejudices, anxieties; the lies we tell ourselves, the lies we tell others; infidelities, addictions, obsessions and self-loathing galore. Did you ever get depressed writing about this stuff?

Oh God, yes. Oh, God. Oh.

Any particular stories that really got to you?

Willis' sections in "Preston Falls" were more disturbing than anything in the story collection because I was with him for so much longer. But it's obviously very claustrophobic and disagreeable to be in the head of that character in the title story. That poor son of a bitch is so far around the bend that he's watching himself behave very, very badly -- almost at the point of enjoying how bad it is, but not quite able to take any pleasure in that. He might be the farthest down in the circles of hell of this book. But since this is a short story, my sentence was commuted much sooner than in a novel.

Where does your contempt for overeducated people come from?

Within. [laughs] No, I like other knowledgeable people. And I don't think I have contempt for knowledge. I think these are the people that I understand the best.

And they're interesting to write about because, rightly or wrongly, they see themselves as somehow at the apex of the human enterprise, with all their wonderful taste -- which is my taste. They know just what music to listen to. The narrator in that title story is impressed because in a bar they're playing the Decca Billie Holiday rather than the Columbia Billie Holiday, which is earlier, or the Verve Billie Holiday, which is later. You know, Columbia is kind of a clichi by now, and Verve is just a little too depressing, a little too shot to hell. But Decca ... All this is horseshit really. But finely tuned, finely calibrated, well-thought-out horseshit. I think this sort of stuff all the time myself. That kind of wildly overeducated decadence. The pursuit of taste is so seductive and it feels so ennobling. It goes back to the Romantics, back to the Augustans, back to the Greeks. The cultivation and pursuit and appreciation of the most excellent. And you know, there is something very noble about that. But it can also be a form of pathology. Anything to avoid more serious issues in our lives.

Self-awareness is the predominant demon for your characters. They know a lot, they know themselves, but a lot of good it does them: "I know what I'm doing. I know I'm a shit and I'm still a shit and I'm not going to change from being a shit."

Yeah, exactly. "And I'm going to feel terrible about it. And I know it's a mistake to feel terrible about it." And so on and so on. It can just feed back and feed back and feed back like a guitar shoved up against the amplifier. I think of that woman in "Saturn" whose intention, she states to herself, is to stop smoking dope, stop having this affair, but in fact the way she behaves and sees herself behaving, she's smoking more dope and continuing the affair. So she's along for the ride somebody else is taking her on, but that somebody else is herself.

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