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An Interview with D. Harlan Wilson
By Chris Perridas

Chris Perridas for +The Horror Library+: In Dr. Identity you clearly satirize our Western – and especially American – proclivity for violence. In your future world, you show society as shallow and desperately addicted to the next media driven hype. It\'s a pessimistic world and all sense of individuality is eroded. Yet, by choosing an eclectic blend of sci-fi, horror, irrealism, and satire, you (as writer) are boldly individualistic in the face of this pessimism. Can you be more specific about your opinions on our individuality in the face of all this \"global flattening\"?

D. Harlan Wilson: Thanks for the kind remarks, Chris. To be “boldly individualistic” is the greatest praise a writer can receive! I always try to do new and different things in my writing, but skepticism always reminds me that nothing can possibly be new and different, but only recycled in creative ways. Dr. Identity is deeply indebted to the science fiction of Phillip K. Dick, for instance; without his novels and stories, I don’t think I could have written it. In fact, my main character, Dr. Blah Blah Blah, is a proverbial Phildickian protagonist (sans the dark-haired girl fetish). And the novel employs the Phildickian megathemes of human vs. android and reality vs. fantasy. What I tried to do was make it more “literary,” which is to say, more attentive to issues of language and narrative structure. Not sure if I succeeded. Anyway, like Dick, I’m very concerned with the constructedness of identity and the body by technology and consumer-capitalist culture. Contemporary media bombard and refigure us on a daily basis, imploding reality and fantasy to the point that one becomes indistinguishable from the other. We live in the very “real” fiction of hyperreality. In a hyperreal matrix, the subject is devoured by the object, and individuality becomes a fiction, too. This is old hat. Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard were theorizing hyperreality in the 1970s. But I think it’s more applicable to society now than ever. Hyperreality is a kind of dark romance between the human and the technological. It’s often turbulent and depressing. But sometimes it can be beautiful . . . through a scanner darkly, that is. The beauty of eroded, ultraviolent, technocapitalist selfhood—that’s what I tried to illustrate in Dr. Identity .

Chrispy: For centuries, Western culture has prided itself on laws and a philosophy based on free will and individual responsibility. Dr. Identity flys in the face of this fundamental tenet. Have we deluded ourselves?

David: The idea of free will is something I’ve written about a lot in my literary criticism (e.g. in articles on the science fiction films Dark City and The Matrix and its sequels). I believe we have a modicum of free will. I can do anything I want within the confines of gravity and my diegetic reality. I can choose, say, to bite my finger off, or I can drop my cellphone to the floor, or I can staple two pieces of paper together, or I can eat a banana, or I can white-out the mustache of the Edgar Allen Poe action figure standing on my desk, all things I wouldn’t have considered had you not asked me this question. Here’s where free will starts to slip away. You did ask me this question, and as a result, I conceived of possible things I might do to prove that I can choose to do things when I want to do them. In the absence of the question, there would be no conception, and certainly no action—not of that specific kind, anyway. So while I have a certain amount of freedom, I’m plugged in to the machinery of society and culture. There’s no escape from that machinery. Most people aren’t aware of this (just as, in The Matrix, most subjects aren’t aware that they are pod-slaves). Most people aren’t even aware of their own desires, it seems. This lack of self-awareness is perhaps Dr. ‘Blah’s dominant characteristic.

Chrispy: Dr. Identity seems a very masculine world-view. The few female characters appear shallow and less important than male-male dynamics. Is feminism a failed strategy?

David: I don’t think I’d call feminism failed. I’m not sure I’d call it a strategy anymore either. The world of Dr. Identity is monstrously patriarchal. I’ve tried to depict the psychological, ideological and actual dynamics of patriarchy by representing certain male-male and female-male social relations (e.g. the absurd mistreatment and psychosis of Dr. ‘Blah’s wife). It’s something like what Sasha Baron Cohen does in Borat. I write characters who have been constructed in a particular way by cultural forces, albeit extreme and exaggerated cultural forces. I think this is an effective method, but it often rubs people the wrong way, which is understandable. At the same time, Dr. Identity can function as a feminist narrative insofar as it portrays the effects of male oppression and domination, sometimes subtly, sometimes audaciously. Feminists might disagree, if for nothing else than I’m a man, and being a man precludes me from making a “true” feminist critique. There’s definitely something to be said for this argument. I’m a product of patriarchy, after all, and even if I critique it, I’m subject to it. As for the current state of feminism, I’m not altogether sure. In America, the last few years have seen a collective desire for a “return to masculinity.” This is ironic in that masculinity has never ceased to be the dominant discourse and mode of thought and behavior. The problem is epistemological. Males who feel the need to reclaim their identities don’t know that they never really lost it. The problem is also perception. People see what they want to see, despite reason, despite history, despite factual evidence. I suppose this is the bane of the mediatized, information-overloaded world.

Chrispy: You satirize the American obsession with violence. It does seem that our culture is obsessed with death, and thereby obsessing on eternal youth. How can irrealism challenge and shake us loose from that schizophrenic delusion? Can we avoid Dr. Identity \'s world and come to our senses?

David: The thing is, we already live in Dr. Identity ’s world. Reviewers and critics have repeatedly called attention to how the novel reflects the state of contemporary society. Here are a few examples:

Dr. Identity

Storming the Reality Studio

Dr. Identity

The Surrogates

Dr. Identity

Skullring.org

Booklist

Dark Fire

This last blurb is especially poignant. Much of Dr. Identity is a caricature of real life. And yet if real life, as I mentioned before, is hyperreal, then it’s a caricature of a caricature, or at least a caricature of a simulation. We all arguably live in the haze of a schizophrenic delusion. I’d argue that schizophrenia is a normative condition. In this light, irrealism functions as an efficient vehicle for representing what Guy Debord called society’s “real unreality” back in the 1960s.

Regarding obsessions with death and violence (and, by extension, eternal youth), I don’t think they’re unique to America. Nor are they unique to this time period. Historically people have always worried about dying, glorified violence, and sought out ways to live forever. The rub is that American technoculture exacerbates the degree to which we obsess over these things. There are no organic differences between the Now and the Then—only degrees of intensity. But what degree of intensity will break the camel’s back? Does this degree even exist? Or is the camel already broken?

Chrispy: You\'ve already established a broad set of irrealistic works. What does the future hold.

David: There are several projects on my plate. In 2008, I have two books coming out. One is literary criticism, Technologized Desire: Selfhood and the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction, which will be published by Raw Dog Screaming Press’s new nonfiction syndicate, Guide Dog Books. It’s basically my Ph.D. dissertation. It maps out how contemporary science fiction redefines the nature of subjectivity by exploring the relationship between the self and high technology. I try to conceive of a postcapitalist subjectivity based on recent literary, theoretical and cinematic representations of how image-culture increasingly mediatizes us (among the texts studied are the films Vanilla Sky, Army of Darkness and the Matrix trilogy as well as William S. Burroughs’ cut-up novels and Max Barry’s Jennifer Government). The other book is a novel, Blankety Blank: A Novel of Vulgaria. “Vulgaria” is an evil, absurdist European barony ruled by Baron and Baroness Bomburst in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which is based on the only children’s book written by Ian Fleming. Recently the term has been used to refer to overgrown neighborhoods distinguished by McMansions. Blankety Blank is set in a Vulgaria in near-future Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up. The main characters are two eccentric middle-aged men, their families and friends, and an inhuman serial killer with a barbershop pole for a head. The novel is finished, but it won’t be published until next August. Right now I’ve begun Dr. Identity ’s “sequel,” or rather, the second installment in the Scikungfi trilogy, Code Name Prague, an irreal hard-boiled detective narrative. After that, I’ll write the third and final Scikungfi installment, The Kyoto Man, concerning a man who can metamorphose into the city of Kyoto. Neither of these books will contain the same characters or even be set in the same world as Dr. Identity . Like Dr. Identity , however, they will explore new horizons of ultraviolence and capitalist media technologies. In Code Name Prague, I’m also going to invent a new martial art form. Try to, anyway. Not sure what it’s going to be yet. I’ll need to brush up on my Kung Fu Theater!