Contributor’s Corner (Fiction): Robert Guffey

ROBERT GUFFEY INTVW BY Neil Gabriel Nanta

NRM: During these trying times, how are you holding up? Do you have anything special planned after this pandemic ends?

Robert Guffey: Aside from the unforeseen difficulties of teaching five English classes online, I’ve learned that—to my surprise— I’ve been subconsciously preparing for a nationwide lockdown since my birth, and that life in quarantine doesn’t affect my daily routine in any appreciable way. After the pandemic ends, I hope to make a research trip to a California lake where Frankenstein’s Monster drowned a little girl in James Whale’s 1931 film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Call it a religious pilgrimage, if you must.

NRM: What inspired you to write “Her Wounded Eyes”?

RG: The character of “Wanda”—and everything she goes through over the course of the story—is based on the traumatic experiences of several different friends I had back in high school.

NRM: In “Her Wounded Eyes”, I can’t help but find a couple of interesting phrases like “dozens of stiff phalli erupting out of vaginal pockets in their protoplasmic bodies.” How do you decide what that particular phrase is going to be when you’re writing?

RG: When Ray Bradbury was a struggling young writer living in a garage in Venice, CA back in the 1940s, he decided to tape a sign to his typewriter that read “DON’T THINK.” The epitaph on Charles Bukowski’s gravestone reads “DON’T TRY.” Jack Kerouac’s advice to young writers includes such pithy bon mots as “Something that you feel will find

If all the wheels are turning, the story is making those decisions for me.

its own form,” and “Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind.” Of course, these are all variations on the same basic theme: “Don’t think.” If you have to think, think afterwards. That’s where the editing process comes in.

I suppose the real answer to the question is that I don’t really make such decisions while the story is being written. If all the wheels are turning, the story is making those decisions for me.

NRM: Can you share with us some notable moments about being a lecturer?

RG: It’s always satisfying when former Creative Writing students move on to bigger and better pastures and develop the confidence to share their own unique visions with the world. Some of my students have been accepted into the MFA Programs at Cal Arts and Iowa, for example. Others have moved on to become professional journalists. Several have succeeded in publishing the stories and novellas they originally workshopped in my classes. One of my students, Chris Mardiroussian, recently wrote and produced his own short film titled Il Breakup, which won the American Cinematheque’s annual independent film festival award in 2018. Knowing the behind-the-scenes difficulties he had to contend with in order to complete this film certainly raised my respect for his perseverance. He even gave me a credit at the end of film, which I probably didn’t deserve, but the thought was appreciated.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve also had several students whose stories were so good that I encouraged them to submit to professional magazines. But for some reason—and I’m not quite sure what causes this—some students seem reluctant to submit their stories for publication, even after receiving an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from their fellow students and teachers. Something prevents them from escaping the womb and taking that final leap into the real world.

One student confided in me that this reticence stemmed from a fear of rejection. But if you’re a writer, you should never be afraid of rejection. What’s the worst that can happen? The editor sends you an email that says, “No thank you”? It’s not quite the same level of rejection a struggling actor or a comedian has to deal with.

Based on what other students have been telling me, I suspect some budding writers are fearful of being unfairly attacked by their readers, as occurred to Isabel Fall, author of the controversial short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter”, a story I used to kick off my Literature of Science Fiction class earlier this year. Young artists should remember that, in many cases, suppression only works if you allow the negative reaction to affect you in the first place. If you have a unique vision, it’s your responsibility to share that with the world. Young writers should never self-censor or allow the ignorance of the mob to stop them from pursuing their dreams (or, in some special cases, their nightmares).

NRM: How do you deal with criticism?

RG: If the criticism is coming from a reliable source, like a close friend or colleague whose opinion I respect, I welcome the chance to rethink a piece of writing that may not be working at the level I’ve intended. On the other hand, if the criticism is coming from philistines (like the people who attacked Isabel Fall earlier this year), I have no problem ignoring it and moving on.

Young writers should never self-censor or allow the ignorance of the mob to stop them from pursuing their dreams (or, in some special cases, their nightmares).

NRM: Your fi rst book is nonfi ction, which talks about a lot of conspiracy theories. How did your enthusiasm for conspiracies begin?

RG: What initially sparked my interest in conspiracy theories was their Rorschach-like quality. In other words, people’s unexamined biases will often dictate the way they react to certain conspiracy theories. When JFK was assassinated, many right-wingers immediately decided that communists had killed him, while left-wingers concluded that billionaire Texas oilmen rubbed him out. Liberal conspiracy theorists obsessed with the Illuminati will interpret these devious conspirators as a cabal of right-wing fascists with Nazi affi liations. Conservative conspiracy theorists will interpret the Illuminati as a cabal of socialists intent on transforming the world into a collectivist nightmare. Meanwhile, there’s no real evidence that the historical Illuminati created by Adam Weishaupt continued to exist beyond the 1780s. Of course, any group of people can get together and call themselves “the Illuminati.” I recommend you and your friends do this, in fact. Why the hell not? As Robert Anton Wilson once said, “When you defi ne the power elite as somebody else, I regard that as a loser script. I defi ne the power elite as myself and my friends, and that’s a winner’s script.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean there aren’t real conspiracies going on in the world today. Genuine conspiracies are swirling around us all the time. My fi rst book, Cryptoscatology, examines many of these real life conspiracies. So does my third book, Chameleo: A Strange But True Story of Invisible Spies, Heroin Addiction, and Homeland Security (which, like Cryptoscatology, is 100% nonfi ction).

NRM: In your personal opinion, what is the most interesting conspiracy theory?

RG: Perhaps my personal favorite conspiracy theory was the one introduced to the world by Dr. Peter Beter on May 28th, 1979. Dr. Beter insisted that President Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger, among several other key American politicians and military leaders, had been assassinated by the Soviet Union and replaced with “organic robotoids.” By carefully analyzing news footage, Dr. Beter could tell you the approximate time and place the real Jimmy Carter was offered and switched with his robot clone. You can hear Dr. Beter’s startling announcement archived on YouTube right here.

Oddly enough, Dr. Beter’s theories infl uenced one of my favorite punk rock albums, Only Lovers Left Alive by The Wanderers, released in 1981.

So, for those of you who think outrageous conspiracy theories based on no evidence whatsoever began in 2017 with QAnon, you’re quite wrong. Most of QAnon’s followers are probably not aware that several of the most eccentric “Q” theories can be traced back to the late 1800s—even earlier. This is one of the reasons it’s important to study conspiracy theories. If more people knew their exact origins, perhaps they would be a little more skeptical when they see these theories being strategically repackaged as political propaganda for a whole new generation of easy marks.

NRM: What’s a principle you hold close to your heart that has helped you in your writing as well as in your life?

RG: My second book, Spies & Saucers (a collection of three novellas that take place during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s) begins with a quote from James Thurber: “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” John A. Keel (who wrote one of my favorite books of all time, The Mothman Prophecies) had a business card that read: “NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING.” In Chapter One of Cryptoscatology, I included this Meatball Fulton aphorism: “What’s coming at you is coming from you.” These three quotes, combined, probably come as close as anything possibly could to identifying an overarching worldview in my work (both fi ction and nonfi ction).