Stephan Eirik Clark's Blog

When I was asked to contribute to the Atlantic’s By Heart series, for which an author describes a cherished work or influence, I rushed over to the website to see who’d already been covered — and was surprised to discover Don DeLillo had not. That made it pretty easy to decide what I’d write about. The first paragraph of my tribute to DeLillo — and especially his novel White Noise — is below:

If I were to run a speakeasy or an underground revolutionary movement—something in need of a secret code phrase, a few words you could whisper to show you were a Fellow Traveler—I might opt for: “The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus.

You can find the rest of the essay here:

For the last two days I’ve probably sounded like someone who’s been studying the writings of Masters and Johnson. (“Have you heard of the Colbert Bump? How about the Lepucki Lift?”). It’s been great, and I thought it important to express, in something more permanent than a Tweet or a status update or even a recurring thought, how grateful I am for everything’s that’s happened — and is happening — to my debut novel Sweetness #9. Writing any book requires an act of faith, and that goes double for a book that takes something like thirteen years to finish (raises hand, nods head, looks down at feet). Along the way, you pepper yourself with questions. Will I ever finish it? Will it be any good? Will a publisher buy it? Will any readers find it? But even if you do persevere, you never expect to have your book discussed on TV before it’s even in stores. So yes, to have so much attention splashed my way is simply beyond my wildest expectations, and for that I am extremely grateful to Stephen Colbert, the very literate Colbert Nation, any readers who stumbled into my book because of the recent news coverage (here, here, here, and here), Sherman Alexie (for getting this all started), and Edan Lepucki – Californian, book lover, patriot — without whom none of this would be happening. Thank you!

“Sweetness #9 does for

flavor science and its sweetly

dangerous concoctions what White

Noise did for chemical

transportation and airborne toxic

events — that is, makes them real

enough to produce legitimate

anxiety and funny enough to make

you fall off the couch.”

—Keith Lee Morris,

author of The Dart League King

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.

I finished Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project this summer, and every now and then I can’t help but remember this one passage from near the end of the book, a long and glorious passage that is instantly familiar to anyone who’s traveled to Eastern Europe and seen a certain kind of a man and a certain kind of woman in possession of a certain kind of wealth. This is a passage describing what the narrator sees at a McDonald’s in Chisniau, Moldova. He’s talking with his traveling companion; and then:

“. . . a gigantic Toyota Cherokee, or Toyota Apache, or Toyota Some Other Exterminated People, drove up on the pavement, the tinted windows throbbing with concussive fuck-music. The rear doors flew open and there emerged a pair of legs stretched long between the high heels and the flashing groin, over which a pair of bejeweled hands pulled an insufficient skirt.”

This certain kind of woman is followed by her certain kind of man, who has “the body and the mien of a porn star, complete with pointy boots, a tenderloin breaking out of his tight jeans, and a triangular torso partially covered with an unbuttoned shirt.”

Following him is their driver, who looks like “a second-rate version of the boss” and stands “with his legs apart–a smaller pubic bulge–and scanned the crowd, his hands wedged in his armpits: should we decide to fuck with the king or disrespect the courtesan, blasts of death should come from his sweaty corners.”

“Stunning.” “Gorgeous.” “Majestic,” the front cover reads. And rightly so.

Anne Elliot, my comrade from my Zoetrope days, tagged me in a post a while back, one associated with the so-called Next Big Thing Project that asks writers to describe a work-in-progress or a book nearing publication. As writers don’t need much more prompting to start talking about themselves, I’ve answered the following set questions.

What is the title of your book? 
Sweetness #9. 

Where did the idea for the book come from?
I read an article that got me thinking for the first time about the importance of artificial sweeteners to the processed, ready-made foods of the post-war era. For example, you can go to the frozen aisle and buy a chicken-fried steak with a side of gravy that tastes just like grandma’s, but it’s only because some chemist in a lab coat has added just the right notes of flavor to your meal (and let’s be clear, this chemist is a genius — the canvas of the latter-half of the 20th Century being one inside our brains, where the neurons fire in the dark). If you took these additives away, your dinner would be a tasteless lump that you might not be able to identify in a blind taste test. Food, like farming, I saw, is not a fixed term — its definition depends on you. And are you willing to trust your health to an illusion? 

Into which genre does your book fall? 
I’ve heard it described as straddling the literary/commercial divide. It may be commercial because there are dead lab monkeys in it. It may be literary because maybe the monkeys aren’t really dead? Maybe it’s all just in his mind? Publisher’s Marketplace announced it as being in the GENERAL/OTHER category. If I could get into a public spat with Oprah about this (and generate a million sales as a result) I’d say, rather gracelessly, that I was writing in the “high-art literary tradition.” And if someone said dead or possibly-not-dead monkeys don’t exist in such a tradition, I’d point them to Pynchon, and then say monkeys-alligators, same thing.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
My main character, David Leveraux, is a walking British affectation, owing to a childhood spent partly in England. Back in the day, Kevin Kline would’ve been perfect. Readers who get to the end of the novel might agree with me when I say Ben Stiller might work (not the penis-caught-in-a-zipper Ben Stiller, the one who wants an Oscar). A low-key Steve Coogan would probably be great, too.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? 
More than twenty years after failing to blow the whistle on the side-effects of a new artificial sweetener, a flavor chemist wonders if he is to blame for the anxious, depressed, and weight-obsessed state of his family and American culture (with stops along the way in Hitler’s Germany, Nixon’s America, and pre-Y2K US of A).

How long did it take to write the first draft of your manuscript? 
About seven years. With interruptions along the way to write a collection of stories, a couple of screenplays, and a dissertation on grotesque literature of the post-war age. 

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 
Fast Food Nation got my thoughts going; the opening scene from Don DeLillo’s White Noise jump-started the prose.

Anne Elliot, my comrade from my Zoetrope days, tagged me in a post a while back, one associated with the so-called Next Big Thing Project that asks writers to describe a work-in-progress or a book nearing publication. As writers don’t need much more prompting to start talking about themselves, I’ve answered the following set questions.

What is the title of your book? 
Sweetness #9. 

Where did the idea for the book come from?
I read an article that got me thinking for the first time about the importance of artificial sweeteners to the processed, ready-made foods of the post-war era. For example, you can go to the frozen aisle and buy a chicken-fried steak with a side of gravy that tastes just like grandma’s, but it’s only because some chemist in a lab coat has added just the right notes of flavor to your meal (and let’s be clear, this chemist is a genius — the canvas of the latter-half of the 20th Century being one inside our brains, where the neurons fire in the dark). If you took these additives away, your dinner would be a tasteless lump that you might not be able to identify in a blind taste test. Food, like farming, I saw, is not a fixed term — its definition depends on you. And are you willing to trust your health to an illusion? 

Into which genre does your book fall? 
I’ve heard it described as straddling the literary/commercial divide. It may be commercial because there are dead lab monkeys in it. It may be literary because maybe the monkeys aren’t really dead? Maybe it’s all just in his mind? Publisher’s Marketplace announced it as being in the GENERAL/OTHER category. If I could get into a public spat with Oprah about this (and generate a million sales as a result) I’d say, rather gracelessly, that I was writing in the “high-art literary tradition.” And if someone said dead or possibly-not-dead monkeys don’t exist in such a tradition, I’d point them to Pynchon, and then say monkeys-alligators, same thing.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
My main character, David Leveraux, is a walking British affectation, owing to a childhood spent partly in England. Back in the day, Kevin Kline would’ve been perfect. Readers who get to the end of the novel might agree with me when I say Ben Stiller might work (not the penis-caught-in-a-zipper Ben Stiller, the one who wants an Oscar). A low-key Steve Coogan would probably be great, too.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? 
More than twenty years after failing to blow the whistle on the side-effects of a new artificial sweetener, a flavor chemist wonders if he is to blame for the anxious, depressed, and weight-obsessed state of his family and American culture (with stops along the way in Hitler’s Germany, Nixon’s America, and pre-Y2K US of A).

How long did it take to write the first draft of your manuscript? 
About seven years. With interruptions along the way to write a collection of stories, a couple of screenplays, and a dissertation on grotesque literature of the post-war age. 

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 
Fast Food Nation got my thoughts going; the opening scene from Don DeLillo’s White Noise jump-started the prose.

A little over a week ago, an 11-year journey came to an end when Little, Brown, the publisher of so many fine books, including my first Pynchon, Vineland, purchased my novel, Sweetness #9. In the first few days that followed the sale, I’d pause whatever I was doing every now and then, as if to question if it had really happened.

Well, yes, apparently it has, because Publisher’s Marketplace announced the news yesterday. Here’s the description of the novel that went out to the subscribers of this industry trade paper:

Stephan Eirik Clark’s SWEETNESS #9, a darkly comic novel about a flavor chemist whose failure to blow the whistle on the side-effects of a new artificial sweetener has profound consequences for his family and American culture at large, in an imaginative debut that moves between Hitler’s Germany, Nixon’s America, and into our post-9/11 age . . .

A little over a week ago, an 11-year journey came to an end when Little, Brown, publishers of so many fine books, including my first Pynchon, Vineland, purchased my novel, SWEETNESS #9. In the first few days that followed the sale, I'd pause whatever I was doing every now and then, as if to question if it had really happened. Well, yes, apparently it has happened, because Publisher's Marketplace announced the news yesterday. Here's the description of the novel that went out to the subscribers of this industry trade paper:

Stephan Eirik Clark's SWEETNESS #9, a darkly comic novel about a flavor chemist whose failure to blow the whistle on the side-effects of a new artificial sweetener has profound consequences for his family and American culture at large, in an imaginative debut that moves between Hitler's Germany, Nixon's America, and into our post-9/11 age . . .

Several months after publishing my first short story, I received an email from the editors of Night Train Magazine, informing me that they were nominating me for a Pushcart Prize. It seemed like a big deal — the Pushcart Prize! I imagined an acceptance speech at the podium, a shiny trophy on the mantel, and all the other untold riches and rewards that would come with being published in (for certainly my story would be published in) one of the most distinguished anthologies of American short fiction.

Of course, my story wasn’t published in the Pushcart anthology.

And as I continued to publish stories (better stories, I was sure, though none of these were nominated for the prize), I came to learn how significant a Pushcart Prize nomination is.

In short, not very much.

Each year, every literary journal in the country may nominate up to six pieces of poetry and/or prose. In addition, every publisher of fiction is entitled to six nominations (of poems, short stories, essays, novel excerpts and even “literary whatnot”). John Fox of Bookfox (and a fellow USC alum) estimates that this results in 3,000 people being nominated each year.

And still people sing it from a mountain, or at least Facebook: “Thanks for the Pushcart nomination! Honored to be nominated with such an illustrious group of writers!”

Just the other day, I visited an English department website and read the bio of a newly-hired creative writer, a guy with a tenure track job. It included the phrase “has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.”

The cover of the Pushcart anthology famously has a picture of a man pushing a cart.

During the month of November, when editors are announcing who they’ve nominated for a Prize, I often see that picture and think of one of my favorite scenes from Monty Python.

So why do we do it? Why do we crow so loudly about something so insignificant? It’s like a writer, desperate to prove he’s made it, saying, “Oh yeah, I’ve been to New York City. Or LaGuardia at least.”

Are we just self-centered, insecure, and desperate for attention?

Perhaps. Probably. Okay, yes.

But also we’re probably trying, in our own little way, to assert a place in the cultural dialogue. The winner of the National Book Award isn’t announced live on television, as is the case with the Booker Prize in the UK. Literary news is buried in the back pages of our dying newspapers, alongside stories of melting glaciers and mysterious fish kills; and if Time magazine ever deigns to put Jonthan Franzen on its cover, it’s probably only to generate a year’s worth of more popular stories on the gender wars.

“Bring out yer dead! Bring out yer dead!” 

Thank you, Southeast Review. I appreciate your nominating my story “The Birds Over the Village N.”