[September 2008]

It was a warm night when I met author Daniel Allen Cox at a crappy coffee place on St. Laurent. He had responded to one of my many ads on Facebook that day. There wasn’t much time. It was going to rain and I had several deadlines to conjure up, including some sort of half-naked dinner party I would later tell people actually occurred. It all seemed so easy back then, and fitting, considering how wayward and corrupt Daniel’s new novel Shuck (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) is, was, will be. To protect it from the rain I had to hide the PDF in my shirt.

What follows is the morning-after pill type interview transcript, between yours truly, Nathaniel G. Moore and Daniel Allen Cox, author of the horrifically gritty and misbehaving novel Shuck. 

I’ve broken it down into 3 main courses: concept, manuscript and the book out in public and stuff.

PHOTO CREDIT - Farah Khan - www.house9road47.com

Shuck is fantastic fun to read. Assured and accomplished, Shuck is also chock-full of anarchic delights: loopy lists, acerbic asides, bursts of poetic description. And sex! It's so exciting to come across such a sensational book. Derek McCormack, author of The Show That Smells, The Haunted Hillbilly

In his novel Shuck, Daniel Allen Cox gives us Jaeven Marshall, the bastard love-child of Dennis Cooper and Jim Carroll. He's a hustler, self-abuser, wannabe diarist, and aspirant to the dubious title of 'Boy New York'. You'll regret getting to know him, but you'll wish he were in your bed. Hal Niedzviecki, author of Ditch and The Program

DAC: I moved out of New York City shortly after Y2K failed to trigger the end of the world. On December 31, 1999, the closest I could get to Times Square was a full twenty blocks away, at the edge of Central Park. I'd say that half of the two million people there were hoping that the millennium bug would black out the city. There was this eerie disappointment when nothing happened. People walked home, looked at each other, and shrugged their shoulders, as if to say "well, it looks like we're stuck with each other for a few more decades, now aren't we?" That pretty much sums it up. You and I. We're stuck. Together. The city also gave me a good business education. I learned that you're never more than ten feet away from a guy who'll pay you to shuck your pants.

DAC: I've been back to NYC since 2000, making two beautiful, summer pilgrimages that left me feeling like a ghost. I couldn't find many of my favourite places. Lucky's Juice Joint vanished or moved. Astor Wines became a bank. In Shuck, I wanted to freeze-frame a New York City that doesn't exist anymore. I'm not talking post-9/11, I'm talking post-Giuliani. A sanitization. You can't buy pirated movies on the corner anymore. You can't walk into a peep show and get a blowjob. Underground sex, though, will always thrive. It just gets harder to find. Astroland Amusement Park at Coney Island is being torn down as we speak. NGM, I encourage your readers to take a final ride on The Cyclone rollercoaster before it's gone, or, at least, to steal one of its wooden stilts.

DAC: I was raised a Jehovah's Witness. With both hands wrapped around the pleasures of life, that made me a troublemaker by default. My work has always had characters with 'found' family, queers and other outsiders who fly-fish for each other. I'm lucky to have both biological and found kin.

DAC: Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Dennis Cooper, Vladimir Nabokov, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Bob Barker is tops, though I don't think he wrote his own cue cards. I used to be into the postmodernists, the Thomas Pynchons and the David Foster Wallaces, but then I outgrew them. To whomever stole my copy of Extravaganza by Gordon Lish, a vaudeville act told in the form of a novel, please cough it up, or anonymously mail me a new copy, care of TDR. It is my favourite book.

DAC: Shortly after New Year's, 2007. I threw on some army fatigues, bought a stockpile of Walkman batteries, and locked myself away.

DAC: Jaeven feels very strongly about analogue media, and so do I. It's physical, and represents how I experience the world, you know? My Walkman was easily the most reliable thing I own, until it conked out last week. Now there's only white noise that whispers about your greatness...

TDR: Jaeven, the main character is likeable because of his ambition and you want him to succeed sort of, would you agree?

DAC: You mean the way one roots for a fish floundering on the dock, hoping it flops into the water? Yes. I think that his ambition is a desperate one, and that it's his sense of urgency that makes him likeable. We've all experienced that jolt, realizing that we might not have enough time to get something done. I also like Jaeven for his dignity in the face of humiliation.

TDR: The way he eroticizes getting his book published is humourous, would you say he's naive or just a bit egotistical or what?

DAC: His naïveté turns into viral egotism the more famous he gets. Kind of like how I was, actually. I've just read, for the first time, an interview I did for The Mirror nine years ago. I pompously proclaimed that as a porn actor, "I only have sex with people I find attractive." What a crock!

2. PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT

TDR: The book is extremely even and clean in terms of flow and there is a real sense that only that which truly was worthy, that helped move the story along made it in. Like some exclusive club. What was the state of the ms before you started slapping it all over the place. Be honest. (Or are you just that damn good?)

DAC: I have strong feelings about the potency of books. When I'm reading one that's not irreducible, I am acutely aware of encroaching death. Ashes in the hourglass. Why do you think I own two copies of Derek McCormack's The Haunted Hillbilly?

TDR: Because you are a stalker? I don’t know. I’ve been stalking Derek for months now. So you like editing?

DAC: I enjoy editing as much as I do writing. Shuck is the result of thirteen drafts, eleven that I worked on prior to submission, and two led expertly by Arsenal Pulp Press. I guess it was a mutual obsession for quality. We must not forget the messy, early drafts that my volunteer readers so kindly sifted through. They didn't let me get away with much.

DAC: Arsenal Pulp Press was my first choice, and luckily, editor and publisher Brian Lam saw things the same way. I remember fetishizing certain pages of George K. Ilsley's ManBug (also published by Arsenal), flipping to the front to see who was guilty of this quality text. The Arsenal crew has been amazing to work with. They're on the ball, they take time out to teach me things, and they believe in the books they publish. I'm in love with Shuck's book cover and design: I think it's sharp, and mirrors this "clean" that you mention. NGM, I'm offering a reward to anyone who can identify the young man on the cover. Word has it that he's a Montrealer.

TDR: Alright Daniel settle down.

3. EXPECTATIONS OF THE WAKING WORLD

DAC: It's tough being a writer anywhere if you don't zero in on your readership: get into their breakfast, the treads of their shoes, the language they use for sex. Then they won't be able to let you go. Having a buzz helps, too. I'm happy that Shuck seems to have one.

TDR: What do you hope people will take away from your book, beyond the fact that you clearly didn't make any of it up?

DAC: Good way to bait me! A lot of it is a distortion, sometimes wickedly so, of my time in NYC. The book has rewritten my history, in the sense that I'm starting to forget what actually happened, and what I wrote into various drafts of Shuck. Yikes! It would be useful if this book contributed to greater awareness about the support and protection that sex workers need. Sex work laws in Canada and the U.S. are archaic and need major revision. We have a hidden culture of sex-for-pay. I say let's acknowledge the people we fuck, and treat them with respect.

TDR: Where is your favourite place to read?

DAC: In bed, where I can access my physicality if it inspires me so.

TDR: Coyote is going to be touring with you that is pretty awesome.

DAC: I can't wait! If I get to touch Ivan's cowboy hat, will I win a lifetime subscription to these questions?

TDR: Don’t you already have this? Check your inbox.

Acclaimed writer Lisa Foad hosts "C is for Cox & Coyote", an evening with two of Canada's finest queer storytellers, Daniel Allen Cox and Ivan E. Coyote at the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom on Wednesday September 17, 2008 as part of This Is Not A Reading Series.

More on Shuck http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.php?index=287