A Conversation with Shane Jones

I first came to Shane Jones’s work after having seen some of his writing online. For someone so interested in the lifestyles of other writers—someone who, as I discovered, discovered that Zadie Smith eats a prawn cocktail wrap for lunch—I was especially surprised to find how lucid and otherworldly his fiction can be. His novels, all of which are playful, enchant and disarm and make room for something very strange to happen under the surface. His latest book, Crystal Eaters, a meditation on death, and the illness and loss of parents, among other things, gave me the impression—as its page numbers counted down instead of up—that the book itself didn’t want to die.

I was going to speak with Shane Jones when he came to New York City to read from Crystal Eaters, but because we scheduled to meet at 8:30 in the morning, we didn’t meet, because it was 8:30 in the morning. We spoke over Gchat, and what follows is an unedited transcript.

—Hayden Bennett

I. RILKE AND DEATH VS. DOGS AND HEAVEN

THE BELIEVER: So let’s start with Rilke and death. Crystal Eaters made me think of this part of his novel: 

When I think back to my home, when there is no one left now, it always seems to me that things must have been different back then. Then, you know (or perhaps you sensed it) that you had your death inside you as a fruit has its core. The children had a small one in them and the grownups a large one. The women had it in their womb and the men in their chest. You had it, and that gave you a strange dignity and quiet pride.

SHANE JONES: Whoa, I’ve never read that before but it’s great and really hits a lot of points in Crystal Eaters. Could definitely use that as an opening to the book. I think we’re all carrying death inside us, it’s coming, it’s always looming. I’ve never been death obsessed before, but now that I’m older (34) and a father, I can’t quite shake the feeling. I both want to die and don’t want to die. Death is terrifying and beautiful, a final thing we can all do together.

BLVR: Well it’s interesting that the kid in the book was death-obsessed, not the parents. Or at least the dad, who won’t acknowledge it.

Rilke talks about dogs, too, and how they’re excited by the smell of death. And in Crystal Eaters Hundred (the dog) is a constant reminder of the system. I’ve always thought dogs—or pets—are kind of the first...