This issue features a microinterview with Thalia Field, conducted by John Madera. Field’s work as a prose writer involves philosophical inquiries, topographies, dismantling of form, and fragmentation of narrative. She questions notions of genre, and her work often steps off the page in other forms, like dance, theater, silent film, and various multimedia amalgamations. The results don’t offer neat conclusions, but provide catalysts for further exploration. Field is on the literary arts faculty at Brown University, where she teaches experimental fiction and performance.
MICROINTERVIEW WITH THALIA FIELD, PART I.
THE BELIEVER: In your book Bird Lovers, Backyard, the birds ask: “Does art merely say things that aren’t facts, but assert them just as strongly? Assert things but refuse to prove them? Argue but not corroborate?” If it’s true that art asserts things as strongly as if they were facts, asserts them without proof, argues them without corroboration, should we trust those assertions?
THALIA FIELD: Asserting is a key word, and I’m glad you used it—it’s in the nature of every character to assert, to want to make ourselves believed (to believe ourselves). Finally, trust is maybe not in the assertion of belief but in compassion toward the confusion behind all assertions. It’s a condition of living to assert as much as we can, but if you’re the first or the last—as those birds are or Neil Armstrong is—are you beyond description? An assertion disrupts like any obstacle, creating form. We take it under consideration when others assert themselves, because they’re part of our world. But trust them? Maybe art can be honest in not requiring an economy of trust, while demonstrating the powerful contingency of beliefs and systems. Maybe.
MICROINTERVIEW WITH THALIA FIELD, PART II.
THE BELIEVER: In A Prank of Georges, Gertrude Stein is quoted as saying that “poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting.” How does poetry manifest these concerns?
THALIA FIELD: The full phrase in the book is: “Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun.” It is the noun and the naming function which A Prank of Georges spirals around—via Stein—via a number of discourses and practices. Poetry (writ large) is textually represented by Stein, and argued only in her voice… a variety of proposals about nouns, and a parallel infatuation with proper nouns, or names—their provenance, and, most importantly, what they say about personality. What is the difference between noun and proper name?
MICROINTERVIEW WITH THALIA FIELD, PART III.
THE BELIEVER: You quote Gertrude Stein in “Machine for Making Spare Parts”: “And a...
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