A Conversation with Novelist and Editor (and Aspiring Bunnicula Groundhog) Juan Martinez
Author of Best Worst American (stories) and Extended Stay (novel)
Fresh? Check
Imaginative? Check
Scary (sometimes!)? Check
Today’s interviewee, Juan Martinez, is one of the most original and comedically subversive writers I know. (Think George Saunders and Jorge Luis Borges—both namechecked below too.) There’s also a Charlie Kaufman quality to his work and at times an Ari Aster vibe (e.g. Hereditary, which I have not seen because I’m a scaredy cat, and if I had to choose between watching this film or sky-diving with a dubious parachute, I’m not sure which I’d choose.)
Juan is the author of the short story collection Best Worst American (2017) and the novel Extended Stay (2023). He also draws some of the goofiest/cutest creatures I’ve seen (more about this below, along with a few examples).
We’ve been colleagues at Northwestern University for the last ten (?!) years, and the other day I sent an email zinging his way, asking if he’d be amenable to an interview for Bookish—the results of that exchange are featured below. (Thank you, Juan!)
One other item of note before our interview! Juan published a new short story, “Lesser Demons of the North Shore,” last week here on Substack in
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Christine/Bookish: Your first book, the story collection Best Worst American (Small Beer Press), includes stories that are both funny and devastatingly sad—often on the same page. I saw strains of Borges in them, George Saunders, and your editor Kelly Link too. How do you generally begin a story—with an idea for a character? A line of dialogue that appears in your thoughts? An image?
Juan Martinez: I generally begin stories with an image I can't quite shake: a talking plant, a pit bull wearing a pink cape and pink booties in the dead of winter, my cousin in full clown makeup cycling through the desolate byways just off Manaus, Brazil. These days the most striking images are drawn directly from life, like that last one.
CS: Your debut novel, Extended Stay, is one of the scariest books I've read, and also one of the freshest and most innovative. Would you talk about its origins too?
JM: So Extended Stay is set in Las Vegas, which is where I lived while I was working on my doctorate. I spent six years there, and when I left I was so sure I wouldn't write about Las Vegas. Like, what could you say about the city that hadn't been said a million times before? But I couldn't shake the city off, no matter how hard I tried. I spent the better part of a year where I was living in a patch of the green, bucolic Pacific Northwest revisiting (in my head) the weirdness of Las Vegas.
I'd urge any writers out there to keep and maintain some other goofy art practice...I've met some amazing fiction writers who do some other side hustle/art-practice, and I feel like it's just a really good idea.
CS: I've seen your skillful and witty drawings on social media these last few years, which I believe you draw primarily on Post-Its [check them out on Instagram @fulmerford]. Are these drawings synergistic, i.e. do they sometimes serve as springboards to your fiction-writing?
JM: They are! I'd urge any writers out there to keep and maintain some other goofy art practice. I love doodling. I've met some amazing fiction writers who do some other side hustle/art-practice, and I feel like it's just a really good idea. It keeps all of us on our toes.
It's all play, all of it, so letting go and finding other ways to express yourself is just a good reminder that the point is not to be good, or to get good, but to play. But I'm also increasingly drawn to the inherent potential in hybrid narratives: a story I wrote for the Chicago Quarterly Review incorporates doodles in ways that I feel are unexpected and pretty freaking fun. Also—that's an issue with your own amazing story in it, yes?
[CS: I do have a story in the current issue of Chicago Quarterly Review too!]
I can't make sense of Las Vegas. I don't know if anyone can. It's a terrible place with amazing people.
CS: Las Vegas features prominently in Extended Stay. You earned your Ph.D. at the University of Las Vegas before you became a professor at Northwestern University and doubtless know LV well. The way this city is portrayed in E.S. is anything but tourist-friendly. (I think of Vegas as the material manifestation of what much of the rest of the world considers to be America's soul.) I'm so curious about how you feel about this city—I'm guessing you don't think it's unequivocally frightening/hellish.
JM: Related to the last answer—the truth is so much of what Extended Stay tries to capture is how Las Vegas is full of kindness. I know that's a weird answer, given how I wrote a horror novel about a hotel that's actually a sentient creature that inflicts horrible damage on everyone—but I tried to highlight some of its best people. It's a terrible place with amazing people. I can't make sense of Las Vegas. I don't know if anyone can. That's why I wrote a novel about the city, but that's why we write in the first place, right? Because we can't quite figure out what's up with the world. We write in order to find out.
CS: Along with writing and teaching, you're an acquisitions editor at the independent publisher Jackleg Press - how did you get involved with this?
JM: The awesome Simone Muench reached out! And I said yes. And it's been a trip---my whole vision for saying yes was finding awesome stuff that doesn't get enough love, particularly really really weird story collections. I love stories! And my first two acquisitions are just about to see the light of day, Joachim Glage's sui generis The Devil's Library and Kathryn Kruse's astonishing To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone.
I'm thinking about the sort of stories I hungered for when I was at my hungriest as a writer—when all I wanted was stories that would blow my mind. I'm so excited that these first two collections would have fit the bill. They're feral and funny and deeply weird and like nothing you've seen before.
CS: If you could be any otherworldly creature (or monster) - werewolf, vampire, revenant, ghost - what would it be?
JM: I'd be a groundhog. I know that's cheating, I know you asked for some kind of otherworldly creature—so maybe some kind of eternal groundhog? Some kind of vampire groundhog? a Bunnicula groundhog? Let's go with that.
I’d love to be deep in a burrow with books everywhere. Deep, deep underground. There's this line from a song that goes back possibly hundreds of years, "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground," where the singer says that if you're a mole you could "root that mountain down." That's what I want. I think that's what a lot of us want—writers and all kinds of artists and folk. We're tired of this mountain. We're ready to root it down.
Yay, Juan! I love his fiction and his doodles! So great to read this interview between you two!
Loved this one. I'm a scaredy cat myself, but I'm going to start working up my courage to read this guy:-)