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BUST MAGAZINE
SEX OF CLUBS: AN INTERVIEW WITH JANICE EIDUS Kathleen Warnock Janice Eidus has created a sometimes surreal, always sensual, and eminently logical world in numerous short stories, many of which have been collected in VITO LOVES GERALDINE and the recently published, THE CELIBACY CLUB. Her characters, from the lonely Elvis to the abused Pandora (from Janice's Pushcart Prize-winning story PANDORA'S BOX) are deeply grounded in their worlds, and given life by an author whose own voice is compassionate, human, deeply weird and funny. And I do mean funny. There's a strong level of sexual tension in a lot of your work. Some people are shocked by my work. They say: you really have an imagination, implying that my imagination is unsettling, disturbing. For me, it's the greatest compliment on earth, that they're disturbed. My work reminds them of what they may be thinking, and are scared of thinking. Some people have grown so inhibited, they can't even think to themselves the things they know intuitively about sexuality and sensuality. Luckily for me, I've remained uninhibited in my writing. [After the publication of] THE CELIBACY CLUB, I got letters from all sorts of people congratulating me on the wildness of some of the stories. I like to think I really do say things that need to be said. People seem to feel that I'm fearless. I don't know about that, but somewhere along the line, back when I was a feisty little girl, I felt that I was going to say whatever it is that I have to say. Do you consider writing itself erotic? Language is completely sensual, and writing is therefore definitely an erotic act. I use sexuality as a metaphor for freedom. The title story of THE CELIBACY CLUB is a story written against sexual repression and sexual censorship. The 90s seems like such a repressive and censorious time. I was interviewed for the book, THE JOY OF WRITING SEX, and I told the editor that what I find really erotic is sex AND romance, not one without the other. Romeo and Juliet turned me on so totally. It's sexy and erotic for me when both people involved are really obsessive about each other. Much more so than nihilistic, cold, bloodless sex, which some people seem to go for. You've also written a story that's both a humorous and sorrowful protest in the face of the AIDS epidemic. LADIES WITH LONG HAIR is about a woman whose hairdresser dies of AIDS. It's an homage to my hairdresser. Because all the women [in the story] won't cut their hair until the cure is found, their hair, like Rapunzel's, just never stops. Robert would have liked this. The metaphor just came to me, this great image of all these different women—young, old, thin, fat—with these long, flowing locks. As far as metaphors, sexuality is always one of the central ones I think with. It's a profoundly human thing. You're in a long-term relationship yourself. Do you find that you have trouble, or are inhibited by the fact that you're not out there yourself looking for connections and relationships? Ever since I met John, I actually write better. We've been together 18 years. I had a disastrous, very early marriage, which interfered with my writing. Before that, I was spending so much time looking and yearning. Now that I'm not, it's a tremendous stimulation to my writing. Yeah, I think suffering for your art is way overrated. I never think of my writing as self-punishment, I love doing it. Which is what one would hope that sex would be, a pleasure and a joy. Writing and sex are important to humanity—let's keep doing both. Read the next interview... |
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