Interview - Michael Czyzniejewski

By Joey Pizzolato

 

 

    

 

 

 

Recently I’ve been looking back on the last couple years of my life.  Two years ago I was barely a published writer, armed with all the faculties of my newly acquired education, meandering around the AWP Conference in Denver, sucking up all the literary love that one comes to find when thousands of writers are grouped together in the same building. 

It was at the Bookfair in Denver that I first met Michael Cyzniejewski, who was manning Mid-American Review’s table.  When I told him I loved his collection, Elephants in Our Bedroom: Stories, he gave me a copy of the Mid-American Review and told me to submit.  I would have never imagined that, almost two years later, I would have the opportunity to interview him.   

So it is with the question of how things come to be in mind that I spoke with Michael about his newest collection, Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions, out now from Curbside Splendor Press.   (Without spoiling anything, I’ve read Chicago Stories, and it rocks.  You can pre-order a copy straight from Curbside Splendor’s website here, or treat yourself to a preview by downloading a free sample collection of eight fictions here.) 

 

1.  Chicago Stories almost reads like the product of a writing prompt from a creative writing class.  Can you tell me a little bit about how this book came to be?

Some time, at least 6-7 years ago, if not longer, I made the connection between Mrs. O'Leary, whose cow, by urban legends, kicked over a lantern and started the great Chicago fire, and Steve Bartman, who, by similar urban legend, caused the Cubs to fall apart in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS, resulting in blowing the game and missing out on the World Series. Both carried huge burdens with them. I imagined their conversation, their eyes meeting.

I wrote a short called "Mrs. O'Leary Consoles Steve Bartman at the Ruins of Meigs Field" almost instantly. The Meigs Field thing—Daley ripping Xs into the pavement in the middle of the night—was happening at that time, and I just wanted to put a third Chicago element in there, something Daley should have felt guilty about, something else to ground it in the city. And the project took off from there. I wrote something about Oprah. I wrote something about Mayor Daley. I wrote something about Mr. T. I had a project. Along with that, I wanted it to be as diverse historically as I could, so I started making a list of people who should be a part of it and kept on the lookout for interesting stories and stories I could synthesize.

The original batch of those went to Another Chicago Magazine (ACM). I'd had a story that featured ex-DePaul and Bull star Dave Corzine taken there a few years earlier and I though they'd “get it.” This was actually when ACM was in a giant flux, though, when Jacob Knabb was taking the reins from Barry Silesky (who'd accepted Corzine story); it took a while for Jacob to get to me, but when he did, he wanted all the pieces, especially liking the one about Dennis DeYoung getting probed by aliens as inspiration for Styx's “Come Sail Away.”

Over the next couple of years, I kept adding, knowing I'd want to get a book-length project out of it, and late 2010, Jacob said he could make that happen. I spent most of 2011 rounding out the book, and in the meantime, Jacob hooked up with Curbside Splendor.

And here we are.

 

2.  I found myself Googling people I didn't know, just to get context for the single-lined jokes that were jabbed throughout the stories.  Did you expect readers to interact with your book in this way? And if not, then how?

I know this is going to happen, and that’s great, but I'm also writing for those people who will recognize these people. I want that person who remembers the ridiculous case of Gary Dotson to just get it. I want people who remember the woes of Skip Dillard to just get it. There's enough recognizable people in the book—the Oprahs, the Daleys, the Ann Landerses—that it won't seem entirely like a research project to read. Plus, I also want the stories to stand alone, on a lyrical level, for it to work even if the reader doesn’t know who’s famous, or notorious, for what.

 

3.  You're known for spending your time in between Bowling Green and Chicago.  Does being a “spatially detached insider” of Chicago change the way you look at the city?  And if so, how does the distance force you to view it in new ways?

Despite not living full-time near or in the city for most of my life, I've always considered myself a Chicagoan. Yes, I grew up in the south suburbs—Calumet City and Lansing—but I count that. Chicago is where I'm from, where my entire family still is, and where I've worked summers for the past 23 years (at Wrigley, as a vendor). I've always had a lot of interaction with the city. However, when I moved to Uptown in 2010 for the summer, I did start looking at it from an insider perspective, and more so, realized that I’d been a well informed tourist up to that point. When that summer had begun, I’d never taken a bus, completely intimidated by the CTA. I only knew about things around Wrigley and other tourist stops like Grant Park and Ed Debevic’s. Worst of all, I had zero understanding of the neighborhood system, but as soon as I moved there, I came to realize how the neighborhoods are everything, that everyone is identified by what neighborhood they live in or which they’re from. A lot of things started making sense then—I understood the 10 o'clock news a lot better, for one. But being able to place people and events and landmarks on the map made things visual, and knowing so many more people and visiting all these places made it personal.

I’m not exactly sure how all that’s affected the book, though. A lot of those early stories were based on people and events that everyone would have known, that city-proper people wouldn’t know any more or less about than suburbanites or transplants to Ohio. I remember Gary Dotson because he was in the news, which is broadcast all over, not just inside the city. Dennis DeYoung is played on rock stations everywhere; I got the idea of the probing piece listening to either the Loop or WCKG, one of the DJs making a joke about a space craft, making me realize what that song was really about. When I moved to the city, it made accessing resources like local libraries and the Chicago History Museum easier, for sure. Living there probably gave some insight into some pieces since then—two thirds of the book was written after this point—such as the story about Malort, which came about after a harsh night of shots with people like Jacob and James Tadd Adcox (Artifice Mag) and the Knee-Jerk Three. Overall, I think the people and the stories are much bigger than inside or outside. I'd offer them up to a lifelong resident and I'd think they hold up.

 

4.  From reading your two collections, and the Mid-American Review, I can't help but notice similarities between them. How does your work with the MAR help inform your writing style, or does it work the other way around?

Reading and writing go hand in hand. The great poet Stephen Dunn came to Bowling Green once, and during a Q&A, a student asked him who his favorite poet was, and without hesitation, Dunn said, “Me.” He explained—he’s kind and not arrogant in the least—noting that you should be writing the exact types of things you want to read. If you’re not your own favorite author, then you’re not working hard enough, or on the right things. He was giving a lesson to a roomful of students (and then smiled and went on to list several poets he admired).

I’m the same way in that I want to write the same kinds of things I like to read and read the same types of things that I write. However, that also makes me a harsh critic. An author doing the exact same thing as me, or at least attempting to, is going to be under much greater scrutiny than some of the authors who have different aesthetics. So while I write a lot of absurdism and magical realism and humor, not even half the stories we take at MAR fall under that umbrella. The unifying traits that all the stories I take at MAR are that they're well-written and unique. These are characteristics I strive for in my own work.

 

Michael Czyzniejewski was born in Chicago and grew up in its south suburbs. He teaches at Bowling Green State University and serves as Editor of Mid-American Review. He is the author of the story collection Elephants in Our Bedroom (Dzanc Books, 2009), a collection of short stories, and has been published in over fifty literary journals, including ACM, Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, and StoryQuarterly. In 2010, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for his fiction. During summers, he lives in Chicago, where he has worked over twenty seasons at Wrigley Field as a beer vendor. Find him at www.michaelczyzniejewski.com.

 

Joey Pizzolato is our reviews / interviews editor.  He's a writer, photographer, storyteller, and globe-trotter.  His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of journals, websites, and magazines.  Once upon a time, his series of photographs, "Scribbling into the Ether" was shown at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.  He lives in Austin, TX, and currently serves as the literary editor of Composite {Arts Magazine}. (url: www.compositearts.com ), along with this joint.

 
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