Erika T. Wurth’s work, an excerpt from Buckskin Cocaine (Astrophil Press 2017), was published in The Offing on September 18, 2017. Q&A conducted by Jax NTP, Assistant Editor, Fiction. Patrons got it first — join our growing community of supporters today!

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Jax NTP: Anaphora is a technique we see more often in poetry than prose. There is an ironic sense of paralyzed urgency in the narrator’s repeated thoughts. Can you talk a little about how you use anaphora to explore the narrator’s haunted thoughts?

Erika T. Wurth: I’ve thought a lot about the words experimental or postmodern and the words traditional or narrative. People use them a lot, but usually just to beat other folks over the head with these terms, and there’s rarely a concrete definition for either. So, and I’ve written a few pieces about this, I thought — I’m going to get really concrete about form and content. And as far as I’m concerned, I think that the form should follow the content. And, as a someone who just stopped — completely — writing poetry, I thought about the experiment of utilizing poetic technique (like anaphora) in prose. And for Barry in “Barry FourVoices” he’s a deeply, deeply troubled person — I ended up writing a series of interrelated vignettes, using anaphora, to illustrate that this is a person who is absolutely an alcoholic (but a dry drunk) who uses whatever he can to medicate his nearly sociopathic and pathological compulsions to use people. He has a number of personalities, and one that he pushes down as hard as he can. We think — and he wants to think at times — that this is a part of himself capable of empathy. But really, it’s just his weakest part, and one that had to be repressed at a very early age. He also has a series of phrases that comfort him — even if they irritate him too — that he repeats in order to hang on to sanity. They also justify his behavior to himself.

JNTP: “He’s hungry, he’s hungrier than I am and if he doesn’t eat, he will kill me.” From my understanding, this line is a metaphor about suppressing our desires/addictions. Do you think that people should feed into the darker parts of their minds to embrace the possibility of growth/change or should people continue to suppress those parts? Can you demystify the layered meaning of this line?

ETW: That is the personality that is without any empathy for sure — it’s the one that allows Barry to use people. He knows that part of himself is ugly — deeply — but he genuinely feels that if he doesn’t use people, he will get used, and that that personality will turn on him, and he will not survive.

I do think that most people need to take a look at every part of their personalities — including those parts that are ugliest, and that really looking at those parts can release some of the power that they have over you. But in the case of Barry, he’s not really capable of “looking” — he’s only capable of awkwardly balancing these parts of himself that were created in a circumstance that was harsh — so harsh, that he felt that he had to develop a part that was utterly ruthless in order to escape those circumstances. As far as he’s concerned, really looking at that part would give it complete control. And he’s human enough for that to really terrify him.

JNTP: Sigmund Freud describes the three unconscious forces as the ID — guided by the pleasure principal, the EGO — guided by the reality principal, and the SUPEREGO — guided by the morality principal. How do the forces, or “men” inside Barry (the “man who believes all the woman are white,” the “man who needs to eat,” and “the littlest man”) relate to Freud’s unconscious forces? What does this show readers about the main character, Barry?

ETW: The parallel is there, because Freud believed in a number of forces that were subterranean — and I think that’s present in the story. But I feel like this person, instead of having a strict boundary between classical Freudian forces, has parts of himself that he juggles in order to survive. He can’t look at them — so, what the story expresses is what he would say if he could express what all of these voices are doing, and simultaneously, the fact that he is trying to not look at them.

I think there are four personalities.

There is a personality that is utterly ruthless/sociopathic — the man who needs to eat, the one who believes all the women are white because he is a Native writer, and when he cheats on his native wife, if he cheats on and dirts only white women, then somehow that doesn’t violate his narrative — that he is a good Native guy that doesn’t re-victimize native women. But he does, he mainly cheats with native women, and then hurts them as hard as he can, because they are most like himself — and he hates himself.

Then there is the public face, the charmer, the funny guy. The guy who seems politically/socially aware and who is the top-most personality — the one that he hopes that people think he is.

Then there is the self that he hopes he really is. The family guy. The guy who just has to deal with all of these personalities, because he’s the victim.

The last is the one who is like a little boy, the most human of them all, the littlest man. He is the most vulnerable, but through the family guy thinks he’s tender towards him, that he is what makes him empathetic and human after all, ultimately ALL of the other personalities hate him, because he is weak, and a reminder of when he was vulnerable as a child. And he’s not really empathic either — he’s just less horrible.

JNTP: Gertrude Stein, one of my favorite writers, said “There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence.” Barry repeats, “because I’m very happy” throughout this excerpt. Is his constant declaration of happiness actually his denial of depression?

ETW: I think so. It’s one of the phrases that the public personality uses again and again, to convince the public that the darkness that they see isn’t real — that he’s a great, funny, empathetic, wonderful guy with an authentic family life — one that he hints at as separate from his public life — though he says this publicly — because all of it is up for grabs, every part of him is used to survive (another word he repeats until its meaningless).

JNTP: Why did you decide not to provide concrete descriptions of the “floating faces”? What does this omission contribute to the voices?

ETW: You know, I don’t know. It’s clear the character is a writer and normally I hate writing about writing in any way — but, it fit into the collection. But if I think about it, it’s because he sees his fans or audience (the floating faces) as one, horrible, amorphous thing he has to impress in order to survive. He can’t see them as individuals, because then he would have to face what he’s doing.

JNTP: The lack of punctuation in certain paragraphs speeds up the text while also creating chaos. How is this technique a reflection of the narrator’s mental state?

ETW: It illustrates that this person is in a constant state of panic. There is no break from any of these personalities — there is no Barry outside of them. They are in a constant, exhausting state of hijacking his mind, one controlling and then another taking over, and then another.

JNTP: On a different note, can you share some of your (fun/strange/boring) writing habits? How much content do you produce monthly? Do you have a set personal word count per day? How much time do you dedicate to writing vs. editing? Finally, as a “freeway flyer,” adjunct professor, it’s hard for me to carve out space for my writing. How do you balance writing and teaching?

ETW: I can get depressed (mainly about the publishing industry) and stop for a few months, even though I’m usually editing and sending out at that time. But when I have time, and when I’m in a good space, I will sometimes make word count goals for myself. Writing prose is sometimes work, and sometimes you have to sit down and do the work, even when you’re utterly uninspired. Oddly enough, sometimes that prose is the best. I am a compulsive worker, so there are months when I produce thirty or forty pages. But my goal is to sit down when I have the time, even when it’s five minutes.

Adjuncting can EAT YOUR LIFE. Though I can’t imagine what it’s like to work at a research institution, with a 2/2, I’m still lucky to have a t-t job. But we’re unionized, and that helps. I am the only one in my dept who publishes numerous stories, essays and books — and they barely know it. But, I don’t care, because I only say yes to the things that feed my creative/intellectual/spiritual life. And I have learned to stay out of the shit, even when there are meetings I am required to sit in on. But being silent pays off — people forget you, and you get that physical and mental space back. I say yes to a lot of things relating to student projects — like independent studies but, though it takes my time, it feeds me. I think too, when you have so little time, you have to get deeply un-precious. If waking up 15 minutes earlier every day, or taking five minutes you might have to watch TV/talk to someone/get on social media (not that sometimes those things aren’t deeply human and necessary) are all you have, you take that time. You pull your computer out and tunnel-vision, even if it feels like you’re writing shit and barely have time for the shit.