"It’s all you know and it keeps you alive. Everything else is just static": a conversation with Jack Moody.

Jack Moody got sober. The world got big. He writes about it.

Jack Moody is a writer from Portland, Oregon. He’s been widely published in literary journals. His last book is called “The Monotony of Everlasting” (Anxiety Press); his next ones will be “The Absence of Death” (Outcast Press, 2024) and a novella, “Miracle Boy”, with Anxiety Press. He works for the literary newspaper Bel Esprit Project.

Topics include: hanging out at a dive bar in Portland every day and writing terrible poems, getting sober, quitting auto-fiction, the self destructive feedback loop of trying to live an awful life to then write about it, not going to college, Emily Menges, the Bel Esprit newspaper and how it fits in the Portland landscape, trying to own your outsider status, the one time Jack “showed a short story that I’d written on my phone to some old guy at the bar and he said he liked it but that I shouldn’t use the word cunt”, and being poor.

Enjoy.

Let's start with an oldie. You're been producing A LOT over the past few years: you've had books out and more books are on the way. I'd love to know when you started making your own stuff and when you started to show it to other people, be it friends, fellow writers, literary magazines... you tell me. 

I used to write little short stories and poems when I was little but then I found out about girls and drugs and gave up on healthy self-fulfillment for a while. I started writing in earnest—like with the goal of people reading it—when I was 21. So eight years ago. I’d hang out at this dive bar in Portland every day whenever I wasn’t working and I’d write poems that were terrible. I wrote a novel by hand called Michelle and the Ivory Tower and I let my mom and my friends Cole and Gina read it and all three people told me that it was objectively horrible because it was. It was so bad. It’s wild looking back at the quality of the stuff I used to write. I had absolutely zero innate talent for it. After racking up around a thousand rejections I got a poem published titled Black Sheep in some online journal. I can’t remember the name of the place anymore. I never showed my work to any writers because I didn’t know any. I remember I showed a short story that I’d written on my phone to some old guy at the bar and he said he liked it but that I shouldn’t use the word cunt. That’s when I knew I was on to something.

I have SO MANY QUESTIONS here, but the first one would be: how much impact does the city of Portland have in what you've been making? 

With the exception of one novel that’s still unreleased, very little. I’m a really introverted and introspective guy, and my books and stories revolve way more around intangible concepts. Life, death, subjective perception, philosophy, mental illness, the human condition. That sort of thing. I’m always in my head and not really focused on the goings on of the places and culture that surround me. It just doesn’t interest me much. Modern culture is also something I don’t really understand. I feel alienated from the societal climate. I’m not part of the community I guess is what I mean. All my autobiographical work—my first book Dancing to Broken Records, my novel Crooked Smile, and my novella Miracle Boy that just found a publisher—take place in Portland because I live here and so the things that happen to me happen in Portland, but the city and its landmarks are never mentioned because it’s not important to what I’m really writing about. This unreleased novel that does take place explicitly in the Pacific Northwest is different, but that’s because it’s more about humanity as a species and our relationship with the Earth. Portland serves as an example of our separation from the rest of nature. So it’s really about human culture than anything to do with Portland and its culture specifically. In fact, in the novel Portland is effectively destroyed and swallowed back up by the environment that existed before the city did. People tend to take a lot of influence from where they grew up or where they live, but those things never much mattered to me.

About this. For the first part of your life as a published writer you've been pretty candid about the overlap between real life events and your stories - I'm thinking of stuff like "Welcome Home, Inmate #Whogivesashit" - but now you've switched to speculative work. Were you getting tired of auto-fiction? Are you happier now?

I mean… both. Just straightforward auto-fic without any other genre influences or storytelling methods began to feel rudimentary after a while. I felt like I wasn’t challenging myself as a writer enough. And once I started getting my shit together the material for that kind of literature wasn’t there anymore. I’m sober, I’m married. I’m a homebody. I don’t have the experiences to write about that side of life accurately anymore. And plus it began to feel masturbatory. Always writing about yourself, thinking about yourself. If you’re not careful you begin to take on the personality of your character. Seeking out unhealthy scenarios and making dangerous decisions for the sake of research or whatever. It became this self destructive feedback loop, trying to live this awful life to then write about it. When I started out I wanted to be Bukowski. I wanted to be Kerouac. I wanted to be the main character. It’s so cringey looking back on it. Now I just want to write good stories, explore topics that interest me. I want to push myself to be the greatest storyteller possible, and that was never going to happen if all I did was write thinly-veiled memoirs. This most recent novella Miracle Boy started out as any other auto fiction book, but it felt cheap and easy and uninteresting, and evolved quickly into this experimental surrealist fever dream like nothing I’ve ever read. It’s more fulfilling for me artistically to challenge myself and look for stories through a wider lens.

Oh boy, yes, this: "If you’re not careful you begin to take on the personality of your character." We NEVER talk about this, but it's a real thing - writers truly become the persona they cultivate, to the point they lose insight so fast they end up becoming cheesy bad actors, not to mention all-around blowhards. And it can happen to very different writers too, active in very different genres. 

Your biography used to end with this sentence: "He didn't go to college." Why did you point it out? You’ve been a working writer for years now.

I took that off of my bio for my most recent published book, I’m pretty sure because it began to feel a little bitter. But I used to have the no college thing on there partly because I was proud of how good I got at writing all on my own, just studying and practicing really intensely for years to progress as much as I have. But it was also kind of this middle finger to all these MFA writers who have all these connections and beta readers and workshops and blah blah blah. I felt out of the loop and was frankly bitter that I wasn’t given the opportunities these college educated writers have. Because that’s really the biggest and only reason I would have gone to school. You’re thrown all these chances to meet people in the industry who can push you along. I don’t have that and never have. I don’t know anyone in the scene and I’ll probably never be a part of the scene. Whatever that even means. I’m poor, working class and isolated. I can’t afford those connections and I’m not on people’s radar. So I guess it was me trying to own my outsider status. Even reading that back I can still feel the lingering bitterness and self pity. So obviously I’m still working through that. I do this because I love writing more than anything and it keeps me sane, and I’ll always do it, but fuck do I wish more people read my work hah.

Yeah, the "scene" element was always brutal for me, and it's not changing anytime soon. I'm guessing the reviews you write for the Bel Esprit newspaper hasn't made you a part of that scene, either? Or have they? 

I think maybe it has. That column has a pretty good readership and it’s given me a foot in the door as something on my resume for other kinds of writing work. But it’s really all because of the EIC Emily Menges. The Bel Esprit is her baby and she’s so passionate but relaxed about it that it’s infectious. She’s the fucking coolest and we just see things the same way. I never think about it as something that’s good for my career or whatever, it’s just really fun getting to spotlight indie books I love and she allows me to write however I want and be myself. I can go on tangents about capitalism in the middle of the review and she’ll keep it in. It was all just so organic how that job came together. Emily is the best and what the Bel Esprit is doing is something kind of cutting edge but old school and I’m just happy to be a part of it.

Speaking of tangents: some time ago I read A LOT of your unpublished poetry and it was good! Funny, bleak, story-oriented, but with a lovely crisp voice running through it. Why haven't you tried to get your poetry out more? Is it something you'd be wanting to try now ? 

Thank you! Your poetry is fantastic so that means a lot. I used to write poetry constantly when I started out. Like five or six full-length books’ worth. It was really hit or miss though because I’d write all the time, sometimes just fractured words when blackout drunk and a lot of the time if I had an idea for a story but it wasn’t fleshed out enough to be a solid short story I’d make it a poem instead. But I was never that interested in poetry. Honestly I don’t really like poetry. I don’t really read poetry. It doesn’t give me the same feeling that a short story or novel does, and it’s the same for my writing. I think in prose, not poems. And there’s such a saturation of poets. Everyone’s a fuckin’ poet now. I’m not interested in throwing mine into the massive unread pile, especially because I’m not passionate about it. If anything I’m interested in writing stage plays alongside my books. Some people are gifted poets and I definitely don’t consider myself one. It was more just a phase of dabbling if anything.

I'm leaving the "your poetry is fantastic" bit in because (one) these conversations run uncut and (two) I switched to prose after I caught wind of the endless online sniping happening in poetry circles. It was a major "I HAVE NOT STAGED MY OWN DEATH FOR THIS" moment. 

About the "writing while blackout drunk" stage of your life: obviously I'm glad you're clean, but, how has your ability to work changed now that you have joined the sober contingent? 

I’ll put it this way. When I was drinking I wrote two books that each took me three years to finish. I’ve been sober for just under two years now and in that time I’ve written two novellas, a novel, and a collection of short stories. I just couldn’t write when I was hungover, especially towards the end when my liver really started screaming at me, and had to stop writing while drunk because it obviously affected the quality of the work. I write every day now, just taking breaks for a couple weeks after finishing a project before starting up again. Improvement of my general quality of life aside, getting sober was the best thing I could have done for my writing.

I started this project once I fully appreciated my overall frame was (still is) "expectations, reality and the inevitable crash". Looking at your life as a published author and a sober guy, is there one moment that stands out to you as a case of "expectations crashing into reality" ? And is there any lesson you learnt in the aftermath ? 

I learned that it is a near impossibility to ever pay the bills with writing alone, and that in all likelihood I will be working shit menial jobs for the rest of my life as I continue to publish books. As naive as I now realize that idea was, it still took me a while to really come to terms with the immense likelihood of complete failure. I never expected nor even wanted to make a million dollars from writing books, and I absolutely never wanted to become famous. Jack Moody isn’t my real name for a reason. I don’t like attention and I like being left alone. But I really REALLY just wanted the possibility that maybe one day I won’t have to wait fucking tables or change kegs anymore. And I now understand that it just is what it is. So the lesson is: Have no expectations whatsoever. In fact, if anything expect the absolute worst. And then just write anyway. Not for what it could lead to but because it’s all you know and it keeps you alive. Everything else is just static.

Buy Jack Moody’s books on Amazon

Want something else? You can buy some of Jack Moody’s books through Bookshop

Read Jack Moody on the Bel Esprit Project

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