10 Questions for Max Berwald
- By Sarah Lofstrom
"Panic tightened Jean's throat. Apple's face had become the final hold–out, drifting somewhere about her chest. Her shoulders were sloping particularly the left, which hung nearer and nearer the floor. Everywhere drops were swelling, and every so often one would become too heavy and fall to the carpet. She seemed, by will, able to keep these drops somewhat slower and steadier in the falling than they might otherwise be, and even capable of sucking them back in. But the trend was clear." —from “The Melting Children,” Summer 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 2)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
There was an early story about two ants that leave their colony. They encounter earwigs that try to kill them. The whole thing was written in centered text. Actually, this question is dragging up memories of one story I haven't thought about in forever. At some point there was a computer in my room, and I had an ongoing science fiction—fantasy adventure on there. My main impression in these memories is of the way this computer's screen had a field of static electricity in front of it so that if you put your head close to it your hairs stuck to the screen. There might have been horse people? Telepathy. Lots of planets. No one ever saw this. I don't even think I read it. When I was in middle school things got a lot more self-serious and violent. I subjected many childhood friends to bad fiction after that. I could flagellate myself so much with this question. I'm gonna stop. I'm sorry if I asked you to read stuff when I was 16.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
The first writer who comes to mind is Ozu. I'm always looking at that stuff. I'm always trying to understand how he wrote those movies. A bunch of those scripts are sacred texts to me. While I'm on screenplays, Tonino Guerra, whose work I don't revisit as often, really knocked me around when I first encountered it. It affected how I thought about writing, and about what the desirable outcomes were, so much so that I'm afraid to go back. Sean Blau is also an influence, mostly through his screenplays. That's more concrete. I've seen certain approaches in his work and they've allowed me to get closer to what I want to write about. The Sean Blau influence is in this story (The Melting Children) for sure. Dolan Chorng also writes screenplays that allow me to think more clearly.
With fiction I'm thinking about Qiu Miaojin a lot. It could be because I just read her recently. I don't usually know why I'm feeling what I'm feeling, so when I encounter these voices that do, I admire that. There's really nothing I can say that will do her work justice. I just feel thankful. Ari Laurel is an influence but I don't know if I'm prepared to talk about that because I don't know what the influence is. Basically, a choir of voices, from her narrators, has taken up permanent residence in my head. There's also a way of working inside history that's way different than mine but totally inspiring. Lots of names are leaping into my head, but I'm going to shout out Tsering Döndrup. There's a collection of his stories coming out in English this winter called The Handsome Monk and Other Stories. I cannot wait to hold this in my hands. I have been reading his stories at a trickle for the last few years and admire them all for different reasons.
What other professions have you worked in?
It's getting so that there's been a lot, but I don't want to get into it. My first job in high school was at Legoland.
What did you want to be when you were young?
Zookeeper.
What inspired you to write this piece?
Sweating.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
Sometimes I am writing about Beijing and sometimes I am writing about the Bay Area and sometimes I am writing about San Diego. I will say that living abroad has made me humbler about the slice of reality I presume to understand. I make all sorts of assumptions about people and characters who live in the Bay Area or people characters who live in Carlsbad on the basis of having been close to them, having been surrounded by media they've created. In some cases I've consumed the same media as them. In some cases I've learned from the same adults as them. Then there's language. Not only was I consuming media from the same pool as those people, people in Carlsbad and in the Bay Area, but I was getting lots of the same messaging, not missing much when I did consume it. But the slice of reality you inhabit when you're abroad isn't representative of anything. Some say it's representative of the experiences of other foreigners, but it's not.
All of that's to say that when I write about things and say they happen in Beijing, that has a different meaning for me than saying they happen in San Francisco. A different approach is required; it's not about content. The credible field of view contracts. On the one hand I may have taken the same bus as someone who grew up in Beijing, but many things were said on that bus that I did not understand. By the same token, a Beijinger and I may have the same relationship towards our bodies, a relationship more similar than I have with anyone in 'my own' community, but they didn't grow up hearing the same advertising jingles on the car radio. Even if what we share is as flesh-and-blood as our own relationship to our own bodies, how can I write about them if they didn't hear the same jingles on the radio when they were a kid? So that scares me. What I'm willing to write about is case by case.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
I just switched to longhand. My friend has been telling me to do this for years, and for years I've assumed he was crazy. Not being able to pivot to another task is obviously a big deal, but more crucial is the way it slows me down. Forming a letter takes time but no thought. You're writing one sentence while planning the next. This rhythm is in all ways preferable to the constant catching up to myself, stopping, thinking, beginning again, catching up to myself, stopping, beginning again.
Who typically gets the first read of your work? Chris Dobbins, Sean Blau, Ari Laurel, Solomon Wong, Alicia Bones, Zac Towner, Emma Arkell, James Choi, Chris Peacock, Dolan Chorng, Anna Sowley, and Judith Huang but there have been many others. Friends and writers with a lot of overlap. I am part of a group that workshops stuff monthly and that's important to me.
If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I'm going to make films again.
What are you reading right now?
The Book and the Sword by Jin Yong, Qiu Miaojin's journals and Don Quixote.
MAX BERWALD is a taipei-based writer from San Diego. His fiction has appeared in Potluck, Blackbird, Shanghai Literary Review, Third Point Press, as part of Tin House's ongoing flash fiction series, and elsewhere.
