5 Questions with Jeremy Steen
Today, we published the final sketch from “Not One Domino Shall Fall.” Michael Colbert spoke with Jeremy about the project’s inspiration, the stories’ analogs, and what can be learned from writing into the darkness.
The Rejoinder: How did you come up with this concept initially, and what was your process like as you developed the sketches that constitute the novel?
Jeremy Steen: The first one of these popped out almost fully formed while I was trying to write a poem. It came together in a few minutes and required minimal editing. Let me stress: this almost never happens. It was a real “lightning strikes” moment.
I could tell the form and voice had more to offer so I kept writing without any clue as to whether or not there would be a cohesive piece at the end of the process. I felt compelled to write more of these things, which is a good sign. If you find yourself drawn to a creative project it’s best to follow the muse, as they say. I just kept writing and after a while a shape began to appear.
Even though I’m calling this thing a novel, thinking of the induvial pieces as poems has allowed me to push things in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t have—it gives me a sense that anything can happen, anything is possible. This is not meant to denigrate the form but the phrase, flash fiction, has never really appealed to me. Thinking of these as narrative poems is very freeing. Genre is fake anyway.
TR: As a whole, the novel feels really cohesive, yet each world is so distinct. What themes, tone, or voice did you have in mind to help you create this cohesion across the project?
JS: When I first started this project, I was researching another novel (I still am) and I was metabolizing all this information—books, articles, podcasts, movies—about, for lack of a better phrase, state crimes against humanity. This stuff was quite dark, sickening really. My plan for this other novel was that it was going to be very long, the kind of project I could work on for the rest of my life (Aren’t they all?), so I needed a container in which to put this difficult information.
Anyway, after I started using these little stories as a container for all my disgust and anger, I thought they might be useful for other people too. One benefit of the internet and the current information ecosystem is a lot of people—North Americans in particular—are opening their eyes to the corrosive nature of American hegemony, be it something as current as the U.S. support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza or something in the past like the 1965 CIA backed slaughter of more than half a million Indonesians. My hope is that someday this project will become a book that people can turn to while they’re doing their own research, while they’re making themselves sick with information, and they can read a few of these stories and experience, some humor, some relief, or some hope.
These stories can still be depressing, but one of my goals is to bend reality in such a way that some optimism gets in, even in these terribly hopeless situations. I can be a pretty depressed and depressing person, so I have to force myself to believe in the power of the imagination. If we are unable to see beyond our current state of despair, if we can’t imagine a better world, we are truly fucked. Maybe these stories are creating a false hope, an imagined hope, but as long as it feels real for a moment or two, long enough to pull yourself out of the gutter, then I think it counts. It has to.
TR: I was taken by this idea of change and shifting identities across these stories. What were you interested in exploring by putting these characters in these various roles?
JS: When I workshopped a different set of these pieces a couple years ago, one of my peers said she was reminded of the television show Quantum Leap, where Scott Bakula travels through time by “leaping” into other people’s bodies, righting the wrongs of history. This was one of my favorite shows as a kid but I hadn’t thought about it in ages. It really blew my mind that this piece of media had somehow followed me from my childhood living room and reappeared in my writing so many years later. My logline for this project is now “Quantum Leap if Don DeLillo was the showrunner and Fuckhead from Jesus’ Son was the protagonist.” I’m putting myself in some pretty lofty company there, but it feels true to the novel’s goals.
There’s something really satisfying about being able to enter different historical moments, to live and die and be reborn (as the narrator does), to see our shared history from all these different angles. The narrator of Not One Domino Shall Fall is constantly failing to meet the moment, constantly fucking up, but then you turn the page and there he is again, trying against all odds to be a better person, to improve the world in some small way. For me, as a person who feels so politically powerless, as I imagine a lot of other people do, this sense of constant metamorphosis, this sense that our reality is not finalized, is incredibly freeing. These characters, like all of us, are unfinished beings, capable of change. If we can change, so can our world.
Then, of course, there’s Ed. Throughout the stories he shifts from being a mere pain in the ass to being a manifestation of greed and evil. In the real world, evil is a concept so absolute in its judgement, so sure of its righteousness that it can’t help but produce more of itself. In fiction though, I think it’s very useful to identify and experiment with evil. Ed is the subject of that experimentation. For me, working with Ed is like getting to draw a mustache on the boogey man. Moving him through these different times and places makes that process all the more cathartic. Even if Ed usually wins.
TR: Many of the events and figures of these stories have historical analogs. Did that feel generative, like a constraint, or both?
JS: The constraint is generative if that makes sense. Often, I’ll be reading something, and I’ll hit on a single detail that’s so insane that I feel compelled to transform it into one of these stories. Sometimes it’ll be an entire event that I need to process, something so big that it’s difficult to wrap my mind around. Compressing that event into a few hundred words helps with that process. These stories help me absorb the history, and the history helps me create these stories.
TR: What’s interesting to you in fiction now, whether with your writing or reading?
JS: Not to sound like a kiss ass but outlets like The Rejoinder are what’s most interesting to me. The literary marketplace is so stultifying—everyone seems to agree that it’s fucked but no one seems to have any clue what to do about it. The only thing that will keep literary culture alive and vibrant are small, independent publications. The Big Five (or is it four now?) won’t save us. We have to do it ourselves.
