Jimmy Chen

Jimmy Chen—San Francisco resident, visual artist, and frequent HTMLGIANT contributor—takes time out to answer a few questions about his flash fiction chapbook, Typewriter, which is available for purchase from Magic Helicopter Press.

Molly Gaudry: You've been writing and publishing stories for a long time, but I think I read
somewhere that you never formally studied writing or literature. If this is correct, what did you study? And what made you decide to write and publish stories?

Jimmy Chen: Yes, I never studied creative writing, though I did take a poetry class as an elective in college; we always sat on the lawn, which set off my allergies. (Try rhyming with ah-choo.) I majored in painting and did that until my quarter- or third-life crisis (depending on how long I live). During this time, I always enjoyed writing little things. I actually went to Kinko’s and made chapbooks before I knew they were even chapbooks. I never 'decided' I wanted to be a writer. Frankly, I still don't consider myself a writer, and I'm not trying to be modest. The truth is, I would pick TV or a long walk over 'working on a novel' any day, so there goes any chance I have of being a 'real' writer. Obviously, I'm aware that I write stories. For me, writing is just the least costly and most efficient way to get ideas out; like if I wanted to make a film, I would need actors, a budget, and cameras. To write, all I need is my keypad.

MG: Taken together, as a collection, what do the stories in Typewriter say about our
relationship to the technological world?

JC: This is tricky. I didn't set out to make a point about technology or the Internet. I'd been interested in Internet culture and published a few pieces online; then Mike Young asked to publish a chap, and of course I felt compelled to write more pieces broaching upon the same topic. I'm not
saying the technology motif was arbitrary, only that it was a 'formal device' which wasn't exactly the most intuitive. So the answer is 'I never thought about it.'

MG: One of this collection's strengths is its range when it comes to the narrators or protagonists of the stories. When thinking of technology, it's easy to generalize the technologically savvy into a certain age-group or demographic. What inspired some of these stories' particular points of view?

JC: A lot of the characters are teenagers with problems. I dunno, that time of life just really interests me because it's full of stupidity and profundity—a sacred time because, really, it's when we start dying, like we fully realize what this world is. There's also a lot of post-college ennui that interests me for the same, though somewhat milder, reasons.

MG: I can't be sure if you respect or are disgusted by technology. I get the feeling you're
rather ambivalent?

JC: I neither respect nor am disgusted by it. It's simply there and still fairly new, and it's inevitable that people will write about it, especially 'online writers.' Human tendency is a resilient weed, it obstinately comes out anywhere. With Twitter, Facebook, and all that stuff, I think we just want to be recognized or noticed, just like at a party.

MG: My favorite story is "Garamond." Will you tell us more about it? Anything will do—what inspired it, how long it took to conceive or compose, where or how Gladwell entered into it, when it was written in respect to the other stories in the collection.

JC: I wrote Garamond after Helvetica. I wanted to anthropomorphize fonts—extract them from the vector/virtual world into 'real life' scenarios, sort of alluding to old-fashioned typesetting back when letters were actual objects. Gladwell entered the way he enters all things: with a burst
of hair.

MG: How long did it take you to complete this collection?

JC: I wrote the new pieces in about a week. I feel like I should have spent more time and/or written more, but near the end I felt I was imitating previous pieces, or fluffing words without any actual content. I wanted to keep the collection fresh, so I just stopped.

MG: The final story, "Typewriter," plays a very important role in the collection as a whole. What would you say this role is?

JC: My aim was to leave openings and disjoint meanings, kind of abruptly end it. The conceit here is how a laptop is, in a way, a typewriter, and vice versa. Both, during their respective releases, promised to articulate our enterprises. They are very hopeful objects. The piece acts as a kind of absurd set of instructions for a 'personal laptop typewriter' which implicates the malleability of technology in relation to the body. The marketing jargon pokes at how something so new can become so old, like how the contemporary laptop will be perceived eighty years from now. Apple's technology is years ahead of their marketing to ensure they can always release something new. I think people fetishize technology out of existential dread, like the future quickly becomes the present and the present quickly sucks so we always look towards the future.

MG: What's next for you? Or, what are you working on now?

JC: I want to write longer, more flushed-out pieces, but I can't seem to stay interested in one idea for too long. The more I work on a piece, the worse it gets. This is probably my undoing as a writer. That's why I like internet flash fiction—I can go from one idea to the next. So, the answer to the question is 'nothing new.'