Synopsis—Vignettes of a middle-class American family told through lists, each reflecting their obsessions, their complaints, their desires, and their humanity.
A suburban family of four—a man, woman, boy, and girl—struggle through claustrophobic days crowded with home improvement projects, conflicts at work and school, a job loss, illnesses, separation, and the wearying confrontation with aging. The accoutrements of modern life—electronic devices and vehicles—have ceased to be tools that support them and have become instead the central fulcrums around which their lives wheel as they chase “cleanliness” and other high virtues of middle American life.
Matthew Roberson is the author of three novels, 1998.6, Impotent, and List, and the editor of a critical book, Musing the Mosaic. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as Fourteen Hills, Fiction International, and Western Humanities Review. He teaches at Central Michigan University, in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Read More By and About Matt:
Short Story: Midwestament
Poem: “Do Not”
Board Member: Fiction Collective 2
Interview: The Collagist
Review: Impotent
How Matt Roberson Became a Writer:
This is the next installment in the How to Become a Writer interview series, which will post here at Ph.D. in Creative Writing every other Sunday (or so) until I run out of writers to interview, or until they stop saying yes. Each writer answers the same 5 questions. Thanks to Matt for saying yes!
1. Why did you want to become a writer?
From early on I loved reading and language. I read anything I could get my hands on and went through all the genres, science fiction, fantasy, mystery. Eventually, I found myself most interested in books that could also really help me explore what it means to be human, and I went on a Vonnegut kick, and then Nabokov, Atwood, Pynchon. It became clear to me early, too, that I could express myself and tell stories and entertain with the written word in ways I couldn’t any way else, and so I always wrote.
2. How did you go about becoming a writer?
Writing was always just something I enjoyed, and I always got a good response to my writing when I was a kid. In secondary school and in college I wrote for newspapers, and fiction for classes. Once I started placing some of my fiction, I realized that’s what I wanted to keep doing—sharing my ideas and stories with audiences.
3. Who helped you along the way, and how?
So many people. Creative writers often have very strong and supportive communities, thankfully. So I had many peers reading and encouraging my work in grad school and a couple of very smart, talented mentors then and after. Cam Tatham, for one. Ron Sukenick. Then I realized that what I was writing shared a lot of interests in common with FC2 authors like Cris Mazza and Lance Olsen and Lidia Yuknavitch and Jeffrey Deshell, and I just gravitated to that clan–which is still doing some of the most exciting, adventurous, NOVEL novels around. I’m very proud to have done List most recently through FC2.
4. Can you tell me about a writer or artist whose biography inspires you?
I feel like it’s kind of weird to say this, but I’m less interested in the lives of writers and artists. It’s their work I find important. I actually got a kick out of writers who played around with making “themselves” characters in their books, people like Raymond Federman, because they toyed with the idea of what’s real and fiction, and, guess what—there’s no clear line.
5. What would you say in a short letter to an aspiring writer?
If writing is important to you, and you want to keep doing it, keep doing it, every day, or every day you can, and read like a crazy person, and get involved in a writing community, because we don’t do this in a vacuum, and good for you, because it’s important that we love language and crafting it.
*Tomorrow, visit Book Puke to follow the tour and read an excerpt of List plus Matt’s insights from the passage: what he was thinking while he was writing, the trail of thoughts that got him there, and a whole lot more!
ph.d. in creative writing 