February 20–27, 1997

20 questions

Matt Ruff

By Jim Gladstone

Background

The minuscule bio on the back jacket of Sewer, Gas & Electric (Atlantic) — a stuffed-to-the-seams new novel of eco-terrorism, satirical Ayn Rand worship and laughs-a-plenty — simply says: "Matt Ruff is the author of Fool on the Hill. He lives in Philadelphia."

In fact, 31-year-old Ruff just arrived in Philadelphia this past May by way of Georgia, Manhattan, Ithaca, Hartford, Boston and Maine to settle down with his longtime Society Hill girlfriend who works at Center City's world-renowned Baumann Rare Books. The two plan to marry this fall. Which is sweet. As are Ruff's rather remarkable books.

His ricocheting plots are littered with everything from trolls and dragons to snooty academics, nuclear submarines and bottled genies. Buffoon-puncturing sarcasm and parodic invention aside, Ruff is, at heart, a gentle humanist and his books prove ultimately uplifting. He's got a rare knack for modern fantasy, mixing the timeless-mythical and the contemporary-mundane with shimmering, alchemic flair.

Ruff majored in creative writing at Cornell University (Ithaca's landscape is as much a factor in Fool on the Hill's title as the Beatles are). His senior thesis turned into a first novel thanks to an academic advisor — author Alison Lurie — who saw promise and generously introduced Ruff to her agent. No less than Thomas Pynchon offered high praise for Fool and the early reviews for Sewer are stellar.

City Paper appropriately sat down with Ruff at Xando, the local coffee house with a name most like a medieval potentate.

In the eight years since you graduated college, have you made your entire living as a novelist?

I've been really lucky that way. In the first summer after I graduated, I worked in a lesbian cooperative bookstore/cafe in Hartford, CT, which is really about the only element of character in that entire city. I was a lousy waiter, so it was great to learn that Fool was going to be published. It became a bit of a college cult novel here. I'm amazed to go onto the Internet and find that people still make mention of it. That's incredibly satisfying. I mean, those are the real readers, not critics or anyone with a financial interest in the book or the book business.

But minor cultism doesn't keep you in chips and dip for nearly a decade, does it?

No. My security has come from the fact that the German translation of the book was a huge seller. The German publisher sent me on a 25-city reading tour of the country; that's about four times as many cities as I'll tour here in the United States. . . And in Germany, the bookstores pay you to do the reading. It's a whole different phenomenon than here. You're really respected for being a writer; you're not just out there as a salesman with a product. You're expected to hang out in a bar with all the bookstore people after each appearance, too. It's like a rock star thing, almost. I'm looking forward to doing it again with the new book.

Eight years is a long time between books. Where were you?

Well, I did write another book in between, Venus Envy, It was a lesbian vampire thing. But my publisher didn't really think it was good enough to put out. People don't realize that things like that can happen even to a "successful" author. But it worked out fine.

But it also took a long time because I really am a slow writer, too. For many years as a kid, I wrote on an IBM Selectric, not a computer, so I don't have this attitude where you can write down anything and then change it easily. I use a computer now, but I still think long and hard about every sentence before it goes down. It takes me a long time to get going on a project, but then I fall into it. Even so, I am not one of these disciplined x-hours a day writers. Some days I write a lot, some days I don't do any at all.

Does it feel luxurious or agonizing to write over such a long period?

Well, I'll tell you. It kills you to see your ideas blow up in your face. One of the original subplots of Sewer, Gas & Electric involved a mailman with his ex-wife in a mail truck that terrorists had rigged with an atomic bomb. If the truck slowed down below a certain speed. . . well, you get the idea. I had to scrap the whole thing. People would think Keanu Reeves was my muse. Then again, I have these green activists in a submarine which is pretty much the same as Spielberg's Seaquest TV series. In that case, the series both entered and exited public consciousness while I was still typing away.

Your work is not at all typical of your generation of writers, where do the stories come from?

My father was a Lutheran minister, my mother grew up in a missionary family in the jungles of Brazil and my grandparents were ice cream manufacturers in Michigan. I have lots of step-siblings and half-siblings and we always had a wild house full of different types. That's really what I write about. All these different sorts of characters colliding.

What contemporary authors do you count among your influences?

I love Mark Helprin, particularly the fantasy elements of A Winter's Tale — although it was a little disconcerting to actually meet him and find him to be a very conservative, businessman sort. I love a guy called Wilton Barnhardt, whose book, Gospel, is the sort of galloping, huge-casted beast that I like to write. As a kid, I liked the Mad Scientists' Club series, the Alvin Fernald, Superweasel books. As a teenager, I loved Stephen King, who I now dislike with the kind of intensity you can only have for something you were once fond of.

So what comes next?

I have an idea, but I can't say it or someone else might use it! I don't have a new book contract or anything, so, who can say what will happen. Things will work out, though. I'm the luckiest guy I know.

Matt Ruff will be reading on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 7:30 p.m. at Borders Book Shop, 1727 Walnut St., 568-7400.