"The self is, in a sense, a fiction": an interview with Paul Dalla Rosa
As part of our new interview series, Selina Moir-Wilson speaks to Paul Dalla Rosa, author of An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, about art, reading critically, and the process of writing short fiction.
SMW: Your stories have been described as exploring "the beautiful and ugly, dark and funny, tender and vicious contradictions of life in late-stage capitalism". I've noticed your characters are often full of contradictions that thwart easy definition. How are your characters shaped by a dissolving barrier between personal and productive spheres?
PDR: I think everyone is shaped by dissolving barriers between the personal and economic. The idea that socioeconomic forces and wider culture create the individual. The self is, in a sense, a fiction. I believe the self is much more porous than we believe ourselves to be. That said, sometimes, in interviews, I make too grand pronouncements. I’m reading Émile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames at the moment. It's a novel about the rise of the department store. It's almost a hundred and forty years later and consciousness seems about the same. Or maybe Zola was just very good at anticipating the changes that would come with consumerism.
The characters in my book are alienated and commoditised. Often, they commoditise themselves, sometimes without even realising it. Some characters are maybe less aware of this, the forces that act on them and within them, and others are aware but seem somehow trapped. They can't quite find a way out. It's a kind of fatal logic. We live in a society of exploitation, the exploitation of the self built off the exploitation of others. Maybe like in Tao Lin's latest novel they have to leave society, but I don't quite know yet if that's even possible.
SMW: What's your favourite story in An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life and why?
PDR: I think my favourite is "In Bright Light." My answer to this sometimes changes, but I remember that I had a sense of calm when I finished that story. I knew it would end the collection, even though it wasn't the last story to be written. I was happy with it. That's quite rare for me. I tend to hate everything I write as I write it, and then when I get to the end, and I know it's the end, it seems like something abject that I don't ever want to see again. "In Bright Light" was different.
Maybe that's for reasons I don't even know. Maybe it's because I had to make the greatest leap from my own subjectivity, which was satisfying. Or perhaps it's that I feel like it does something outside of what I'd done before, and maybe that answered something for me—it felt like an off-ramp from the book and out into the world.
SMW: How did you first come to writing?
PDR: I came to writing quite late. Well maybe not that late. I was about 19. I never really wanted to be a writer growing up and I think I'm lucky for that. I was always reading a lot and I remember at 18 being given an issue of The Lifted Brow. I remember there was a Tom Cho story I really found to be incredible. Then I was reading The Paris Review, and contemporary fiction at that time seemed very exciting. I became enamoured with it. From there, I began to write my own.
SMW: Your longform fiction piece "Day Spa" appeared in Voiceworks Retrograde in 2017. How has your style evolved since then?
PDR: I'm probably the worst person to answer this question. I don't think my style has diverged greatly. "Day Spa," if I remember correctly was written in 2015. I started working on the collection the next year. I think the difference is more in refinement or skill. I have the ability to do things now that I didn't then. The stories were clumsier, or I found that I couldn't reach over the gulf between what I wanted a story to be and what the story was. Also, I've changed from the person I was then. I've lived more and that, in turn, feeds into the stories and not just on a technical level but what I'm able to reach emotionally.
SMW: Do you have any recommendations for young writers of short fiction starting out?
PDR: I would recommend reading but perhaps reading critically. I don't think you need to do an MFA or study writing to be a writer. Someone once said something very wise to me, creative writing classes aren't about teaching you how to write but how to read. If you know how to read, you really can teach yourself. Find the stories that in some way move you, and take the time to think about what about it moves you. What is it that excites you? How is it constructed? Think about the differences between what your work is doing and what they're doing.
People can also waste a lot of time comparing their work to what's being published in x journal or y magazine, when they don't even like what's being published there. To me, this defeats the point of writing. Go directly to what animates you. It's also important to remember that art isn't just self-expression. You have to work on it, which can be difficult and sometimes even painful. It's a craft. It takes time.
SMW: What do you tend to focus on first when you're writing a story? E.g. character, imagery, an idea/question?
PDR: It really is dependent on the story. I know that's not a very helpful answer. Something might strike me. A job, a location, something someone said in conversation. Sometimes I'll start a story, and it just isn't working, but there's some facet of it that's more interesting, and that's the actual story. Whatever that might be. There isn't really a formula that's replicable. This is why it can be quite difficult to teach. At the end of one story I have no idea how I will write the next one. I often think writing the next thing will be impossible, that I'm washed up. I'm over. Once I accept that, I can write the next one.
Paul Dalla Rosa is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. His stories have appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Meanjin and New York Tyrant. In 2019, his story ‘Comme’ was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. He is currently undertaking his PhD at RMIT University, studying ‘the real’ within contemporary fiction. An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life is his debut collection.
Selina Moir-Wilson (23) is a writer and artist. They edit comics and non-fiction at Voiceworks and are a co-editor at Layabout. They were a 2021 Toolkits: Graphic Narratives participant and their work has appeared in Voiceworks, Layabout, Farrago and George Paton Gallery.
We have 1 copy of An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life (Allen and Unwin) to give away to a lucky subscriber along with a copy of Voiceworks #108, ‘Retrograde’.
Subscribe to Voiceworks before June 30 to go in the draw.