Anything goes in Kyle Seibel’s debut story collection. The former mayor of Baghdad opens a popular restaurant, whose eventual failure one resident worries about. A disgraced teacher recruits former students to back him up at a hearing. Newlyweds get locked in U-Hauls, a Taco Bell manager hits on an employee, a couple purchases a rollercoaster house, and a father breaks his decision to stop treatment over road trip sandwiches. Hey You Assholes is an agile, deft collection with a wicked sense of humor and an undercutting of deep, fearless humanity.
Our Culture sat down with Kyle Seibel to chat about the idea of the loser, playing, his experience in the military, and more.
Congratulations on your debut collection! I know it went through some phases, how did it get to Clash?
The press that initially put the book under contract went up in flames at the last minute, right before the book was supposed to launch. I had done, at that point, a lot of press for it. And then there were no books to be shipped. I had booked myself all these interviews that I ended up doing anyway, which got enough attention [for] Clash. It was not a straight line to publication, for sure, but there’s been so much confirmation that Clash was the right home for it.
Let’s start with the idea of the underdog. Your characters are down and out, yearning, reminiscing, pleading. What draws you to this archetype?
I think there’s a certain kind of spirituality of the loser, something biblical. It becomes really relatable when viewed through the prism of, ‘Have I ever felt like this?’ I think it’s repeatable in so many situations and scenarios, and I it’s interesting for me to find different ways to sympathize with jerks and assholes and nobodies and losers. I think they are my people, in a lot of ways; I’m always drawn to that kind of person. I don’t know if I’d consider myself a member of that community, but I certainly am an observer and enjoyer.
‘I swear I’m not actually a loser, I just love writing about them!’
Yeah, I’m not a jerk, but I play one on Twitter. I like finding pathos in those situations; they’re ripe for some kind of emotional pivot. I think that’s what I look for in fiction and what I respond to, and why I was inspired to write these stories.
There’s a lot more material when you’re on your knees rather than on top of the world. I’m thinking of “Roller Coaster House” or “The World’s Biggest Moron Stops Laughing,” the narrator of which deals with his father’s cancer diagnosis and wife’s infidelity at the exact same time.
Yeah, someone else mentioned that these stories were about ‘men in crisis.’ That’s interesting to me because it seems such a serious diagnosis of these stories that can sometimes feel kind of silly. Not silliness, maybe, but elements that don’t feel especially literary — I like to find those moments and make them literary.
I think “Mr. Bananaman” is the most emblematic of the collection — so funny, very real, men in crisis, vomit.
I’m so glad you think so — it was an idea I was playing with for a long time, a disgraced teacher. It’s one of the longer pieces; I’m so much more confident about the shorter pieces, I feel a little more exposed in a longer one.
So the shorter the story, the more confident you are?
I don’t know, I feel comfortable in a certain range or length, or at least I feel really confident in my ability to maintain control of a story in that space. I don’t know if that speaks to my immaturity as a writer or my natural preferences, but I like that in a shorter story, it feels really boiled down. It’s usually a challenge, having a complex idea or an experience you want to relate, and it forces you to put it into this really short space. And having it be a narrative, too, so there’s a change, and a choice — it’s an interesting challenge for me as a writer.
Two stories, “As Planned, We Stopped for Sandwiches,” and “A Thin Layer of Frost Over Old Decorations,” communicated sadness so well, but both did so, it seemed, as quickly as possible. Was this strategic?
[For] “A Thin Layer…” I really wanted to write a love story, but I didn’t want it to be sentimental, and I wanted a little bit of a rug pull, where you think these characters will have an illicit hookup. That’s the zag that I wanted that story to take — you think what they’re gonna do will be lurid, and what it is ends up being quite innocent. To do that, really stripping the interiority of the characters was necessary — it feels like these words and the evening itself is so quiet and spare.
I think how you approach your readings is so interesting and hilarious.
Not all pieces work in the live setting. I have a handful that work really well as monologues, and I think they work well because there’s an element of panic to the narrative that works well live, there’s some urgency about the delivery. I don’t think about performing when I’m writing, but it is afterwards when I’m thinking of how it might play to an audience and how it might be enhanced by a performance. That’s very fun to me, it feels like recess. You’re just getting to play. I have been to readings where people have no fun, and it’s a choice! But one that I think is boring. My rule for readings is ‘Don’t be boring.’
I did this reading in New York last week, and someone wrote about it and said, ‘Kyle Seibel shouted at us for 5 minutes. I guess that’s what he does.’ I was like, ‘I think it’s a little more sophisticated than that. I’m certainly using volume as a tool.’ But I don’t mind that people think it’s a shtick. Guess what? The biggest schtick of all, you’re a writer, you showed up to this thing. Sorry that I’m having some fun.
Like, would you rather it be in a flat monotone?
Part of it is that I am nervous, and then using the energy of being nervous is part of the performance. It comes out in a rush. Actually doing the performance, then you feel almost hidden by it, and you can lean into it, then it’s not you being silly, it’s this character you’re doing.
In his grief, the narrator of “I Suppose You’ll Want to Know Something About My Life Now” accidentally goes on a run with a boner in some pretty revealing shorts, and when stopped by a police officer, blames it on his dead grandmother. I didn’t write a question about this, I just wanted to talk about it.
I don’t know if you know, but in the event of high stress, where your body produces an enormous amount of adrenaline, like the narrator of the story, a couple of things can happen. There’s a blood flow cutoff, and in the aftermath, when the adrenaline leaves your body, it can produce some physiological effects that are not sexual. So I wanted to play with that idea. I’m not a runner, this didn’t happen to me, but I was on my bike one time and the day my grandma died, I almost got hit by this woman, and I just screamed in her face. Halfway through, I was like, ‘I’m unloading on this lady. It has nothing to do with what’s going on.’ It was all about the swell of emotion of losing someone. So part of it is real. Another thing is that there’s a certain vulnerability that comes with losing someone. You’re reminded of all the loss. You start to see harmonies in different things and meaning where you wouldn’t otherwise because you’re in this vulnerable place; this guy who’s having this public shame, the cop was nice to him, so it’s okay… I think it puts you into a space where you’re hyperaware of things you might not otherwise understand or see.
Let’s talk about “The Former Mayor of Baghdad,” which communicates American interference on a small, neighborhood level, with a drunk guy badgering the Iraqi restauranteur with wisdom he already knows. “American helping,” the mayor says. “I know this story.”
Yeah, this is another great example of why I’m fascinated by the loser. This guy is just not having a great couple of weeks, he’s playing hooky from work. I didn’t write the story with the idea that he’s a veteran, but people have read into it. I think that’s great, it’s interesting if you apply that layer. It’s something that’s so relatable, you understand your world through your problems. And this guy understands the world has so many bigger problems than this guy has. Everybody knows he’s so far behind, and he realizes it’s on him to catch up. That’s my postage stamp-sized story. The idea that it’s a critique of foreign policy… I like that too. That works.
Maybe I was finding meaning when you were just playing.
Meaning is always ephemeral. There’s a sense that these characters need to make a choice, for the story to end, even if it’s making no choice, if that doesn’t sound too up my own butt. But maybe in “Baghdad,” the end is that the guy is going to return to life, which is a triumph, I guess. I don’t really talk about the meaning of my stories too much. I find it like working out a new muscle.
Well, when you said it’s like recess, that reminded me I was talking to someone when reading this book, who said that a book has to have meaning. I was like, ‘No it doesn’t!’
I don’t think it has to start out meaning anything — you’re absolutely right. In fiction, I think there’s no need to play by rules. You can do anything. When I write something, and it feels like furniture that’s been in other stories of mine, or at least in ones I recognize. Because literary fiction has its own genre conventions — ‘the bar story,’ ‘the divorced guy story.’ They’re tropes that I employ as well. If you’re really embracing a sense of play, you automatically introduce new energy into those conventions, and I think it always yields interesting results. I think good stories have a lot of tension in them, and that has meaning.
I want to talk about your experience in the Navy with the collection; obviously, there are many characters in the military, but I was curious if you were thinking about fiction while you were there, or if it came later.
I wasn’t writing in the Navy, but I probably should have been. I wish I had taken better notes. I have some notebooks, but usually they’re just a good place for names. Recently my mom sent me a huge box of shit — have you gotten a box of shit from your mom yet?
It’s all at her place — I have one drawer in the guest room.
My mom has decided, no more stuff. So she sent it to all the kids. And in mine, there’s a lot of Navy correspondence and awards, so if I’m looking to populate a setting or scene, I’ll look through the box, which can set off synapses. That can be really helpful. I was always reading in the Navy, but my job was not particularly creative. I think I had an idea that I’d write about the experience in some regard, even though I didn’t know what shape that would take. I think I needed the distance from it. I got out in 2015, and I didn’t start writing until 2019. I needed to process and figure out how I wanted to express my feelings about it. And the answer is that my feelings are complicated. What I’m left with oftentimes when I’m looking back, ‘Was this time in my life worth it? Would I have changed it?’… I’m left with the stories of people. And it feels like an easy way out, but it’s really not. Some of them were unkind and violent and despicable and unlikeable and on occasion those same people could show more humanity to someone else than I’ve seen before. So I’ve reckoned those two ideas, of what I’ve known and what I’ve seen about other people — that they’re awful and ugly and also will surprise you too.
I want to talk about Master Guns, the title character of the last story. His line of dialogue really got to me — “No man, I mean [fuck] everyone. My personal philosophy. Don’t… Don’t be like me.” I heard and saw so many people in his attitudes.
“Master Guns” has the most real-life stuff in it than the rest of the book; it’s a lot of condensing for the timeline of the story, but a lot of it was taken from my first deployment. This senior enlisted guy came in, who was such a character. He was so small, like a pitbull. He’d leave notes on my desk, like ‘I love Nancy Pelosi’ — he just thought I was this big liberal. I have no idea why. We developed this sincere affection for each other over the course of the cruise. He wasn’t in big trouble, he just needed some counseling. But the larger criminality was taken from this guy, who was such a fuckup. He was just another one of these guys who were held up as totems of morality and characters, ‘These are the khakis, the fuckin’ chiefs,’ and they’re just as heinous as anyone else. That guy got in big trouble.
Finally, what’s next? I know you also have a novel.
I wish I had more motivation to work on any of the novel projects — I have two finished manuscripts. I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re publishable or ready-to-go; they’re just book-shaped objects. I have no motivation to go in and figure out what’s wrong with them. But I’m writing short stories right now, and they’re all unfortunately similar-themed, so maybe I’m writing another collection. They’re all based in the military, they all have a speculative element. I don’t know what’s gonna come of it, but I am having a good time exploring.
Hey You Assholes is out now.
