Macromere Press

Macromere: Since today, September 6th, is the 17th anniversary—or deathiversary, as we should now be calling it—of Christopher Coe’s passing, would you mind telling us about “Christopher”?

David: Not at all. “Christopher” was one of the early ones in the genesis of He Who Shall Remain Shameless. It was written after “Chris” and “Harriet”, and I’m pretty sure it was actually the third story out of all of them to be written. I felt I had something with the concept and themes behind the first two stories, so I thought I’d keep going. I wasn’t sure who was next until I was alone in a classroom at San Francisco State University, where I was then taking some classes for a graduate certificate in post-secondary teaching, and I scanned the bookshelves. I always scan bookshelves when I’m in a room. Anyway, there was a lot of fiction on these shelves, books that no one had picked up or held or otherwise touched in a good long time, and one of the spines was very thin. It stood out to me because it was a Vintage Contemporaries paperback—you know, the ones from the eighties and early nineties that have a very specific design, quite sleek and respectful.

M: They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

D: I took this slim volume down and it was I Look Divine by Christopher Coe. I’d never heard of Christopher Coe. His author photo in the front of the book was haunting. He wasn’t exactly looking to the side, but his head was turned from a direct confrontation with the camera, and he looked as if he didn’t really want his picture taken. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or if he was about to cry. I felt a strong sense of tragedy in this photo, a tragedy that continued into the work itself.

M: We’re ashamed to admit none of us have read I Look Divine yet.

D: You should. It’s a good book. Highly unsettling. Very short. It’s shortness was the thing that struck me the most about it. It’s a novel, but at only 109 pages in paperback format it could really be considered a novella. It works as a novel, though, and it works well. I mean, is He Who Shall Remain Shameless a novel or is it a short story collection?

M: We say it’s a novel. A novel in stories.

D: But is that just a fancy way of saying a linked short story collection?

M: Maybe….Does it matter?

D: Probably not. Sooo…I was fascinated by Christopher Coe, and I decided to research him. I couldn’t find much. But his life, what little of it there was available for the public, what more of it could be created and thus saved by the David Michael Ewald of He Who Shall Remain Shameless, that was worth writing about. So I wrote a new encounter that became “Christopher”. 

M: It’s certainly the shortest of all the stories in HWSRS.

D: It is. Just under 2,000 words. I remember submitting it to the online magazine Morbid Outlook because they wouldn’t accept any story over 2,000 words. And Morbid Outlook accepted it. No changes were made to the submitted story, but significant changes were made between the story published in Morbid Outlook and the version included in He Who Shall Remain Shameless.

M: Such as….

D: Such as an expansion of this idea that drives the entire novel, or novel in stories: Other people on the Internet have Christopher Coe’s name, and David Michael Ewald the narrator and hero is afraid that the Christopher Coe of I Look Divine and Such Times will be replaced permanently by all those other Christopher Coes, even Christopher Coes that have yet to be born. That’s what it means to be ‘Internet dead.’

M: Replaced on the Internet, erased from the Internet—and thus from all public memory. Forgotten in the worst way possible.

D: You got it.

M: A big part of “Christopher” seems to be the discussion of one’s art, and how one’s art may not be enough to sustain the memory of the artist.

D: Exactly. Certainly Mr. Coe’s two novels are out there, but he died tragically before he could write and publish more, and in this meritocracy we now live in, I—like the David Michael Ewald of HWSRS—felt it’s a tragedy to have to be ranked, and therefore judged, in this way.

M: So it comes down to sales rankings.

D: It shouldn’t have to, but that’s one of David Michael Ewald’s biggest sticking points with the Christopher Coe of “Christopher”. The sales rankings of those two novels have to increase, or else.

M: What about your own sales rankings, the ones for He Who Shall Remain Shameless?

D: Believe me: I’m prepared to join Christopher Coe.

M: As are we. Thanks for taking the time etcetera etcetera.

D: Etcetera.

Macromere: Today, July 15th, is the 37th anniversary of the death of Christine Chubbuck, whose ghost happens to be the second the hero and narrator of He Who Shall Remain Shameless encounters. To give us some insight into this story, we talked to the author himself….

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Macromere: This is the one that started it all.

David: That’s right. I wrote “Chris”, the second story in He Who Shall Remain Shameless, back in 2007 before any of the others. For years I had been taken, like many people, with the story of Christine Chubbuck’s on-air suicide, but I hadn’t been able to find much of anything at first. A rendering of her face, a few tidbits here and there, but it wasn’t until late ‘06-early ‘07 that I began to find more information about her. I knew that the footage of the incident had either been lost or destroyed or was well-hidden, never to be revealed, and this footage seemed to be what the majority of people on the Internet were talking about. They all wanted to see it.

M: And that led you to the story….

D: What actually led me to the story was the death of Anna Nicole Smith. I remember it was February 8, 2007, and I was working for a public relations firm in Palo Alto. There was a bar in the offices, a “keginator” as they called it, and also a television above the bar playing CNN that late afternoon. I remember standing at the bar watching the TV when no one else would. They had already seen it, I suppose. But I watched, and I wondered about how much attention Anna Nicole Smith was getting. And I thought also then of Christine Chubbuck, and how she’d died in Florida too, and then I went back to my cubicle, opened my notebook and started writing. I didn’t want to write about Anna Nicole Smith; I wanted to write about Christine Chubbuck. Not just Christine Chubbuck—I wanted to write about the people who wanted to see the footage, I wanted to write about us. And so I went at it…I got some stares from coworkers who walked by, but I had a draft by the time I left work that day. 

M: “Chris” was originally published in The Bend in 2007….

D: It was. The story went through some changes after that, but a lot of it’s stayed the same. David Michael Ewald’s mission in Sarasota, Florida, hasn’t changed from that first draft I wrote in February of ‘07 to what readers will see in He Who Shall Remain Shameless.

M: “I was in Sarasota to find the footage….”

D: I wanted to convey the sadness of what happened that day in July of 1974, but I also wanted to explore the aftermath, the obsession.

M: We believe you have, and we think readers will agree. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, David.

D: Thank you.

Macromere: Today is July 1st, the 99th anniversary of Harriet Quimby’s death and, not coincidentally, the day He Who Shall Remain Shameless really begins. Any thoughts on Harriet—and “Harriet”?

David: “Harriet” was the second story I wrote for what would eventually become He Who Shall Remain Shameless. At that time I didn’t know I was putting together a novel in stories…I just knew that the first story, “Chris”, had been successful, and I thought I’d run with this idea of a guy going around the United States—and soon the rest of the world—seeking out deceased people who could be found on the Internet but who may not have the staying power they could have. The concept was still in its early stages, but at the time I was reading up a lot on early aviation, and I was fascinated by Harriet Quimby, the first American woman to get her pilot’s license, and I thought, Why not have the same narrator from “Chris” encounter the ghost of Ms. Quimby in Boston? Her face haunted me…especially the one of her in her monoplane, smiling, with the amulets around her neck. She had such dark eyes, I felt I was there with her, in that plane, when I looked at that picture.

M: She was a beautiful woman.

D: Definitely. But what struck me was that she was 37 when she died, and she died, according to everything I read, childless, unmarried, which was surprising to me. A woman at that time, I had thought, would be married and have children by the time she was 37. A stereotype, I know, but I did see a connection between Harriet Quimby and Christine Chubbuck, who had also died childless and unmarried—but at 29.

M: Harriet Quimby was different than the majority of women at the time….

D: She was independent, strong-willed, ambitious. She wrote for Hollywood, she wrote articles for magazines, and she wanted a career in aviation. She was on her way to solidifying that career when she died tragically, under mysterious circumstances.

M: How much research did you do to write “Harriet” in particular?

D: A significant amount. I went to the library and checked out books on early aviation…the one that ended up being the most helpful was a Time Life book…It was helpful mostly because of the pictures, which gave me a better sense of what it was like then, how people dressed, how they might have interacted. Taking in those pictures I got a better sense of being there, and this strong sense of time and place helped me to write “Harriet”.

M: You mentioned you received an e-mail from a stranger shortly after “Harriet” was published in The Harrow….

D: Yes. He wasn’t a descendant of Harriet Quimby but rather of William Willard, Harriet’s passenger on that tragic day of July 1, 1912 and a key figure in the story. I was surprised and touched when this descendant, William Willard’s great-great grandson, wrote me to say how much he liked the story and to ask if I had found any further information on his great-great grandfather through my research. We exchanged e-mails, and I found out more about William Willard. He too has a fascinating—and sad—history.

M: Well, David, we appreciate you taking the time to give us some insight on your process for “Harriet”. Until next time…

D: That would be July 15th.

M: July 15th it will be.

Macromere: The protagonist of He Who Shall Remain Shameless is named David Michael Ewald, which just happens to be your name too. From the outset did you intend the novel to have this metafictional aspect? 

David: It’s not really metafiction, because I’m not the David Michael Ewald in this novel. The David Michael Ewald in this novel is younger than me, for one, and he has more hair on his head than I have. We have a similarity in that we’re both tall, but beyond that….I was never in a bike accident like the one he mentions, nor did I ever work for a company in San Diego the way he did before he embarked on his series of missions to save or somehow help the deceased. Not to mention, if I discovered my cellphone could fly and hover and shoot lasers and talk in a British accent, I’d react differently. I’d run away.

M: So…this protagonist is a fictional creation.

D: Most definitely fictional. There are plenty of other David Michael Ewalds out there, and who’s to say some of them aren’t fictional too? We can only go on what the Internet gives us, unless I move to North Carolina and replace the David Michael Ewald who’s living there now. But I wouldn’t want to do that. I like living here in Denver.

M: But you are mentioned in the novel….

D: A few times. “That little-known writer who lives in Denver,” I believe the Meritocrat puts it in the fourth story, “David”, which is also about another David Michael Ewald—only this David Michael Ewald is no longer with us in the flesh, unfortunately.

M: So you are something of a character in He Who Shall Remain Shameless.

D: Not really. I never make an appearance. I set about writing He Who Shall Remain Shameless with the intention of keeping myself out of it as much as possible. I succeeded.

M: Well. This really has been an informative interview sesh, David. Thanks for dialoging with us today.