Robert Kloss Interview
[GS-INT-015]
Robert Kloss is the author of five novels, including THE GENOCIDE HOUSE (Bridge, 2024) and A LIGHT NO MORE and THE WOMAN WHO LIVED AMONGST THE CANNIBALS, both reprinted by Inside the Castle in 2022. He lives in Chicago with his wife, the writer and musician Meghan Lamb, and their cat, Daniel Day-Lewis.
Based on your writing alone, it's clear you work in a ritualistic manner. Was this always the case, or is there a point in time where writing tapped into something more for you?
Hmmmm. I suppose it depends on what you mean by ritualistic?
I would say I mean it in a less religious, informal way. Meaning with reverence.
To be honest, I wouldn't describe my working process as anything other than opportunistic. I learned many years ago to take advantage of whatever free time I can. My schedule is always shifting, so my process is always shifting. And that's been of a benefit--it keeps me from getting too locked into one way of doing things--and it's kept me from being as focused and productive as I'd like.
Do you find that helpful or are you just adapting? Or perhaps it puts some extra positive pressure on it?
And was there ever a time when you struggled with wanting to work on something but were unable to find time to do so in that moment?
I don't find it helpful, no. My working methods are about adaptation and survival. Ideally I'd work daily from 7 or 8am through noon, take a break, and come back to the work in the late afternoon. I've found that kind of routine and immersion fruitful. The more time I have to mentally stretch out the more I can focus on the bigger picture--the plot and direction of the work, the themes, etc.--in a way that I find impossible when I'm fighting to find an hour here and there to actually write. Then I'm focused on smaller tasks, what can be accomplished in that time. And increasingly I have to spend a lot of that time relearning what I'm working on, looking over older drafts, notes, things like that. So it's not just about not having the time to physically work--I'm mentally unable to think about what I'm working on with the kind of focus and precision that I find necessary. In the end I suppose there is something gained from this kind of method, certain qualities arise--my writing has become increasingly fragmented, for instance--that would never have otherwise developed.
Your writing reflects your life. What about the subject matter, what about your life influences what you write about?
On one hand, I'm sure all writers, in one way or another, draw from their own experiences, either consciously or subconsciously. Our lived experiences have to inform, one way or another, our work. I can point to specific instances in my work that are drawn from my life--conversations I've had, people I've known, incidents I've been involved in or witnessed, dreams I've had etc. But I try not to think about where things come from--I think that too much distracts from the work itself. If an idea comes from my life or someone else's life or a film I've seen or a book I've read or whatever it amounts to the same thing. And hopefully I've retranslated it in a way that makes the original text new and interesting.
That said, I also think that any correspondence between my life and my work, the themes of my work and the themes of my life, perhaps come out of some shared origin. Who can say where my interests and obsessions first emerged. I don't get into self-analysis in that way--I'd rather some things remain mysterious. I do know that many of the things I'm interested in today would have or did interest me when I was much younger. Where did the interest in the macabre or in American history first come from? How do those origins overlap with my life, my experiences? I have no idea.