Q&A With Kyle E. Miller, Author of The Idiot’s Garden

DUMBO Press: Tell us about your latest release, The Idiot’s Garden!
Kyle E. Miller: The earliest appearance of TIG in the world was an imaginary forward to the speculated 25th anniversary edition of the novel. Getting ahead of myself, I know, but that act manifested the idea in the world, and I think that's part of the reason the book got written. I wrote this speculative forward during a writing workshop, and the idea of actually writing the book gestated in my head for a while longer. Around then, I also realized that much of my recent work was focused on overcoming challenges, themes of victory and triumph, healing. I was trying to heal myself through writing. Like a form of sympathetic magic. A literary poppet. Once I was conscious of it, I could make it work for me rather than being at the mercy of it. And it became fundamental to TIG.
DP: This is such an experimental work – what types of literary devices did you employ? Can you name some of your literary inspirations for this book?
KEM: I don't really think of writing in terms of literary devices. A novel isn't built like a house from discrete units of language. This is how creative writing is often taught, not because it works, but because we don't know what else to say. So much of what makes writing good happens spontaneously, intuitively. What works in theory only occasionally works on paper, and sometimes the most thoughtless scraps become, together, an enduring novel. Speculative fiction writer Paul Park once said that learning to write is one half tedious technical stuff, taught by someone who knows what they're doing, and one half blundering ahead on your own. I mostly blunder ahead. I don't know beforehand whether something will work, or how it will work. The act of writing is largely mysterious to me, and I think that's why I like it.
Much of the inspiration for TIG was non-fiction. Evolutionary theory, posthuman philosophy, medieval history. Some fiction inspirations include Gene Wolfe, John Cowper Powys, Antoine Volodine (for Orn), and Virginia Woolf.
DP: What does your writing process look like? Do you have a consistent routine, or are you more sporadic in your work?
KEM: My writing life is sporadic, mutable, shape-shifty. When the moon's full, I can't write, my head captured by pointless obsession. When it's not, I can't write either, but for different reasons, because life's too interesting. And then there are those few good days of unknown providence during which three chapters fall out of my head like that's what it was made for. I wouldn't recommend it. You should probably write every day or something like that.
DP: What element of this book are you most proud of? Do you see this book as a representation of events in your own life? If so, what made you decide to pursue allegorical writing about yourself?
KEM: I wouldn't describe TIG as representative of events in my life, no, and it's definitely not allegorical, but of course it carries some aspect of my spirit. But is it personal? No. I tried to write it with the neutral light of the cosmos in my hand. I don't like writing about myself; I find it tedious even to keep a journal. I spend enough time ruminating about myself. In fact, I find autofiction and its associated schools of writing vaguely nauseating.
DP: How did you know when this book was finished?
KEM: Apparently, that's one of the trickiest things about writing a novel. Not knowing when to stop. Accepting the fact that when you look at the book again in six months, you'll find things you want to change. I think it's much more difficult to let a novel go compared to a short story. It wants to keep evolving. But generally, once a piece is finished, something in my mind clicks back into place. A tab closes. Something goes to sleep.
DP: The ending doesn’t feel like a conclusion, but, rather, a jumping off point. What do you want readers to take away from the ending of this book?
KEM: I have to be careful here, not to reveal too much. Much of the meaning is located in the work leading up to comprehension. There are two endings to TIG: the first is chronological according to the narrative itself, and the second is chronological according to the way the words appear on the pages. The one you're referring to is the latter. There are multiple ways to interpret this ending, at least two. Everything you need to know is in the book.
DP: It’s an interesting title, The Idiot’s Garden. You don’t often see those concepts linked, and it feels a bit contrasting. How did it come about, and how do you see its relation to the story?
KEM: I think the title came to me spontaneously. I can't quite remember, but the title may have appeared before any other idea or word associated with the novel, presupposing them, as is sometimes the case. The title appears; all the rest follows in its wake (which isn't meant to sound easy). It's like acquiring or discovering a rhythm, as Virginia Woolf once described the foremost necessity in writing. Find a rhythm, a wave. "A sight, an emotion," she said, "creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it." It was that way. A sight, an emotion. The Idiot's Garden is the Earth. You're meant to wonder, to what degree and in what way is the Earth an "idiot"? Is the course of evolution like the drunk man who falls off the wagon and picks himself back up unharmed? Is it possible to meddle too much, to remove the wine from the man's cup, or will all our meddling be drawn into the circle too?
DP: You were involved in a house fire earlier this year, shortly after finishing TIG. How are you holding up since then?
KEM: I don't know. I'm a very materialistic person. Not in the way we normally use the word, which actually implies disrespect for material things. I relate to objects the way most people only relate to other people. They aren't necessarily replaceable. I'm still rebuilding. Earlier in the year, I didn't want to rebuild. I couldn't find the energy. It didn't seem worthwhile. The sound of a smoke alarm still lights up my nervous system.
DP: During your healing process, we went through several editing phases. Did the fire change your approach to this work? Has it changed your approach to writing or life in general?
KEM: I don't think the fire changed my approach to revising TIG, but every experience imprints itself on you in subtle, indirect, secret ways. This is something I try to teach my students, that novel experience, being in an idiosyncratic relationship with reality, getting your fingers dirty, demanding something from life ─ and giving as much of yourself ─ is essential to being a writer, an artist, whatever. Being a person, really. It's not so much that experiences give you something to write about, though they do that too, but rather that they alter your consciousness, add layers of texture, create depth behind each sentence… something like that. You become more of the world. It's as if, with each new experience, the atoms that comprise your body wake up to more of their memories, recalling the other bodies they were once part of and the events they once witnessed. And that informs your writing.
DP: You studied non/narrative in grad school. Now that you’ve graduated, would you say you’ve departed from that school of thought? How does it continue to influence you? Would you say TIG rebukes or celebrates the non/narrative, or both?
KEM: I've always been drawn to unconventional narrative fiction, which doesn't necessarily eschew narrative entirely, but finds new narrative shapes and textures. I think that's what I prefer, though I like anything if it's done well enough. I find some experiments in non/narrative to be tedious and desperate, and I don't trust people who become too clever for stories, but there are things you can learn from that approach. In practice, I don't really draw a sharp distinction between the two. TIG is somewhere in between a fairly traditional adventure story overgrown with toxic and intoxicating blossoms.
DP: It’s safe to say TIG is a work of post-apocalyptic fiction. What is the importance of writing in that genre, considering today’s socio-political climate? Do you see your work as a three-way intersection of commentary, critique, and entertainment, or something else?
KEM: It's funny, I've never thought of TIG as a post-apocalyptic novel, and yet it is one, by definition. Aesthetically, it's closer to a utopia. If it's anything in addition to a short novel, I think it's more of a philosophical text than commentary or critique. Along the way, it started communicating a kind of organic philosophy. But it's definitely not critique. I repudiate the critics, invulnerable in their white spires. TIG was originally intended to exist out of context from the present, somewhat in reaction to the contemporary obsession with "the social," mostly as it's presented in the humanities. You know how a literature class is a kind of sociology class now, though the methodology differs, of course. By presenting a time and place with no easily traceable ties to our own, TIG doesn't allow you to fall back on the sociopolitical tropes of today. During the writing of the book, these ideas eventually fell away and I stopped caring about whether I was writing it in 2025 or 2125.
DP: In this work, the organic and inorganic seem to be in conversation. In that sense, tell us about the epitaph (“I have sympathy for all matter without hierarchy”). Do you see a dividing line between the living and non-living, or are they inextricably linked? Can empathy for the nonliving be a virtue in today’s world?
KEM: Maybe. Is the root of discrimination a disgust of those lower in the hierarchy of the order of nature? What if the order were flattened? I don't know; I would hate to moralize. But one idea I hope TIG brings to mind is how arbitrary some of our divisions can be. The line between living and non-living, for example, only looks like a hard line from one level of observation. And the hybrids that fall between our categories ─ virus, zombie, robot ─ betray the arbitrary nature of those categories.
DP: What can a literary study of ecology do for bridging the gaps of isolation?
KEM: I'm afraid we might be on our own in this. The broad vision of a communal, interconnected Mother Nature is just as fallacious and slanted as nature red in tooth and claw. Non-human nature can't necessarily teach us anything about ourselves. There's no way of being human that is more natural than any other: how could it be so? Nature isn't an Aesop's Fables to be searched for morals and lessons. The rabbit's life isn't a direct corollary to our own. What's good to the rabbit might be evil to humans. And yet we all share certain things… How alien are other Earth-forms? That's something that fascinates me. I don't think we know. Maybe we can't.
DP: The chapter “The Doctrine of Signatures” is quite powerful in its rhetoric. It seems to be talking about itself, explaining what this work is trying to do through language. You write, “Words make things seem simpler than they are.” Can you explain a little more what this line means? Is writing itself a kind of paradox?
KEM: It must be, but with that chapter I'm not making any definitive statement about language. Not that that quote or this chapter is a red herring. I'm asking a question. Does language simplify or complicate reality? Now that I've asked it, I don't think I really care, though I think language generally simplifies, reduces the mystery of a thing to a sign. Ultimately, I don't think language has as much power to shape reality or perception as is commonly believed in the humanities. We've imbued words with too many metaphysical powers. Maybe it's all the Derrida, or Wittgenstein, who, when he helped kill metaphysics, transferred its power to language.
DP: Can you talk about the work from the angle of its chapters? Not only are they nonlinear, but they take different shapes, too. Is this a puzzle for you? How do they all fit together? I’d also love to hear about the thought that went into the double-column structure of some chapters. How does that change the syntax?
KEM: The interstitial chapters are modeled after medieval broadsheets, which often announced the appearance of monsters, miracles, natural or supernatural wonders. They're like "news" from around the world of TIG, tall tales, eye-witness sightings, anecdotes. The nature of the chapters is similar to the way I idealize or imagine a society: grandiosely interdependent. Each unit is its own thing, answers to its own laws, and yet each unit is also deeply connected with every other unit, not by possession, but by nature: they are all adjacent in the same book. They don't necessarily have to get along. There's no coercion to conform behavior. And yet if one chapter were to step too far out of line, the others would combine to reign it in. The balanced force of their combined aesthetic, their general manner, which honors the part and the whole, sees everything in its place.
DP: Obviously, TIG fights conventional structure and narrative. Do you see this work as a rebuke of assumed structures? Conversely, in what ways does TIG follow mainstream narrative? How far away from the well-trodden trail are you willing to take your writing without getting lost?
KEM: Why wouldn't I want to get lost?