Author Interview: Mario Kluser – part III

Mario on the Brooklyn Bridge

I am thrilled to present the final segment of my interview with my friend Mario Kluser. This was such an enjoyable experience. Mario is so refreshingly free of ennui or any kind of unnecessary drama. He enjoys writing, he loves the work he has produced, and I am proud to be the first one to publish an interview with him in English. So, without further ado, here is the conclusion of our interview.

You can listen to this segment, to the entire interview, download either to your mp3 player, and/or, naturally, read the transcript.

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Ilaria:   One last question before we end the interview: You have a tattoo on you arm.
Mario: Yes.
Ilaria:   That you got during this first visit in New York.
Mario: Yes.
Ilaria:   Your first ever visit in New York.
Mario: And my first tattoo.
Ilaria:   And your first tattoo ever. And this tattoo is inspired by something that happens in one of your novels.
Mario: This tattoo is the tattoo that my main character has on his back.
Ilaria:   Now, is this the first novel or the second one?
Mario: The second.
Ilaria:   The second one. So, Andy.
Mario: Andy, yes.
Ilaria:   So one of the many flashbacks he has, thinking about his tattoos, one of them is about this tattoo.
Mario: One is about this.

Ilaria:   Would you tell that story?
Mario: Yeah. Where have I to start? Andy had this tattoo on his back in prison. In the chapter where he is asked about the tattoo he ends up in hospital, because what follows is a fight with the guards, because he is provoking them. Then comes the flashback about how he got this tattoo. He wanted to have the sentence on his back, “I’d rather die standing than living on my knees.” And to make it more mysterious he wanted it in Chinese letters, and so he put it in Chinese letters on his back. The back story from my part, why I had to put this tattoo into the book, because when I was a young boy I worked in Germany and I had a workmate there, and he had this tattoo on his arm, but not in Chinese letters; but just in German there stood, “Lieber stehen sterben als kniend leben.[Any misspellings in the German are mine.]” And I loved this, I found it impressive, the sentence. So when I came here to New York, Ilaria was that friendly to ask her Chinese friend Qing to translate the sentence in Chinese, in Chinese letters. And it was actually a Chinese… how do you call it, idiom?
Ilaria:   Chinese characters, but there are two kinds.
Mario: Yeah, but the saying.
Ilaria:   Oh, a Chinese idiom, yes, it’s an idiom.
Mario: A Chinese idiom, and it says, “I’d rather get killed than humiliated,” that’s pretty much the same. If you would translate it literally there would be many Chinese symbols and I don’t know if I have that much skin on my body to put it there. So she sent a couple of different kinds to write it in Chinese, the traditional and the more modern kind that looks more like printed. And I chose one of the traditional, and it’s very beautiful.
Ilaria:   And so now the tattoo you have on your arm says, “I would rather be killed than humiliated.”
Mario: Yes.
Ilaria:   In idiomatic Chinese.
Mario: Yes.
Ilaria:   Okay. Well, I was going to ask you a little about National Novel Writing Month, which you participate in, this is your second time participating in it.
Mario: Yes.
Ilaria:   So, National Novel Writing Month is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco that celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. It started out in somebody’s garage with two guys or something, or four guys, whose goal was to write a novel or the first draft of a novel in 30 days, from November 1st to November 30th. And since then hundreds of thousands of people have joined this project every year, and the goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days, and you can upload your word count and your file to the website to make sure… to keep everybody honest. If you reach the 50,000-word goal you “win.” You don’t actually win anything, it’s a competition with yourself. You win the satisfaction of having done it.
Mario: Yes, and you have fun with the guys on Viddler.
Ilaria:   Right. And there are many communities that have grown up around this project. There are people who share their videos on a popular video social networking site on the internet called Viddler, and who share their stories and who read from their books and so on and so forth, and are very entertaining and interesting to watch and fun. But several famous novels have come out of NaNoWriMo. Obviously not the first draft: they were then edited and submitted to publishers. But one very popular novel in the United States called Water for Elephants started as a NaNoWriMo novel. NaNoWriMo being short for National Novel Writing Month. So last year you wrote a novel and you won, you reached the 50,000 word count.
Mario: Yes.
Ilaria:   Are you going to publish that novel as well? Are you going to edit it, or finish it… it’s not finished, right?
Mario: It’s not finished. I promised in one interview to the audience in the Netherlands to publish it in 2008, but I didn’t get that far. It still has to be finished, but it’s a great one.
Ilaria:   Oh, yeah?
Mario: Yeah. It’s a literary thriller too. It’s about a serial killer. I thought one time in your life you have to write about a serial killer. I don’t know if he’s that bad, or if my main character is actually the serial killer. It’s about a Vietnam veteran, the main character, who has post-traumatic stress disorder, and he is admiring a girl he sees regularly on the bus, but he doesn’t dare to speak to her because his social… he’s socially not that good. And on the other hand there is a gap in age, and while here and there murders are happening, and when you read it you suspect him in fact… but at one point the girl speaks to him, and they meet, and then… I don’t know. I don’t know further what happens. But it’s a very tender story.
Ilaria:   That sounds very interesting. Now, were you writing that in English?
Mario: I write it in Dutch.
Ilaria:  Oh, you were writing in Dutch. Because I remember you reading a bit of it… oh, you were translating on the fly.
Mario: Once I had translated on the fly the plot, the back cover text of my first novel. I translated it in English and read it on Viddler.
Ilaria:   No, because this story of the guy on the bus…
Mario: Oh, this was when I…
Ilaria:   A scene on the bus.
Mario: This was when we… when we were doing, or trying to do Script Frenzy.
Ilaria:   Oh, you were going to make a movie of your NaNoWriMo novel, that’s why I remember.
Mario: My idea was to finish my novel, make that film script of the novel, so I know when I finish the script how my book has to end. Because I had no plot in my mind or something. I just wrote out of my stomach. So my first book I wrote out of my head, and the second one, which is the best book in the Netherlands, ever…
Ilaria:   Meaning Loser: Director’s Cut?
Mario: Yes. Maybe I’m the only one who says that, but it’s just true.
Ilaria:   Wait, just let me, for our readers, make one specification: that Script Frenzy is also an initiative of NaNoWriMo, where in April, I believe, every year in April people write a movie or play or television script and that has to be 100 pages of script. You have to reach 100 pages of script in a month. So you were attempting to discover the ending of your third novel, which was your NaNoWriMo 2007 novel, by writing it in the form of a script during Script Frenzy. Okay, and your second novel, you think it’s the best Dutch book ever.
Mario: Yes. For me it is.
Ilaria:   Because you just love the story so much.
Mario: I love the story so much. It’s for a big percentage autobiographical, and of course I overestimated some things.
Ilaria:   Well, you’re not on death row in Detroit, for one thing.
Mario: No, but you… Thank God for that. More symbolic.
Ilaria:   Yes.
Mario: I put very much of myself in it.
Ilaria:   Okay, well I think that’s just about all the time we have today. Thank you so much for giving me this interview.
Mario: You’re welcome.
Ilaria:   It’s been wonderful.
Mario: I can talk for hours about Loser. There is so much to say about Loser.
Ilaria:   I hope this… this may be the first step towards finding an English language publisher for the book.
Mario: One time it has to be translated.
Ilaria:   Well that’s what we’re going to see… if we can make this happen.
Mario: Yeah.
Ilaria:   This will be the beginning. And then we’ll maybe talk to some publishers and agents.
Mario: Yeah, we have to talk to Nicolas Cage about the Orderboek, because he was the inspiration for my main character.
Ilaria:   So he has to be in the movie.
Mario: If it will ever become a movie, he has to play the main part.
Ilaria:   And that was your first novel.
Mario: Yes.
Ilaria:   Well thank you very much, and we will interview you again if you finish the NaNoWriMo novel or you write the script, or you write the script for one of your other two novels into a movie. And then we will have another interview.
Mario: Okay.
Ilaria:   Thank you very much.
Mario: You’re welcome.

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