Greg Gerke: Artist Profile and Upcoming Book Reading

Greg Gerke is a writer living in Buffalo.  The native of Wisconsin, who grew up in the City of Milwaukee, will have a reading of his novel, There's Something Wrong with Sven, a collection of short stories and flash fiction, at Talking Leaves Books! 3158 Main Street location, on November 4th at 7PM.  It is a book riddled with odd characters.

We had a chance to speak with Gerke about his book, his craft in general, the path that led him to writing books, and his newfound life in Buffalo.

Gerke originally went to school to be a filmmaker and made some student films, but somewhere in the middle of these studies he became more enamored of writing screenplays. He wrote one to be filmed in Paris with Juliette Binoche and Jennifer Jason Leigh as the main actresses. Gerke then sent it to Robert De Niro's Tribeca company, but it was not accepted; he was describing how the camera should move--not a traditional screenplay.

Gerke moved to Eugene, Oregon, in 1997 and continued his studies as an English major, taking a few undergraduate creative writing classes with Robert Hill Long. He championed 'Flash Fiction' and had been in early anthologies of the form. From there, he worked on a stuffy, autobiographical novel, but returned to flash fiction about five years ago as a break from the novel and it freed something up in him. He says it was just what he needed.

Since moving to Eugene until now, Gerke has worked primarily in social services, serving developmentally disabled adults, autistic children and mentally ill adults. These experiences have had profound effects on his life and writing, especially the four years working in a mental health crisis shelter, where he say "Many strange incidents and characters passed my eyes," Gerke explains.  "Interviewing people who claimed to be married to Zsa Zsa Gabor and have fifty children around the country only solidified my non sequitur take on the world."

He also lived in Brooklyn for two years, working office jobs and as an audio set up man. And he can't forget living in Germany for a year and half, working as a maid at a United States army base. "The interface with the German people and culture has been very influential in terms of a fascination with broken English and how people from foreigners and Americans get along as well as the surreal army base that appeared to be a pocket of America that somehow landed in southwestern Germany," he says.

Gerke came to Buffalo in August of 2007. He says, "My girlfriend got a job at the University of Buffalo and I followed along. I went to a reading at Rust Belt Books in the fall where I met Geoffrey Gatza who was very friendly and encouraging. He told me about his press, BlazeVox Books, and I loved one of the books he had just published by Aaron Belz called The Bird Hoverer. He then saw me read for Forrest Roth's Flash Fiction series, again at Rust Belt and we had subsequent discussions about a book. It took me a while to get it together. It originally was a little longer but I took some pieces out to make the collection better and not so sprawling. Geoffrey was very kind, setting up the cover and putting the text in a PDF before a final version was okay, and it was ready to print."

Gerke says that because Buffalo is much more affordable than Brooklyn, he's able to work part-time and give more of his attention to writing. "I'm very lucky to have no debt and keep a sparse lifestyle so the writing comes first," Gerke says.

Q:  Sven is a cancer-ridden, 1,000-pound moth, and he shares company with a lot of other, ah, interesting characters in this book.  Where'd they come from?

A:  Sven came in the middle of night, which is very rare for me. I usually only write for periods of time between seven in the morning till about five at night. More often than night a line gets stuck in my head, impelling me to write a story or a 'fizzle' as Samuel Beckett called it. "There's something wrong with Sven," was the line and I was pretty sure it was dialogue. The rest followed quickly.

Again I think working in Mental Health has had an influence on the characters, their backgrounds and idiosyncrasies. Also I lived for seven years in Eugene, Oregon, often described as a 'hippy town.' There and in the Pacific Northwest people are more want to change their names to some outlandish moniker such as Seven or Purple Flame. An ex-girlfriend changed her name to a Hindu religious concept, and I was resistant to calling her such a name until there was an intervention.

Q:  You're a prolific writer, and you publish locally.  What sort of autonomy does this give you in that you can simply write and publish rather than pitch ideas and describe characters [to an agent] like the ones mentioned above?

A:  If [the question you ask is] more about creative license, then I think it's good to let it all hang out and dare yourself to be different, more different than you could have every imagined. There's an endless amount of things to write about and picture in askew, obtuse ways. The world is so interesting. Cormac McCarthy said he hasn't been bored in sixty years. I can only hope to share this attitude.

Q:  So you're new to Buffalo.  A lot of area musicians and visual artists who feel that our seasonal changes, especially the colder months, lead to a greater body of work for them.  You too?

A:  I'm not sure yet. This upcoming winter will be the third so maybe with three I'll be better able to compare. There's no doubt that for me it is harder to write when it is nice out. But being inside too much has its own drawbacks, which may affect my mental health and turn the writing into more loony and troubled directions.

Q:  In terms of gathering material for stories, do you get inspiration here?  Was this particular book born in Buffalo?

A:  Probably more of the pieces in the book were drafted in Brooklyn but the important thing is they were all edited and made much better in Buffalo. In making the book and reaching out to writers here and over the Internet I think I've learned much more about writing/editing in the last year than I have in my whole life.

Stories I've written recently are full of material from here. People I meet, conversations overheard and most significantly a horror story I made after continually walking past the mansions on Delaware Avenue between Summer and West Ferry that are now non-profits or private clubs--trying to imagine what is really going on in those dark places that I can never see into.

Q:  What book/idea is next on your docket?  Will there be more odd characters?

A:  There is a partially autobiographical novel set in NYC that I am shopping with agents. It is very straight-laced but the 'Sven' book has a few stories that are traditional realism as well. I like to pay visits to all the modes available, though to some people, I might sound the same in any form.       

There are more odd characters. I'm also enjoying delving into the thoughts of traditional characters, exploring the 'self-talk' that goes on in our heads as we decide what next to do. In this I'm following the footsteps of the great Western New York writer George Saunders whose writing I get regularly get drunk on.