Brett Hymel Jr.
Interviewed by Albertine Clark
In “Sweepstakes,” you have two ostensibly extraterrestrial characters, Glorp and Thoraxis. One of the things that interests me the most about this story is the role of the extraterrestrial, both within Dean’s internal world and outside of it. To phrase it as simply as I can—in writing, what is the role of an alien?
Well, first off, thank you for this interview and thank you to Subtropics for everything. This was on my list of dream publications and to think that I have both a story and an interview coming out here is beyond surreal to me. This is my first-ever interview and these questions are all so wonderful and thought-provoking and I have a secret suspicion that I’m going to be graded on my introspection and self-analysis at the end of this, and that that grade is going to fall somewhere in the C-F range, so let me just put this out here first and foremost to get ahead of the “he’s an idiot” allegations: I am an idiot. And I have no clue what I’m doing. And writing to me is a practice of f-ing up on the page over and over again until, over time, it becomes something slightly less f-ed up.
Case in point: I think the alien is a sort of extreme example of the visitor allegory. In the past, including, ahem, previous iterations of this story, I’ve used visitor allegory as a way to insert a parable aspect into my fiction—the visitor shows up, points out the ways in which the narrator has ruined their life and continues to ruin their life, and then dips out. And I’ve come to realize that the only people who appreciate fiction that moralizes to that degree are conservatives and toddlers. And so now I regard the alien as a character that is there to observe and suggest things, and that suggestion plants a kernel of something—doubt, reflection, remorse—in a character’s mind. What interests me about “Sweepstakes” in particular—and what was fun to write—is this idea that Dean is pretty much static in terms of his character, and what Glorp and Thoraxis suggest to him doesn’t necessarily readjust his outlook, it just brings back things he’s already known which he’s repressed. And so we, because we are so closely aligned with Dean’s mental process, don’t necessarily see a variation in the route, we just get a larger picture of the fixed track he’s moving on.
To me this is a story about trauma. Is there something about trauma, or other strongly negative or unbearable emotions, that lends itself to a particularly speculative narration? What is it that can’t be said in a more conventional, “literary fiction” form?
I don’t know! I don’t feel like I have the authority to say. I think more conventional forms, realist forms, etc. can do anything that speculative stuff can also do in terms of emotion. I think emotion is a concept that’s going to persist in memorable stories no matter what genre they fall under. I think that the particular benefit I derive from the more speculative stuff is having my attention span tickled enough to finish a story. If, for some reason, I were forced to write this piece without aliens and without glass eyes and without a sort of absurd time loop occurring, I wouldn’t ever finish it and it wouldn’t ever get published. So most of the speculative choice for me is just a matter of personal interest. I don’t want to be in reality. Most of the time, I’d rather be anywhere else. I think that injecting a philosophical reflection on trauma into what might seem like a fairly absurd story on its face is my way of both having and eating cake. I get to write something with real feeling set in a very unreal situation.
And, as a last note, I feel honor-bound to mention that I don’t really get a distinction between speculation and literariness and I don’t think it’s very useful for the state of literature as a whole to think of these as mutually exclusive terms. I think anyone trying to carve out a niche for themselves should think of themselves as their own genre, full of its conventions and inspirations and areas of particular interest. Other people can try and define what I write but in my head I only ever write Brett fiction. When I try to brand myself, I describe my fiction as stories for bugs. Bugs are slimy and weird and when I see a crazy bug I go, “Hell yeah.” But I don’t think that really clues people in on what I write about. If somebody were to put a gun to my head and ask me, “Define yourself in terms of genre,” I’d tell him, “Hell yeah,” and then he’d blow my brains out.
This story has an unusual but instantly recognisable atmosphere. It reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut, specifically Slaughterhouse-Five, but also of other male writers who talk about loneliness and desperation – Denis Johnson, Barry Hannah, David Foster Wallace. Could you talk a little bit about your literary godparents, as it were? Who inspired this particular blend of rage-and-sadness-filled speculative fiction?
Thank you so much for putting my name in conversation with three brilliant writers whose work I love and admire and David Foster Wallace. I got my undergraduate degree at UF, and Padgett Powell was on the way out by the time I got there, but I learned from one of his mentees, so I like to think I’m a grandchild of Padgett Powell and, by extension, a great-grandchild of Donald Barthelme. George Saunders is big with me, same with Barry Hannah and Flannery O’Connor. I’m obsessed with the magical realists: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Italo Calvino. Lately I’ve been getting a lot of joy from Percival Everett and Dan Chaon. Maybe I’m outing myself too much here, but this story started from a Dan Chaon short story called “The Bees”. I read that story and fell in love with it instantly, and since then Dan Chaon’s work has been formative for me.
Why is this story so funny? Is that something you thought about overtly during writing, or did it come out more organically?
You’re laughing? This guy is stuck in a horrible loop of alien abduction and repressed
memory and you’re laughing?
The woman and the boy add a strange kind of triangulation to the piece, in that they also, in a sense, have an experience of Dean’s internal world—they seem to exist both inside and outside of him. What did you think about when writing those two characters? What are they there to prove or exemplify?
If my introspection grade isn’t already in the gutter, this question will tank it for sure. I
think that I enjoy the hallucinogenic quality that they lend the piece. Everything about them, their presence, their interruption, their fascinations, feels a little off to me, and I like this idea that they’re occupying a sort of uncertain space inside of an already fraught mind. With that being said, I didn’t ever want them to feel too fantastical, too imagined in the piece. I wanted very badly to portray them as real. I love the idea that they’re on their own type of quest, that Dean is simply a secondary character in their particular story, and that they could live in Dean’s world for a little bit before they move on to something else.
The story has a strong sense of place, a particularly American place, in a way that made it feel quite cinematic. What were some of your visual inspirations? Do you watch a lot of movies?
I’m a recent convert to movies; I’ve been watching a lot of horror and dark comedy lately
to make up for a lifetime of not watching as many movies as I should have. The visual inspiration for this, however, were two visits to Albuquerque I made in 2022 and 2023. I grew up in the South my entire life, so seeing the high desert/scrubland/mountains of northern New Mexico was incredible. We got in a truck and zoomed around the dunes and empty arroyos. We hooked the abandoned shell of a car to the truck’s winch and rode it like it was a sled. In the evening, we took a lift thousands of feet in the air to the top of a mountain still covered in snow from the winter. As much as I love Florida, you don’t get that pleasure of topography.
I think about all of the “bad” (learning, growing) fiction I’ve read in undergraduate workshops and as a reader for various literary magazines, and I feel that there’s an archetype of story I call the “tree story.” Somebody sits under a tree, looks at its majesty for three or four pages, and comes to a strong conclusion about their life based solely on the beauty of the tree. I don’t want to be the tree guy. When I write landscape, I try to condense as much panorama into as little space as possible. I’ll give myself a sentence, maybe two, just to set the scene, and then we’re in it.
Who is Dean, to you? Is he a representation of a kind of life, a kind of emotional state, or is he a real person?
This is going to come as a shock, but my family tree has two shiny apples called ADDICTION and MENTAL ILLNESS. A lot of people in my life have struggled with addiction or don’t have to struggle with it any longer because they’re dead. Dean struggles in the same way they do. To answer where he comes from, whether he’s real or not—all my characters are real to me. They get up off the page, speak to me, dictate their own actions when I want to do something dumb, and maybe this is the mental illness talking, but that’s when they become a character for me, not just an idea or a line of witty dialogue. Dean is as real in my mind as my conception of self is. He’s a conglomeration of people I know, and he’s a little bit of intuition, and he’s somebody who at some point has taken the reins from me and written himself into his own corners.
I’ve had my writing described as nihilistic, which I would disagree with. I’m a hater, and a cynic, but I’m also a lover, and sometimes I can even be persuaded into giving hugs. I don’t want anybody to come away from “Sweepstakes” with the idea that things will never get better. Many people get caught in these cycles, but many more break free. That’s a continual process too. I know people who have broken free, are breaking free, and I love and support them in their struggle.
With that being said, I do get a strong urge to apologize to Dean whenever I read this story. He’s f-ed his life up pretty badly, but I still feel for him by the end. If you could help me out in this—maybe when you get to the end of the story you just give the magazine a little wave and say, “Sorry, Dean.” I don’t know if that will make him feel better or not, but that’s not really in my hands anymore, that’s up to him to decide.