I was an immediate fan of your story “Retrograde” upon reading it in Fatal Flaw last year. It is, in my view, an extraordinary work of short fiction—and its nomination for the Pushcart Prize last November suggests I’m far from alone in that opinion!
As an aside for readers (who I highly encourage to read the story), it’s about a world in which all women and girls have years ago been killed by a mysterious sickness, leaving only men behind on Earth. It picks up with an old, gravely injured man trudging through the Canadian tundra, encouraged onward by the voice and image of a specifically “female” AI program that appears to him through special contact lenses.
The ideas explored as the plot unfolds from there, all rendered in your mesmerizing prose, are haunting, profound, and made me pause for thought again and again. With all that said, how did you come up with this story and its themes? Were there any particular inspirations?
I struggled for a long time thinking about how to answer this! Isn’t it so daunting to gaze intently at the inner caverns of your mind sometimes? It is for me anyway–it’s kind of chaotic in there to be honest. My writing mind is in no way linear and infrequently deliberate. When I have an idea it tends to be a sort of fully formed “atmosphere” if that makes sense, like an emotional snapshot, rather than a cut and dry plot or story. If I had to guess, I think at the time I was developing this story, I was spending a lot of time listening to Kpop (Korean pop music) and diving into the virtual world of their many and seemingly endless streams of media. And I think I just kind of got caught up on the way these women (and men too! Though I mostly spent time watching the girl groups) are oftentimes valued through a very specific and completely merciless set of qualities. Every aspect of their lives controlled and curated. And it just got to me, I think.
I couldn’t stop imagining the fans, the ownership they frequently expressed over these women, how they exerted their expectations over them, and over the sort of assemblage of them not as full persons but as part of their groups. The phrase “pieces of women” kept occurring to me over and over and I couldn’t let it go.
The real seed of the story, though, was always this idea of an old man in a winter hellscape, either dying or close to it, finding this surface-level and ultimately fruitless comfort in a beautiful AI companion, who from the beginning was always named Nectar. It fleshed out from there. Not sure how to explain the process, but I tend to just sit inside an idea for a long time before putting anything in writing. Not necessarily plotting it out, but just imagining different scenarios and the ways in which certain feelings might be explored or expressed.
Occasionally, there will be a chunk of writing that asserts itself completely formed, and I swear that is the best feeling in the world! The bit about the old man imagining the women as having risen into the atmosphere and “vibrated themselves into so many multitudes” was one of those. Also the woman he remembers, the memory of her collar bone and her face of “pale feline slopes.” Those were my favorite parts to write, no question!
When (and how, if that’s applicable) did you get into writing fiction? Is it something you’ve done in one form or another for as long as you can remember, or did you develop a passion for it more gradually?
Writing has always been an immense part of my life. From probably around six years old and on I was always writing stories. Rarely finishing them! But always writing them, convinced that the next story was better, that my ideas were constantly outpacing my abilities, and that if I could just keep improving my technique and skill then I might finally be in a position to write that big novel I’ve always dreamed about. Someday soon, maybe I’ll be there!
On the topic of that big novel you’re dreaming about, is there a premise or any hints you can share about your plans for such a work, or is that staying strictly private for now?
For sure! It’s hard to describe fully without laying out a long and introspective plot that would exhaust any potential charm right out of it haha, but what I can say for sure is that I have always been very moved by and enamored with relationships like that of Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn from True Grit or Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us, or even at times that of Lyra and Lord Asriel from The Golden Compass.
The degree to which we are or are not beholden to those who idolize us or love us, as well as the other way around, the degree to which a love born of admiration and a child’s naive worship can be both real and enlightening or else harmful and self-deceiving. There is something so appealing to me about a grizzly older narcissist with nothing to live for finding some kind of resurgence of purpose from the stubborn affection of a kid. So that kind of thing is in a large part the thrust of the novel.
I’m also truly, deeply in love with anything southern gothic so it will be set largely in Louisiana and then migrate across Texas. I won’t go into much more than that except to also say that every word of it has been massively and irreversibly steeped in Gustavo Santaolalla’s score for the The Last of Us (2013). I like can’t even be a person without that music, I swear.
What are some of your favorite novels or stories, and are there any authors in particular you draw inspiration from? Also, what are you reading currently?
So many authors, so many stories! How to choose without endlessly yelling into eternity about the limitless abundance of talent there is out there?? It feels like these micro nuclear bombs are going off constantly every time I read a new author who is top of their craft; little explosions of inspiration. But probably the novel I have read the most and has arguably had the most discernible impact on my writing is The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. What he does with language and perspective, and his grasp of nostalgia and the way he wields it like the most perfect weapon, is unreal. Every time I read it I am bowled over again by the skill of this story, the way it is envisioned and executed with such confidence and satisfaction. The experience of that novel, for me, is an absolute knock-out from beginning to end.
Other massive influences though are such a long list, but I’ll list some of them because they are so amazing and I relish any opportunity to shout about them:
- Denis Johnson (Train Dreams, The Largess of the Sea Maiden, Fiskadoro)
- Karen Russell (St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Vampires in the Lemon Groves)
- Marilynne Robinson (MARILYNNE ROBINSON, my god what a killer, she’s a freakin legend and her mind is as infinite and precise and unfathomable as the cosmos): Housekeeping ties very closely with The Virgin Suicides for one of my most beloved reading experiences of my life
- Wells Tower (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is easily my most recommended collection of stories of all time, cannot recommend it enough, to anyone, ever–it eludes my capacity to describe the many and varied ways in which I desperately love it)
- Elizabeth McCracken who is an unrivaled MASTER of all things literary (Thunderstruck)
- Ottessa Moshfegh, the most glorious weirdo (Homesick for Another World, Eileen, McGlue)
- Sam Pink (The Ice Cream Man & Other Stories)
- George Saunders OF COURSE (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Lincoln in the Bardo, Pastoralia)
Also, for non-fiction: - Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking, Blue Nights, Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
- Leslie Jamison (The Recovering, Make it Scream, Make it Burn)
- Maggie Nelson (Bluets, The Argonauts).
Ok, I’ll stop now but could seriously go on forever, and I promise I didn’t lose sight of the question. I genuinely mean to say that all of these authors and their works have had a huge impact on me and the way I hope–one day–to be able to write! Right now I’m reading an ARC for this novel called A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan (set to be published June 13th, 2021) and am enjoying it very much!
Do you have any more published pieces available? Where can we read more of your work?
I have a piece called “Hummingbird” in Parhelion, an online Literary Magazine: https://parhelionliterary.com/lindsey-moore/. And one story in a podcast called “Howl” (the episode is titled Open Oak Plantation): https://itun.es/us/oLPCab.c?i=1000373324177
Lastly, here’s your wild-card question: What is something you would very much like to see happen in your lifetime?
A huge landmark in space travel/space observation/contact of any kind–anything like that would be everything I could hope for. The understanding of dark matter or a feasible means of faster-than-light space travel. I don’t mean colonies on Mars, but I’d love to see us better exploring the moons of Jupiter or maybe–one day–making it to a distant world in another solar system where who knows what might be waiting.
Lindsey Moore was raised in the miasmic, urban swampland of the greater Houston area. She earned her Masters at the University of Oxford in Creative Writing and currently resides in Austin, Texas where she works for the independent book store, Book People.
