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Derek McCormack: I don't know how novel what I wrote is. At times I think of it as a fashion book—like the promotional literature designers send out as publicity, or like the statements that designers distribute at fashion shows or leave on the seats for editors to read. When I was writing it I was thinking of it as a publicity project for Maison Martin Margiela. I don't understand why the Maison hasn't bought boxes of it!
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I think that fury and ecstasy is an incredible description of what I was going through. The cancer changed the way I wrote in obvious ways—I had all these new holes and I kept leaking pus and blood onto my laptop.
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A rebellion against books sounds right in a way, though I don't have a reason to rebel against them, or I don't have a good reason—only a general anger or disgust or something. When I was writing The Show That Smells , I dreamed it would somehow have the power to destroy all books. Why would I want that? Because I want it.The things you said about the word faggot are as close as I can come to a clue. I'm a faggot, I always preferred faggot to queer or gay. I've been called a faggot my whole life so I don't feel bad about using that word—it's mine. When I was a kid, and kids called me faggot, and adults called me faggot, I always said: "Yes, I am. I'm as vile and perverted as you think I am. I'm even more vile." I mean, I've always thought of myself as disgusting physically and mentally. I still do. It seemed stupid to deny it, and it seemed smart to push the faggotry as far as it would go, to make myself worse than worse. I make my violence against myself worse than any violence against me, and maybe by doing so I do some violence to the world.
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I wanted to impress Martin Margiela, wherever he is and whatever he's doing. The guy's a ghost, so I'm trying to impress a ghost. The book's a sort of seance that way. He's living and dead.I do like to picture reactions to the book. I want readers to be repulsed by it, and by me, but I want them to be impressed, too. The book is a fuck you to literature and to life and I want readers to get that, and then to admire the gall of it. I want to piss people off and to have them praise me for it. It's been like that with all my books—I always want to write stupid and shiny things that have to be admired for the artfulness of their stupidity and shininess.I'm performing, really. I like to think of my books as performances—like magic shows, or fashion shows. I like them to be short and shocking and maybe sickening. Thanks to the disease, this book is an especially effective fuck you, I think. When I was writing it, I thought it could only be published posthumously, so I went all out. I always try to write all out but I have to tell you, it's easier to do when you're at death's door and a little demented.Follow Blake Butler on Twitter.