Jay Slayton-Joslin

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat is set in a world where milk is almost a back market drug and it pours down with acidic rain. Initially, this is the type of place I’d hate to be, let alone enter my mind into such a place during the course of the novel – but thank goodness for Floyd. Floyd is the wise cracking narrator of the novel, often found to be referencing film trivia with as much knowledge as an IMDB page. Floyd is a man who has given up everything for his wife, but still has to struggle to keep on living. Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat was a fantastic read, thanks for joining me here Andrez.

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat is available from Another Sky Press here.

Interview is as follows:

 
1.) In Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, Floyd is a seeker who lives in a ruined world. What was the inspiration for this and how has your travels in your personal life inspired this?

 
I’m not 100 percent sure where the “ruined world” scenario came from, though likely I wear my influences on my sleeve and other people tend to read those better than me. I guess I grew up in the ‘70s on a diet of disaster flicks and old sci-fi movies – which also included the odd disaster (Godzilla and This Island Earth, for instance. I loved the dystopian, disintegrating social fabric of other films like Rollerball and The Omega Man, and I always had a soft spot for noir. While The Third Man and The Big Sleep are obvious influences on Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, I’d go so far as to say that Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out and John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon were bigger ones. And then I copped my first viewing of Blade Runner in 1982, followed by Terry Gilliam’s Brazil in 1985, and they really got the loaded die rolling. So the celluloid stuff is obviously hugely significant, but you’re right to pinpoint the travels side of things. I’ve been in Tokyo for a decade now, and there are places here where I can just kick back and chew the scenery, fooling myself into thinking that this is the future. Some of these are positive, especially some of the contemporary architecture – but in other instances it’s a seedy, negative view which does a world for stimulating the imagination.

When I went to Detroit in 2004 to DJ, the people putting on the party took me for a spin through the inner city. That was a riveting eye-opener for me; there’s nothing like that in contemporary Australia or Japan. Although the recent earthquake and tsunami left a similar legacy, that was after I finished the novel. I remember seeing these ruined, grand old buildings and derelict car factories in Detroit, like the huge Packard plant, and thinking that this was what the novel’s no man’s land, Richmond District, would be like – with the added bonus of constant rain. Also seeing the Packard factory triggered something else in me, and that was the memory of a lot of cool cars people drove in the old noir films and tomes – the Sternwoods’ dead chauffeur drove one off the pier in Chandler’s The Big Sleep, for instance. On the same trip I went to San Francisco and checked out the corner of Bush and Stockton, where Floyd Thursby was killed according to Dashiell Hammett in The Maltese Falcon. I think the heavier noir focus in the novel really began to seep through after those experiences.

2.) I love all the old school movie references in the book. I often quote unappreciated film trivia. What importance does the love of movies resonate with you and how does it influence the novel?

 
Man, I adore movies to the point of distraction. My parents dug movies too, so I grew up with that – my dad took me to the cinema to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was about five – and when my parents got divorced when I was 14, movies (and writing) got me through the experience. And I’m better at remembering movie release dates than I was an important historical event during university. I often equate the date a movie was released with the state of my life and/or the world around me at that time. So I made a conscious decision in the novel to be honest about that impact, and to use it as a crutch to help Floyd through his own emotional crises as well as to tell the story. A subversive part of me has always wanted to get people to watch my favourite movies, and if I can achieve that with any potential reader, then I’ll utter here something George W. Bush was wont to say at silly times: Mission Accomplished.

3.) How would you describe the journey to getting the book in print and do you feel you were always working towards the novel as it is now or if it was finished years ago would it be a completely different book?

 
It’s been a long journey in terms of writing but I didn’t actively seek publication until around 2007, as before that it always felt unfinished. I finished the first novel manuscript in 1992, tucked it under my bed, and didn’t resurrect it until I’d moved to Tokyo a decade later. I rewrote the whole caboodle, changed the fate of Floyd’s wife Veronica as well as the end, injected extra elements, and then shelved it for another five years.
I really got stuck back into it from 2007, and in the latest version it took more of a noir bent, the humour was pronounced, and the movie references really started to take hold. There’s a lot more of Japan in the reboot, and also more of Kristopher Young, my editor, who contributed a lot to the final story. Incidentally I just got back from a trip to Australia to launch the book, and stumbled across the original short story I wrote back in the mid 1980s – which I thought I’d lost – buried in a mouldy box with other stuff in my mum’s shed back in Melbourne. It’s basically the bare bones of the dream sequence in the novel in which Floyd encounters the young Dev, and although I’ve (hopefully!) improved my technique since then, it’s got the same flavour. If anything I think the original versions were a bit more earnest and fatalistic.

4.) The book’s publisher, Another Sky Press,  operates on a system where the customer can just pay the printing and shipping costs, and choose whether to contribute towards the people involved. I imagine that would be the bane of many authors, can you talk about how you feel about the process and how it’s affected you?

 
Straight up front, I love the philosophy and it’s one of the two major reasons that I agreed to run with the novel with Another Sky. The fact that they actually liked the manuscript and agreed to publish it was the other reason. I think I’ve mentioned that I make electronic music, and have been doing so for 15 years, plus I ran my own record label called IF? Records since 1995. The concept of IF? was very similar to Another Sky – we were more interested in the art and getting it out there and into people’s hands than making a profit, so we kept things dirt-cheap, never made any profit, and I obviously ended up losing a fair whack of money doing that! Where I think Another Sky is more intelligent is in addressing the audience directly and asking them to patronize what’s being handed out, on a voluntary basis and as much as they feel fitting or deserved. So whatever we get out of this is not a compulsory sales tax we’ve added onto the bill. That makes me happy. I think art should be entirely accessible, and I dig the fact that Another Sky keeps things as cheap as possible for those who don’t have a fat purse right now. I’d rather have people reading the book and make no money, than have it over-priced collecting dust on a book store shelf and collect my three percent from Penguin every year.

5.) What is your opinion on the E-reader VS print debate?

 
For me there is no tiff, it’s more just another option – probably because I went through the whole digital debate with online music back in 2008. Some people can’t get their head around new media (with the music it was vinyl vs. mp3s) but I think the more the merrier. While I often claim to be a Luddite it isn’t really true; I do love inroads in technology. But I also dig the past. History was my major at university, and I think past, present and future can sit in comfy bliss on the same sofa. Anyway, getting back to the books, I guess I’m saying there’s no need for a debate at all – although personally I prefer to read my books in my mitt rather than on screen

6.) The alternate world set in the novel has things where fresh milk has the value of a black market drug. When building this world was it difficult to decide what would be taken away from the characters?

 
Actually, not so difficult in general, and it did enable me to have a bit of fun with things like the milk and frequent-flyer programs – I mean where are you going to fly to? But when I did sit down and think it through, it did worry me a wee bit about where people sourced various bits and pieces, particularly exotic food like the salmon at Holberg’s, and I ended up being glib instead and offering up no real explanation. Then my editor Kristopher brought up the issue that Hylax’s chief claim to fame – plastic – was an oil-based product, so where did they get the oil…? That was a bit of a can of worms for us.

7.) What plans do you have for your writing future?

 
I was planning to take a break for a bit to actually spend some quality time with my family, but I have to ‘fess up here that I’m getting itchy feet. I rediscovered another old manuscript of mine while I was in Australia (well, to be honest my good mate Kristina had it stored in her shed in country New South Wales and she found it while she was shifting house).
I’m thinking about combining that with another story I’ve been plodding over in my head for the past four years, related to identical twin sisters who live to be 100 – and have an Othello/Iago relationship. I’m not sure how it’ll pan out, but I’m pretty into the idea.

8.) Floyd is a character who sacrifices his whole life for his dying wife. How did you go about creating a character who has done this and the consequences it has on the rest of his life?

 
Yeah, this was tough. I’d like to believe I’m that dedicated in my own relationships, but I’ve never been put to this kind of test so it was tricky to write it in a meaningful and believable way, one that wasn’t too mushy. My editor Kristopher and I had some chats particularly about Floyd’s emotional responses and he understandably felt I’d taken it a bit EMO at times, so we deleted some riffs; others I really wanted to keep so they’re still in there.
I think this dedication to Veronica is one of Floyd’s redeeming strengths, even if it damages him in the process. I mean it’s obvious he loved her and she meant the world to him, and she’s been stripped away from his life. I had to try to put myself into that mindset and feel that pain, get the gist of it, and write a suitable response to it. To be honest I’m glad to be outside that frame of mind now.

9.) If you were stranded in TSMG’s universe, would you follow a similar path to Floyd?

 
Ha Ha Ha… er… I think I was partially stranded in TSMG’s universe for several years, on and off, and particularly over the past three years alongside my fellow jailbird Kristopher! While I do like my alcohol and have been known to partake of a cigarette, I try not to go as far as Floyd or quite so often.
And to be honest, while a lot of Floyd is me and how I would (I think) react to certain stimuli, both positive and negative, I’m not a believer in the vigilante justice he doles out at the end. Finally, over the past few years some of Floyd also ended up being a bit like Kristopher so we’d need to ask him this question as well

10.) What work, in all forms of medium, did you see as influences on the novel?

 
Great question – and the answer is probably too long-winded to squeeze in here. But in a nutshell I’d say a lot of it has to do (obviously) with the movies my parents loved and their friends loved, and I what I grew up with myself with my own mates. I was 12 when Star Wars was released and that kicked me for six; I was 14 when I saw Alien and 17 when I saw Blade Runner. Both those movies were also huge influences. Then I discovered directors like Terry Gilliam and David Lynch, followed by Japanese anime like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell. I love ‘60s TV comedy series like Get Smart and F Troop, and classic old cinema. I’m rabidly fond of Akira Kurosawa’s movies. As much as Floyd protests otherwise, I also do dig books myself. Obviously Raymond Chander’s Philip Marlowe back-catalogue is a huge influence, as is Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. I admire a lot of stuff by James Ellroy, Haruki Murakami, Philip K. Dick, Graham Greene. I loved Dr. Seuss when I was a kid (still do) and really enjoyed my editor Kristopher’s own novel Click. Then there’s the music and art side of things.

My favourite art movement is still Dada – probably more for their for cheeky intent – and I did my university thesis on Industrial music in Britain in the 1970s. Musical groups involved in that like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle were equally enamoured with Dada, as well as influenced by William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and the Beat Gen writers. They especially dabbled with the idea of the cut-up found sound tape-loop, which they spliced back together in remarkable new ways. Anyway, they’ve always been the biggest influence on my own music under the alias of Little Nobody. I love the idea of accidentally found sounds, loops, deconstructions, and appropriation in sound, and I’ve been toying with this stuff myself for 15 years. Meanwhile the novel has been sitting somewhere within my head space for the better part of 20 years, taking precedence on and off (mostly off, I have to admit), but over the past four years it’s been at the forefront – and this has coincided with my resurgent interest in making electronic music. So some of the themes and ideas have obviously cross-pollinated: the movie sample/references/allusions; the underlying focus on a futurist take of the hard-boiled/noir detective concept, something my friend Viveka would dub “klepto-modernism”. Just as IF? itself makes a guest appearance in Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, so many of the tracks in my Little Nobody album Hard Foiled (2011) were born in the novel’s head space, from around 2008 on. Chapter titles even double up as track names. I could go on for hours here, but I know I’d head off tangent (like skipping through Wikipedia) and I don’t want to bore you more than I probably already have – so let’s call it a day here!