Withersin’s Damned Interview with:

Garrett Cook

I’m a 27 year old author, born in the haunted, perverse little town of Wenham, Massachusetts. I grew up on folklore, mythology, horror films of all sorts and great literature, though I’ve struggled with both hereditary bipolar and a learning disability that causes me to see the world pretty differently from everybody else. For eight years, I tried querying agents, getting into the New Yorker and being the kind of author people think of as one of the real writers, then I sort of tried to be a mainstream horror author. I didn’t write any mainstream horror fiction, but I wanted to play that game. Didn’t work out so hot. But then I discovered Bizarro and started submitting things to underground presses. James Chapman from Fugue State read the first few chapters of Murderland (which was composed of h8. Life During Wartime and Godless, shorter, different less weird animals than they are now) and while he didn’t take the book, he remembered me and told Jeremy Needle about me. And since then, I’ve been a member of the Bizarro community. I’m the Winner of the First Annual Ultimate Bizarro Showdown, Associate Editor of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Sanitizer Overlord for ENE and pretty much one of the gang now. But, that’s kind of an odd thing to say with Bizarro because, like all the others I try to do everything I can to distinguish myself and be my own genre. So, I do things with a Neopulp/Experimental and Horror edge, things where intimacy and otherness are as important as strangeness. I’ve got three books coming out in the next two or three months: Murderland Part 2: Life During Wartime (October), Archelon Ranch (October) and Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective from Eraserhead Press (November/December). I’m into cult cinema, comics, weird fiction and vintage horror of all kinds. You can also check out my reviews right here at Withersin.

List some of your works (stories, books, poems, songs, albums, movies, etc):

My story “Brian’s Girl” was in Exquisite Corpse, my story “Hundred Year Old Murders” was in Polluto#3, my story Mr. Plush, Detective was in The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. My book Murderland Part 1:H8 came out last year and my books Archelon Ranch and Murderland Part 2: Life During Wartime come out next week. My book Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective is coming soon from Eraserhead Press and currently up for preorder, as I said.

Your website: http://thegarrettcook.blogspot.com

How can you be contacted? I can be emailed at thecentercannothold@gmail.com, you can drop a comment on my blog or you can add me on Myspace: www.myspace/mezzodelcammin

In your own words, define Withersin.

It sounds kind of a like a kenning, something from Anglosaxon poetry. The sin that makes somebody’s life begin to decay, the moment where the destruction starts. Good horror and frightful absurdism often lurks at that moment.

If you were a sideshow act, what would you be?

I’d be proud to be a blockhead. I take pride in my capacity to endure all kinds of crap.

What is your greatest non-literary influence?

Mental illness, horror movies, not quite fitting in.

Describe your most irrational fear.

Weird and unexpected behavior from people, random persecution. Like my waitress will splash me with french-fry oil or the emails from old friends are filled with viruses. I don’t think badly of people, I just know there’s no limit to what they’re capable of.

How about your most guilty pleasure?

I’m going to sound like a pretentious dickface for saying this but my work is kind of a guilty pleasure for me now that I’ve fallen into the Bizarro crowd and know I’m accepted for who I am. Some of the things I write now, I can’t help but sit and cackle maniacally.

Name the most disturbing nursery rhyme/fairy tale you can recall.

I’d say a lot of the stuff about faeries. I got read and had access to Irish and Scottish faerie stories and they involve irrationally ghastly creatures and terrible things happening to little kids. I was horrified of trolls and faeries when I was little. I don’t think anybody else on Earth was frightened by Troll.

Do you eat meat?

Every five minutes. I can’t stop.

What were the skies like when you were young?

Vast and perplexing.

Name your favorite garden tool.

The trowel. I don’t really like gardening, though. It’s grueling and I’m allergic to grass clippings.

Name your least favorite color, first job and worst job.

Yellow, dog walking and…hmm, this is a toss up. It could be the time I spent cashiering in a Central PA grocery store or it could be the freelance editorial job I had working on a piece of “Urban Fiction”. I had to type a xeroxed manuscript and make something out of a book that didn’t have dialogue attribution or paragraph breaks. It had a protagonist named Jubaby.

Favorite:  Author, Movie, Music Group, Song, and Quote.

Dante, The Abominable Doctor Phibes, The Ramones, “Simple Twist of Fate” by Bob Dylan, “history is a nightmare from which I am waiting to awake”- Stephen Daedalus in Ulysses

If you were a loaf of bread what kind would you be?

I aspire toward the goodness and riboflavin content of banana bread but I can’t in good conscience say I have reached that state of transcendence. I’ll say garlic.

Weirdest news you have read in your local newspaper:

Back in Wenham, old people would make ridiculous calls to the police that would end up in the police log. One of these involved a werewolf. On the same day, someone called about their missing husky. Our police weren’t as Scooby Doo savvy as they should have been.

If you have a message to the people of Earth, tell us what it is:

You can do the right thing. You know how.

And finally, a question you can take anyway you like:  But Why?

For the bunnies.

Here’s a photo titled, “INEDIBLE NOT INTENDED FOR HUMAN FOOD” 

You have 112 words.  Go.

Quake with fear. The highway lizards are dyin’. The concrete devils that hide in the street have been kept at bay by those truck eating behemoths for a long time now, but no more. The trucks are poison, man! Don’t you get it? Don’tcha? They’re gonna come for us now! Head for the hills and gather your guns, else pray like you never prayed before that them lizards learn to read. Or better yet, maybe you can help ‘em out. Be a part of the solution. Teach a lizard to read. They like the Berenstain Bears and Highlights for Children. Girl lizards are like totally hot for Goofus from “Goofus and Gallant”.