I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, by David Shields and Caleb Powell is fresh off the Knopf presses. It’s a book in the form of one extended and contentious dialogue. Over the course of a weekend at a remote cabin tucked into the Cascade Mountains, Shields and Powell argue Life versus Art, testing the limits of civilized conversation and the boundaries of the self. The Monarch Review had the chance to talk with both Quarrelers individually about the making of both the book, and the adaptation of the book into a film directed by James Franco. This is the first of two installments.

I meet David Shields at Zoka Coffee in Tangletown as planned. I’m immediately disarmed by his easy smile and surprisingly large build. I remark on his height, and in a kind manner he says, “Well, you’re tall too.” I’ve been nervous in anticipation, not only in my desire to pose interesting questions, but at the prospect that his demeanor might be less than congenial. His literary persona can be combative, even hostile, and I’ve been worried that he might be difficult, cagey, perhaps mean. Contrary to my fears, he’s warm and curious, and easy to talk to.

I have questions numbered and scattered out of order across several pages, my attempt at combating a complete lack of organization. I intend to stick to the numbers: bread and butter questions first, and then the more detailed, difficult stuff. Whose idea was this, what was editing like, did you become friends?—this kind of thing—and then on to ideas like whether or not the question of life vs. art is actually even a real question. I always feel under-prepared for interviews, so I try to have a series of questions that can be moved through methodically, hopefully linking thematically one to the next, but what usually happens is that life, it’s buzz and bustle, take over and conversation just happens.

Shields is hungry and suggests we go around the corner to the Elysian satellite, Tangletown. Though I’m all set up at Zoka, the galley, notes, recorder all laid out, I’m happy to oblige. He’s considerate in noting that I still have a full cup of coffee, and frets over it, suggesting I get a to-go cup, apologizing. It’s a re-fill, and I’m fine leaving it behind.

We’re already talking by the time we’ve grabbed a table to one side of the mostly empty restaurant. I ask if he’s following the story of exodus at The New Republic—editors and writers leaving en masse. With a general sense for what’s going on, he comments that it “seems like the subset of some larger conversation, like Jeff Bezos taking over the Washington Post. Who’s this guy Chris Hughes…is that his name?”

What begins as small talk on the trending literary news of the day quickly becomes a more substantial line of inquiry. Trying to put some meaning to The New Republic being renovated by a Facebook mogul, I riff on a question that has been bugging me for some time:

“If you use Facebook, or social media, or if you just have the internet and you’re looking for the thing that’s going to be meaningful to you, it seems like you have to sift through a lot more to find that stuff. It becomes immensely discouraging, for me at least, because I see so much silly stuff. I stay away from threads, but every once in a while I get caught in one, and I think ‘Jesus, we’re all morons.’ Was this always the case, but we just didn’t have the access to so many conversations, so many comments?”

“I try to stay away from those comment threads too,” he says. “The article might be slightly substantial, but immediately the comments go to ‘your mother wears combat boots.’ It doesn’t even pretend to engage with the article at all. It’s just this endless firebombing of each other as a kind of amusement. It depends on the publication, but there’s often no pretense from the very beginning that you’re with the subject of the article. It’s just ‘The Seahawks are better than the 49ers’ or ‘You’re a racist motherfucker.’ What!? How did we get here? So I think your point was a good one. When Shakespeare published Hamlet, there were probably a bunch of really silly comments about it, about how Hamlet just wants to fuck Ophelia. But that they wouldn’t be online, they’d just be in some pub. But we’re supposed to accept this New Republic narrative that somehow they were publishing great journalism, and that Leon Wieseltier and Franklin Foer are somehow god’s gift to civilization. And this guy Chris Hughes is suddenly talking about clicks, and obviously there is something vulgar about that. The other thing is just as exhausted. I haven’t looked at The New Republic in twenty years. It’s not like I think the world turns on whether we are reading incredibly long, incredibly predictable essays about the Middle East in The New Republic. I’d be wary of both narratives, if you know what I mean.”

We order lunch and tumble farther into the conversation on technology and social media. Shields expresses a healthy ambivalence about the whole thing. He does use Facebook and Twitter, but he has a research assistant post for him—a detail I’m pleased to find endearing. He seems to have conflated the advantage of a certain remove from the process with temporal efficiency. A small swell of envy passes over me—not for the fame or the abundance of resources, though there’s something to that too—but his freedom, his distance from the unwieldy beast that is The Internet.

“I’ll have my phone with me,” he says, sipping on his Diet Coke, “and I’ll see something funny, and I’ll say, ‘Hey Hailey, please post this, I think it’s funny.’ And she’ll go ‘Ok, what’s your lead-in?’ And I’ll say ‘X.’ That way I take care of it in five seconds. I’m sure I could probably take care of it on Twitter in six seconds, but I need to keep my head slightly free. I’m not totally checked out, but I’m not totally checked in.”

In the new book, there is surprisingly little talk of technology. It seems a conspicuous absence, and I ask about it.

“Maybe being in the woods was part of that. Originally, we were going to check into adjoining rooms in some downtown hotel, and I’m glad we didn’t. There’s nothing interesting about that. Somehow, being at this cabin, which was a perfectly well-appointed and fancy cabin, endlessly talking about Twitter feeds wasn’t our key or leading topic, because we had these rather stunning natural surroundings. I’m not sure we had anything shockingly new to say about it. ‘Ok, what do you think about the web?’ ‘I don’t know, it’s a part of our lives.’ Although, I just had an idea. Part of the book is Caleb pushing back against my work. He says, ‘Your books are just kind of amalgams of stuff.’ He doesn’t really, in my view, read them well at all. Part of him is just being provocative, and trying to get a rise out of me, and part of it is that he’s invested in a more old-fashioned narrative. The books he admires are not the books I admire, and vice-versa. I do feel that my work changed about twenty years ago as I started paying attention to the electronic and digital media around me. It really changed my attention span. From a book I wrote in ninety-six called Remote to now, my work has gotten more speeded up, more compressed, concise—”

“More epigrammatic, aphoristic?” I wonder.

“Totally. Part of that is influenced by a writer like Heraclitus from three-thousand years ago, but part of it is influenced by reading Nietzche’s quotes on Nietzche’s Twitter feed, which I get constantly. Or seeing certain writers I love… it seems like their work is in conversation with the speed of contemporary culture. I literally can’t read those glacially paced books, whereas, I think Caleb can and does. So I think in a way, the web is the elephant in the room. I’m twelve years older than Caleb, but Caleb’s arguing for a pre-web literature and I’m arguing for a post-web literature. In some ways I think we are living in a post-literature literature. People who are writing literature as such, I think it’s really simply wrong. I don’t know if you saw this piece by Adelle Waldman. It’s basically a long essay on my book Reality Hunger, kind of arguing against it. It was a respectful, thoughtful piece—but it was basically saying ‘I’m not sure if Reality is right, because I really like Anna Karenina.’ It was like ‘What?!’ I really like Anna Karenina too, but it was written a really long time ago. This friend of mine said, ‘Isn’t she just saying typewriters are still relevant because she really likes the 1938 Smith Corona design?’ I thought it was a beautiful analogy. I wanted her to make a stronger case for the contemporary novel, because all she said was that Anna Karenina really rocked. It’s like, no fucking joke. It’s a great novel that was written a long time ago. The point isn’t that Anna Karenina isn’t a good novel, it’s how do we write a book now? It’s like, where’s the Tolstoy of the Vietnam War? It’s the wrong question. There can’t be a Tolstoy of the Vietnam War.”

I’ve made a point of avoiding questions about Reality Hunger and all the bluster and hullabaloo that came with it, but before I know it, we’re slipping into a conversation that Shields is obviously tired of having. I mention Don Delillo’s novel Point Omega, and though Shields professes his respect and admiration, he’s soon talking about his “allergy to plot” and the book’s “tedious novelistic armature.” It doesn’t help that our food hasn’t arrived yet.

“I feel like I’ve endlessly explained…and either people agree or don’t agree. That’s settled law. I’m right and they’re wrong. I’ve talked about this at length in Reality Hunger and How Literature Saved My Life, and I’d much rather, frankly, talk about this new book. I’m weary of my own voice, and I would think readers would be too.”

Our food really should have arrived by now, and I grow increasingly uncomfortable watching Shields become visibly agitated. His eyes are alert, darting about the room for any sign that we might actually be served the food we ordered twelve, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes ago. Eventually, it’s too much, and as our waiter passes by, once again empty-handed, Shields loses it. In a wonderfully awkward, Larry Davidesque turn, Shields half-yells across the floor, “What’s going on with the food here? Is our food going to come up?” His voice, which already has a trebly pitch, gains an extra strain into an even higher register. The waiter stops and gives a dead stare. He musters an entirely unconvincing, “Yeah.” It takes another ten minutes, but we do, eventually, and to my great relief, receive our food: a turkey club for Shields, soup and salad for me.

I ask, as we chew, about the genesis of the book, and if he and Powell continue to spend any time together. Shields wanted to put his “over-devotion to writing” into contention with a worthy adversary. After a failed attempt with one former student, he found that Powell, another former student, was a perfect fit:

“We just have a very natural push and pull relationship. He’s apparently that way with almost everybody. Kind of a provocateur, kind of a naysayer, a devil’s advocate. No matter what position you take, he’ll take the opposite one, just to watch the logic play. He’s a very, very logical guy. Anyway, after Reality Hunger, I wanted to question myself, as I say in the book or somewhere, I wanted to burn my little village down.”

One could argue that Shields’ little village might be more accurately described as the ivory tower. There are moments when the conversation smacks of privilege and dissociation, as Shields even admits when telling Powell about his experience with his daughter’s education in the public schools: “I’m embarrassed, because I’m privileged and white, but when the rubber hit the road, I wanted what was best for my daughter.” I ask him about this part of the book, and about whether he can back down from this idea of the human as ultimately selfish. I wonder aloud if this notion of selfishness is tied to a desire to avoid any sentimentality.

“The great art, in my view, tells very difficult truths about human existence. I’m hardly unique in my allegiance to work which is rigorously unsentimental. That to me is a defining quality, if not the defining quality of great art. Specifically, the art of the personal essay, it derives entirely from the writer/author/speaker turning an unbelievably unblinking eye on himself and saying really naked things. I do emphasize it a lot, but it’s part of the history of literature, and it’s really a part of the essay tradition. Having said all that, I think your point is a good one. I think you really hone in nicely on these contradictions, whether about consciousness or backing down. I don’t know if you know my other book, Black Planet. It’s a book I wrote about the Sonics’ NBA season 15 years ago. Anyway, I’m doing a film based on it, with James Franco also directing, and me basically doing a monologue. Basically talking the irreducible tragedy of human tribalism as it manifests itself in race and tribes, Jews and blacks, as seen through sports. Anyway, at the end of the film, James asks me, ‘Are we fucked? Is there no hope? Is your vision as bleak as Cormac McCarthy?’ He’s a huge Cormac McCarthy fan. He’s basically asking your question, is there any backing down? Are we just these raging beasts? I think it’s a good question. Part of me wants to say, you know, yeah, that’s it, I’m just delivering very bleak news about the human animal. And I’m pretty much ok with that, but I back down a little bit. I’m not sure this will be in the final film, it’s sort of a corny term, but I say something like ‘I think human beings can meet at the scar tissue.’ I don’t think it’ll make the movie because it’s a little hackneyed, but I think to the degree that I offer a mitigation of human sadness, it does come from the joy of human connection. That is probably my over-valorization of art, because I just feel extraordinarily linked to people through great art. That’s a big part of the Caleb/David book, but also the Caleb/David movie…it sort of argues that Caleb is a theoretical good guy but on a daily level he actually treats people poorly, and that I am sort of a theoretical bad guy, but on a daily level actually try to treat people really well—the waiter not withstanding. I really try to treat people well. I don’t act selfishly, I’m just trying to offer a vision of life. Shakespeare understood human beings to be selfish. Every great writer understands how bottomlessly and awfully selfish the human animal is. It’s hard to think of a great writer who didn’t have a pretty bleak vision of the human animal. So in life, I try to treat people really compassionately, but in my work I try to be as rigorous as I possibly can. I don’t know if that answers your question. But I think this whole idea of backing down is a really live one. That really interests me. That’s basically what Franco asks me in Black Planet. That’s what Caleb and I wrestle with. What will I back away from finally? I don’t know. I don’t have it all figured out here. Even McCarthy’s vision has ameliorated over time, so that The Road has a sentimentality that the other novels don’t have.”

So, did Shields’ village burn after all? Did he take any serious intellectual or psychological hits? Was he changed?

“I do suffer more body blows in the movie. I get in trouble, because, basically, as they say, we throw away the script. James Franco and Caleb and I have a big argument. At one point, Franco and I turn on Caleb, and then at one point, Franco and Caleb turn on me. It gets pretty hairy. I feel like that actually changed me in relatively serious ways. Am I a theoretician of risk, or a practitioner of risk? It just made me feel that in my work going forward, I want to make sure that I don’t just pontificate about risk, but that I actually completely embody the risk that I ask of James and Caleb. It’s not like I suddenly became a horse whisperer, or something. It’s not like I became a different person. I’m still working through it.”

Shields is voluble in his opinions, but he’s just as ready to investigate some alternate avenue of thinking, or turn the questions back across the table. I’m surprised by his interest in my thoughts, experience, writing ambitions, etc. I shouldn’t be—so much of the book consists of his pensive interrogation into Powell’s life—but I am. I suppose, I too, assume that people are mostly selfish. By the end of lunch—which Shields vehemently and unyieldingly insists on buying—it’s an assumption I’m forced to question. Despite his dark view of humanity, there’s something defiantly generous in his sensibility:

“I like when art is trying that heroic and noble thing of actually showing what it feels like to live inside of someone’s brain, and then the essential loneliness of human existence collapses. That is, I think, the function of literary art.”