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 second of two installments. Read vol. 1 here.

Powell is a curious physical presence. He’s somehow simultaneously imposing and inviting. His shaved and shining pate, grey stubbled chin, and broad shoulders are offset by a mischievous glimmer in the eyes and a slightly goofy grin. There’s something of a child’s unencumbered joy tinkering at the margins of his barrel-chested middle-aged body.

We’re sitting in one of the old wooden booths amid the din of the subterranean College Inn Pub. We’re drinking cheap beers that Powell has insisted on buying. Powell is fond of beer. If I didn’t already know this from the book, in which his affection for the beverage inspires concerned discussion, I would know it now, from his quick dispatch of the first can of Olympia. His thirst comes across as healthy, robust even—as if beer were a necessity to certain patriotic pursuits like lawn mowing, political argument, and arm-wrestling.

Our conversation is loose and easy-going from the start. We’re more a couple of dudes having a few than anything else. Powell is curious about where the interview will be published, and he even says, without thinking too much about it, that I could pitch it to some “real magazines.” With great pleasure, I take a posture of mock offense on behalf of the illustrious Monarch Review and declare theatrically that I don’t care at all for the implication. Powell is good for the ribbing and we banter back and forth for a moment before moving on.

I’m curious about the making of the film version of I think You’re Totally Wrong. I read in an interview with Shields that they rehearsed scenes from the book, but ended up just arguing all over again. I ask about that first, thinking out loud at how strange it must be to play yourself rather than be yourself.

“I agree. When we read from the book, we were very stilted and rehearsed and not natural. When we’ve gone on stage, and in the film, and when we’re talking, I find that we’re much more dynamic when we’re off script. Our first reading was at Elliot Bay, and we read from the book, but a couple of times we argued about what we should read, and that was far more interesting.”

I ask about working with James Franco, if it was awkward working with a big Hollywood star.

“Yeah. I went in thinking ‘I’m not gonna kiss his ass, he’s just another fucking guy, big deal,’ but I get there and I’m like ‘Mr. Franco’.” He guffaws at the memory of his star-struckness. “Obviously, there are a lot of things I wish I’d said or done differently. I’m happy with the way it turned out, but I think I was marveling at celebrity. I’ve followed his career. I’ve read some of his books. As soon as I knew he had read our book and liked it and was interested in making a movie of it, I thought ‘Wow, I’ve got to see his movies.’ I tried to get David to watch This is the End with me.”

They didn’t end up watching it together.

“David is a strange critter. He’ll invite me to dinner and I’ll say, ‘Sure, what time?’ and then he’ll say he’s too busy. He’s probably done that twenty times. I’m keeping tabs! It’s annoying! So this James Franco thing is one of them, where I say, ‘Hey, This is the End is out. Let’s go watch it together.’ And he says, ‘That’s a great idea!’ And it’s playing at the Crest, and then it’s playing here too, and it’s playing here, and all these times, and he says, ‘I’m gonna spend some more time with my wife.’”

In the book, Shield’s art is always getting top priority, often to the detriment of his marriage and family, so I find it sweet and endearing this idea that he’s trying make more time for his wife. I find the irony amusing too, and when I mention it to Powell, he’s quick to respond:

“He wants to be a human so badly, but it’s all pure artifice and device, and he’s not really a human. I’m going to examine that idea. He’s actually a good guy, but I think he is kind of twisted in these things. ”

The central question of the book—Art vs. Life—is an artificial device: from a cynical perspective, it’s a marketing ploy; from a more generous vantage, it’s a fine way to frame an occasion for dialogue. The question does generate a good deal of debate and digression in the book, but the question I find truly compelling is the one Powell has just touched upon: what does it mean to be human?

I remember seeing W.S. Merwin read once. In the Q&A after the reading, he was asked about the origins of poetry. He was modest and demure in a stately way, and said that, though he didn’t know, he very much liked the idea that poetry originated from the first lingual responses to ululations of suffering, that poetry arose from the first attempts to comfort with speech.

To be human is to suffer—at times exquisitely—and to be able to talk about it. That, for me, is the answer this book embodies. And that is why, even when Powell and Shields are griping and moaning at each other, something affirming, familial, and vital is occurring.

I ask Powell if there was anything in the book he was embarrassed by.

“No! Well, yes, no, yes, YES! It’s both. What I said about my wife. She’d told me not too. I pulled her aside and said, ‘I have something I have tell you about. You’re not going to like it.’ And I told her that I’d talked about her past marriage. She really did not want that out. She said, ‘That’s my business. How could you do that?’ She said, ‘When you pulled me aside, I thought you were going to tell me you had cheated on me, and I almost wish you had!’ So we had that. I talk about my grandfather on my mom’s side being a child molester. I talk about myself. I told my wife, ‘I also sacrifice myself about my transvestite experiences.’ But I don’t even worry about that stuff.”

“That stuff comes off as really endearing,” I add.

“I kind of feel like I betrayed other people because they weren’t my secrets.”

The literary economy of anguish interests me a great deal, so Powell has my ears perked all the way up and my mouth running: “In the literary world, there’s a value to your bravery, which I think is a euphemism for a willingness to sell your most personal secrets and your most personal pain, and the pain of those who are most close to you. And it’s troubling to me…”

“I’m troubled too. I used some real names in the book that we had to change in public, because there were some really big secrets that I put out there. Ninety percent of my secrets, I revealed. David’s secrets, which potentially could be more damaging, we get maybe two percent. We don’t even get that. In the movie I tried to bring them out. Not damaging, but painful. I think David could reveal my secrets and it wouldn’t damage our relationship. If I revealed David’s secrets, it would damage our relationship. I don’t want to do that.”

“So what’s the contract?” I ask, though I don’t know what I’m asking exactly—which is exactly why I am asking.

“If this fails, he’s got fifteen books. If this fails, I’ve got zero books.”

I ask if he feels like he got used in any way, and I immediately regret it. He answers emphatically to the contrary: “I feel honored.” I ask if he thinks Shields is being honest in investigating his own darkness, his own secrets.

“He hasn’t lived life for so long that he’s become a literary critic. Yes, he has a wife, he’s had a kid. His life is so normal. Yes, having a kid is an amazing thing, but millions of kids are born every year. These experiences are normal, as a human. He hasn’t lived on the edge. Basically, his last few books have been about, ‘Here’s all the things that I’ve read and here’s what I think about them.’ And I think he’s really good at it.”

Powell is all haughty conviction and bravado in one moment, and doubtful reflection in the next. Talking about his own artistic life in relation to his family life, an unmistakable pang of regret sounds out: “You get to the point where you’re in your forties and you’ve dedicated yourself to life and you have nothing. It’s a tough thing to stare at. It’s a lot of pain. It’s a different risk.” At times, his speech conjures a crushing practicality, as when he talks about opportunistic post-9/11 publishing: “We’re all stuck having to make money at the end of the day. It makes people cynical for legitimate reasons.”

Voluble and variable, Powell is excited to talk about anything. It’s apparent why Shields found him such a perfect foil. Quick to take the least popular angle on any argument, Powell is just as quick to admit uncertainty in his thinking, or to crack a joke—often aimed squarely at himself. When I ask him how we would respond to claims that the book sometimes smacks of white privilege, without missing a beat he says, “Yeah, we’re just two white guys arguing.”

.