Toronto writer Jason Guriel talks to AW’s Lucy Black about his latest book.
A year into the pandemic, I was finding I was tired of scrolling, of being online. I was missing bookstores and music stores, which had been dwindling for years anyway, especially the music stores. On Browsing is a love letter to those places. And it’s a love letter to physical media—books, CDs, and so on.
LB: It might be argued that On Browsing is a book about “agency”. Did it begin that way as an idea, or did the ramifications of the essays become clearer as the ideas and the text developed?
JG: The ideas definitely became clearer as I wrote. The book started as a kind of screed against scrolling, against being online all the time. And then I found myself getting more emotional. I was remembering all these bricks-and-mortar shops, places that had meant a lot to me—places that had vanished. I hadn’t set out to write an elegiac memoir, but that’s what the book became.
LB: Your book uses both recent historical references as well as ones that reflect social perspectives over time. These references are not necessarily presented chronologically, however, but often discretely, in the emphasis of particular points of observation or argument. In this sense, are they also the result of “browsing”?
JG: Sure, I suppose I was browsing my memories!
LB: Share with us a little about your go-to support group. Do you have trusted supporters that you bounce ideas and early drafts with? Are they also writers?
I would never call them a support group, but I do have a few writers I’ll occasionally show a draft to. Most of the time, I try to avoid too much input. Writers are drowning in what gets called “literary community.” It’s important to cultivate a prickly carapace towards too much feedback and fellowship—until you have a polished draft that you really believe in. You need to insulate your writing from too many opinions, especially when you’re at an early stage. I’m scandalized by the spectacle of poets thanking dozens of readers in their acknowledgments page.
My ideal is to work with one brilliant and demanding editor who makes me raise my game—like Luke Hathaway or Carmine Starnino.
LB: What is the most valuable piece of writing advice you have ever been given?
JG: I don’t think this counts as “advice,” but for a few years as an undergrad, I had a wonderful creative writing professor named Richard Teleky, who’s a very fine novelist. This one time, Richard pointed out a weak spot in one of my poems and told me to fix it. All he said was, “You’re up to it.” That was it. There was no specific suggestion, just, “You’re up to it.” And that vote of confidence has always stayed with me.
LB: Tell us about a book that you have returned to over the years and read more than once?
JG: He’s written better books, but I’ve come back to William Gibson’s Neuromancer a few times. It’s a masterclass in how to build a world through oblique glances, in how to build up texture. Like all great books, it trusts the reader to try to keep up.
LB: What is the biggest challenge or hurdle you have had to work through as a writer?
JG: Having small kids and a full-time job, though these turn out to be secret blessings: they force me to make the most of my writing time.
LB: Do you have a writing routine or regimen? What does that include at the different stages in the writing process?
JG: When I’m writing a book, I tend to wake up early, usually around six. At that point, the rest of the house is still asleep. This buys me close to an hour and a half of silence, though the early rise takes a toll. I’m pretty tired by the end of the day.
LB: What would you consider to be the most important elements in good writing?
JG: I like writing that is simultaneously precise and original in the way it sees the world. There’s a moment in a novella by William Gass that I’ve always loved: “…when a paste-white chicken would emerge from between piles of scrap wood and scrap metal as if squeezed from a tube.” That’s a spot-on simile that captures the way a chicken’s feathery bulk expands a little as it passes through some tight gap. Good writing identifies phenomena we’ve all seen but never found words for—and then finds the unforgettable words.
LB: If you were to give a young writer a piece of crucial writing advice, what would that be?
JG: Giving advice is a mug’s game (though I did suggest earlier that writers should avoid too much feedback!). Ultimately, writers learn their most important lessons on their own. “There is no method,” says T.S. Eliot somewhere, “but to be very intelligent.”
Jason Guriel is the author of On Browsing, Forgotten Work, and several other books. His writing has appeared in Air Mail, The Atlantic, ELLE, Slate, The Walrus, Poetry, and other magazines. He lives in Toronto.