Michael Leone’s work has been published or will be published in Green Mountains Review, the Jabberwock Review, The Ledge, North Atlantic Review, the Southern Review, and the Saranac Review. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and writes reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Plain Dealer, and the Kansas City Star. He lives in southern New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

How would you define your writing style as far as fiction is concerned?

I used to obsess about style. I’d read Nabokov and Faulkner and Richard Yates and yearn to write like they do, adopting their voices, the result being that I was writing phony stories. Now I don’t think about style at all. Style is who you are, how you walk, how you wear your clothes, the plaque on your teeth, the fungus on your toenails. (I do floss, and my toe fungus is gone, thank you.) For instance, I wrote a story that got published in FRiGG—which I’m grateful for—it’s called “Out of the Valley,” a period piece that takes place on a farm. But it’s not really me. It’s me trying to be Cormac McCarthy or Breece DJ Pancake or something (and failing). The story is a distillation of voices, but it’s not the real Michael Leone that my friends know, this geeky, neurotic guy who almost chopped his foot off the other day running his Cub Cadet lawnmower, the guy who lost his turnpike ticket last week because it scurried out the car window. I guess it’s a part of me, but it’s not my essence. If a writer has to think about style then they are thinking about manufacturing a style, which is only a form of posturing. Be who you are: in life and on the page. Send that one in to Bartlett.

That’s a great observation and piece of advice—be who you are. Don’t manufacture style. What stories have you written that are the real Michael Leone?

I’ve got one coming out in Sou’wester called “What’s with your Teeth?” that I think is the authentic me. I’ve written another called “Paper Tiara” that has yet to find a home. The newer stuff I’m writing seems more Michael Leoneish, and less derivative, I hope. Who knows? It’s a process.

You mention trying to write like Nabokov, Faulkner, Yates, Cormac McCarthy, and Breece DJ Pancake. Who else do you credit as literary influences? How do you separate your admiration for these writers from the desire to write (be?) like them?

Everything I read and love is an influence. Chekhov, Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, John Cheever, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Carver, Leonard Gardner, Brian Moore, Larry Brown, William Gay, Antonya Nelson, Tim Gautreaux, David Jauss has a brilliant collection of stories called Black Maps. The stuff I hate, too, influences me, because it reinforces what it is I want to do and what it is I want to avoid.

Admiration and envy are good motivating tools, but at the end of the day, you are who you are. Stay true to that and your stuff will be unique.

You’re currently working on short stories, and trying to “come up with a gimmick to link them.” Why do you feel it’s necessary to have a linked collection? Are they easier to sell?

In this market you must have a novel, frankly, and the next closest thing is a linked short story collection, which more often than not is a transparent attempt to sell a bunch of shoddily strung together short stories. Sometimes, such a collection works, like Donald Ray Pollock’s “tour de force” debut, Knockemstiff, or Ron Currie’s God Is Dead. But I’ll be honest—I find novel writing daunting. I don’t know if I’m a novelist. I’ve written one, and maybe four or five unfinished ones, and they’re just crappy. I feel my short stories, however, do have enough weight and are rich enough with characters to be made into novels, if I can just commit to the process. It’s like I have novelist’s ADD or something; I tend to lose focus, or interest, for that kind of sustained narrative. I’m much better in shorter bursts, which makes me feel like a short story writer. But I shudder to think this, because in this market, short stories are so arcane, so overlooked, I may as well be writing Petrarchan sonnets.

How long have you been writing book reviews? How did you get the newspaper gigs?

I’ve been writing for newspapers for about three years. I started out writing reviews on Amazon, believe it or not, basically because I was bored. I wrote little blurbs about books I liked, or didn’t. Then a friend of mine suggested I send some out and actually get paid for it, which I did. I started first at free places, a few online, a few in print, and built up some clips, and after some time, say a few years, I mailed off these clips to every conceivable newspaper across the country. It takes a lot of scrambling, lots of envelopes and stamps—just like submitting fiction. Occasionally, the editors bite, but most often they don’t. I was lucky a few did.

National Book Critics Circle. What is it, and how do you join?

Um, it is admittedly a fancy sounding organization, but the truth is, if you have some clips published in newspapers and fifty bucks to spare—voila!—you’re a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Are there specific guidelines you follow when writing book reviews?

Yes. John Updike has guidelines he uses, too, and I follow some of those. For one thing, I always try to quote a passage from the book to give a sense of the author’s style. I refuse to simply rehash the plot. Almost every book review you read today, not only in the Sunday Times Book Review, but in such “esteemed” venues as The New York Review of Books, is a plot synopsis. It just boggles my mind. No attempt has been made to offer an analysis of the work, its themes, its characterizations. Of course, this is next to impossible in your average 600 – 800 word newspaper book review, but I try to see the work as a whole and honestly tell how I feel about it. The latter part can sometimes be a problem; frankly, most books aren’t very good, but I know it’s very hard to make even a bad one, so I try to find something positive to say in every review. There are a lot of great book reviewers out there, by the way, better than the ones you read in the really posh places. Google Todd Shy, Floyd Skloot, Irina Reyn, Eric Miles Williamson. Great writers who write intelligent, perceptive reviews.

For you, what makes a book good?

Great writing should leave you feeling a bit wounded. A rupture has opened in your universe and you will never look at life the same way again. I still remember trembling when I finished Madame Bovary. Same way with all great books: Bleak House, Lolita, Revolutionary Road, Fat City, The Great Gatsby, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Stoner, Light in August, Mrs. Bridge. I also love comic novels, which are just as serious as any tragedy. Evelyn Waugh, Gogol, Robert Plunket. Of the latter—try finding a copy of My Search for Warren Harding. It is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. I can only strive to reach those heights in my own work.

You’ve told me that you’re not “Mr. Serious Writer” guy. Does that mean you regard writing as more of a hobby, or were you referring to your personality?

I guess it was my way of saying, and perhaps it is my own insecurity, that to talk about writing is to seem very pretentious, especially when I don’t feel I’ve particularly earned the right to sound my opinion at all. Talking is easy, and if you let me, I’ll talk your damn ears off. The doing of it is the hard part. Maybe it’s the blue collar guy in me—though I work as a librarian! No grease on these hands. I grew up in a working class family. Dad was a cop, mom was a court officer: the municipal middle class. The truth is, I take writing very seriously, as anybody who knows me can attest. But I’m also not one of these thousand words a day dudes. I wish I was.

With the exception of a two week stint in Seattle, you’ve lived on the east coast your entire life. First of all, what made you go to Seattle, only to leave it two weeks later? Secondly, tell us what you love about life on the east coast.

“Love about life”? Is this a joke? I am the last person to describe anything that way. I visited Seattle once in the early 90s with an ex-girlfriend with the intention of living there but I found it too cool and bohemian for my tastes. Too many would-be artists lugging satchels and battered guitar cases and defaced notebooks to scribble their bad poems in, and within two weeks, we hurried back to the gritty glamour of New York. Of course, New York has its downsides too: expensive rents, crowds, noise, constant, earth-shattering construction going on. We moved to Brooklyn and had roaches the size of lizards in our apartment and mice, and this was not a cheap place. One night I came and saw my drunken super pissing on the side of our building. What a caretaker. That’s New York. Love it or hate it. I’ve since moved to southern New Jersey, and it’s been an adjustment, but I’m an hour and a half away from NY if I want it.

That’s true—you probably would not use the term “love about life.” You have, if you don’t mind me saying, a morbid sense of humor. So maybe you can end the interview by telling us a bad joke.

Why did the hippie move to the North Pole? To meet cool people.