LA writer Salvador Plascencia is the author of 2005’s The People of Paper. In case you haven’t read it: it is a bold, wild-eyed, painful, silly, devastating, dark, hope-giving, religious, dirty, playful jaunt through several characters’ lives in El Monte, CA. Strange things happen. There is a boy whose cat is butchered, so he creates organs for the cat in order to revive it…out of paper. And they work. There is a metafictional twist where Salvador Plascencia himself becomes a present force in the book. It’s grand, epic, in line with what some would call “magical realism,” but the crisp and graceful prose never threaten to know the secret to the cosmos—it’s a book that is at peace with its own pretensions, knows when to be smart and when to throw pies. I caught up with Salvador and got inside his head:

Could you tell us a bit about how you came to be here in America, where you were born and where you grew up?

I’m interested in how you were socially as a youth. Some writers have the “flashlight under the blanket” syndrome, where they read omnivorously as a child. What was your childhood like with literature?

I was a gym rat. If I wasn’t in school, I was either playing or watching basketball. Basketball was my first love, but it was somewhat unrequited. I stopped growing and I had to give it up. Somehow, between all that basketball, I was reading. They tell me I always had a paperback in my back pocket, but it’s not something I recall as a childhood memory. I remember sitting on my friends couch and watching Isaiah Thomas dribble past Magic and sweep the Lakers, but I don’t remember where I found Steinbeck and Kafka.

The People of Paper is comical in a sort of subtle way. I found if I wasn’t laughing out-loud I was constantly smiling, just at the situations and the characters (the description of the wrestlers moves, for instance). What has inspired you comically in your own life, not even just specifically with authors, but other forms of entertainment?

I don’t have the comic instinct to be a George Saunders or attempt to write Twainesque sentences. All of my life, I’ve been surrounded by uncles and friends that tell these hilariously raucous stories; I’m the person that follows with the dud joke. I love stand-up comedy, I own nearly every Richard Pryor concert and I was really excited by George Lopez’s early work. And of course: The Simpsons and Futurama. There’s a big part of me that wants to go for the big laugh, but ultimately I’m afraid of bombing. For that reason the humor in my writing tends to leak out. If I tell a joke, I won’t admit to it. Humor opens up avenues that lead to a real intimacy and tenderness that is otherwise unavailable. I mean, there is also the crass ugly comedy, like the stuff Carlos Mencia does, jokes that function on aggression and appeal to our darkest misanthropy, but the great humorist are not bullies.

What’s the deal with your table of contents page? I at first thought it was Morse Code, and actually figured out what it said in Morse Code. In case you’re interested, it actually says: OESOESO-ESMSEEE-OSIIIOISEOSEO. I am now fairly confident that it is not Morse Code (haha). But this is just an example of what a reader who approaches an experimental text is working with. What do you think about that?

There’s actually a pretty simple explanation to the table of contents, but the reader interpretations I’ve heard have been far more interesting and beautifully complex than my original idea, so it’s best if I just stay quiet. People that have gone through the novel have come up with some very sophisticated readings that make perfectly good sense but were never on my radar. And many of the interpretations have been far more interesting than I could have dreamed up. It’s been really exciting to see the novel expand in directions I was not aware of. But this is not exclusive to experimental fiction, it happens in all literature. I’m not at all interested in controlling the meaning of the novel or approving a “correct reading”. I wouldn’t want Salinger to tell me how to read Franny and Zooey, and I not going to dictate any particular reading. Experimental fiction tends to give a more explicit permission to the reader to screw around. In this way experimentalism might be more trusting and generous to the reader than traditional fiction.

Who is a current author that maybe you read the most, the one that’s like your meat and potatoes?

It used to read Marquez non-stop. At one point I read A Hundred Years back-to-back-to back but I haven’t read him in a good while. There is no meat and potatoes at the time.

How long did it take you to write People of Paper.

Five years, I think. But it was in streaks and writing fevers. I would go hard for two months and then not write for three. For the next novel I’m getting a timecard clock and I’m going to punch in and out. But that’s assuming there is a next novel.

What was your reaction when you found out Mcsweeney’s was interested in publishing your book? Were you at all hesitant? And is Mcsweeney’s a place you would call ‘home’ now as a writer, or are you looking to explore other publishers as well?

I would love to call McSweeney’s home. Eli Horowitz, the managing editor, has a phenomenal eye. He’ll see a strand of string hanging from a sentence and instead of saying “snip it off,” he’ll tell you to take it home and pull at it. Next thing you know you have a full Persian rug on you lap. He’s one of the last real editors out there. McSweeney’s is made up of flesh and blood people that are really kind and intelligent about books, it’s not twenty offices in three different cities. I think there’s always the temptation of money from bigger places, but I’ve come to realize that it’s not really worth it.

Why hesitation? Because McSweeney’s is not a major press? Or are you hinting at what has become a fashionable anti-McSweeney’s sentiment? There are people out there who have built careers on player-hating against McSweeney’s. But it’s not like McSweeney’s is an aesthetic school with a manifesto or a major publisher paying for space on the front tables of Barnes N’ Nobles. What are they objecting to? McSweeney’s quirky design? They’re opposed to quality bindings and beautiful cover art because the books become fetish objects? Okay, maybe. I can see that.

What happens for you when you get “inspired?”

I trust that there is some underground stream that I can tap into. I tend to follow sentences, not concepts. It’s very workman like. I write a sentence and I need another sentence to follow it. Stories and characters are then spawned from the word choice. I don’t plot until the very end. I assume that my subconscious will make its own coherent order. But I wouldn’t mind some help from a supernatural muse, hopefully for the next book. Maybe I can just be the medium for some tortured ghost that has some unfinished business to take care of.

The stylistic choices you use, like the angry letter about “decay” and “fading” where the ink on the page literally fades, or the “I love […]” with the name physically removed from the text, and even just what the metaphors prompt, the idea in the beginning of people and animals made of paper and going about everyday life—it tempts me to read quite a bit into it. For instance there seems to be the theme of language, the written word, both giving people power and enslaving them, but no one escapes it. But then there’s a part of me that wants to just read the stories and ask “how” rather than “what.” What do you think?

I once went to see Octavia Butler at a reading. Butler is fascinating for the simple reason that she has a huge sci-fi fan base but also many academics in Africana are interested in her work. But at this reading during the Q and A both of the crowds came together and there was this dynamic tension between the “how” and the “what”. One person would ask about the logistical problems of time travel, stuff a Trekkie would enquire about, and the next person was a post-colonial scholar asking a long winded question about the Black-Diaspora. I remember smiling the whole time. What do I think? Well, I guess, I wouldn’t mind being the male Mexican-American version of Octavia Butler.

What are you working on now? A new novel, some short stories? When can we expect a new work of fiction from you?

I’m working on my dissertation and just reading stuff that is assumed I already know and have been faking for years. Next time I get in a conversation about The Master and the Margarita I’ll be able to say more than, “Oh, yeah that book with the cat.” As far as fiction goes: I’m all over the place. Whatever I say won’t be true a week from now. I think in two years there might be a new book.