An Interview with Isabel Waidner
Liam Harrison | Tolka, Web Only, January 2024
‘The fawn looked at me, batting four sets of lashes, giving disarming smile. Off he went, hustling around the bandstand, rattling the local blue tits to the core.’
Isabel Waidner’s latest novel, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility (2023), spans prize culture, notions of social mobility, wormholes, daytime telly and, perhaps most memorably, an eight-legged Bambi.
Waidner’s previously published work includes Gaudy Bauble (2017), Liberating the Canon (2018), We Are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019) and Sterling Karat Gold (2021), which won the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize. Corey Fah, like Waidner, is a writer who has won a literary prize – in Corey’s case, ‘The Award for the Fictionalization of Social Evils’. But Corey Fah struggles to collect the prize, which takes the form of a UFO that hovers just out of reach.
After failing to collect the prize, Corey Fah returns home to their partner, Drew Szumski, who is obsessed with a reality TV show called St Orton Gets to the Bottom of It, where guest audience members discuss their experiences of červí díra, or wormholes. Things get worse for Corey Fah when Bambi Pavok, live on St Orton Gets to the Bottom of It, takes revenge on their tormenter Fumper, and ingests the bunny through an Alien-esque mouthpart: ‘Bambi Pavok proceeded to sluice onto Fumper’s abdomen while simultaneously sucking up pre-digested fur and tissue.’
I spoke to Isabel over email about Corey Fah in January, ahead of its US publication in February.
Liam Harrison (LH): For those unfamiliar, can you say a bit more about your latest novel and Bambi Pavok (or spider Bambi)? Where did the idea of the arachnoid Bambi come from?
Isabel Waidner (IW): My ambition for the novel was to examine and challenge conservative ideas around social mobility, which, especially in fiction, are often told as simplistic triumph-over-tragedy narratives or connected to mythologies around merit. I use the example of a writer, Corey Fah, winning a prize (not unlike myself winning the Goldsmiths Prize in 2021) to make the case that it might not be quite so straightforward: propelled into unfamiliar contexts of social power and opportunity as a result of their win, Corey has to contend with their difference and their messy past catching up with them – in the shape of a cute but freaky Bambi character, Bambi Pavok.
Writing, I was looking for a character who could animate Corey’s personal history and younger self, and hold the tensions between lovability, chaos and disruption – Bambi, modified, was just that. Bambi Pavok shares some of the Disney character’s characteristics and backstory: notably he lost his mother in a tragic incident when he was young. In one of many departures from the Disney version, he is beleaguered by a bully called Fumper, the evil version of Thumper, the rabbit.
LH: I’ve heard you say that Corey Fah originally had Bambi included in the novel’s title, until the lawyers got in touch and said Disney might not be too happy about that . . . The title, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, captures the voice and trajectory of the novel – how did you decide on it?
IW: The first chapter of the novel is titled ‘Corey Fah does social mobility, see how that goes’. When we started looking for a replacement title, my editor at Hamish Hamilton suggested Corey Fah Does Social Mobility and I thank him for it. It captures the book perfectly and is the far superior title compared to the original idea.
LH: There is a kind of queer archiving in Corey Fah, which stems from your other work, like Liberating the Canon. There is an incorporation of queer artists and events (such as the life, work and murder of Joe Orton) in the novel. Can you say a bit more about Corey Fah as a kind of queer archive?
IW: Making explicit connections to existing queer cultures in my writing – and mobilising them in new ways – has been important to me: I have thought of the referentiality of my work as community-building across time and space. In Corey Fah, a fictionalised version of the playwright Joe Orton appears as a talk-show host who escaped an attempt on his life in the nineteen sixties through a červí díra – a time-and space-defying passageway, or wormhole. Building the classic sci-fi trope into the novel allowed me to put historical figures to work with what might be seen as irreverence, but which I consider a homage: Joe Orton was one of the few British gay working-class writers winning literary prizes historically. He constitutes a rare precedent to Corey Fah, a gay working-class writer themselves.
LH: I heard you speak at a Corey Fah event in Bristol last summer, and you touched on interesting ideas about counterculture and the mainstream. I think you said that you used to be happy working outside of the mainstream – whether that meant being categorised in alternative sections in bookshops or working on the edges of the publishing scene – while you’re now happier, or more intent, to take up ‘mainstream space’. Am I getting that right? Perhaps the binary framing needs dismantling . . .
IW: I agree that the binary framing between mainstream and ‘alternative’ forms of writing needs dismantling. I have long contested the view that inventive writing, or writing that explores ideas through literary form, is difficult, inaccessible and unsellable. Readers are far more adventurous than they are given credit for. The ongoing side-lining of inventive writing within publishing and review cultures is a problem and leaves us with an impoverished notion of what the novel can be and do. The Goldsmiths Prize has done a lot to compensate for a culture of sameness but we aren’t there yet.
LH: You have been on quite a publishing journey! The first two books were published by the micropress Dostoyevsky Wannabe, then Sterling Karat Gold came out with the indie Peninsula Press, and won the Goldsmiths Prize, and now you are published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin. The US edition of Corey Fah is also about to be published by Graywolf. Your books not only illustrate this publishing journey but reflect upon it as narrative material (the literary prize Corey Fah tries and fails to collect is a described as ‘a physical representation of the cultural capital I’d just acquired’). What has it been like working with these different publishers, and why do you like to include these experiences into your stories?
IW: I learnt a lot from working with what technically was a DIY publisher, Dostoyevsky Wannabe. I was disabused of some received misconceptions, namely that formally inventive fiction doesn’t sell. That novels exploring ideas around power and subjectivity in some complexity don’t sell. And that you need a budget and a large team to produce and sell novels. Publishing without any of the traditional support structures in place wasn’t easy, but, with the help of various early prize short listings, we managed to exceed expectations.
Peninsula Press is a far more professionalised operation which is embedded in grassroots literary cultures through their connection to the Burley Fisher Bookshop in East London. In addition to Sterling Karat Gold, they reissued my second novel We Are Made of Diamond Stuff in 2022, and I have loved publishing with them. Our collaboration is ongoing whenever opportunities arises. The connection to my US publisher Graywolf was made by team Peninsula, much to their credit.
Hamish Hamilton is my ideal imprint, enough said. It’s a huge privilege to publish with them, and their willingness to try new things is rare in mainstream publishing. It’s taken years if not decades for me to arrive at this point, but it was worth it.
My experiences in publishing shape my writing because they inform my understanding of how power works – makes sense, no?
LH: There is a great attention to clothes and appearances in Corey Fah. Do you have a favourite fit in the novel?
IW: The fits in Corey Fah are relatively relaxed compared the more elaborate takes in Sterling Karat Gold! I like combinations involving joggers or tracksuits and knitwear – it’s the juxtaposition that counts.
LH: The cover art of Corey Fah is a wonderful collage by the artist Linda Stupart, who also did the cover art for We Are Made of Diamond Stuff. Could you say a little more about the Corey Fah cover, and collaborating with Linda?
IW: Hamish Hamilton gave me the opportunity to work with a long-term collaborator – as well as with designer Jon Gray – on the cover for Corey Fah. I’ve been a fan of Linda’s work for years, and first asked them to make a collage for the cover of the Dostoyevsky Wannabe edition of We Are Made of Diamond Stuff in 2019. We used a print-on-demand service to get paperbacks made and the print quality wasn’t as high as we wanted it to be. I was made up when Linda’s art, their version of Bambi Pavok, appeared on an expensively produced Penguin hardback cover including glossy (‘varnished’) parts some years later!
LH: Rachael Allen wrote a great piece about class and publishing recently for Too Little / Too Hard. Allen writes: ‘I feel confused about where I sit. I don’t believe I am working class anymore, but feel limbo-stuck, unable to return, and prevented from being where I thought I was supposed to be. I did not transcend my class, I just complicated it.’ Does this resonate with Corey Fah’s experiences? Or, in different ways, with your own?
IW: It does. I should say, I wouldn’t necessarily want to transcend my class, but rather resist the inequalities that come with it: we can learn a lot from working-class cultures and ways of relating which I wouldn’t want to miss! I don’t feel confused as much as in the minority in privileged industries like publishing and academia. I also get the sense that those of us who are ‘inside’ are expected to be grateful and adjust, rather than bring our resourcefulness and ideas to bear on structurally changing the contexts we work in.
What stands out for me in the Too Little / Too Hard piece is Rachael’s brilliant critique of the assumption within publishing that inventive writing, or writing that explores ideas around literary form, is too difficult or complex for the working classes to understand. The smartest, most literate people I know are working class.
LH: Amid all the wormholes, spider legs and anarchic comedy in Corey Fah, there is a strained yet tender relationship between Drew Szumski and Corey Fah at the heart of the narrative. Can I ask you about this relationship, and the role that love plays in the novel?
IW: The relationship between Corey and their partner Drew has the hallmarks of a long-term romantic relationship, the reality of which can be quite unromantic, of course. Corey gets on Drew’s nerves, they bicker, they argue, but ultimately, their partnership is based on love, humour, trust and generosity. I’m not going to tell readers that love emerges as the answer in Corey Fah, but that maybe love, in all its complexity, is worth labouring for.
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2023 and Graywolf in 2024.
Isabel Waidner is a writer based in London. They are the author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, Sterling Karat Gold, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff and Gaudy Bauble. They are the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 and were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2019, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2022 and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and they are an academic in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.
Author photo by Robin Christian
Liam Harrison is a founding editor at Tolka. He is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
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