Matthew William Graham will be forty on the Sunday of our interview. During conversation, his tone vacillates between sustained notes of optimism and a crushing hopelessness. Like that which is present in most people of substance, there is an experience-provoked duality at play. And darkness has been animated for Matthew. When he closes his eyes the night becomes a hope-sucking vacuity,
The controversy around Sean Thor Conroe and Sam Pink raises interesting questions about authenticity, and how the comparatively well-off have a tendency (which is maybe a particularly American tendency) to grasp at low-culture and reject their relative status.
It’s often the case that American high-culture produces dissatisfaction with itself, and in the occasional case of someone like Sean Thor Conroe,
MM) You’ve lived all over. While Hollow Nacelle is decidedly a Los Angeles/American Southwestern novel, it exudes a kind of Zen, a mysticism, a preoccupation with nature and the nature of sound. Tell us about your physical and spiritual life trajectory and how it led you to expat. How has living in places far-flung from California informed this novel?
MM) Family Annihilator went through a few different phases of conception. You’ve been muttering online and through various channels about this mysterious novella for a while now. Could you share the process of revelation you had that brought us this book in its final incarnation?
CW) From what I recall, sometime in 2018 I was writing a short story about a young couple making a weird YouTube horror show.