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LT: Yes, I think so. You move between and among all those different states. In a way desire, libido, that sort of drive, that energy— without it you probably wouldn’t do anything. But when you have it, when you’re experiencing it very, very strongly, so that it’s pushing you in all sorts of ways, you’re also at its mercy. You can feel content, maybe, in the moment when you’re not feeling that, but you’re also in a static state. You may have a period of equilibrium but you’re always going to head toward a state of disequilibrium. PN: There are several moments in Cast in Doubt where Horace finds himself ‘without or separate from desire’; ‘Indeed I felt blank’, he says (C, 141). LT: Yes—a desire not to desire. I’m working on a story now in which a woman likes to watch pornography. But to say ‘I like this’, or to say ‘I want to see this’, means that those things are not in her life. That’s the implication. That’s why nobody wants to be caught wanting. We’re filled with desires, but you’re not supposed to say that you have them. Because if you have them, it means that you’re lacking. At the ICA panel on Straight Sex, Lynne Segal in November talked about female heterosexual agency in so-called straight sex that everybody agrees is not so straight. Later all I could think about was that implied in the term ‘I desire’ is its own negation, a negation of agency. If you desire then you have a problem. But you can always say, ‘I wanted him and I got him.’ PN: But he wasn’t good enough! LT: Then I wanted someone else! PN: Can we go back to your first book, Haunted Houses? I gather the title comes from a passage in H.D.’s Tribute to Freud where she says that ‘We are all haunted houses.’ At the end of the novel that haunting is described as ‘A bad feeling that someone or something is never going to let you alone’ (H, 206). What kind of someone or something were you trying to get at in this novel? LT: I guess it’s a question of personal history, psychological history, of one’s family, which never leaves you alone. The idea that you can be completely free of that is bogus. Moving from personal history into public history, your present is always inflected by your past. I believe one can move, with a lot of psychological work, further away from the neurosis of the family, but perhaps never completely. PN: There’s certainly a lot of interest in this first book in forms of recollection and repetition. The young women in the novel fear they will repeat the lives of their mothers, and it’s as if the
DOI link for LT: Yes, I think so. You move between and among all those different states. In a way desire, libido, that sort of drive, that energy— without it you probably wouldn’t do anything. But when you have it, when you’re experiencing it very, very strongly, so that it’s pushing you in all sorts of ways, you’re also at its mercy. You can feel content, maybe, in the moment when you’re not feeling that, but you’re also in a static state. You may have a period of equilibrium but you’re always going to head toward a state of disequilibrium. PN: There are several moments in Cast in Doubt where Horace finds himself ‘without or separate from desire’; ‘Indeed I felt blank’, he says (C, 141). LT: Yes—a desire not to desire. I’m working on a story now in which a woman likes to watch pornography. But to say ‘I like this’, or to say ‘I want to see this’, means that those things are not in her life. That’s the implication. That’s why nobody wants to be caught wanting. We’re filled with desires, but you’re not supposed to say that you have them. Because if you have them, it means that you’re lacking. At the ICA panel on Straight Sex, Lynne Segal in November talked about female heterosexual agency in so-called straight sex that everybody agrees is not so straight. Later all I could think about was that implied in the term ‘I desire’ is its own negation, a negation of agency. If you desire then you have a problem. But you can always say, ‘I wanted him and I got him.’ PN: But he wasn’t good enough! LT: Then I wanted someone else! PN: Can we go back to your first book, Haunted Houses? I gather the title comes from a passage in H.D.’s Tribute to Freud where she says that ‘We are all haunted houses.’ At the end of the novel that haunting is described as ‘A bad feeling that someone or something is never going to let you alone’ (H, 206). What kind of someone or something were you trying to get at in this novel? LT: I guess it’s a question of personal history, psychological history, of one’s family, which never leaves you alone. The idea that you can be completely free of that is bogus. Moving from personal history into public history, your present is always inflected by your past. I believe one can move, with a lot of psychological work, further away from the neurosis of the family, but perhaps never completely. PN: There’s certainly a lot of interest in this first book in forms of recollection and repetition. The young women in the novel fear they will repeat the lives of their mothers, and it’s as if the
LT: Yes, I think so. You move between and among all those different states. In a way desire, libido, that sort of drive, that energy— without it you probably wouldn’t do anything. But when you have it, when you’re experiencing it very, very strongly, so that it’s pushing you in all sorts of ways, you’re also at its mercy. You can feel content, maybe, in the moment when you’re not feeling that, but you’re also in a static state. You may have a period of equilibrium but you’re always going to head toward a state of disequilibrium. PN: There are several moments in Cast in Doubt where Horace finds himself ‘without or separate from desire’; ‘Indeed I felt blank’, he says (C, 141). LT: Yes—a desire not to desire. I’m working on a story now in which a woman likes to watch pornography. But to say ‘I like this’, or to say ‘I want to see this’, means that those things are not in her life. That’s the implication. That’s why nobody wants to be caught wanting. We’re filled with desires, but you’re not supposed to say that you have them. Because if you have them, it means that you’re lacking. At the ICA panel on Straight Sex, Lynne Segal in November talked about female heterosexual agency in so-called straight sex that everybody agrees is not so straight. Later all I could think about was that implied in the term ‘I desire’ is its own negation, a negation of agency. If you desire then you have a problem. But you can always say, ‘I wanted him and I got him.’ PN: But he wasn’t good enough! LT: Then I wanted someone else! PN: Can we go back to your first book, Haunted Houses? I gather the title comes from a passage in H.D.’s Tribute to Freud where she says that ‘We are all haunted houses.’ At the end of the novel that haunting is described as ‘A bad feeling that someone or something is never going to let you alone’ (H, 206). What kind of someone or something were you trying to get at in this novel? LT: I guess it’s a question of personal history, psychological history, of one’s family, which never leaves you alone. The idea that you can be completely free of that is bogus. Moving from personal history into public history, your present is always inflected by your past. I believe one can move, with a lot of psychological work, further away from the neurosis of the family, but perhaps never completely. PN: There’s certainly a lot of interest in this first book in forms of recollection and repetition. The young women in the novel fear they will repeat the lives of their mothers, and it’s as if the
ABSTRACT
LT: Yes, I think so. You move between and among all those different states. In a way desire, libido, that sort of drive, that energywithout it you probably wouldn’t do anything. But when you have it, when you’re experiencing it very, very strongly, so that it’s pushing you in all sorts of ways, you’re also at its mercy. You can feel content, maybe, in the moment when you’re not feeling that, but you’re also in a static state. You may have a period of equilibrium but you’re always going to head toward a state of disequilibrium.
