INFREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
Here at S.A.V.A. Press, not only do we like and
respect writers, but we find them profoundly interesting. As such, whenever we
publish and promote authors, we also try to get to know them a little bit. Hopefully,
you’ll find the following questions and answers both engaging and enticing
enough to delve into more of the author’s available content…
And now, without further ado, S.A.V.A. Press is proud
to present: Titus Green!
S.A.V.A. Press:
“Author bios, by their very nature, are meant to be short and sweet. Is there
anything outside of your author bio that you’d like your readers to know about
you, or that you think your readers might find interesting and/or surprising
about you? If not, feel free to use this space to speak directly to your
readers about anything related to your published work…”
Titus: “I’ve spent most
of my adult life living and working overseas as a teacher of English as a
foreign language. I’ve taught in Europe, the Middle East, North-East Asia, the
UK and North America. I don’t think I could have received a more powerful or
profound education in culture, geopolitical nuance or worldview exchange than
this, and although English language teaching isn’t the most stable or
standardized of careers, I am incredibly grateful for the rich memories and
intellectual growth it has provided for me. I speak smatterings of Japanese,
Mandarin Chinese, Arabic and could once operate competently in pre-intermediate
Korean, having lived in Seoul for seven years.
“Travel is a vital influence in writer development. I
am unequivocal in this belief. Writing with the greatest impact can transcend
geographic and cultural boundaries, and when informed by authentic experience
and observation of these places, it can fascinate readers and do so
compellingly immune from the sniping idiocies of post-modern critical theorists
such as ‘cultural appropriation,’ and the like.”
S.A.V.A. Press: “Here
at S.A.V.A. Press, we feel that all writers can contribute something to the
conversation about the art of writing. Can you share your thoughts on what, in
your opinion, are the elements of great writing?”
Titus: “A huge question!
With so many possible answers and supporting ideas…I’ll attempt brevity,
however. Perhaps some, but not all of Aristotle’s six elements of drama are
applicable to exceptional short and long forms of fiction (plot/character/thought/diction/spectacle/rhythm
of speech).
“If I conflate plot + character and rephrase it as
‘content’ (of the story), this is one of the critical ingredients of the work.
As criteria of value, the following apply:
· Is
the content of the story compelling, powerful and interesting? Does it convey
or reveal powerful insights into the human experience? Does it affect us? Can
it change our perception or challenge our assumptions? Or is it just frivolous,
trivial and insular? Will it be forgotten within five minutes of reading? Or is
it too cliched and self-absorbed to be memorable? Great writing explores
reality without interference from the author’s ego or prejudices and does so
with the conviction that literature does not have a responsibility ‘not to
offend’ (a preoccupation of many contemporary editors having a certain
political and/or ideological agenda) in what is sometimes an infinitely
offensive and threatening world.
· Regarding
‘diction,’ obviously with literary fiction language assumes a different status
and responsibility compared to, say, more generic ‘market’ fiction where the
narrative action and events are more important to the reader than the
creativity and experimentation (particularly with metaphor) with which this
action is expressed. Literary fiction has an obligation to express and capture
this mystifying world with memorable phrases and adroit syntax. There is no
place for cliché. As Martin Amis famously said: ‘Cliché is heard language.’
Therefore, great writing constantly leaves the reader marveling at the writer’s
prowess with vocabulary, even when and if coherence is sometimes sacrificed (as
with Joyce or William Burroughs).”
S.A.V.A. Press: “Writing
is an art, and all artists derive inspiration from their mentors and idols
along the way. Can you elaborate on the people who’ve inspired and influenced
you, and helped mold your writing thus far? And please don’t feel as if your
answer has to be limited to writers. Inspiration can come from all kinds of
sources…”
Titus: “Creative writing
runs in my family. My late mother Anna Janina wrote vivid poetry, and my father
Paul is an all-rounder in the language arts, being a widely published poet,
fiction writer, radio dramatist and literary reviewer. I have learned much
about writing from my father (I am not a creative writing graduate or MFA
holder), who frequently reads and comments on my short fiction drafts. Through
my father’s connection to the University of British Columbia’s creative writing
department of the late sixties and seventies, I also benefited from the
awe-inspiring feedback and insight of the late, great J. Michael Yates, former
Distinguished Professor and renaissance man of that department. ‘Mikey’
broadened my reading horizons drastically in the summer of 1995, when he pulled
a copy of Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones from his bookshelf and thrust it
in front of my curious eyes.
“My influences are diverse and include Jean Genet,
Ferdinand Celine, Jorge Borges, Johnathan Swift, Juvenal, Brett Easton Ellis,
Joseph Conrad, Edgar Allen Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Don
DeLillo.”
S.A.V.A. Press: “Please
share your thoughts, both positive and/or negative, on the literary landscape
of today…”
Titus: “On the negative
side, it is impossible to address this question without prodding the
conspicuous elephant (or mammoth) in the room, which is the increasing
colonization of the small-press literary landscape by identity-fixated social
justice publishers who make the pigmentation of one’s skin, sexual orientation,
gender, and perceived level of ‘marginalization’ (whatever this nebulous euphemism
means in their post-modernist speak) the sole criteria for publication and ‘inclusion’
in their journals. It wouldn’t be so concerning if these insular publishing
communities confined their influence to a vast echo-chamber of target readers
with like-minded worldviews. However, it is becoming more obvious that as their
ubiquity grows, so will their ability (it may soon be authority) to dictate
what may be written, who may write it, and how it may be written in and across
all domains of literature. I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but if that day
comes, culture could be in real trouble!”
S.A.V.A. Press: “If
you could suggest one fiction book that everyone should read, what would it be,
and why?”
Titus: “It is difficult
to select one from the treasure chest of greatness that is world literature of
the past two hundred years. However, it would probably be Borges’ Ficciones
that I mentioned earlier because it sets the gold standard of magical,
enigmatic and imaginative fiction. Some of the masterpieces from this
collection heavily influenced my writing of ‘Quetzalcoatl Comet,’ a story I
wrote in 2019 that was published in The Collidescope.”
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