A39
Collective Memory
Excerpt from Radio transcription.

Interview with Samson Manoah: Self-proclaimed creator of Freeform Fiction.

[…]

Manoah: Yes, and I’ll repeat it again: R. C. Forde was, hands down, the greatest influence on me growing up. Her work resonated with me in a very meaningful way […] Her story August. was probably the most important one to me, personally, because like August in the story, and like Ms. Forde herself, I lost my mother at a very young age. Hearing Ruth describe that specific loss through her story […] was important for me at the time that I encountered it.

Gretty: So do you agree with the people who say that your work is just an attempt to be Ruth Crimson-Forde?

Manoah: Not at all. That isn’t how influences impact my work. I know some people work that way, and I’m not trying to say my work is better or worse than those who learn through imitation. For me, though, Ruth’s work helped me to form my boundaries. She taught me to speak but I never tried to use her voice, if that makes sense.

Gretty: Not really.

Manoah: Yeah. Well I guess what I mean is that I never wrote a poem that sounded like Ruth’s or even tried to. My writings appeared different after I found her work, but it wasn’t because I learned her tricks and copied her style. Instead, I adjusted what I would and wouldn’t allow in my writing to match some of the things I found interesting in her writing.

Gretty: Could you give me an example of one of those? I’m still having trouble understanding what you’re describing. What is something that you found interesting in her style that you then adapted to yours?

Manoah: Ok, yeah. Well… give me a second. So, alright, so there’s this thing she does where she uses her line spacing in smart ways to kind of guide the timing in the reader’s head. I mean, breaks in lines seem like a small thing, but they force the reader to read at the speed of the breaks. It gives you a much clearer head voice, and it like, this tool that, once I discovered it, I couldn’t let go of it. So when it came to me writing fiction, I wanted to keep using that same tool. The standard style, though — with paragraph blocks of text that all looks, and, by extension, reads, the same. That’s where Freeform Fiction came from, really: me just wanting to retain this valuable thing I had learned from Ruth. […] I’m sorry, does that answer your question?

Gretty: A little.

Manoah: Mechanics always ruin art.

Gretty: So you’re one of those…

Manoah: It’s true! Look at Thresher Charles.

Gretty: What about him?

Manoah: What did he release before—what is it? Please hold your questions…

Gretty: Please hold your questions until after everyone’s gone.

Manoah: Yeah that one. What did he do before that?

Gretty: The Fireside Chronicles

Manoah: Exactly. A nine-book young-adult saga about a boy with insomnia who fights crime with nocturnal creatures. Then I come out with Freeform Fiction and he makes this book of short stories that look like poems and calls it the same thing.

Gretty: I don’t see your point.

Manoah: He’s Mechanical. He just does whatever “works.” So he sees Freeform Fiction is something new and exploitable, and he uses it to make his leap into the prestigious world of “literary fiction,” and he’s already got a readerbase to back him.

Gretty: So you’re upset because you’re jealous of Thresher Charles.

Manoah: [pause] I’m upset becuase Thresher Charles wears me as his dinner jacket.

Simin Gretty