Self Interview

[Jacek Pudlo]

A WARNING: I think fast and I think deep. Because I do not want to waste
your time, I suggest that all but the most intelligent readers ignore this
post. If you do go on from here, please have the courtesy to concentrate.
The art of deep thinking is disappearing, much thanks to the mental laziness
of such audiences as the present one. Thinking is after all one of the two
main pleasures of an intelligent human being, the other being fucking, known
in polite society as "the pursuit of happiness." If you find the thinking in
this post too fast and too intricate, I suggest you pursue your happiness
elsewhere.


This is the first in a series of interviews with pre-eminent members of the
IF community. My first interviewee is none other than the (in)famous founder
and CEO of Pudlo Industries, Jacek Pudlo.


Jacek: Why do you write interactive fiction, Jacek?

Jacek: So that I can reach out to millions and change the course of history.

Jacek: Okay, let me rephrase that. What do you *seek* specifically in
interactive fiction that you cannot find in other media?

Jacek: I seek to discover in it the mode of art whereby my genius could
express itself in unfettered freedom.

Jacek: What do you see as the most important quality in an IF writer?

Jacek: Sincerity. Once you learn to fake it, you've got it made.

Jacek: You're flippant. Do you feel threatened by my questions?

Jacek: To be honest, yes. The long, sincere, non-flippant response to your
question is that the most important quality in any writer is to always be
more of a crackpot than a nudnik. A man on the street wears his shoes
hanging from his ears. The nudnik asks the man why his shoes are hanging
from his ears. The crackpot asks why they are untied. The problem is that
the very act of painstakingly explaining the difference between a nudnik and
a crackpot has made me into a nudnik. Wisdom is cheap and talent is precious
and a writer should always aim for the latter. This is why interviews pose a
threat to writers, because they tap a writer's wisdom, not his talent. There
I go again, being a nudnik.

Jacek: Do you have any religious ambitions?

Jacek: You can't grow up in an orthodox Jewish family without thinking once
in a while of becoming Messiah. But ever since my last attempt to walk on
water ended in embarrassment, I try not to think about it too much.

Jacek: Are you a narcissist?

Jacek: Drowning while kissing your own reflection is such a wussy way to go.
The character in Greek mythology I identify most readily with is Zeus. I
guess that makes me a Zeusist.

Jacek: Do you think psychiatry will ever solve the problems that beset you?

Jacek: No doubt it will, and by doing so create new ones.

Jacek: How do you feel about money?

Jacek: Money is the one thing that gives a sense of dignity to people who
otherwise don't have it, which is why so many people humiliate and dishonour
themselves to get it.

Jacek: You don't think money is freedom?

Jacek: Not if your only way of getting it is becoming a wage slave.

Jacek: Do you believe the government was behind the 9/11 attacks?

Jacek: No, but I think it's a healthy lie.

Jacek: Why?

Jacek: Because it creates the illusion of a government that is potent and
competent enough to perpetrate a complex plot, and therefore dangerous and
therefore worthy of our grudging respect. If people knew just how impotent
and inept a democracy truly is, they would opt for National Socialism, as
the Germans did when they realised just how inept the Weimar republic was.

Jacek: Do you believe in alien abductions?

Jacek: No, but my answer is based solely on cognitive empathy.

Jacek: Eh?

Jacek: Picture a family of space aliens living somewhere in the Andromeda
galaxy. It's Labour Day in Andromeda and Daddy asks Mom & Kids where they'd
rather spend the holiday: on Planet Zyglot, which is just around the corner
and has a new amusement park, or on Planet Earth, which is millions of light
years away and where the only amusement is abducting humans and probing
their anuses. Unless this family is *seriously* into rectal photography,
they should opt for Zyglot. Assuming they've mastered inter-galactic travel,
the cognitive gap between them and us is like the gap between us and dogs.
When was the last time you spent Labour Day abducting dogs and probing their
anuses?

Jacek: What is the meaning of life?

Jacek: (Here Jacek's answer was lost to static in the tape.)

Jacek: That is really something. I've never heard anyone define the meaning
of life so eloquently and succinctly. This will be a life-changing insight
to so many people!

Jacek: Thank you.

Jacek: You have famously likened the IF community to "a cottage industry of
isolated cranks who write computer games no one wants to buy and few want to
play." What kind of shape do you see interactive fiction in today?

Jacek: To see it really well I'd have to play more of it than I currently
do. I belong to the fin-de-millennium generation, which means that by 2001
my tastes had congealed into a fairly stable jelly. Emily Short's _Savoir
Faire_, Mike Gentry's _Anchorhead_, Adam Cadre's _Varicella_ and Jon
Ingold's _All Roads_ are the games that define IF for me. Games written
since that could equal these are few and far in between. _Slouching Towards
Bedlam_ has an interesting concept but sloppy execution while Emily Short's
more recent (over)production has yet to yield anything even remotely
comparable to _Savoir Faire_. Cadre's _Nercolepsy_ was unplayable and Gentry
is sadly as unproductive as Short is �berprolific.

Jacek: These four are your idea of the IF Canon?

Jacek: Not in the Must-Play-Before-You-Die sense. More in the sense that
when you can't get what you like, you learn to like what you can get.
Playing IF today is very much a process of learning to like stuff you would
normally wrinkle your nose at, like the pseudo-profundities of
_Metamorphoses_ or the god-awful Lovecraftian prose of _Anchorhead_ or the
sophomorisms of _Photopia_ or the obscurantism of _All Roads_.

Jacek: What about commercial old school games?

Jacek: Like _Zork_?

Jacek: Yes.

Jacek: I never understood the attraction. To me _Zork_ has always been a
trivial exercise in arbitrary puzzles with no sense of language, little
sense of detail and a sense of humour that is uniquely dreary. It's
something you pay lip service to simply because it's been around for a long
time. Like a senile aunt or YAHWEH or Andrew Plotkin. But _Zork_ is also
inescapable. No other game is so widely and lovingly parodied. Like all
crap, it improves greatly when seen through the lens of nostalgia. It's one
of those games that are more fun to reminisce than to play. A lot of noise
has been made about how post-commercial IF has raised the standards compared
to Infocom's games. I suppose that's true. The games mentioned earlier are
hopelessly minor league, but unlike _Zork_ they are not autistic.

Jacek: I couldn't help noticing you didn't include Plotkin in your IF Canon.
I'm sure Andy's mom and dad would beg to differ. And they are just two of
the several people around the globe whose imaginations have been touched by
the magic of Andy's games. I didn't want to upset you then, but now that
you've brought him up yourself, perhaps you could calmly explain the
exclusion?

Jacek: I come to IF not as a player would but as a thief. When I come across
something witty in a Thornton game, I don't write the author an email
offering him goats and sweet incense in gratitude, as an ordinary player
might, but instead ask myself this. How can I appropriate Adam's wit in my
own work without committing blatant plagiarism? This never happens when I
play a Plotkin game. Wit, or indeed intelligence of any kind, is a rare
occurrence in his work, and considering the paucity of his mind I can see
why he is reluctant to insert it gratuitously.

Jacek: What about your own IF? Why the prolonged silence? Why haven't you
released anything since 2004?

Jacek: I can write only after at least one day of celibacy. I have not been
blessed with such a prolonged hiatus of sexual activity since I was awarded
the Golden Banana of Discord. The constant orgies (where the Banana figures
prominently among other stuffed fruits and vegetables) have drained my
creative powers. I need the energy of sexual frustration to sustain the
anger that is the source of my creativity. It's really a question of
spermatic economy. The more jizz I spend on sex the less I can afford to
ejaculate into my art.

Jacek: So what you're saying is that your orgiastic lifestyle has castrated
your art?

Jacek: Let it suffice to say that it's not inkwells I've been dipping my
quill into lately.

Jacek: This would be an incredibly tasteless reference to Oksana in
_Gamlet_?

Jacek: (Jacek nods.)

Jacek: I suppose the question on everyone's lips is how real is Oksana? Is
she a mere foetus of your oversexed imagination or is she based on a real
woman?

Jacek: She is neither. Oksana is a composite of sixteen women whose houses I
had broken into to ejaculate in their hair as they slept. But Oksana is more
than just a boyish prank. She is also a dozen or so publishing houses whose
employees I viciously harassed for several months. Like all great artists I
had sublimated my sex drive into art and written a bulky volume of poetry
that absolutely no one on this planet wanted to publish.

Jacek: Despite the universal acclaim of _Gamlet_, you don't seem to have
many friends among your fellow interactive fictioneers. Most see you as a
contradictious and divisive figure while some have not shied away from
excoriating your good name with odious innuendos. What gives you the
strength and conviction to persevere in your one-man crusade?

Jacek: Interactive fiction is facing big, complex problems. If Jesus Christ
and Steven Segal have taught me anything, it is that big, complex problems
are best tackled by a lonely guy with a god complex who's crazy enough to
take on the whole world.

Jacek: You do understand, though, why people react to you the way they do?

Jacek: I'm too honest, too intense, too fucking REAL. I suppose that makes
people afraid and people who are afraid are often hostile.

Jacek: Do you think they are afraid of you because they understand you or
because they don't?

Jacek: That's a good question, Jacek. I think they are initially mildly
annoyed and begin to understand me as they grow furious.

Jacek: Adam Cadre has dubbed you a "sociopathic asshole" and compared you to
the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib scandal simply because you disliked his
novel. How do you feel about that?

Jacek: A billionaire friend of mine invites me sporadically to his London
townhouse where we get drunk and have merciless philosophical disputes where
no feelings are spared. One time I won the dispute and awoke the following
day with a hangover and the dread of having gone too far and lost a friend.
The servants informed me he had left. On the kitchen table I found the keys
to his Jaguar and a note. "I'm off to Baghdad to close a deal. Help yourself
to the booze and the Jaguar, not necessarily in that order." It's hard to
wound a man of action. It's hard to nurture a grudge when you're off to
Baghdad the next day to be received as a personal guest by the Iraqi prime
minister. Adam Cadre is a wonderful IF writer and a god-awful novelist. He's
also an idle man with enough leisure to nurture a silly grudge.

Jacek: How do you feel about I7?

Jacek: Before I answer that question, I'd like to expand on the Cadre
debacle.

Jacek: Please do.

Jacek: Adam Cadre likes to quote Rilke and drop Heidegger's name here and
there, but he's much more at home with The Fantastic Four than serious poets
and thinkers. He has a comic book mind, which is fine when you're writing
light-hearted IF like _Varicella_ or _I-0_, but a disaster when you're
writing a novel. _Ready, OK!_ is one gimmick plus some silly anecdotes
diluted to fill 360 pages. Reading it is a bonanza of vicarious shame. It's
an embarrassment of such proportions, the very fact that Adam is still among
us is a testimony to the strength and perseverance of his personality. A
lesser man would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. As to I7, I am
certain it's an MI6 conspiracy to take over our computers.

Jacek: But seriously.

Jacek: Seriously I think I7 is as useful as a fountain in the rain. A lot of
this is going to get cut out, right? The Establishment will surely not allow
this.

Jacek: Perhaps, but I'll make the decision what will, not the Establishment.

Jacek: There is something heroic about Graham Nelson writing _Curses_ while
creating I6. I am reminded of Whitman personally typesetting _Leaves of
Grass_. Nelson not only wrote a seminal game, but created one of the most
useful and prolific tools of IF design. He is thus both the Gutenberg and
Goethe of IF. I'm afraid I can't say the same thing about his work on I7.

Jacek: In a recent interview E. L. Doctorow describes the novel as a "large
canvas capable of holding the most substantial themes." Do you think this
description applies to IF?

Jacek: Is this what they call a subtle bridge? It's funny you should mention
that interview, by the way, because I'd just finished reading it and had
asked myself the very same question.

Jacek: And?

Jacek: Is IF a large canvas? No. There's some genre fiction, mostly sci-fi
and fantasy, and there are some noteworthy murder mysteries and horror
stories but nothing that approaches in seriousness the kind of work you
might expect from, say, E. L. Doctorow.

Jacek: Why is that do you think?

Jacek: The narrative vehicle of a novel is the interaction between its
characters. The narrative vehicle of IF is the manipulation of objects
through the intermediary of a playing character who is usually a sociopathic
kleptomaniac whose only aim in his interactive little life is to stuff his
incredibly spacious inventory with everything that hasn't been nailed down.
It's difficult enough to address "the most substantial themes" through the
proxy of object manipulation. When you add a single-minded maniac to the
equation, the problems become almost insurmountable. On top of everything
there's the crazy economic logic of IF.

Jacek: Crazy economic logic?

Jacek: The way the Incredible Underground Empire contains incredible riches
but only one screwdriver and one pair of ear muffs and you know the
screwdriver and the ear muffs are much more valuable than the riches because
their singularity implies they are part of some future puzzle. You'd think
that the people who built the Incredible Underground Empire and filled it
with incredible riches could afford one more pair of ear muffs. On top of
this there's a tradition of IF puzzle design going way back to _Zork_ that
presupposes a barter economy. _Stiffy Makane_, _Mentula Macanus_ and many
other games have puzzle schemes where item A must be given to character X so
that X may release item B to the PC which is then given to character Y
releasing item C, etc. This is barter at its crudest. It's basically Stone
Age economics. There's no way you could make this work within a realist
mimetic tradition, unless your game is set in a Neanderthal community or
among wizards and "moon ministers," which amounts to the same thing. The
problem is that IF depends on a verbal interface that works smoothly only
when handling objects with unique names. This is why you don't see many
representations of monetary economy in IF.

Jacek: Are you saying that IF's problems are endemic to the medium?

Jacek: Not so much to the medium as the tradition within which most IF
writers have chosen to work. You can't really play Chopin on an accordion.
There are instruments and puzzle schemes that severely limit your
repertoire. To widen our repertoire, we need to abandon the Zorkian
tradition of puzzle design. If you're wondering how a post-Zorkian puzzle
scheme might look like, have a look at _Savoir Faire_. _Savoir Faire_ is a
good example of a game that spurns the Zorkian puzzle design tradition while
retaining IF's preference for uniquely named, singular objects. But these
are fairly minor issues compared to the major hurdle, which is the IF
community.

Jacek: Care to elaborate?

Jacek: The IF community is too geographically and culturally dispersed to
engender any sense of commonality. It's true that all great literature is
universal in this sense, but there's an oxymoron lurking in this statement,
because while being universal great literature is also local and specific.
Few novelists are as universal as Dostoyevsky, and yet his global appeal is
possible only by dint of his distinct Russianness. The paradox of literary
universality is that it feeds off specificity. There is an acute sense in
Dostoyevsky's novels of addressing not only a Russian-language audience, but
more importantly a Russian *nation*, a people with a common destiny, and
thereby shaping and defining that destiny. Please note that I am not using
"nation" in a purely ethnic sense. Americans are not a cohesive ethnic
entity, but they are nonetheless a nation, a people with a common destiny,
and that destiny has been shaped by Whitman, Twain and Hemingway. There is
no such thing as an IF nation, nor is there any sense of a common destiny
among the people who play IF, which is why fantasy and sci-fi are the
predominant genres of IF. Neither is exactly renowned for being capable of
"holding the most substantial themes."

Jacek: You're not a big fan of _Solaris_, then?

Jacek: As a matter of fact, I am. I can see where you're heading with this.

Jacek: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be combative.

Jacek: That's okay. _Solaris_ is an extreme rarity. It's a speculative novel
that has successfully broken into the Canon. I can think of only two other
such novels, _Brave New World_ and _The Left Hand of Darkness_. It's vital
not to confuse speculative fiction with science fiction. These novels are
not brainy episodes of _Star Trek_. They are conceptual experiments
presenting us with contra-factual scenarios that extrapolate real social and
technological trends into the future, thus helping us to question things we
usually take for granted. The vast majority of Canonical novels are not
contra-factual in this sense but highly specific works, set in a factual
space and a factual time and informed by the author's own experience. This
specificity and factuality and authorial honesty is missing from IF today.
_The Dreamhold_ was written by an American man living in New York, but it
might as well have been written by a mildly retarded Chinese woman living in
Beijing.

Jacek: Are you suggesting that we write more non-English-language IF?

Jacek: Not at all. I don't think there's much future in Greek-language IF,
but I do think Greek IF has a future.

Jacek: Now I'm confused.

Jacek: Don't be. It's really quite simple. _Ulysses_ is a uniquely Irish
novel despite having been written in English. What I'm suggesting is that
Greeks write in English about their Greek experience, instead of wasting
theirs and my time with flying unicorns and vapid surrealism. If you live in
New York, don't set your game in some insipid "memory palace," but use the
city you live in as a backdrop for your story. After all, that's what
writers do all the time - use their lives as material for their fiction.
Reading a novel like _Ulysses_ today is the closest you'll ever get to time
travel. Playing _Metamorphoses_ fifty years from now will be like going to
Moscow only to find they have the very same McDonalds there that they have
everywhere else. The problem with inanity is that it's the same no matter
whether it's made in Europe, China or America. What has stronger resonance
for an educated adult: a story about a non-descript wizard haplessly roaming
his "memory palace," or a novel by Paul Auster?

Jacek: So why don't you kindly fuck off and go read your Auster novel? What
makes you think a tourist blithely strolling into the ghetto can presume to
lecture its inhabitants about a place they've lived in for decades?

Jacek: Because I don't think you necessarily must live in a ghetto.

Jacek: Point taken. Do you hope to achieve immortality through your IF?

Jacek: I'd much rather achieve immortality by never dying.