Staff reader Nick Bertelson talks with contributor Sam Munson about misinterpretation, the cultural identity of “writer,” and his short story “The Coughing Policeman” from NER 45.4.
Nick Bertelson: Let’s start where you left off in the story: the title. I was drawn to it immediately and loved how integral it was to the plot. You do such a wonderful job of titling Bernardo’s books. I knew what this guy was about just from reading the titles of his past work. For me, “The Coughing Policeman” brought to mind Flann O’Brien’s “The Third Policeman” and I was pleased to find a similar tone in your piece. Are you familiar with O’Brien’s work? Was the narrator always a cop in your early drafts? It wasn’t “The Sneezing Sous Chef” at one time, was it?
Sam Munson: I have not read Flann O’Brien. The title in fact was inspired by a movie from the 1970’s starring Walter Matthau, called “The Laughing Policeman.” It was directed by Stuart Rosenberg, who made “Cool Hand Luke” six or seven years earlier, and would go on to make “The Pope of Greenwich Village” in the early 1980s. All three are terrific movies.
That Rosenberg movie is an adaptation of a novel, written a few years earlier, by the same title. The first in a series by the Swedish leftist novelists Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall featuring the police detective Martin Beck. The novel is not nearly as good as the movie.
The story came from the title, really from the title alone, and the narrator’s profession was always fixed.
NB: It seemed to me that the narrator’s job was not initially evident from the jump. Only when I got to the end of the story did I realize that’s what he did for a living. Will you take me through your structuring process a bit? Was there a specific scene or interaction from which this entire story emerged? How did you decide to tackle this premise from a policeman’s perspective?
SM: The story as noted above emerged from the title. I don’t really know why but the phrase “the coughing policeman” got stuck in my head, and eventually it produced this story.
As for the question of “structuring,” I suppose I worried that if I highlighted the fact he was a policeman at the beginning too clearly people would lose interest, as the phrase “the coughing policeman” is somewhat cryptic. I worried that people would lose interest because the meaning of the phrase within the story turns out to be completely literal, at least for one moment at the end.
On the other hand: It is easily possible to imagine a story called “The Coughing Policeman” that is simply about a policeman totally prevented from doing his job in increasingly horrifying ways by fits of terrible coughing. Perhaps that would have been better.
NB: There’s always a few dilemmas writers face when writing about writers. You have a nice workaround with the narrator here, though, in that your narrator is relatable, likable, and funny in that workingman kind of way. The writer in me recognizes what Bernardo is going through but the “normal” person in me would rather hang out with the policeman because, well, it’s nice to have a beer with someone. So I guess my question is: do all eccentrics have to be pieces of shit in order to create their brand of art, or is that just an excuse for doing whatever they want?
SM: I don’t know many “writers.” Most of the ones I have spent any time with were not eccentric. Indeed, they were the opposite: well-adjusted, sedentary, respectful, obedient, and even anodyne.
They knew all about this false causality you outline—i.e. that eccentricity causes creativity. They knew about it because they had read a number of essays and other novels, I suppose, in which this false causality is proposed and illustrated and generally harped upon.
As a result, they tried very hard to cultivate some sort of “eccentricity.” Mostly through small, in fact, timid violations of social norms.
I don’t think there is a causal relationship here. As noted, I think the causal relationship between “eccentricity” and “creativity” has been constructed by “writers” (i.e. people who think of themselves that way, people who take up the cultural identity “writer” which is distinct from and even opposed to the creation of books).
These people usually are quite bored with themselves and so need an outlet for their boredom and frustration. The need to be “interesting,” to always have an opinion on every subject instantly ready, etc.
Most “writers” are also incredibly lazy: another reason for their justification of “eccentricity” (poor personal hygiene, house filthy, refusing to get a job or to live within their income, etc).
NB: Bernardo seems to be misinterpreting the world at every turn—the narrator’s coughing, for example, which is actually furtive laughter—and yet he turns these misinterpretations into reputable art. Can great art, in reality, stem from misinterpretation? Does all art do that? Or is this a function of the policeman’s misinterpretation of what great art is?
SM: Re: the conflation of “reputable” and “great,” let me say openly that I reject it.
Since Bernardo’s book The Coughing Policeman does not exist it would be hard to assess it as art. But I do not think of him as a “great” writer at all. Instead I see him as someone who enjoys a certain reputation (for that is all the narrator ever says about his work—that other people seem to like it) and is tormented by the fact that he does not deserve it (see the notes about “writers” above).
Whether all art stems from misinterpretation depends I suppose on your definition of misinterpretation. Art has to be particular; it cannot exist “in general.” And particularism arguably is a form of misinterpretation.
That does not mean serious books cannot come from misinterpretation as it is more usually understood, by any means.
I am no expert but I can think of at least one pretty easily: The Platonic dialogue Cratylus, which expatiates on dubious, speculative, and even false etymologies at length with total confidence. It is one of my favorite Platonic dialogues and I think any reader of it would be forced to admit how powerful and poetic it is, among the most delightful and amazing of Plato’s dialogues.
In short: I support misinterpretation.
NB: Now for the “Lighting Round” in which I am Bernardo and you are the coughing policeman:
NB: What did you do with my copy of Ulysses?
SM: It’s propping up a broken shelf in my closet.
NB: Do you know who I am?
SM: My former neighbor, the “writer.”
NB: Did I ever catch your name?
SM: It’s fucked up to pretend you forgot my name.
NB: What color are Vera’s toenails these days?
SM: You know she never paints them, man.
Sam Munson is the author of the forthcoming novel The Sofa (Two Dollar Radio, 2025) and three other critically acclaimed novels: Dog Symphony (New Directions, 2018), The War Against the Assholes (Saga Press, 2015), and The November Criminals (Doubleday, 2010), which has been translated into nine languages and was made into a major motion picture. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Granta, n+1, the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the Times Literary Supplement, the National, and elsewhere. Most recently, his short story “Administrator” appeared in Guernica.
Nick Bertelson‘s recent work appears in the Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and descant. His story “Invasive Species” won the Gary Wilson Award for Short Fiction.
Photo of Sam Munson courtesy of Ana Mariategui