Jason Schwartzman: Missed Connections
Talking marginal interactions with strangers, the spirit of empathy, and Russian Proverbs with Jason Schwartzman, author of NO ONE YOU KNOW
Jason Schwartzman’s debut book NO ONE YOU KNOW (available May 4) is a searching, insightful and often moving collection of tangential connections and disconnections that open out onto larger human and societal dilemmas. Mostly taking the shape of short vignettes chronicling Schwartzman’s personal experiences with old friends, strangers, and overheard tales that have come his way, Schwartzman’s essays interrogate the limits to which he – or anyone – can really know another.
In “Distance,” for example, the author is walking down an empty Detroit street where “the tall beige buildings have shed their glass, the windows rectangles of black,” when he notices a scraggly looking man walking towards him. His first instinct is to presume he is about get mugged, but the truth turns out to be quite different. It is in this turn where expectation confronts reality, and, like many pieces in this collection, where something important about human nature is revealed.
Schwartzman offers readers a sense of the liminality inherent to a journey of a perceptive soul in search of themselves, and an inner meaning that can hold them over for another day.
I had the pleasure to interview Jason by email over the course of several weeks. The conversation ranged from Russian proverbs to his childhood neighborhood in New York.
The following is edited for length and clarity.
Jason Schwartzman
Q: I wanted to begin with asking about the form of the book. I was reminded of Lydia Davis and Stuart Dybek, but the first comparison that came to mind was J. Robert Lennon’s Pieces For The Left Hand, made up of equally short (albeit fictional) pieces. Is there something about the flash form most of these pieces take that you felt allowed for an expression inaccessible through a longer form?
Definitely. The flash form allowed me to accurately represent the brevity, speed, and intensity of each encounter with a stranger. I experienced these impromptu meetings as heightened moments where details felt especially salient and crystalized and then they were just over. Hopefully, the fact that most of the pieces are so condensed echoes that effect. In a longer form, there’s more of a temptation to zoom out or digress or ponder or double back. The flash style gave me close-ups at high velocity.
Q: Given that we now live in a time (hopefully soon coming to a close) where close contact with strangers seems a fraught prospect, do you look back over these narratives for some human connection or disconnection that may have been lost over the past year?
I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve missed the marginal interactions with strangers that have been largely eliminated this year. It’s affirming to connect with a random person, even just for a few minutes. In cases when there’s a disconnect, the gulf is usually interesting. I didn’t expect that my book would be preserving a mode of interaction that was so quickly lost! I hope we all have time to linger and detour again soon. I miss Oreo-centric debates with the one other dude also getting a snack after midnight in a CVS. I miss someone in a cafe asking me if I like the book I’m reading and discovering we both loved The Princess and The Goblin as kids. These types of micro-encounters can still happen, of course, even safely, but it’s harder and rarer. The other day, a woman stopped me outside of a Walgreens to ask about the pattern on my mask. She was from Portugal and didn’t know the word “paisley.” I spelled it for her and looked up the name of the vendor. She explained that the pattern and the blue color called to mind the iconic azulejo tiles in Lisbon. She was going to order that mask right away. It reminded her of home.
Q: What was the impetus for the book? Did you keep a journal of your encounters, or perhaps draw mostly on long-term memory for the writing?
I was deep in a depression and had mostly taken a break from writing. Far from friends and reeling from a breakup, it felt like I’d lost every last glimmer of intimacy. I think because of how much I was missing connection, I became more open to strangers. I listened to what they had to say. I got off the train with them. I let things happen. Some of the encounters were so odd and unexpected that I had a strong impulse to write them down, which I did, usually right after we parted. I had no notion of a book or an essay or anything. I’ve always kept some kind of journal or at least a “commonplace book” where I jot down miscellaneous things like IMDB trivia, bizarre Russian proverbs, illuminating snippets of conversation. Eventually, I signed up for a memoir class and found myself writing about the strangers I’d met. The process made me wonder about other people in my life. Family, too. Some hidden parts of myself. All of that blended to become No One You Know.
Q: I want to focus in on a piece that, to me, really encapsulates the ‘gulf’ or ‘disconnect’ you mention. In ‘Distance’ you come across a man walking towards you on an empty street in Detroit (a place that already has connotations in the national consciousness of decay, abandonment, and the chronic consequences of racist policy). As you get closer to the man, it
seems that a number of possible interactions, none of which actually occur, flash through your consciousness. The truth ends up being quite unexpected, if still tenuous in its nature. How did it feel to be navigating all of these ‘gulfs’ in understanding, and how did you interrogate them as you remembered the episode to write it down?
It felt tense. Being alone and next to abandoned buildings and terrifying graffiti and seeing a stranger who might have been desperate, I think I was laden with a very familiar cultural story that’s told about Detroit. One that glosses over historical context and just tells you that this might be a dangerous place. When we finally crossed paths, the interaction was in some ways the opposite of what I’d imagined. Instead of taking something from me, he offered a gift. When I understood him to mean, “Hey, I’m Detroit, too,” that cast into sharp relief the gap between a story and a reality.
It was a complex moment to process. I felt a trace of guilt that I was in such a more comfortable position than he was (needing money for food) and that I’d suspected him of anything sinister, which ultimately revealed more about me than it did about him. I felt really sad that such a small gesture (giving him $20) seemed to create such joy in him, though at the same time, it felt powerful to be in that joy together. There’s something about two strangers approaching which can imply a showdown or a collision but what resulted ended up being much more tender. It symbolized to me the incredible distance there can be between people and how affecting it is when we’re able to bridge that gap, even if just for a moment.
Q: In the United States, our interactions with strangers—or anyone, for that matter— is still, sadly, filtered through our conceptions of race, of color, of how our outsides literally look like to others. In pragmatic terms, this means that there are areas and places in American life where either you or I would feel very uncomfortable or even experience outright hostility. It is very difficult, within these terms, to become a ‘transparent eyeball’, as Emerson put it. How did you feel as you moved through these various social contexts, and was it a goal of yours to become as much of a ‘transparent eyeball’ as possible, in order to observe those around you? Or was there another, perhaps more intuitive, strategy?
There wasn’t any intentional strategy of observation because the encounters were just things that happened to me in the fabric of my life. I usually try to aspire to a spirit of empathy and kindness and wondering — I hope that came through in the telling. Both in the interactions themselves and in the writing, I came away thinking that you never know exactly who you’re talking to, so take care with them. Be gentle. Be kind.
I never felt drawn to the idea of Emerson’s transparent eyeball because I don’t believe it’s possible or honest. We’re all filtering what we observe through our biases and particularities and preconceptions and that’s as true of me as anyone. Even though I took great pains to present these stories as straightforwardly as possible, they’re still very much seen through my lens. I meant there to be a trace of skepticism in the “Stories We Tell” part of the subtitle. Not because of any fiction on my part but rather because of the slippery nature of storytelling and all our hidden filters of perception and memory.
Jason Schwartzman is the author of NO ONE YOU KNOW, forthcoming from Outpost19 on May 4, 2021. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Narratively, The Rumpus, Hobart, River Teeth, Human Parts, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @jdschwartzman and more of his writing on jdschwartzman.com. He’s a founding editor of True.Ink.
Gabriel Noel was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. He is about to finish his undergraduate career with a degree in Political Science from Boston University, but lapses into literature from time to time. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons.