‘Usually dressed in a top hat and black cape with outrageously long fingernails, Jose Mojica Marins, aka “Coffin Joe” made a series of notorious films from the 1960s until his death in 2020, at age 83, that were real nightmare fuel, filled with lots of blasphemous swipes at the Catholic Church and horrifying images of torture and murder. He was the “Freddy Krueger” of Brazil but with real elongated fingernails instead of a razor-fingered glove. His films suddenly got so demented they were banned by the government. But he never stopped making movies.

‘Marins was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil on March 15, 1929. His father Antonio, worked in a traveling circus as a bullfighter and went on to manage a local movie theater, where the young Jose became fascinated with the horror films shown there. His father gave him an 8mm camera, and Marins started making his own movies using neighborhood children and experimenting with trick photography. He once had a nightmare in which he saw himself being dragged into an open grave by a man dressed in black which triggered the creation of “Ze do Caixao” (pronounced ZEH-dough-kySHAWN), which literally translates to “Joe the Grave” (Coffin Joe on video).

‘Audiences so identified Marins with the “Ze do Caixao” character that when he once ran for public office, people voted for Coffin Joe instead of Marins, invalidating the ballots. As for his obsession with children, Marins married several times and has 23 children! When he used to film in an abandoned synagogue that became his studio, Marins was also known for holding notorious casting calls where he would force aspiring actors to let rats and snakes crawl all over them (the police were called in several times).

‘He even incorporated his actual eye operation into a film and when told Bunuel had done that in Un Chien Andalou, Marins said: “But did he cut his own eye open?” In 2008 he made Embodiment Of Evil where “Coffin Joe” is released from Sao Paulo prison and his faithful hunchback servant Bruno and a new entourage of punked-out kids search anew for the perfect receptacle of his demon seed. Corrupt cops and a vengeful priest hunt him down. Scene after scene of surreal bloody madness reminded you that Marins had not lost his edge.

‘I was exposed to Marins’ films from Something Weird Video, helmed by the late, great Mike Vraney who tirelessly rescued hundreds of bizarre films from the vaults. He released the Marins films on VHS, scrambling the brains of cinemaniacs who were flabbergasted by the movies. Purists have objected to the “Coffin Joe” moniker and complain that we should say “Ze do Caixao.” But according to Mike Vraney, Marins was delighted with the name and thrilled with his newfound accessibility. For me, the films were a true discovery- a man whose dark visions and disturbing imagery were unlike anything I’d experienced before. Cheaply made and filled with amateur acting, Jose’s films were also genuinely creepy and utterly fascinating. I had nightmares for weeks after binging on them.’ — Dennis Dermody, Original Cinemaniac

 

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Stills

 

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Further

José Mojica Marins @ Wikipedia
JMM @ IMDb
My Last Interview With José Mojica Marins
JMM @ mubi
DVD: ‘Coffin Joe Collection’
The Coffin Joe Wiki
Jose Mojica Marins: Up-Close and Personal
JMM @ Letterboxd
LOOKING INTO THE EYES OF JOSÉ MOJICA MARINS’ COFFIN JOE
Coffin Joe (José Mojica Marins) Appreciation Page
The Filmmaker Must Attack On All Fronts: José Mojica Marins (1936-2020)
“Coffin Joe” – The films of José Mojica Marins
José Mojica Marins and the Cultural Politics of Marginality in ‘Third World’ Film Criticism
DEPTH OF FIELD: JOSÉ MOJICA MARINS – COFFIN JOE’S THEOLOGICAL TERROR
Celebrating José Mojica Marins and the Legacy of Coffin Joe
Under the Shadow of Coffin Joe
Ritual of the Sadists: The Subversive Horror Cinema of José Mojica Marins

 

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Extras

The Strange World of Coffin Joe – 1968

Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe (Official Trailer)

The Retro Time Machine Podcast – Coffin Joe

Coffin Joe – Jon Stewart Show 1994

 

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Interview
by Felipe M. Guerra

 

FMG: What can you say about “Exorcismo Negro”, your best-produced film from that period?

JMM: It was my most expensive production, with a quality level I had never had before. It was something like: “I need a needle”. Boom, the guys from the crew just brought me a thousand needles! But the film was not as good as it should be. [Producer] Anibal put a guy on my back, to control me, and he was the wrong guy. He passed away recently.

FMG: Are we talking about Adriano Stuart? [note: Also a filmmaker, Stuart directed successful films with the Brazilian comedy group Os Trapalhões. He appears in “Exorcismo Negro” as an actor.]

JMM: Yes, that’s him. Adriano was there as a kind of spy for [producer] Massaini, someone who should control me during production. But the curious thing is that he drank a lot, I saw him drink a whole glass of cognac in front of me. He was an alcoholic, so he was unable to control me. And he had the audacity to say that he could stand drinking more than I did! Once the guys made a bet, the poor part of the crew with the rich part, to see who could take more alcohol. I drank a lot, cognac, wine, mint liquor, everything they served me. And he [Adriano Stuart] didn’t have the satisfaction of seeing me fall, because he fell first. And only when he fell drunk did I raise my hand and say: “Okay, now I can fall too”. And then I fell. But while he didn’t fall, I didn’t either. The power of the mind is incredible! I took it all because it was a gamble and the poor part of the technicians bet on me.

FMG: Adriano Stuart once said that he directed scenes from the film.

JMM: No. The only thing he did was busting my balls because I don’t like to repeat takes, and he wanted to do all of his scenes again and again. He made me repeat it too much, and I am against it. All the scenes in which he acted… Sometimes he wanted to repeat four, five times, thinking that his performance improved with each take, when in fact it got worse and worse.

FMG: But at least was he a nice guy?

JMM: No. He was very arrogant, too arrogant. And he drank a lot while shooting. [note: Ironically, Mojica and Stuart worked together again more than 30 years later on “Encarnação do Demônio”]

FMG: Let’s talk about “A Estranha Hospedaria dos Prazeres” (The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, 1976). Who directed this film after all, you or Marcelo Motta? [note: Officially the film would be directed by Marcelo Motta, a pupil of the filmmaker, but Mojica had to take control of the production. Motta’s name is the only one that appears on the poster and in the credits.]

JMM: Marcelo Motta was a friend of mine, a student at my school of dramatic arts, whom I wanted to give a chance to. But he became religious at the same time, he started dating an evangelical girl, and started to change his way of thinking. The whole thing started to get complicated, but he was a smart guy, and I really wanted to give him this chance. (…) But in the end he threw away so much money, wasted so many things… I had to take over the production. I said: “Marcelo, I don’t want to discredit you, I know you’re smart, but I think you need to take a few months off with this girl”. He did so many things wrong that it was not easy for me to finish the film, he left everything incomplete.

FMG: And what do you think of this film now?

JMM: Well, I ended up doing exactly what I wanted from the start. But the film could have gotten a lot better. It was a project that I believed in a lot. It was very difficult to give a shape to the material that he [Marcelo Motta] filmed, because it was impossible to understand anything.

FMG: Soon after you directed three films, “Inferno Carnal” (Hellish Flesh, 1977), “Perversão” (Perversion, 1979) and “Mundo, Mercado do Sexo” (World, Sex Market, 1979), without the presence of the supernatural. All three are thrillers and the horror comes from the human being. What happened?

JMM: This time it was not because of the Dictatorship. I simply wanted to show that the human being does not need to appeal to the supernatural, he is already supernatural, he is already perverse. If you look at “Perversão”, for example… Good heavens! My character in that film is very cruel! [note: In this movie Mojica plays an evil millionaire named Vitório Palestrina, who sexually abuses a virgin girl and bites off one of her nipples!]

FMG: So the villain doesn’t need a supernatural element to be bad.

JMM: Exactly, it is not necessary. That’s what I tried to show and I think it worked.

FMG: I love what you did in “Delírios de um Anormal”, which was putting back all the scenes from your other films that the censors had cut. And none of the censors noticed this time!

JMM: Their imbecility was gigantic. I did it on purpose after I went to the censorship building and, suddenly, a woman and two men appeared and started touching me, to make sure I was a real human being! And these guys were responsible for censoring our films!

FMG: And they touch you to see if you were real?!?

JMM: Yes, they were touching my body! And I asked: “Do you want to touch another part too?”. Holy shit, that was crazy. “Why are you touching me? Do you think I’m an extraterrestrial?”. And I said: “Are YOU the guys responsible for the censorship?”. I was really pissed! And so I looked for several journalists to tell the story and said: “Let each one do their own censorship because Brazil today has no censorship”.

FMG: That’s why you decided to make a film with all the scenes they had cut?

JMM: Yes, I put back everything that was cut, as a confrontation. Everything I was asked to cut in my whole career I put in this new film, and it passed uncut this time! I thought: “Fuck, it can be!”. Because everything they cut from my other films was there. What censorship was that? [note: Of the 1h23min of “Delírios de um Anormal”, Mojica filmed only 35 minutes of new scenes. The rest of the narrative consists of images from his previous films.]

FMG: And you’ve always had a lot of problems with the censors.

JMM: Yeah, a lot. You have no idea how much censorship has hurt our youth at that time. I have always defended youth with tooth and nails. I think that censorship destroyed a part of Brazil.

FMG: When you think about how much you couldn’t do during the dictatorship…

JMM: Holy shit, lots of things!

FMG: Let’s talk about “A Praga”, a movie of yours that was lost and has been rediscovered just now.

JMM: “A Praga” had one of the great actresses of Brazilian cinema, television, and theater, Wanda Cosmo. I think “A Praga” would be a great success if Eugenio Puppo released it at the end of this year, because they are preparing many tributes for me this year. I still don’t understand why, maybe is it because the Maya said that in 2012 it’s the end of the world? The only thing I know is that I am receiving a series of tributes in Brazil and abroad. And I wanted to release “A Praga” right now, because the film is ready. If he intends to release only after I die, it will not have the same intensity.

FMG: Is it true that the film had to be dubbed now and the dialogue lists no longer existed?

JMM: My ex-wife [note: Nilcemar Leyart, who also edited many of his films] does lip reading very well and managed to save a lot from the original dialogues. She was the one who edited my old films.

FMG: “A Praga” was filmed in Super-8, right? Why?

JMM: At the time I had a new Super-8 camera and wanted to make an experiment with it. I think the movie is really good. But I had a maid who didn’t know about those things, mistook the film rolls for trash, and she threw it all away. So we literally had to rescue the movie from the trash! I think “A Praga” will be interesting right now because it will show things from the past, and a lot of strong scenes.

FMG: Have you ever seen the movie since it was shot?

JMM: Exactly. And I’m curious to see it now. I’ll be really pissed if Puppo took things out of the movie that he shouldn’t have taken. What was in the movie should be in the movie. Unfortunately, a long time has passed and it would not be possible to shoot new scenes with the same cast, so I hope we can show the film as it was originally. What I do know for sure is that “A Praga” has amazing scenes. The main character has a wound in his stomach that needs to be fed with human flesh, and in the end there’s a fantastic scene in which he swallows his own wife! If Puppo waits for me to die to release the film, I don’t know if it will be the same thing. Because with me alive I can talk about the film and help promote it, but with me dead they won’t do a fucking thing.

 

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15 of José Mojica Marins’ 43 films

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Sentença de Deus (1958)
‘God’s Sentence (Portuguese: Sentença de Deus) is an unfinished Brazilian film project developed between 1954 and 1956, directed by José Mojica Marins. The film was restored into a complete format in 2007 by Portal Heco de Cinema de Brasil.’ — Wikipedia

Excerpts

 

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My Destiny is in Your Hands (1963)
‘Tired of the constant abuse he suffers in his household, a boy runs away from home and goes on a series of sad and dramatic adventures, in which he finds the opportunity to show the power of his own voice.’ — Letterboxd

the entire film

 

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At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964)
‘Marins plays the lead, dressed in a black top hat and cape with bushy connecting eyebrows, straggly beard and mustache, and outrageously long, curved fingernails. In the film, Coffin Joe is the local undertaker and evil town bully who is searching for the ultimate woman to sire his child and perpetuate his evil. He puts several damsels though hideous tests- like having spiders crawl over their body while they sleep- to see if they measure up. Most fail the test and die, but on the Day of the Dead the victims rise from their coffins to get their revenge. Crudely filmed in black & white, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is remarkably potent stuff for 1964- filled with scandalous anti-Catholic rantings, nudity, sex and sadism. The movie became a sensation and Coffin Joe became a cult figure.’ — Dennis Dermody

‘The crew refused to shoot a scene because there wasn’t enough sunlight. Director José Mojica Marins forced them to shoot the scene by pointing a gun at the cameraman. Various crew members have confirmed the story. On one of the rare occasions when he would respond to questions about the incident, Marins claimed that the gun was only a prop.’ — IMDb

the entire film

 

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This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967)
‘This Night I Will Take Your Corpse begins where the other film left off and continues Coffin Joe’s reign of terror. There are scenes that scald the mind- women are covered with 50 real tarantulas and left in a pit filled with real snakes. Marins also adds an amazing color sequence in which Coffin Joe travels to hell, a surrealistic snow palace of writhing, screaming bodies. The whole film is like a nightmarish poem, disturbing and scary and pathological.’ — Dennis Dermody

the entire film

 

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The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)
‘The film is a collection of three short films titled O Fabricante de Bonecas (The Dollmaker), Tara (Obsession), and Ideologia (Theory). Joe only appears briefly in the role of a horror host, introducing the segments, and the film is not a part of the Coffin Joe trilogy. The hymn-like title song was written by Marins, and performed by Edson Lopes and Brazilian Samba band Titulares do Ritmo.’ — Internet Archive

the entire film

 

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The Awakening of the Beast (1970)
‘Psychiatrist experiments LSD on 4 volunteers, to investigate Coffin Joe’s influence over them. Each patient presents a different reaction, involving sex, perversion and sadism.’ — Letterboxd

Excerpt

 

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End of Man (1971)
‘A mysterious man emerges from the ocean and wanders aimlessly through a town. After apparently resurrecting someone, the man is mistaken for a messiah with supernatural powers. After giving a farewell speech from a mountaintop, the would-be messiah voluntarily returns to his former residence, an insane asylum.’ — UOL

Trailer

 

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Sex and Blood in the Trail of the Treasure (1972)
‘An American explorer organizes an expedition to the Amazon Rainforest in search of a lost treasure.’ — Letterboxd

Trailer

 

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When the Gods Fall Asleep (1972)
‘A slasher, but instead of murder he spreads morality. Even more than The End of Man this one owes a massive debt to Neo-realism and at times hits some of the same subversive notes you’d find in early Pasolini or the Spanish Quinqui cycle. The sketch comedy tone is also faded, as this goes a bit more Mondo. Marins is marching to his singular beat and gives us something utterly unique in the end. Those expecting something akin to the Coffin Joe films are going to be sorely disappointed though.’ — man_in_bath

the entire film

 

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The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe (1974)
‘José Mojica Marins, a director of horror films about the diabolical Coffin Joe, is spending Christmas with friends. Household members go violently mad for no reason: first grandpa, then the hosts’ daughters, one of whom, Vilma, is about to get married. Mojica discovers that Vilma’s mother made a pact with a witch in order to become pregnant with Vilma, promising this first-born child to Satan; her impending marriage to a human is stirring up things supernatural. It what seems like a dream, Mojica enters a bacchanal in which an entranced Vilma is about to wed to Satan’s son; the master of ceremonies is none other than Coffin Joe. Can Mojica defeat his own creation and save Vilma?’ — rarefilmm

the entire film

 

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The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures (1976)
‘At an isolated inn — “Hospedaria dos Prazeres” (Hostel of Pleasures) — the owner (Jose Mojica Marins, who is also Coffin Joe) turns away some and allows others already in the guest book to stay. Those without a place to stay are enraged, as after all, there’s a storm outside. Yet he has room for hedonistic Hell’s Angels, a couple sneaking out on their respective partners, a man ready to kill himself, gamblers out to bankrupt someone and criminals escaping their last robbery. When they wake up in the morning, all of the clocks and their watches are set to midnight. That’s because they’re all in Hell and the absence of time is one of the many things they must deal with, as well as having to watch their deaths again and again. The owner warns them all that they don’t want to see his evil side — Coffin Joe.’ — bands about movies

Excerpt

 

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Perversion (1979)
‘A prominent millionaire gets a woman drunk and rapes her, biting off her nipple in the process. Because of his influence and powerful lawyer, though, he is able to beat the rap, claiming the woman was trying to extort money from him. He continues his life of debauchery, using women and flaunting his power until he meets a new woman, who won’t let him have his way with her, but wants to be his friend. Falling madly in love with her, he cleans up his act and devotes his attentions to her, not realizing that she has a hidden agenda.’ — Letterboxd

the entire film

 

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Embodiment of Evil (2008)
‘Forty years after the two previous instalments of what became known as “The Coffin Joe trilogy”, and marking a return of the legendary Brazilian writer-director-star Jose Mojica Marins to the role that established him as an Auteur of Horror, ‘Embodiment of Evil’ sees the villainous anti-hero gravedigger Zé do Caixão released from his shackles after decades incarcerated in a prison cell.

‘Accompanied by some of his followers, Zé take residence in a shanty town where he continues his search the perfect woman to bear his children and intent as ever on unmasking the political corruption and religious hypocrisy, no matter how extreme his modus operandi. Driven by tormenting visions, Joe is haunted by ghosts of his former victims and graphic hallucinations of a purgatory-like landscape filled with human suffering.’ — One Eyed Films

Trailer

Making of Embodiment of Evil

 

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Coffin Joe Born Again (2015)
‘The legendary Jose Mojica Marins, along with Marcelo Colaiacovo and Nilson Primitivo created this mind blowing experimental horror film. After two heart attacks in 2014, the Brazilian master is back with new footage and original script. These rare images were discovered by Marcelo Colaiacovo during his thirteen years of researching the Coffin Joe archives. It was during this time that Colaiacovo discovered several film cans full of unprocessed 35mm material from the 1970s – 1990s, some of which was used to create this short film. Using an experimental processing technique with assorted chemicals in his Resistência Filmes laboratory, Colaiacovo and Nilson Primitivo (King of the Brazilian Underground) worked together to ressurect these treasures to life.’ — IMDb

Trailer

 

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The Curse (2021)
‘This short film recounts the process of restoring A PRAGA, directed by José Mojica Marins AKA Coffin Joe. Originally produced in 1980, the film was never finished and was ultimately lost. Full of twists and never-before-seen footage, “Mojica’s Last Curse” breaks down the only unreleased film by the Brazilian horror master known to date, through making-of excerpts, testimonials, scenes from the original filming and images from the comic book that originated it.’ — American Cinematheque

Trailer

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Jack Skelley, Oooh. I like all kinds of pizza, but if I get to choose among all of them, deep dish, ideally Chicago style. I promise you a nice tip. Best, Stephen King. ** _Black_Acrylic, That book is a super winner. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I love it so much when I managed to find them. I forget what foods have A and D. I guess I eat them since my fingernails are a normal pale purple/white albeit heavily chewed. Bimbo Tower met your criterion, yes. Sigh. I’m still a desk-chair-with-wheels newbie, but, so far, I’m never going back. Ha ha, wow, okay, me as Barbie with, hm, to be authentic, I guess a writing pen in my right front pants pocket, a packet of Freedent White Strong Mint gum in my left front pants pocket, and a nicotine patch in my shirt pocket in case of emergencies. Dare I ask you what accoutrement your Barbie would come with? Love stopping my brain from inexplicably wanting to constantly replay the riff from ‘Smoke on the Water’ because it’s most annoying, G. ** Misanthrope, Finally! I was in a Books-A-Million once in Georgia. Its selection was absolutely shocking! Well, you’re in DC frequently, and there’s gotta be one or two good indie bookstores there. ** Tosh Berman, Wow, you worked for Greg Shaw. I used to talk to him when he was at the Bomp! store, which was fairly frequently. Bomp! Records was a really fantastic label. It put out great records by so many great people: Spacemen3, Stooges, The Weirdos, Shoes, Modern Lovers, Germs, Devo, Flaming Groovies, The Last, The Nerves, 20/20, … I could go on and on. In your relative hood, The Little Lending Library and Iliad are good too. ** Justin, Hi. Thanks. I had no idea that reading was recorded. Weird. I sound a little sleepy. I’ve never been in an ice storm. It does have exciting but treacherous vibes. I hope your day is opposite of dreary. ** Mark, Hi. Huh, that’s very interesting. That the film provided good opera. Maybe it’ll get over here. Parisians like their operas. Oh, right, it involves outputting $$$ to get over here. You don’t have people you can crash with? I’d offer my place but my roommate has a ‘no guests’ rule. I think flights betwixt you and here are sort of not too, too expensive right now, I’ve heard? I hope you can, duh. It’ll be worth it, remember. ** Charalampos, I remember the Corll and Kraft books as being useful. Oh, it was kind of an existential threat at the time, at least if you weren’t a street hustler or hitchhiked. SMASH indeed! Vibeage galore from you know where. ** Darbyy🐖🐷, Hi. Oh, no problem, I understand that difficulty of reading about that. I was very interested in Emo culture when I was working on that book. I lived in a building here at the time whose ground floor housed Paris’s biggest Emo clothing, etc. store, and there were Emos hanging out around the building all the time. I was never interested in the music, I was just interested in them emotionally and their manner of displaying themselves fashion-wise. Well, the problem is suicide fucks up the people who knew and cared about the suicider. I’ve had a bunch of people close to me commit suicide in my life: my uncle, George, many friends, … and those suicides fucked me up forever. I don’t know, I like ‘Babe’ a lot. It’s pretty ‘sweet’, but it’s physically really well done. No, I’ve never been in a cult. I’ve always been really practical as a person. And my anarchism makes those things seem really faulty from the outset. Yes, I would like to see what you’re working on, and please only burn it if burning it seems like the final ingredient or something. ** Dee Kilroy, Hey, Dee! Wow, you’re working on a lot, That’s great. Bug paintings are a ticklish idea. Very cool to hear. Everyone I know who’s lived in Chicago loves Chicago. Zac included. Probably the same for you? Ouch, yeah, give your knuckles whatever they want temporarily at least. I’m still kind of doing that with my temporarily bum leg. 47, nice. The 40s were good for me. Just wait til you hit my age. It’s completely shocking. ** Uday, Thank you for saying that! And thinking that even more so. I should use that as blurb: ‘The Finnegan’s Wake of the internet’, except then no one will ever want to look at it, ha ha. ** T, Hey! Gosh, it’s really hard to pick a favorite Williams. I love them all. I guess I would say the only book of hers that I don’t 100% love is ‘Honored Guest’. Yes, Zac and I have tickets for Friday and Sunday. Cool, let’s meet up there. Actually, Zac and I are hoping to use a particular track by 7038634357 over the closing credits of our film. We’re in the process of writing to him to see if he would let us use it for minimal bucks. Fingers crossed. ** Caesar, Hi, Caesar! Very awesome to see you! Wow, you’ve done a lot since I was last graced by your presence. Congrats on all the good things. Engaged, for instance! I’m good, I’m just basically doing the work to finish the new film every day and sometimes night. I’m relieved to hear that things there aren’t as disastrous as it seemed they might be. Although, yeah, that sounds quite chaotic. ‘Prayers’ that your fascist president keeps hitting impenetrable walls. I didn’t see the 2018 ‘Suspiria’. I’ve been suspicious of it, but maybe I should. I’m working on a possible short fiction collection, Very short collection, if it works out. And Zac and I are bandying ideas around for our next film that I hope to start writing before too long. I’m happy you like Joy Williams. I think she’s my favorite living American fiction writer quite possibly. I still haven’t seen ‘Poor Things’, no, only due to my big busyness right now, but I will ASAP. I haven’t seen a single film thats nominated for the Oscar. Weird to realise that. I’m going to watch ‘American Fiction’ this week because it’s the assigned film for my next biweekly Zoom book/film club that I do with some writer friends. What’s your pick? ‘Poor Things’, I’m guessing? ** Okay. Today you get a Day dedicated to the Brazilian often horror director José Mojica Marins. Credit for the inspiration to make this post to Dennis Dermody’s great film site Original Cinemaniac, from which I also lifted some of the post’s texts. Enjoy. I think you will or could. See you tomorrow.

 

‘Published in 1988 and set in the Florida Keys, Joy Williams’s Breaking and Entering is a strange waking dream of a novel. Liberty and Willie, young married drifters, spend their days breaking into expensive, unoccupied houses, which abound along the Gulf of Mexico. They drink the owners’ champagne, shower in their enormous bathrooms, sleep in their beds, read their romance novels, attend parties at their private clubs. Willie and Liberty are not homeless—they have a rental they don’t like much, or bother locking, which sits under a giant banyan tree that Liberty greets when she returns to it because “it did no harm to keep in touch with the vegetable world.” Willie and Liberty are unemployed but have some money from his parents, from whom they are estranged. Willie says that his occupation is saving people—literally saving them, from drowning or choking or car accidents. He is aloof and cryptic and prone to disappearing; when Liberty asks him to lie down with her in one of the borrowed beds, he misunderstands her as asking for sex, when what she really wants (and what he doesn’t offer) is comfort. She fears their joint “fascination with the buzz saw, the stove’s red electric coil, the divider strip, the fierce oncoming light.”

‘Liberty, for her part, has saved Clem, an enormous Alsatian dog she found, near dead, as a puppy, and befriends two young children, Little Dot and Teddy, whom she cannot save. She is reserved, a depressive, “one of those wives,” Willie tells a chatty, clueless guard at one of the gated communities they break into. Liberty is preoccupied with her own barrenness: “Stolen houses made her think of babies all the time.”

‘Breaking and Entering is not an overtly political novel, but it makes you think about capitalism, waste, and the general threat posed by adult humans to everything they touch. Little Dot’s mother ties a rope leash around her daughter’s wrist to keep her from wandering off. Teddy is shuttled from activity to activity but prefers climbing Liberty’s banyan (“There are twenty-eight places to sit or lie on that tree,” he tells her). Houses breathe chilly air conditioning into the atmosphere; pelicans become tangled in fishing line and starve. The people in positions of relative power—the gatekeepers, the parents, the wealthy homeowners—are poor caretakers of anything but what they own. As Liberty notes, “They protected their possessions as though they had given birth to them.”

‘Breaking and Entering is a perfect novel to read on the cusp of adulthood, when trespassing remains an active interest, even a pastime. I trespassed all through my childhood—through fields and woods and sometimes into old barns and abandoned homes. In college, too, I was interested in rooftops, cemeteries, night swimming, examining specimens in the back rooms of the medical school. I liked to be anywhere that was empty and off limits, and I cultivated, too, an appreciation of the kind of odd, stylized encounter that Williams represents. I lived off campus, with a roommate who dropped out of school on the first day and would get up in the middle of the night to go to work at a bakery. I was always searching for jobs that would pay my rent while also allowing me time to read—I tried paid medical experiments, but fainted at the sight of needles. I worked during the week as a salesclerk in a fancy boutique, on weekends as a character at an amusement park. This was the person Sally Doud saw outside her office, every other Tuesday or Thursday, looking for a new book or words of encouragement. I wonder whether she noticed that I forgot to return this book, and whether she replaced it.

‘Because Breaking and Entering is also a fine novel to return to as an older person. A sort of test: Who have you become? Where are your allegiances now?—and do you really live a life in service to those allegiances? Do you turn away from strangers, from your own loved ones? Do you like to pee in the sand and look at the stars (like Little Dot)? Do you climb trees (like Teddy)? Are you preoccupied with owning things?

‘What do you make of a paragraph like this:

In the silence, Liberty could hear Clem drinking from his water bowl. One has these assumptions, Liberty thought, these foolish assumptions about life. This is the day that the Lord hath made—that sort of thing. It proceeds from sunrise to sunset. Dare, don’t adapt. Rejoice. Be truthful. Get enough rest. Take it easy on the sun and salt. Love. Reflect. Praise. Learn. As a child, Liberty had learned how to write with ascending accuracy between increasingly diminishing lines. That’s a child’s life. A child starts with intense admiration for the world. It’s him and the world. But there are too many messages. Most are worthless, but they still must be received. One must select and clarify. One must dismiss and forget. One is in a lighted room, then it turns dim. Inexplicably. One’s intense attachment turns to fear, then hate, then guilt. Finally, sorrow.

‘Do you sit in mystery, in wonderment? Does that paragraph make you cry? Do you recognize the “increasingly diminishing lines,” the light that “turns dim,” the path from attachment to fear to sorrow?

‘Joy Williams was forty-four when Breaking and Entering was published, two years older than I am now. It was her third novel, her fourth book. Recently my friend sent me a beautiful black-and-white photo of her—maybe taken around this time—rowing a boat with a German shepherd as her passenger, smiling big, in some river or tributary. Looking at it I think of my professor, Sally Doud, and her sly but welcoming smile, her door always open—just a crack—the air around it faintly clouded by smoke.

‘To be young is to be in a space that belongs, always, to someone else. The young are always trespassing, and getting older seems to be carving out space, possessions, territory that is ours alone. Life’s encounters become less stylized. But the genius of Joy Williams, and this novel especially, is that her allegiance remains steadfastly with the young, even as she recognizes that there is a tide of life that carries us away from wonder and in the direction of fear.

‘Perhaps by watching the young we can relearn our wonder, our attachment to one another rather than to things. The other day I was in a poetry writing workshop at my university. The poet Kaveh Akbar was leading us through a series of exercises designed to connect us back to our unconscious, back to a sense of awed bewilderment. It was a two-hour workshop, held in a large room we had reserved in our library, a place where students often gather to work on homework or read between classes. We kept the door propped slightly open, and near the end of the workshop, as Akbar read a long, intensely personal poem of his own to us, a student wandered in. Akbar paused in his reading and said, “Hello, welcome.” The student nodded and said, “What’s up?” then sat down in one of the few remaining chairs.

‘I watched the student, curious to see whether he would get up and leave—he hadn’t registered for our workshop, and clearly was there by accident. But he stayed, and took his backpack off as Akbar returned to the poem, and during the question-and-answer period he raised his hand. “How does your mind go to a place,” he wanted to know, “where you can write this poem?”

‘It was an unanswerable question, in its way, but important. It was the question of a person who has not lost his admiration for the world or his ability to trespass. It was a reminder to keep the door open, always.’ — Belle Boggs

 

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Further

Joy Williams Does Not Write for Humanity
JW @ goodreads
Joy Williams, The Art of Fiction No. 223
The Misanthropic Genius of Joy Williams
What is the point of an environmental-literary cynic?
‘Great, Beautiful, Terrifying’, Joy Williams on Cormac McCarthy
Directly to the Heart: An Interview With Joy Williams
“Maybe More People Should Have Writer’s Block.”
‘Web’, by Joy Williams
My Son the Medium Can’t Even Tell Me Why We’re Here
Joy Williams Explains How to Write a Short Story
The Consolation of Joy Williams
Q&A with author Joy Williams
50 Reasons Why You Should Read Joy Williams

 

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Extras

Joy Williams: National Book Festival 2021

Live! At the Library: Joy Williams

UA Prose Series: Joy Williams

Joy Williams Reading an Essay at the William Gaddis Centenary Conference

 

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Box of index cards with notes for Breaking and Entering

 

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Manuscript page

 

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Interview
by Rebecca Bengal

 

The language your characters speak and think in is untrendy. It’s not tied to slang, yet it’s always exactly right, no matter when it is from—even when you write from the perspective of teenage girls, which you frequently do.

That’s because they’re so desperate to become. They’re desperate to make themselves understood, to discover what they want to say. And maybe that’s what keeps the stories in motion.

Do you think there are people out there who really are devoted to the short story rather than the novel? We’re talking about a very small group of people who care about literature, about writing in general, and why they care about the short story rather than the novel.

I guess I’m far more likely to be disappointed by novels. They can so often fail to deliver on their promise, they burn out. When they don’t work I think it’s because they’re loaded with the extra things that a good story is stripped of. But what do you think? And has your idea of what a short story should be changed for you over decades of writing them?

No, I don’t think it really has. I mean, these are the characters, this is their moment, they’ll never be heard from again. Even if they don’t recognize that this moment is integral to what their life will become and what it’s been. After O’Connor, it’s the mark of a good story whether a moment of grace is offered or not. Whether it’s accepted or not is irrelevant, whether it’s recognized, but it’s there, it’s in the story. This is another angle on their life. This is the mustard seed of their life, within the story.

But I don’t believe I know “how” to write a novel. I don’t have the board or the organization or the family tree. With the story it’s the same way. Any rules I have are rather abstract. Powell’s Books asked me to do a list: rules for the short story and one way it differs from the novel. I said that a novel tries to befriend you and the short story almost never. That was my distinction. A novel is like that, isn’t it? You read it in bed, or in your hammock, you spend a long time with it. And then there’s the short story, you know, bang!

And maybe that’s why I often feel that way about the novel—at least, when it doesn’t work—that it can then be the false friend who betrays you.

Oh, I like that.

Do you ever feel that way? About certain novels, that is.

Well, I return to certain novels like old friends. But they’re odd novels, like Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Or Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone.

Yes. Some of the gloomy greats, as you’ve called them. You’re working on a new novel now.

That novel’s finished. But I’ve got to revise it.

And you’re not a big reviser.

No, I never was. And that’s why some of the advice I give to writing students, I don’t know if I even agree with it. They go back and back and back, and it just loses more of the juice, I think.

But do you ever discard things as you go? And if so, do you ever go back to those things?

I don’t, really. I’m very thrifty that way. I don’t cannibalize them, either. Once I get involved in a story, I just try to make it as perfect and complete as I can and not think of it as a drawer of parts for something else.

That makes me think of this, the ending of a version of your essay “Why I Write,” when you speak of DeLillo: “I said that he was like a great shark moving hidden in our midst, beneath the din and wreck of the moment, at apocalyptic ease in the very elements of our psyche and our times that are most troublesome to us, that we most fear. Why do I write? Because I wanna be a great shark, too. Another shark. A different shark, in a different part of the ocean. The ocean is vast.”

Right, my part of the ocean—what is my part of the ocean? Didn’t they drag up all those poor creatures, the one that has survived happily for eons or something and they found it and they got to figure how it survived and managed to elude—that’s the part of the ocean I want to be in.

Circling around each other in your distinct parts of the ocean. The two different worlds, different Americas.

You know, critics want you to go and “capture the American experience.” But I don’t think you can, consciously. So much of it is unconscious. To think of all that you lose when you’re not sitting there at that desk—just with the knowledge, I want to work, I haven’t been working, I should be working. I have to sit there and wait until something starts to stir itself. That’s how it has to happen. Just think of all we’ve missed because we’re experiencing the American experience instead of going to the desk and sitting down.

 

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Book

Joy Williams Breaking and Entering
Vintage

‘This compassionate and original book is about love and loneliness and courage in the new wilderness of out atomized society. It is also funny, awful and gruesomely Floridian without sacrificing its seriousness. Joy Williams is as fine a writer as you heard she was.’ — Thomas McGuane

‘An ominous and enthralling novel …. truly significant fiction, of which there is not very much around. Breaking and Entering reminds me again that life is short; it is also very wide.’ — Jim Harrison

‘To put it simply, Joy Williams is the most gifted writer of her generation. For her, the human personality is of most interest and most truth when it is under the most extreme pressure…. This notion of truth emerges in Joy Williams’s work in a complete Americanness of setting, language, and psychology that I find to be of great beauty and meaning.’ — Harold Brodkey

 

Excerpt

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Charalampos, Hi. I’ve never heard them described that way, but I can imagine that happening. I think the reason is because people usually only see them in groups looking for food. If you observe them when they’re living and hanging out more privately, you get that they’re much more individualistic and interesting than they often appear. That’s my favourite Purdy, and the West novel is great. Yes, I read lots of articles and things about Corll before I wrote ‘Jerk’. He was the first serial killer I’d ever heard of, and I was fascinated. Love from cloudy but not overly cold Paris. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Record stores are special. And not just in a nostalgic way. I know people who’ve been driving for decades and are still nervous wrecks behind the wheel, but they’re rarities. Upward intake on the vitamins then. Do you know which one is missing? Well, practically speaking, I would ask love to reopen Bimbo Tower here in Paris. An amazing, weird store, and there’s been a real hole out there ever since it closed. Expressing my thanks to love who surely had a part in buying me a new desk chair yesterday with wheels (!) so I can roll around the room like in the movies, G. ** adrian, Bonjour! It’s staring me in the face, and I’m excited. Amsterdam has a porn festival? I only knew about the Berlin one. Zac’s and my first film played there, and, even though it’s meant to be a porn-shaped movie with no (or hardly any) sex, they still didn’t boo. We were worried. I want pizza. I’ve been dying for pizza. My favorite pizza place here closed suddenly, and I’ve been in mourning, but life and eating must go on. Excellent on the score re: your thesis supervisor. And, you know, that she has, ahem, such good taste. Concerto! When I lived in Amsterdam in the mid-80s I shopped at Concerto all the time. It blows my mind that it still exists. It used to be very good back when vinyl was the only option. Cool, tell me how it is. Good day to you! Mine’s work-y, but I’m in the mood to work hard, so it’ll be a pleasure. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. When I posted the original Dead Record Stores #1 post it was before the big vinyl comeback, and it felt much, much grimmer. Interesting. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, really, about dying bookstores? In LA at least, they’ve made a huge comeback. There are more really good bookstores there now than in the pre-Amazon days. Interesting that you imagine me preferring serial killers’ teeth instead of serial killers’ victims’ teeth. The latter is something I can almost imagine myself collecting. ** Jack Skelley, Rhino was a mecca for me too. And PooBah Records in Pasadena, which may still exist. And Arons. I think you know John Rechy lived a block away from me for years and years. Total prima donna. Love, Jackie Collins. ** Mark, Hi. It pains me that I don’t have a record player here, but I don’t, because, yes, I barely have room for the books I keep seeming to think I need to have. Disco vinyl is worth a pretty penny. I was, of course, an anti-disco punk rocker back then, so I’m bereft. But I do some awfully valuable punk 45s somewhere. ** Justin, Hi, Justin. I was actually surprised not to find more Portland entries for the post, but maybe they’re all still alive. I read ‘Container’ on video.?Huh. There’s a lot of early (as in ‘too’) in ‘Wrong’, but I do still like ‘Container’. Nice, thank you. Are you guys getting any Pineapple Express action up there? ** Tosh Berman, It’s true: when I think of record stores, I think of you. Crazy that Rockaway is still there. That’s something. I loved Arons even though I get why Amoeba kind of made it superfluous. Bomp! was great. Greg Shaw was a real cool guy. Did you know him? ** Fredrik Nilsen, Hey, Fred! Whoa! Super great to see you here, old chum! Shit, okay, I’ll go delete Earwax Records from the graveyard. I must’ve read its signals wrong. Thanks about the blog and ‘I Wished’. man. I’d love to see you. Next LA jaunt, let’s coffee up together or something. Hugs and love from Paris! ** Bill, Hi. You went to Crazy Eddie? I walked by it a billion times, but I never set foot. Welcome to the other side of the seemingly overhyped deluge. I just got tickets to the upcoming Presences Electronique Festival. Some pretty good things this year. ** JG, Well, hey to you! Wow, it’s a major refresher to see you, pal! Lovely reminiscence. How are you? What’s going on? I’m all ears, or, wait, eyes. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. No, no clue on why it was closed. That is really strange that Rough Trade survived the move without dying immediately or ‘selling out’, whatever that would involve. I don’t have a record player so I almost never go to record stores here. It’s too painful. Everyone, Steve Erickson’s ‘February music roundup for Gay City News, covering Brittany Howard and Astrit Ismaili, is out‘ ** Guy, Hi I have no idea what’s going between your email and mine, but, no, I haven’t received it. Very strange. And vexing. Shit. I’m going to see if my email has some kind of option to search my storage in extreme detail or something, because it seems inexplicable. I’ll do my utmost to finish the little collection, thank you! At the moment it’s looking … likely? Bisous! ** Darbyy🐖🐷, Uh, that’s a good reason to get heat. Given that ‘I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream’ is one of the all-time great titles, I accept your comparison with bells on. It’s awfully nice to see your current physical incarnation. Such expressive eyes, my friend! And pretty good scrubs. I think that was the Monster in question. I don’t know if French Monsters look different from American ones. I’m so happy I don’t eat pigs and have no nostalgia around what pork looked or smelled or tasted like when I was a child who still ate in such an evil way. You ever seen that movie ‘Babe’? A lot of people think it’s just sentimental dreck, but it’s actually a great and kind of perfect movie, if you ask me. Verbosity is in the eye of the beholder, and I detected none. ** Uday, Hi. Being an LA resident in 80s, Missing Persons were inescapable. And, you know, their songs are kind of cheap thrills even now. Bob Flanagan and I were super great friends. As was Sheree Rose. We were all in a poet/weirdo posse together. Good about the grant headway. Is that interesting to talk about? I will alert you upon my return to that country because it would be big fun to hang out. ** Joe, Hi, Joe! I’m all mp3s now too. I don’t even have a CD playing option anymore. I do miss packaging. Sometimes. I still have …. mm, most of my lifelong accumulation of vinyl and CDs and cassettes. Lots of things that I really should sell since they’re probably worth a ton. They’re all in LA. Just sound files here. Loveliest day, my friend. ** Okay. I haven’t turned the blog’s spotlight onto a book by the great, great Joy Williams in several years, so I did. Glory in her glory. See you tomorrow.