Interview with Author Zachary Maher

Zach Maher's story "Finalizing the Merger" caught our eyes and ears with its breathless pace, imaginative scenes, and bold language. It's absurd and funny and playful—and definitely weird. Learn a little more about the author and his approach to writing in our short interview below.

What makes you keep writing, even when it's hard?

I have consistently failed to discover this, albeit it’s with writing that I’ve sought a conclusive answer. Whatever the urge to write is I’ve attempted to follow it through or work it out. Sometimes I wonder if it’s not a weird debility, and if all writers aren’t trying to fashion for themselves with their work some kind of mental prosthesis, like a crutch to lean on. Art is a life-support system, so says Stephen King: however clueless certain authors were about what they did and exactly why, the things they left behind, their stories, their books, have long outlasted their doubts, to sustain, among others, my own life. So, I too muddle on. Who would be a turtle who could help it? 

What's your favorite obscure novel or short story (a work you never hear anyone else talking about)?

I wish I heard more people talking about novels and stories :) 

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann. Among the most neglected novels I know of (I have a clear memory of seeing five or six antiquarian copies of this four-volume, 1,500+ page book rotting on the shelves of the Strand circa 2008). If you’ve ever wondered how or whether it’s possible to believe in God amidst catastrophe and defeat—with this book, the 20th century’s most magisterial wizard of prose storytelling and gutsiest writer-exile provides a work of theodicy that we can actually understand and relate to. As with Mann’s other books in English, John E. Woods is the translator to trust. H. T. Lowe-Porter doesn’t quite get it.

Advice on creating that you’ve learned by trial and error.

Mistakes are your friend, the portal to discovery, genius makes none of them, etc. I have a devil in me that is never content, and until I made my peace with that bastard, I struggled to endure my own deep dissatisfaction with everything I wrote. Now he sits on my shoulder while I’m revising, whispering mean stuff in my ear (during first drafts, he has to wait out in the hall). In order to write something that at least sounds true, your ego must be flayed like skin. The job sucks, and no one cares enough about you, or your work, to assume responsibility for doing it properly. 

Zachary Maher writes stories and lives with his family in Luxembourg. His fiction was first published in Weird Lit Magazine.