An author of tales that court the poetic through the lives of those who inhabit edges and in-betweens, Francesca Lia Block is prolific and steadfast in her drive to give voice to those who could use a little more noise. Best known for her groundbreaking Weetzie Bat books (also known as the Dangerous Angels series) in which characters transcend stereotypes and prejudice within a fertile, magical realist landscape, Block writes what have been deemed “contemporary fairy tales with an edge” that have garnered her no small amount of controversy. For her work, she’s received the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award and the Phoenix Award, as well as opportunities to develop a show for MTV and a screenplay to put Weetzie Bat on the big screen. No one else makes Los Angeles—where Block has spent very nearly her entire life—and the maladies of modern life so tangibly mythic, so paradoxically abrasive and fecund. Black Clock had a chance to speak to Block this summer about what makes her tick.
BLACK CLOCK: Your work is full of subcultural presence, and illuminates both the gritty and the mystical in those who eschew the mainstream. How do DIY and punk ethics, specifically, influence your life and your work?
FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK: I was a teenager in the late seventies and the culture didn’t excite me until punk came into my life. I remember seeing the Go-Go’s at the Whiskey when they were little punks playing really fast and rough while the boys slammed in front of the stage. It changed me in some important way. I felt that you could be a beautiful girl but also as wild and tough and free and alive as the boys, that you could be an artist and not be perfect, that you could be different and still find your people, that you didn’t have to listen to Styx and Journey and wear expensive jeans and have long shiny blond hair. I’ve loved alternative culture, in all its forms, ever since.
The city of Los Angeles has figured prominently in your writing. Do you think any other cities in the world could feed your creativity as much as L.A. has?
I think that wherever I would have grown up would have fed my creativity because I think I basically would have died if I didn’t get to write. In fact, the more sterile my environment the more necessary it might have been for me to find magic in it. That said, L.A. is the perfect city for me because it is so full of toxic beauty and that contrast really feeds my work.
You have characters with names like “My Secret Agent Lover Man” and “Witch Baby;” you have books with titles like The Magic of Forgetting and Missing Angel Juan. What guides you when you’re dreaming up names?
I choose names mostly from my subconscious but also from things I see around me. Like My Secret Agent Lover Man came from graffiti written between the tiles in the grout at the UC Berkeley library. “My Secret Agent Lover Man you will never read this.” There are names everywhere, inside of us and outside of us, waiting to be discovered.
I’ve read that you use Tarot cards in your writing process—can you explain how this works for you?
The ancient, iconic images of the Tarot can be very inspiring. I feel tapped into a collective unconscious when I use them.
Your writing is often a sensual feast, rich with unexpected flavors and images. What feeds your senses when you’re writing?
The things I love–people, flowers, music, food, movement, dance, art, sculpture. I am constantly grateful to my senses, especially after suffering some severe vision loss lately.
What do you think it is about Weetzie Bat, your most infamous character, that allows her to remain relevant over twenty years after her first appearance in print? Is it her? Is it you? Is it your ability to slink into any of social media’s dresses, be it Twitter, Blogspot, or Facebook, and flaunt it?
It’s not me. It’s all her. I tapped into something with that character–a quality in certain young girls who see the magic and beauty and wonder in the world around them no matter what. They see it more, perhaps, the more they have suffered. They keep coming, each new generation. I was once that girl and I still have some of her in me. Yes, I use social media to remind people about her but she has taken on a life of her own as a reflection of some of my students, my readers, my muses (often these are all the same young women).
What’s your response to people who believe fiction to be indulgent, and thereby of little consequence?
Firsthand experience: fiction saves lives.
by Patricia Cram
an Editorial Assistant for Black Clock and an MFA Writing candidate at CalArts
