Molotov Editions: Denver? Your writing? How does Denver—the reality of the place (from whatever angle you have experienced it) play into your work as an artist? Is there something about Denver?
Zack Kopp: I never had much sense of place about Denver for a long time. Now I’ve lived here longer than any of the other places. Denver was an international occult headquarters through the 80s and into the 90s thanks, in part, to a punk band called the Temple of Psychick* Youth, spawning a series of interesting cults (including an unusual religious sect—with tv/pop origins—the Partridge Family Temple). And the Krishna Temple used to have free feeds every Friday night where all the counterculture types would show up.
Molotov Editions: You’ve also written on the Beats—and their influence on Denver’s psychic landscape…
Zack Kopp: I wrote a book on Denver’s connections with the Beats, which let me in on the old-time hip crowd history, since Neal Cassady spent most of his growing up years here. Since writing that Beats-and-Denver book, I’ve made friends with Neal’s son, talented artist Robert Hyatt, Neal’s daughters, Jami and Cathy, and Jami’s husband Randy Ratto, who live in CA, which puts me in touch with that lineage, since Neal grew up here―and Denver artist Mark Sink, (Kerouac friend) Ed White’s stepson, took me to the rest home to meet him one morning. That one was called The Denver Beat Scene (2015). When I gave Ed a copy, he said, “Can’t beat that.” “See, he’s still got it?” said Mark sotto voce.
Molotov Editions: Neal Cassady is also a character in Happiness, your latest novel …
HAPPINESS by Zack Kopp
Zack Kopp: Neal C. comes up importantly a few times in Happiness, in the main story, but also in that novel’s footnotes.
Molotov Editions: Footnotes?
Zack Kopp: Yes. But those aren’t footnotes in the traditional, academic sense—but function more a subtext, a secondary (or tertiary) level—offering alternative angles into the story.
Molotov Editions: Automatism (automatic writing)—the Beat idea (ideal) that art could be generated spontaneously in the moment ... To what extent does this technique play into your own compositional ethos?
Zack Kopp: I started writing spontaneously after discovering Kerouac when I was about 15 and experienced a very clear connection to that wellspring—one that has only grown with time and repetition. I feel like I tempered my own channeling experience with my intention of literary effect―and I guess you’d have to say Kerouac did, too (and even Neal, arguably to a lesser degree). What I mean is I wanted to use the connection I’d made with the subconscious or allness or whatever it is to write with, where someone else might have channeled an extradimensional being.
Molotov Editions: How does this channeling play out in your latest novel, Happiness?
Zack Kopp: In Happiness—it plays through my main character, freelance writer Wally Jack Mack. Through his infatuation with extradimensional medium Kartinie Thinie, whose own mode of divination gives demonstrable utility to the same stuff he’s been splashing around like cheap paint all these years. In other words, she’s a successful version of himself, himself emerged, distinguished by the same innate psychic or intuitive connection, but smart where he’s foolish, resolved where he’s confused, and he commits to learn whatever he can from her and get as close as possible to her magic, with incredible and unforeseen results.. …
I guess you could say I felt at times I was channeling Wally Jack—as a fictional character—similar to the way he channels Kartinie. Real or unreal, vicarious or imagined, it was an exciting convergence for me.
Molotov Editions: The observed: places, people, events—real life stuff, that you either witness or experience—how does that find its way into your fiction, improvised or otherwise?
ZACK KOPP:: His many books include Happiness and The Denver Beat Scene
Zack Kopp: Great question. I’ve been writing my life into fiction for so many years now that I’ve gotten used to catching on to what’s a dominant theme life-wise and making changes to whatever I’m writing on the fly. One example of life trumping art in this symbiosis is that someone from real life who at first bore no relevance to the work as I conceived it ended up becoming instrumental (in a fictional way) to the plot of Happiness through sheer energetic interference to the adventure I thought I was going through. This book kept changing up until the very end and assumed its final shape by entropy, momentum or sacred geometry.
Molotov Editions: In many ways, Happiness jumps into another dimension--— not just in content but in genre and form. Could you talk about those aspects?
Zack Kopp: Magic(k) realism + metaphysics + paranormal history = Happiness. Readers get main character Wally Jack Mack’s day to day along with excerpts in a smaller font from the belief cloud he inhabits and the paranormal research he’s doing, meanwhile diverting readers’ attention with the tale of his freelance writer’s crush on an interdimensional alien channeler on yet another level….
Footnotes after most chapters mimic the state of awareness people currently inhabit, one where there’s no reason not to know the nuts and bolts about anything if we want to. Some of my writer friends won’t care at all about the paranormal research end of this one, picking through the footnotes for the narrative, but my hope, they’ll get sucked in. Other types of minds might like the footnotes more than the narrative, and I have the same hope there—that they’ll get drawn into the main narrative. But also if the reader hops around, that’s okay.
Molotov Editions: Like Cortazar’s Hopscotch?
Zack Kopp: Yeah.
Molotov Editions: Last Question: What’s your intention with this book?
Zack Kopp: It’s the kind of book that seeks to change your perspective as a reader, providing an optional tour of all the topics incidentally crucial to the unfolding narrative, like a portable internet, and can be read on all levels at once or in series, like footnotes first then narrative, or vice versa. In both cases, experiences are detailed where people find themselves drawn to things and feelings beyond themselves, to understand, define and know them fully, even knowing they can’t, even knowing it can’t be known, before being returned, at the end of their fool’s adventures, to their natural lostness, where curiosity comes from….
Happiness is a book about humanity’s forever unconsummated romance with the unknown, and the way it never stops, nor should.
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Happiness is available from Amazon, as well as the Mutiny Information Cafe in Denver or directly from the publisher at campelasticity@outlook.com .
Living by his wits in the blown-out shell bottom of a ruined, crowded world, writer and editor Zack Kopp has worked as creative artist of one kind or another from ever since. Kopp has served time as a freelance writer, citizen journalist, photographer, novelist, and musician. He is also the founder of Camp Elasticity Productions, a growing concern among determined believers in impossibility. His many books include Happiness, just released in August of 2022, as well as Reality Stars, The Cool Zone, and The Denver Beat Scene: The Mile High Legacy of Kerouac, Cassady & Ginsberg.
Upcoming: A new anthology, Tiger Mouth , edited by Zach Kopp, is accepting submissions of writing, b/w photos and art at campelasticity@outlook.com