Meet Zane Perdue

Zane Perdue’s Intoxication and Rembrandtstrasse are both featured in our upcoming anthology The Shortlist: Best of BarBar 2024. Zane has been one of our favorite writers for a few years now. His work, A Music of the Humors, won one of our inaugural BarBes back in 2022! With a keen eye for language and an insatiable curiosity, Zane’s work is textured and engrossing. Be sure to check out his work in The Shortlist, releasing January 31st, and subscribe to his Substack. He writes beautifully and publishes frequently.

https://zaneperdue.substack.com/

Follow the links below to read Zane Perdue’s work!

Intoxication
Rembrandtstrasse
Lexico-Theological Manifesto
How Herman Translated the Title of an Incunabulum
On the Interaction of Yellow and Blue
A Music of the Humors

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Zane was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. Please enjoy.

What is a writer, to you?

To me, a writer (to paraphrase Walter Benjamin in his radio piece on Cagliostro) is someone whose powers of observation have ascendancy over the mere firmness or correctness of their point of view.

What is the most detrimental to your writing progress? (E.g., Is it distractions? Plotting? Revisions? The blank page? The finishing? The size of your audience?) 

The most detrimental thing to the process of writing in general, in my opinion, is the notion of inspiration. Of course, we no longer see inspiration as something that is put in us from without, e.g., by God. Instead, the notion has become so psychologized that it is even more difficult to get away from than when God was striking it into the hearts of geniuses. I am convinced that inspiration is the ultimate spook.

We all have strengths and weaknesses in our writing, what are yours?

The weak point in my writing (and I do not think I am alone in this) is that I often seem to want to say the last word first. Any strengths I might have derive from the degree to which I am able to remember this weakness.

Tell us about the projects you are working on now and what’s next.

I am currently working on a manuscript of essayistic prose.

What written work by another author lives rent-free in your head?

One chapter in particular from Henry Miller’s book on D.H. Lawrence (The World of Lawrence) has been very significant to me recently: “The Universe of Death,” a long meditation on language and the life of the artist via the work of Marcel Proust and James Joyce (favoring, seemingly, the former over the latter). Robert Walser has also meant a lot to me lately.