Philip Brunetti
Fiction writer, poet, antipoet, gentle quasi-misanthrope, librarian, Philip Brunetti has been writing fiction and poetry since his early 20s. His innovative work has been published in various online or paper literary journals including Cobalt Weekly, Swamp Ape Review, The Boiler, and Identity Theory. His debut novel, Newer Testaments (Atmosphere Press, 2020) is described in the Independent Book Review as 'an innovative existential novel told through hallucinatory poetics.' Via his librarianship at the Brooklyn Public Library, Brunetti also runs the Gravesend Writers Group, a monthly writers discussion group.
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
More than particular films, I'd say film movements, especially the French New Wave (and other New Wave filmmaking in general). Godard in particular in Pierrot Le Fou, Masculin-Feminin, Alphaville, Breathless - guess I'm naming films here... But it's more the overall experimental risk-taking, exuberance, and audacity of the French New Wave that I attempt to embrace in my writing. I've always been interested in pushing writing boundaries and New Wave filmmaking holds so many keys of approach and inspired examples. I should also mention an American filmmaker, Hal Hartley, whom I see as an Indie inheritor of the French New Wave in America, somewhat. At least as far as stylization. His first four or five films had such cadenced, stylized dialogue, it still sticks with me, those indelible exchanges, though I haven't watched those films in years.
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
I like to think that experimental jazz influences my writing, specifically fusion jazz of the 70s, which in my opinion reaches its apex in Miles Davis's Bitches Brew. I could listen to that double album all day long and have on occasion. There's such a grandiose swirl of sounds and laconicism, strange, triumphant, spooky, an upended forward motion backtracking - sound spills in multiple directions at once yet perfect. It's a haunting kind of album and I'd like my writing to haunt like that too, to last in the senses and consciousness, to perturb, awaken, and reveal. Yes, I sometimes listen to this kind of music while writing and keep an oblique connection to it.
Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?
I'm pretty cut-throat with this. I don't usually go past the first page or two because there are so many books that I'm interested in reading. I need to be drawn in immediately by the voice of the narrator, the language, the flow, velocity, and innovation. I like to read books that punch a hole in ordinary reality from the start. You get it up front and go from there. So, the first paragraph's key, then the first page or two, written in such a singular way, it feels inevitable that the writer will sustain it for the length of the novel. A stylistic confidence comes through and keeps on.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
Actually, writing is the profession I would like to try. As in, I've been writing for the better part of thirty years now but have never supported myself by writing. I worked a good long stretch as a teacher and am currently a librarian but also had a bunch of oddball, factotum jobs way back when including a vendor at the NY Mets old Shea Stadium. But really, what I'd like is to get paid someday for my writing without any overdone marketing or compromise, without trying to get paid. I'd just like to write my books, the books I'm interested in writing, and have them get published, have them sell fairly well, and be a professional author. Sounds great, right? Still waiting for the payday part to happen.
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
I don't speak another language fluently but have been trying to learn Italian, on and off (mostly off), my whole life. In fact, I lived in Italy on two separate occasions, once for as long as a year almost, but spoke too much English as an English instructor. I'd love to have deep, interesting thoughts in Italian but, instead, if I think differently in Italian - it's very elemental and basic. I cannot philosophize or have an interesting conversation at all, sadly. I'm fascinated also by the Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri's Italian journey, and her ability to immerse herself in Italian life and culture and learn the language well enough to write a book in it. Then translate it back into English herself. That'll never happen for me but I can honor it - and do! Greatly.
