An Interview with Marlon L. Fick

Abstract

A conversation with a Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts in Writing for the United States as well as Mexico (ConaCulta), Marlon L. Fick. Fick is the author of several books, including translations, volumes of poetry, and short fiction. He is the author of two forthcoming novels from Jaded Ibis Press - the two novels are part of a trilogy with the third underway. The novels, The Nowhere Man and Rhapsody in a Circle, are written against a backdrop of twentieth-century political turmoil in third world countries: The Congo (then Zaire), Nicaragua, Mexico, and Pakistan. Although at the heart of both novels lies questions of identity, the potentially futile quest for the soul, the theme of individuality and freedom eventually collides with politics. Fick believes we are prisoners of the body politic. The author does not like to speak of the novel as history, except to assert that 'history is a poor word for something for which we have yet to find a better word'.