WE DAT is fucked. That’s because from what I know of him, Dee P. R. Kay is fucked. Completely fucked in my estimation.
Dee P.R. Kay ain’t quite right and that’s why I love him so much. And why I love this book so much.
And because WE DAT also fucks.
This is transgressive lit at its best. It trashes morals and all popular writing adages and just fucking goes for the nuts and rips your nuts off and feeds them to you (to clarify, I mean both male and female and intersex nuts).
There are porn stars and prostitutes and pimps and side-hustle pimps and blackmailing and revenge plots and a murdered cat and a lot of gratuitous sex and if I haven’t sold you yet, there’s this guy named Dee P. R. Kay who writes the shit out of a sentence. My favorite sentences I’ve read in a long long time.
You see, I’ve become a lazy reader over the last ten years. I read, I think that’s pretty good, maybe even that’s fucking great, but I don’t take out my pen anymore. The way I used to when I first started out.
Well, I took the shit out of my pen on every page of WE DAT. Underlined like every other sentence. It really says something that the horniest I got while reading WE DAT was for syntax.
Dee P.R. Kay lives in dark alleys and writes from dark alleys. Dank, sweaty, putrid back alleys of NOLA where they toss all the titty beads after they sober up and do the walk of shame the next morning.
Except with Dee P.R. Kay it’s not a walk of shame. It’s a point of pride. It’s what they mean when they say WE DAT.
WE DAT is the book you read when you’re pissed off at how fucking feckless the larger literary world has become and want to be reminded that good real writing doesn’t have any place at the Big Five or The New Yorker or Paris Review, Ploughshares, or Granta and that’s a fucking badge of honor, a badge of honor that Dee P.R. Kay owns. WE DAT is we be DAT, is we got DAT. And DAT is also a lot of good old dirty horny fucking.
BKD: Let’s start out with the basics: A) What are you? And B) where the fuck did you come from?
Dee P. R. Kay: I’m just a simple country boy from St. Clair Springs, Talibama, but I grew up in Birmingham. We’re all just people trying to feel something in this capitalistic hellscape. Probably panspermia explains my existence best, lest we defer to God.
BKD: In the inscription for my copy of WE DAT, you wrote that it was a “literary exorcism”? What were you exorcising? Exercising? Excising? How much Dacre you got in your loins? How dirty is your soul?
Dee P. R. Kay: I think my heart and soul are in a sock drawer in the Quarter, along with some pink socks with a unicorn that says, “fuck yes, you glorious bitch!” But yeah, demons should be exercised, not exorcised, and if you don’t pay the exorcist, you get re-possessed. Who fucking knows, man? All men got that dawg in us.
BKD: You’ve got a beautiful gutter poetry throughout WE DAT, how much Bukowski did you read in your impressionable years? If not Bukowski, then who did you read that made you think you could write the shit you write in the fucked-up way you write it? (See also “11” from the BULL archives).
Dee P. R. Kay: My granddaddy, Walter, also worked for the post office, like Bukowski. Granddaddy died from TB in the 80s and my parents wouldn’t let me look at him in his casket. He played drums in a band that did big band music and we would watch The Lawrence Welk Show together often. After he died, I was learning to play drums, but my Nana sold ‘em to make ends meet. I coulda been a rock star. Music has had a deep influence on my writing.
I have read some Bukowski, but I was more influenced by Dostoevsky and Raymond Chandler in my impressionable years. My voice and idiosyncrasies are just how I am. Poetry-wise, I like Arseni Tarkovsky. u.v. ray is pretty much my literary daddy, so credit where credit’s due (btw, his poetry is vastly underappreciated). u.v.’s also shown me a ton of support, has been a helluva mentor, and i consider him a friend and one of the best writers currently writing.
My mama would return from the grave and rip my face off if I didn’t mention her… influence. She was a writer and was like the Annie Wilkes of Flannery O’Connor fans. She won some big Flannery O’Connor literary award and was offered to be a Chair of the writing department in Milledgeville, GA. So it was, like, you couldn’t escape Southern Gothic lit growing up with her. This stuff is in my DNA. Mama also taught creative writing, and I mocked her students as “the delicate geniuses.” Now my karma is to be a delicate genius at the mercy of the sleepless guardians of the slush pile.
BKD: I’m about to do a talk about Flannery O’Connor in her childhood home: what’s some shit that I can say that’s gonna make me sound smart and witty? What would I need to do to impress your mama?
Dee P. R. Kay: I’m legit jealous! (I think it would be really ironic if you karaoked Katy Perry’s “Peacock” to break the ice.) O’Connor’s indomitable spirit, as she battled Lupus and convalesced in Andalusia, has to be discussed. She was damn near monastic in her writing routine, and despite extreme health problems, she still penned some of the most brutal short stories ever written and banged out two novels there. I would say, her strongest hand was that she gave zero fucks about being liked by the literary establishment and exposed the moral rot of the South. The bitch-fight between her and McCullers is also worth exploring.
BKD: What’s some shit about New Orleans that people get wrong when they think about New Orleans?
Dee P. R. Kay: New Orleans IS America. WE DAT was dedicated to New Orleans and New Orleaneans. I love NOLA. These are some of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet in your life, but don’t bring no bad energy, or they’ll mirror that shit back (and the best food is at somebody’s mama’s house, not in restaurants that removed the food’s soul for tourists).
NOLA has such atmosphere, grit and characters, that it does 90% of a writer’s job. It worked for Faulkner and Williams. But NOLA’s also a place that will chew you up and spit you out. Just ask Trent Reznor… Too many romanticize NOLA and overlook that it’s a city built upon trauma and exploitation. NOLA is a broken black mirror of brutal self-discovery, and ain’t nobody walking away without his or her face cut up.
BKD: Best NOLA book?
Dee P. R. Kay: Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite (now Billy Martin). Hands down.
BKD: Okay, you got me at Poppy Z. Brite (even if it’s now Billy Martin which reminds me of the old Yanks/Mets coach who got ejected from a game and then tried to sneak back into a game with a fake mustache, but I digress and am probably offending them). But I’m intrigued. What’s the deal with this Exquisite Corpse thing?
Dee P. R. Kay: Cadavre exquis was a game the Surrealists played—it’s essentially creating something without seeing the whole. Wanna play a game?! I think many miss the Rosetta Stone of Brite’s title. Like the game, thru fragments and pieces from our subconscious, meaning emerges, and somehow it is coherent… this is what good literature does. No hand-holding. All black, no apologies. Fuck HEAs and redemption arcs. That ain’t the world we live in.
Exquisite Corpse went so goddamn hard to the paint (holding a mirror up to society) that many can’t handle it. That book will rip your soul out. Exquisite Corpse is required reading for anyone repping being “transgressive,” and there are a lot of folks perpetrating and flaking being transgressive gang colors in indie lit.
BKD: Obviously, we share a love for u.v. (see: “bad junk” & “cinesthetic“). Share with the world who don’t know why they need to get off their asses and get some u.v. in their life. And don’t be all brief and general about it. Get specific. Get real. Do some some real deep shit lit analysis.
Dee P. R. Kay: Jesus Christ, dude. That’s a tall order. Maybe TBD going all lit analysis… on my fucking idol. But here’s what i will say, if it weren’t for u.v. ray, we wouldn’t even be doing this interview. He literally told me, stop fucking around on TikTok promoting your book and write for lit mags. So I followed my marching orders, and here we are.
What I’m saying, is u.v. cares about the lit community, even though he’s not received that same love back from the literary establishment. U.V. Ray makes Irving Welsh look like child’s play, and Ray’s works are indie lit canon. He’s the King of Literary Nihilism–go read Black Cradle.
Re: Druggernaut: Anyone who’s struggled with substance abuse knows that you end up being an actor in your own shitty movie, and “confusion will be our epitaph” per King Crimson. Only someone who’s lived that and is an extremely talented writer could put that in a hybrid fiction/script format and pull it off.
u.v. ray recently retired; and I take him at his word. Dude’s been grinding since the 80s. He’s writing from lived experience and from inside the wound. But you can only bleed on the page for so long before the blood runs out. Some of us just don’t have cute stories inside of us….
As he says, writing is a “terminal sickness,” but I hope he knows his writing has had a huge impact on many and has lifted-up many downtrodden souls. I read him and say, “Holy fuck! Somebody else feels the same?!” If there’s a patron saint of the junkies (me), alkies (me), 304s, criminals (me), the insane (me) and fucked-up people on the margins of society… it’s U.V. Ray.
All Hail U.V. Ray. DISSOLVE TO:
BKD: What’s the story behind the story behind the story of the story of WE DAT? What books begat it? What authors haunted it? What actual ghosts haunted it? Is this your fiftieth novel but first to get pubbed or is it the popping of your auto-fic novel cherry? How long? How wide? How heavy? How come?
Dee P. R. Kay: WE DAT is my only novel. I highly doubt I will do any more books. I didn’t consider myself “published” until I was published in actual lit mags that are curated by EICs. WE DAT was self-published thru my shady-ass Wyoming LLC and a total boondoggle. It’s basically like, what if Fight Club and Tampa hate-fucked in a seedy NOLA motel room, had a love child, and threw it in a dumpster fire out back the Popeye’s Chicken? Try selling that! As for the artists haunting WE DAT—Foucault, Haneke, Lynch, Lodge Kerrigan, Bataille, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus & Artaud.
Jesus, I sound pompous.
re: “the story behind the story” stuff—I have nothing to say. Respectfully. Five words, brau.
BKD: If you had to put together a playlist for We Dat, what’d be the essentials?
Dee P. R. Kay: I could go all Tyler Dempsey and QR-code a sad WE DAT playlist if you like…
Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0zsyoEisQ7nB5mzr9LdjZA?si=QY0TuTwYQcWDx_hUjOfRfw
BKD: What’s the dorkiest fucking thing you do or have done?
Dee P. R. Kay: Watch My Little Pony with my daughters. Or pranking people with Feral Pickle Goblin and making her Bloody Mary pickles. We’re terrible. Pranks that are borderline Hellfire Club type stuff.
BKD: When was the last time you cried or threw a temper tantrum for pissy reasons?
Dee P. R. Kay: I am the Piss Christ of bad personality traits. The last time I cried, I was a child. It was at the funeral for my Nana’s bestfriend, Miss Vada. I used to play Bridge with Miss Vada, and she was very sweet to me.
I don’t do temper tantrums—more like seeing red with 187 in my eyes, as they turn from blue to grey, then my Protector/Persecutor handles whomever needs handling (nothing illegal and not promoting violence).
But yeah, I’m basically devoid of emotion and have learned how to act like Meryl Streep, though I would love to be able to feel like a normal fucking person.
BKD: Ten years from now and you’ve written and published the shit you wanted to publish: what’s “good” for you? What to you means: maybe I ain’t Stevie King, but I feel good about where I am, where I’ve gone, what I’ve done, and who I’ve met?
Dee P. R. Kay: I may have already climbed Mt. Everest getting published in The Opiate twice. The Opiate was the biggest, baddest person in lit prison to me, and I felt like I got validated with prison ink by Genna. No hate on BULL. I love you, and I love BULL. (You pretty much got my best story, “11,” and advised me on an edit that made it what it is.)
I have a Russian view of things—that the NKVD of life will snatch me up in a black car and schlepp my ass to the gulag. I don’t believe in the future, and I don’t reflect on the past. I wake up each morning, put my left foot in front of my right foot, and focus on surviving that particular day. Inside of that present-based prison mentality, I feel that human connection (even though I’m not good at it) is the primary motive for my writing, not money or fame. And there’s a part of me that’s just a Sag literary arsonist…
I can’t read David Foster Wallace’s fiction, because he wrote trauma so well (same for JCO’s Blonde) that I spiral, but I do like his essays and speeches. so I hope to be part of the new generation of writers he advocated who are post-ironic sincere. (I can do irony, and different aesthetics are cool and all, but when I read stuff, I ask, “Where’s the fucking blood?!”)
I call what i do post-everything, because i feel, as artists, everything has already been done (cf., Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West), and we’re basically vultures baby-birding cultural carrion of tired borrowings and recycled shit to our audience. That doesn’t mean we should stop making art or that it’s meaningless.
If i’m future-oriented at all, my legacy will be my daughters, Zaichenka and Lailichka. Not words on a page. Because my daughters will be the ones holding my hand in old age as I die in a hospital. And all I really want for them is to grow up safe, happy, healthy & prosperous—to have the normal life I never had. So any kind of immortality or legacy will be thru my daughters. No pressure, but they need new shoes, so y’all please buy a fucking copy of We Dat.
Dee P. R. Kay: i’m turning the tables on you, my cracka. are you gonna serenade us with a mullet and play dat gitfiddle? Feral Pickle Goblin already has some requests…
BKD: With me pretty much everything’s always on the table. Alas I finally shaved the mullet (one of those protective proactive controlled fire burns), but I have multiple mullet wigs I’ve been known to whip out upon the right occasion.
BKD: Anything else I didn’t ask that, like: drevlow, you’re a goddam idiot, if you knew anything at all, should’ve fucking asked about…?
Dee P. R. Kay: you didn’t ask me about a leaderless resistance atavistic insurgency… or Gematria… or numerology… or hoodoo… or my pickled shrimp recipe… or Feral Pickle Goblin. Btw, the algorithm loathes a certain acronym for a certain hermit kingdom–thus my pen name that totally side-stepped that shit. I don’t wanna get y’all shadow-banned by the SEO overlords.
Oh, there’s a longer piece Genna is printing in vol. 45 of The Opiate, “3 White Lights,” out soon, and I would very much appreciate all of y’all reading it and showing support for Genna and all the other artists in the Spring issue. That story is like Knockemstiff on goddamn Tren.
Quick shout out: to YOU and BULL, u.v. ray, anyone reading my shit, all the mags and EICs who’ve supported me, Feral Pickle Goblin (love you, girl), the Apostle of Chaos Baby Billy, and my brau, Solo Dolo.
