12 Questions for Matthew Davis

The debut novelist on John Lennon, religion, parasocial relationships, attractive women laughing at him on the street, previous romantic flings, and more.

Photo by Alexander Tsebelis

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Texting with Matthew Davis a few weeks before the publication of this interview and I tell him I’ve pretty much finished his intro.  

‘Is there a quote we can put in the Amazon blurb section… a good glazing quote?’ He says. 

‘I’ll look back and see. What’s glazing, I don’t use this adjective? Like plumping?’ 

‘Gen Z slang for praising.’ 

‘You identify as a Z-er?’ I ask. 

‘Yeah.’ Davis says. ‘I am a Zoomer novelist.’ 

He goes on to ask several times if I can include a photo of his book cover, which was designed by the artist Jon Rafman. 

‘I’m just gonna put the photo of you.’ I say. ‘But I’ll link the book.’ 

‘We’re here to sell books and get other websites to interview me and REVIEW my book.’ Davis responds. 

‘No, that’s why you’re here.’ 

‘This will be good for Jewish novelists in general.’ Davis tells me. 

‘That’s true.’ I respond. ‘We need more of that.’ 

This is a typical interaction one might have with Davis, disingenuous and irritating, unnecessarily ironic yet devoid of wit, but, I must admit, a touch of seduction and mystery, something that keeps you interested, engaged, if not very slightly charmed, a thing that prohibits you from ignoring him altogether. He’s a nice guy in search of attention; aren’t we all? At the end of the day I think he means really well, though that might just be something called the benefit of the doubt. When interacting with Davis, you need the forgiving sense of the benefit of the doubt, or at least, to just not take life too seriously. Otherwise, it’s true, you might pull your hair out. 

Can someone be so disingenuous that they become, in effect, the most oddly genuine, authentic person you know?

***

Over the past several months, I’ve been making a concerted effort to never cancel any plans; an exercise in commitment. I figured that if I go to every plan I make, no matter where and with whom, that maybe I’ll think twice about agreeing to certain things in the first place, and will finally be able to carve out a bit more time for myself, which means more time to read, to write, watch films and stare into space. Time, time that’s so valuable, something I never, no matter what, feel I have enough of. Death creeps forward, ever closer, drawing near. This is terrifying. Theoretically, I enjoy the idea of doing what I’ll say I’ll do, of following through on said commitments. Often I’ll go to a social engagement, date, work obligation or interview and find it to be a useless waste of time, inane, insisting to myself that I’ll never make the same mistake again. Still, for whatever reason, I persist in making reckless plans. The novel I’ve been working on remains incomplete; if someone asks me about it again I’m at the point where I'll pounce them in the face with the dense, unedited manuscript. We’re a social species addicted to building, pushing forward, habitual creatures of manifest destiny despite knowing all the better. At thirty years old I haven’t quite figured out how to say no when I’m merely not in the mood, ever weighing the moral obligation of each request, what I owe every person in terms of what I said I’d do, or mentioned I might be interested in. Some people never start saying no, and then they die without fulfilling their dreams. 

My friend Moriah and I were going over the most obnoxious thing someone could say to cancel a plan, and by a long-shot this is the line we both agreed to be the winner: I’m sorry I’m unavailable, but I’m trying to cultivate my own theoretical paradise, a wondrous place where I could exist, and you’d be getting in the way. It’s true that this is rude but, it is actually, in terms of the writing I don’t do and the films I don’t watch and the endless list of books I don’t get around to reading, the truth. It is also exactly the kind of text we’d both love to send to absolute strangers, to new acquaintances, taking pleasure in their reaction, but in reality would never dare. Well I did it once, and never heard from the person again. Success, I suppose. Moriah mentions it might be better to just text something simple, like, I’ve eaten too much, and no longer have the wherewithal to be social whatsoever. In a sudden turn, a complete non-sequitur, Moriah starts to bemoan the type of people who buy the same shirt and pants in different colors, wearing them on consecutive days, thinking no one will notice. ‘Those are the type of people I wouldn’t mind canceling plans with,' Moriah says. ‘Perfect candidates for the theoretical paradise text.’ 

‘Yeah,’ I respond, not really listening, and not listening because I’m thinking of a certain Matthew Davis, who’s been occupying a truly unjust and in no way reasonable sum of my mind. I’m thinking of exactly what I could text him to get out of the interview, this far in, after he’s already completed his responses, before acquiescing to despair. ‘There’s no way out of this one,’ I murmur to myself. 

‘What?’ Moriah says. 

‘No, nothing. Matthew Davis.’ 

‘Who.’

‘Downtown writer guy. Engineer. Religious.’ 

‘Oh.’ Moriah says, deeply uninterested. She finds the whole downtown literary world creepy, rightly so. I attend many events and readings, I’m part of it in some abstract way, and I don’t disagree, lashing myself with discontent every time I’ve had a good time, or have become too close. 

Despite my desire to cancel the whole charade, to not spend any time writing this intro, publishing this interview, something does genuinely interest me about Matthew Davis, an element of his persona that drew me close several months ago.  

A parent, desperately, gauges the interiority of their children, what’s really going on in their lives. In the same way, a child will never truly know the inner-life of their parents, at least not until they’re dead. Beyond the art, good or bad, I wish to know something of the inner-life of my subjects, here and now Matthew Davis. From the few times we’ve casually spoken, I’m building a good idea of Davis’s interiority, to the extent that he’ll let me in, the man he’s hiding behind the defense of so-called irony. And it’s something casual, dare I say even quotidian; there’s nothing wrong with that. I suspect, though, that Matthew Davis thinks there’s something wrong with that. He wants to be more.

***

When he’s not writing, editing, or posting on the internet, Davis works in tech as a software engineer. He grew up in an upper-middle class family in Poughkeepsie, New York, though on a recent phone call he asked if I could include the sentence that he grew up with a lot of money anxiety; he describes himself as blue-collar middle class, basically another way of saying financially comfortable yet entirely uncultivated. He moved to the city to attend NYU and after graduating fell into a trendy Lower East Side crowd, dating the novelist Honor Levy before beginning a relationship with the podcaster/actress Dasha Nekrasova, attending all the very in parties and readings. He regularly discussed and flaunted his Catholic/Jewish identity during a period when it was in fashion to attack a vague concept often labeled neoliberalism. From the root of economic disparity, despair, and online confusion, there existed, among the young, hot, modish new socialites, an understandable desire to make an artful, graceful return toward conservative religious values, all with a form of alternative, aesthetic flair. Houellebecq’s humorous 2015 novel Submission, and his erudite, witty book of essays Interventions 2020, which primarily focus on how society has trouble sustaining itself without a collective religious belief system, had an effect on the way this new movement began to define itself, even if it seemed like only a handful of people actually read the books; through X and Instagram, the loose notions of these complex theories began to spread. It’s in this environment that Davis found himself joining a new sect of the downtown literati, and where he sold his first novel, Let Me Try Again, which, he told me, he wrote over the course of a few months in his early twenties for an hour or two a day, just before the lower-Manhattan literary scene began to resurrect itself as something more sex-filled, edgy, and — paradoxically — conservatively faith based. (Skyhorse Publishing bought the rights.) While previous iterations of Manhattan’s literary world contained a uniquely American, Puritanically neutered dogma at its heart and core, the new scene, which grew organically, would be socially reckless, erotically tinged, politically questionable; God would be present, monitoring the situation, a place where one could go to ask for forgiveness. 

Considering the supposed enoughness of Davis’s life, (I mean this all sounds interesting enough, publishing a book in this milieu, sustaining himself financially through a stable full time job where his skills will always be useful), why then does he consistently try to portray himself as something extra to or more than what’s already there? What point is he trying to prove, to himself, and to others? 

A few days later, I answered my own question, through the help of Cassidy Grady, a writer and actress who moves in the same downtown scene as Davis. ‘I love Matthew, he’s so cute.’ Cassidy says after I bring up the interview.  

‘Yeah, yeah. Sure.’ I respond. ‘But why is it that, in the answers to his questions in the interview and also at the points in his work where he could really show himself, why is it that he retreats to irony and sarcasm as opposed to the occasional discomfort of sincerity, or the simplicity of being straightforward? I mean part of me likes him but I also find it, well him, pretty annoying.’ 

Cassidy takes a large sip of water, then gulps, and hiccups, before coughing several times, laughing, deciding, finally, that it was time to answer. ‘Irony is used as a crutch as opposed to a tool because it gives you plausible deniability over everything.  Like yeah, irony is a literary device, a comedic tactic, but if you’re not able to master it anymore, it’s because it’s mastered you, and the artist has lost control.’ 

‘Is it like nihilism?’ 

‘No.’ Cassidy says, still coughing, lightly punching her stomach as she tries to stop. She flips her hair back. ‘It’s not as thoughtful as nihilism. The decimation of having anything to say at all is in itself the statement. That’s the tragedy of being irony-pilled.’ 

‘Irony-pilled?’ 

‘What you’re describing about Matthew. It’s like a disease and it’s not even really intentional.’ 

‘But he’s aware of it deep down and wishes to be more sincere?’ 

‘No that’s what you’re projecting. He might not really care or give a shit.’

‘But either way, it’s a coping mechanism, right?’ 

‘Oh yeah.’ Cassidy says. ‘Like alcohol and drugs, sex and women, eating too much, pathological lying, uhm.’ 

‘Irony.’ 

‘Yeah. But it’s cool when it’s used in the right place and time.’

‘Eating dessert also has its time and place.’ 

‘But only a broken freak wants to eat dessert all the time!’ Cassidy says, smiling with the grin of a mischievous child. She breaks out into laughter, ha-ha-ha, a high pitched giggle. 

***

Time has the unique ability to save us from ourselves. This is true almost always, except for the occasion when immediate action is required and something cannot wait. Knowing when to act and when to pause and let things be is, in my opinion, the definition of wise behavior, a form of wisdom that at times appears impossible to grasp. 

It’s been a couple months now since I finished conducting this interview. I’m reviewing my notes from when I first started Matthew’s intro in the middle of July. Here’s a light sample:

It was around noon on a Saturday, the sabbath, that I finally decided, against my will, the kind of piece I was going to write. I was sitting at Bar Ricardo, one of the oldest tapas bars in Valencia, drinking beer and Spanish rum. The weather could best be described as scorching; humid and above 95, at least. I watched the Spanish women play France in handball, a quarter final in the Paris olympics. My waiter kept fluttering his lips every time France would score, they were winning by nine. I looked up at the screen and thought with certainty: I’m going to tear him to shreds—rightfully so. The tapas bar, like Valencia, was near empty. It was a day before they were about to go on holiday for a month, a much needed break, the manager told me. I’m going to tear this fucking asshole to shreds, I thought once more before taking another sip of my drink, dreading the process of going home to begin writing the intro. France score again, two in quick succession, and the waiter throws his towel on the floor before kneeling down to pick it up, saying ‘puta madre, coños francesas’ (French cunts), laughing, much glee, childish and cruel.  

‘Ughh.’ I sighed, staring at the TV and again back at my beer, and then the rum, picking it up to pour it down in one go. ‘Yeah, alright, fine. Fuck this guy.’ 

Sitting down now to write, I begin to wonder about what point we decide, subjectively, personally, that someone just kind of sucks? We do, or at least I do, have hope at the start of every new interaction… 

At that I point I stopped writing, and began working on something else. The tone, the sentiment, the annoyed self-aware yet still vengeful attitude didn’t feel quite right. I put it aside for a little while, hoping he’d never text to follow up. 

But he did, on a Monday at the beginning of this month. 

‘What happened to our interview?’ He rightly said. 

***

Not that anyone cares, but I’ve actually come to like Matthew, to recognize his charm, irony-poisoned or not. I’m happy I waited for the seasons to change before sitting down to write this. Looking back, though, I did have good reason to be miffed, a bit annoyed with Davis. 

When I first reached out asking if he’d be interested in the interview, he called a mutual friend of ours, Peter Vack, and began to ask who I was, enquiring as to whether I was an internet schizophrenic intent on ruining his life. 

‘No.’ Peter assured him, laughing into the phone. ‘He’s just, like, a New York kid with this interview series. You should do it.’ 

Later that day, I ran into Peter on Essex and Hester and he explained the situation. 

‘But isn’t that kind of schizophrenic?’ I asked Peter, referring to Matthew’s paranoia. 

‘I mean, I guess.’ He said. ‘But there have been a few people to come after us, like actually harass us online with no end in sight. And it can be really frightening.’ 

That’s fair enough. I run into Matthew outside of a reading at a gallery on Orchard a few days later, the first time I meet him in person. I’m walking my dog and purposely pass the event, to see who I might run into. 

‘Gordon, Goooordon, Gordon, Gordon. I’m sorry I called you schizo to Peter,’ he says. ‘There were just like, some scary situations recently that freaked me out, this guy with a podcast and a cowboy hat who was like, threatening to ruin my life with blackmail. Honor Levy’s life too. Everyone. It was crazy.’ 

‘Oh,’ I responded. ‘A guy with a podcast and a cowboy hat.’ 

(Looking into this further, there was in fact a man with a mediocre podcast and cowboy hat threatening to harm writers and artists who associated themselves with this relatively new downtown scene. It would have scared me as well.)

This summarizes the first interaction I’d ever had with Davis; it wasn’t smooth, to say the least. Deciding to conduct the interview closer to summer-time, to the release of Let Me Try Again, we loosely kept in touch on social-media. I found a lot of his Instagram stories to be funny, a mix of caustically abject captions laid upon a photo of something that didn’t match, completely out of context with what was being said. Or sometimes just a tweet-like aphorism against a black or pink background. Having friends and chilling is one of the worst things a writer can do, one of them read, and I found it funny, making the uncontrolled gesture of, as they say, laughing out loud. 

My irritation reignited when Davis and I had our second proper interaction, a particularly unpleasant ninety minute phone call consisting of, in no particular order: How many people are gonna read this thing anyway, like three or four? No, hahah, I didn’t read your work, and I’m not going to. Is there anyway we can do a deal where you get Dwight Garner to review the novel and I in turn introduce you to my agent Julie and can help you get a book deal, a little quid-quo-pro? Yeah, Gordon, the other downtown writers are kind of jokes. Writers used to be serious people who could quote Dostoevsky and Wittgenstein offhand, now they’re people who have tattoos and aren’t good at math who try to make stories. They used to be able to read Latin and Greek, now they smoke weed and then write stories about the time they smoked weed. None of these other writers with books out can do that, they’re just online personalities, they meme Hello Kitty and stuff. He went on to name a few of his friends, and then: What makes me different is that I just really love reading and writing, you know? What have you been writing since the book? I asked. I’ve got some stuff cooking. He responded. We started to talk about religion: The thing about me and my work is that, I’m like, a Catholic, but I’m Jewish. I’m a Catholic but at the end of the day I’m Jewish, and that just defines my whole life. Can you say more? Just my Judaism constantly undermining my Catholicism, like we’re sinners and we’re going to hell but I’m bargaining my way out, with no success. 

OK, I said, giving a full-Jewish sigh. The very next day I wrote the intro mentioned earlier, the one in the tapas bar. There was another sentence I didn’t add. It went something like: Matthew Davis is a good, young writer with promise, and I wouldn’t discourage you from reading his new book, but he’s not good enough to be such a fucking asshole. 

Again, I’m happy I took the time for summer to pass, to let certain emotions pass. He’s really not that bad. Few people are. 

***

An editor of a widely read online publication recently told me, insisting he not be named, that he found Davis’s perspective on religion, specifically on Christianity, to be performative, if not entirely disingenuous.

In conversation, Davis talks a decent amount about his Christian background, his sense of faith. He grew up, he says, under the influence of Vatican II, the outcome of a council which modernized the Roman Catholic Church and promoted interfaith dialogue. He likes to mention that the Vatican II (which he now denounces) in its tolerant recognition of other religions, is not really true to what Catholics believe in, a kind of neoliberal muddying of something deathly harsh, yet pure. 

In the aforementioned unpleasant ninety minute conversation, I asked him if he could be more specific. He dodged the question and began again to talk about being half Jewish on his father’s side, how that gave him a good sense of humor but the endless curse of neurosis. 

‘What do you mean?’ I responded. 

‘It’s like I said before, the Jewish thing subverts the Catholic stuff, much to my chagrin.’ 

‘In what way?’ 

‘Oh, like, you know, I’m a Neo-Freudian Jewish novelist that’s also Catholic. It’s like that.’ 

‘I don’t really follow.’ 

‘So how many people are going to read this thing?’ Davis asked again. 

The answer to my question of what, actually, it is that this man wants to say, has to say, about and to the world, was yet to be answered. 

I called Davis again this past Friday and asked him for his response to the well known editor’s accusation of religious disingenuousness. 

'I genuinely believe.’ He says. ‘Look, this isn’t something I like, but I really believe that if you’re not inside the Catholic Church, then you’re going to die and go to hell, forever.’ 

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I’m not trying to be edgy,’ he says. ‘It’s a thing I’m tormented over, and it’s what the Church has taught for over 2000 years. I don’t like it but it’s what I’m supposed to believe.’

He says this over and over, but for some reason I have trouble believing him. That’s my problem, my prerogative. I press him again on where the Jewish equation comes in. I quote to him our conversation that took place during the summer, where he failed to really say what any of that meant. 

‘Like, in my view,’ I begin, ‘Judaism is a complex dialectic as opposed to a dogmatic black or white, it’s a never-ending conversation.’   

‘Well yes, and I do have this innate Jewishness that makes me react to the world around me, I embody a certain Jewishness.’ 

‘How would you define that Jewishness?’ 

‘Judaism is a set of commandments in the torah.’ Matthew responds. ‘Observant Orthodox Jews are obsessed with loopholes, like the way they utilize Shabbas lamps and elevators. And with the utilization of loopholes, that’s how I operate within the strict confines of Catholicism.’ 

Finally, after he tried again, and again, I begin to understand what he wants to say, or something of the substance of what he means deep down. Perhaps it is me that wasn’t reading between the lines, that was slow on the uptake, or maybe it was him, who, as a writer and self-proclaimed Neo-Freudian novelist (one of his tired yet admittedly funny bits), failed to conceptually put his perspective into words. If anything I was serving as Freud, Davis the unwitting subject. All to say, we were getting somewhere. 

‘Oh, by the way,’ Matthew says toward the end of our call. ‘I want you to know that I started the religious trend in the downtown scene. I baptized Honor Levy in my bathroom, my other ex never even went to church before I did.’ 

‘Got it.’ I say. ‘And oh, can you say just a little more about your response to the accusation of religious disingenuousness?’ 

‘I’d say that writing a novel is the most earnest thing you can do, it’s a vulnerable novel about heartbreak and religion.’ 

The preference, like with the content of our other conversations, would have been for Davis to be a little more specific, or provide an example that could be pulled. What annoyed me most was that it didn’t feel like he was being evasive, or hiding anything, just that there wasn’t much there. But it’s true he did, after all, write this book; to a certain degree his response is true; Matthew Davis put himself out there, and you can’t blame him for having certain defense mechanisms, or for not being perfectly media trained like a well-oiled sociopath. He’s a human with diverse beliefs. And young, twenty-seven, still figuring things out and finding his way. I, and many others, would like to see what he does next. 

*** 

There’s relief now that this is done, could be the weight of hell, if such a thing exists. It’s true I feel like dancing. 

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GG: Can you tell me a bit about your relationship with jealousy, perhaps some instances where it’s had an effect on your life? 

MD: