Bookpleasures.com isdelighted to welcome David Fishkind, a Massachusetts-born writerwhose work has appeared in The Believer, New York Tyrant, ForeverMagazine, and The Paris Review.

His debut novel, Don’tStep into My Office, follows Jacob Garlicker, a struggling writerentangled in grief, failure, and a shocking murder on a Long Islandbeach.  

Murder on the sand, Gatsby conspiracies, gluten intolerance,and an unreliable narrator—Fishkind's novel has it all. 

In ourinterview, David opens up about dark humor, Jewish identity, and theunsettling truths behind elite institutions.

Norm: Good day, David,and thanks for taking part in our interview.

Don’t Step into MyOffice’s title references recurring gold nameplates that say ‘myoffice.’ What inspired this motif, and how does it symbolize themesof ownership and personal space in the story?

How does the concept ofownership and territory relate to Jacob's ongoing sense ofdisplacement, encouraging readers to reflect on belonging and loss?

David: The nameplates wereinspired by one my father had outside his office in the shape of afish, and by another his grandfather had, some kind of commemorativeplaque about his time working for Estée Lauder, which I found amongmy grandmother’s things upon her death. 

At the time, I was livingin a tiny apartment decorated with stuff I’d found on the streetand at garage sales, just a hodgepodge of crap covering the walls andshelves, and I hung that great-grandfather’s plaque in my kitchen.

 I felt pretty unaccomplished and self-loathing and would ironicallythink of this apartment as my office. Like Jacob Garlicker, “atsome point, I’d realized I didn’t want to be anywhere.” Spacemeant less and less in a digital, gentrified, atomized landscape. 

Mymind was a rotten, haunted glut, which I routinely worked to escapewith drugs and alcohol. 

There’s this existential dread in the bookand, I believe, widespread across the country, among millennialsparticularly, that the benchmarks we felt promised, or entitled to,are never going to be met—never going to be able to afford to buyproperty or start families, not enough well-paying, stable jobs tojustify the exorbitant expense of the college degrees we obtained,etc. 

The ideas of belonging or ownership over anything becomelaughable, and I think Jacob sees that in the nameplates. 

They speakto him, because they’re the embodiment of a cosmic wink: you fuckedup, it’s too late, you’re still very, very young, and thisaimlessness is your station in life, your lot.

Norm: Jacob’s thesisabout Jay Gatsby’s Jewishness forms a significant subplot. Whatdrew you to this interpretation of The Great Gatsby?

How does the antisemitismin Fitzgerald’s novel mirror the prejudices Jacob encounters incontemporary Long Island?

David: The first draft ofthe novel actually didn’t include any Gatsby references. I’dfinished the manuscript, but something still felt missing. The bookwas incomplete. 

After languishing through most of the summer of 2023,frustrated and uninspired, I thought if I read something short andfamiliar, it might buoy my spirits. I’ve read The Great Gatsby fiveor six times now.

It’s deceptively straightforward, but I noticenew things on every pass. After living in Jacob’s snivelling,paranoiac monologue for so many months, I was primed to speculate onthe root of Gatsby’s otherness, and to see the text’s Jewishthemes anew. 

Pretty much all the evidence with which I could makesuch a case appears in Don’t Step into My Office. I don’tsubscribe to it with the same devotion or desperation as Jacob. 

Fitzgerald’s ambiguities are what that makes that book amasterpiece. But teasing out the scathing allusions to Judaism andtheir relationship to Jimmy Gatz’s isolation and chicanery justfelt like a proper foil to everything going on between DSIMO’scharacters and the present zeitgeist. 

People are afraid of what theydon’t know, compelled to scapegoat outsiders for ills they can’teasily assign blame because of myriad, nuanced, competing influences.Plus the book was already set on Long Island.

Norm: Jacob is deeplyunreliable—drunk, paranoid, and traumatized. How did you balancemaking him sympathetic while acknowledging his flaws?Were there moments whereyou worried readers might lose patience with his self-destructivebehavior?

David: I think we shouldbe able to sympathize with addled, neurotic people. I do. Though Iunderstand some readers find Jacob unsympathetic. 

I’m glad youdidn’t. There are a lot of hypercontemporary internal and externalpressures that cause people to lose sense of their values, theirgoals, lose control. Jacob’s character is an ode to that loserdom. 

Those doing well—mentally, professionally, financially,socially—might find less to relate to with him. These people,unfortunately, are often the mouthpieces of society, foremost tooffer their perspectives and insights on life. 

Fortunately, orrather, even more unfortunately, there are an increasing number ofpeople who aren’t doing so well and experience trauma and delusionand self-medicate with drugs, sugar, social media, and other copingmechanisms. 

Maybe they can see themselves through Jacob. I do expectsome readers to lose patience with his behavior, but that wasn’tnot by design. People like Jacob exist, you probably have analogs inyour own life. 

I encourage people not to reject those who arestruggling out of hand and consider the contributing factors thataccompanied them to that place, one from which they can always bedelivered. 

That said, redemption is not necessary for a person to beappreciated. Suffering people deserve empathy and sympathy, even ifthey aren’t suffering by some moral standard. 

An easy way todevelop greater empathy, in my experience, is to read aboutexperiences that are unfamiliar and consider how that stuff came tobe. An easy way to develop better patience is to read a book you’refeeling some resistance to, for whatever reason, to completion.

Norm: The book exploresthe publishing industry through Jacob’s failed novel andrelationship with Sofia. What commentary are you making aboutliterary gatekeeping? How much of Jacob’sstory reflects your own experiences navigating the publishing world?

David: I’m not reallymaking a commentary on gatekeeping. I can see obvious hazards andbenefits to gatekeeping in any industry. Anarchy seems cool, but I’mnot promoting an alternative necessarily. Like Jacob, in mymid-twenties, 

I wrote a novel, which was rejected by several dozeneditors. I thought the prose was strong enough to vindicate itsplotlessness and uncomfortable subject matter. I also didn’t thinkthe book was plotless. 

In any case, the manuscript was deemedunmarketable, laying the foundation for how I’d approach my nextnovel, the one we’re talking about. For better and worse, I have adefiance streak. I was like, oh, I’m not commercial enough? 

Thenhow about I write a neo-noir metafiction murder mystery beachthriller dramedy about capitalism, identity, and family. 

If myunpublished novel was accused of being too minimalist, I’d makethis one as maximalist and genre-fluid as possible, that way there’dbe no arguing against its market value. 

Still, I wrote only what Icould, and have been too-long guided by Houellebecq’s advice—“Beabject, and you will be true.”—to start from scratch. That, and Imay have been a bit slaphappy in my calculations, because my book wason submission for eight months before it sold.

Norm: Food restrictionsand Jacob’s gluten intolerance appear throughout. Is this arealistic detail or a symbol? How does his digestive“wandering lump” represent his inability to process trauma?

David: It’s realistic.I’ve experienced all those things myself. Mysterious physicalillness and the grasping attempts to reconcile it do have somesymbolic weight, but they’re also just symptoms of modernity, ripefor exploring in a narrative about alienation, disillusionment,learned helplessness, and so forth. 

There’s a good deal of researchnow on the gut–brain axis, and the relationship between mental andgastrointestinal health. Jacob’s wandering lump can certainly beseen as a manifestation of his stress, repression, self-punishment,and trauma. 

It can also be seen as random bad luck. There’s a lotof confusion still about the origin of microbiotic disorders likeIBS, otherwise known as functional bowel disease, wherein westernmedicine and lab imaging reveal nothing out of the ordinary while thepatient remains in a state of chronic gastric distress. 

He can feelit, he can see it, but maybe the lump really is in Jacob’s head.This obscure, enigmatic condition aligns nicely with the more urgentmysteries in DSIMO’s plot.

Norm: The mystery ofJacob’s parents’ disappearance drives much of the plot. When didyou know what happened to them? Did you consideralternative explanations during the writing process?

David: I played aroundwith alternative explanations for sure. I didn’t explicitly knowwhat happened to them until I listened to The Girl with the DragonTattoo audiobook on a breakneck thirteen-hour drive from Michigan toRhode Island a few weeks before I finished the first draft. I stilldon’t entirely know. It doesn’t feel extremely important for meto understand all the particulars of their disappearance. 

I wanted toplay with ambiguity and equivocation throughout the text. I wanted toplay with allusion and illusion. And I wanted to put the solidity ofreality on trial, emphasizing the role of fiction and its powerswithin the fictional narrative itself.

Norm: Emma seemsremarkably patient with Jacob’s behavior until she isn’t. How didyou approach writing their marriage? What does theirrelationship say about the compromises people make for love?

David: Principally, Jacoband Emma want their marriage to survive. They’re sort of puttingthe cart before the horse, less concerned with whether therelationship is healthy or gratifying than with making good on theirovert commitment.

 I strove to be acerbically realistic in thisregard, as well as compassionate, hopeful. Still, like many things inthe novel, Jacob and Emma should be taken with a grain of salt.There’s a lot of irony baked in. 

The story is suffused withincongruity and derision and pathos. Of course compromise is a partof life, but I don’t know if I believe it’s a part of love.Compromise implies “sides” and “concessions.” 

Matrimony is aneconomic arrangement. Love, in my opinion, is not. I see theirmarriage as both an indictment of the institution, and an endeavor insacrifice, forbearance, and acceptance.

Norm: Classconsciousness permeates the novel, from Coney Island to the Hamptons.Why was economic disparity essential to explore? How does Jacob’smiddle-class background inform his resentment of his wife’s wealthyfamily?

David: Economic disparityis, like, the driving force of American life. It’s the basis of oureconomic and social order. I don’t particularly want to explore it,it’s depressing, but it’s impossible for me to ignore. 

So manyhuman activities and interactions here are defined by class andmoney. So naturally, in combining any family, this is going to rearits unpleasant head. 

That said, Jacob’s middle-class upbringingarouses fetishization of his in-laws’ class standing even more thanit informs his resentment. 

He’s totally enamored with their casualsuperiority and self-possession, and it’s in searching for his ownsecurity and place in the world that he attaches himself so readilyto Emma’s clan. 

He feels entitled in that way. And I don’tremember who said it’s an artist’s responsibility to cross classboundaries, but that idea impels and validates Jacob’s driftingthroughout the novel. He sees himself as unfettered by socioeconomichierarchies and gives himself license to indulge indigency,addiction, pretension, laziness, and the luxuries of wealth withoutconsequence. 

This gets him into trouble sometimes.

Norm: Music plays aninteresting role—Jacob claims not to understand it while constantlyreferencing songs. What’s behind this contradiction? How does hisrelationship with music reflect his broader struggles with emotionalconnection?

David: I mentioned mydefiance streak earlier. In framing the narrative, I wondered what itwould be like to follow an insufferable protagonist. 

Would readers beable to look past Jacob’s hideous self-exile and see him as thesensitive, generous soul he claims to be? I think the greatestconsensus among all people is a certain predilection for music—thatis, in general, genre and style aside. In his failure to appreciateit, Jacob is chronically left out. Only another expression of hispathetic loneliness. He thinks about songs because he lives in amusical context. 

Everyone likes music, even murderous creeps. WhenSofia says as much, Jacob responds:
?I just don’tunderstand what I’m supposed to be enjoying!
?It’s like . .. our bodies . . . represented through sound.
?Like coughs andburps?
?Like waves and vibrations, Sofia’s patience wasinfuriating. ?Our heartbeats. The flow of blood and digestion,gestation and time. The circadian rhythm.
?Rhythm . . . Twosyllables, zero vowels. Graphemically maniacal. It’s like a primenumber. The whole thing is made up. Time is made up! And ourdigestive systems are deranged.

It’s supposed to befunny, but turned out to be one of the darkest elements for me towrite about.

Norm: Jewish identitythreads through the story—from the Gatsby thesis to Jacob’scomplex relationship with his heritage-inviting readers to considercultural belonging and prejudice.

How does Jacob’sJewishness intersect with his position as both insider and outsiderin different spaces?

David: Jewishexceptionalism is a net negative, but it’s how I was raised. In ourevermore individualized, narcissistic, navel-gazing society, peopleseem to be seeking out means to define themselves against thecollective. 

This generates victims, artists, and self-proclaimedgeniuses abound. Jacob is, in some ways, vying to separate himselffurther from others by fixating on his Jewish heritage. 

On the otherhand, antisemitism does historically pervade many sectors, and thishas an enduring impact on those who’ve inherited the ethnicity. 

Gatsby too is seeking to separate himself from his past, and revisionhis legacy on his own terms. 

In the early twentieth century, beingJewish would’ve been a perfectly loaded catalyst for rejectingone’s humble backwoods beginnings, and something to conceal amidnewly exalted prominence. 

Only collaborators, bootlegger gangsterslike Meyer Wolfsheim, could be privy to Gatz’s secret. In Jacob’scase, he doesn’t need to hide his Judaism for fear of actualreprisal. 

The low-stakes, jokey prejudice he experiences is more areference to past hardships, and a nod to the mutable identities andstatus Jewishness has implied. Jacob doesn’t know if he wants tobelong or not, he wants to have it both ways. 

If he’s trying tohide anything, it’s his deep-seated insecurity and shame, whicharen’t expressly accounted for.

Norm: The book’shumor is very dark and often self-deprecating. How did you calibratethis tone to balance comedy with the novel’s serious themes, andwere there moments that surprised you in how readers responded?

Were there jokes orpassages that readers found funny that surprised you, or vice versa?

David: Oh, everything is alaugh, misery not excepted. Maybe that’s where the real Jewishnessof the novel coheres. If you can’t find humor in the most dismal,dire circumstances, you’re going to have a bad time of it. I knowfrom experience. 

Still, I try to have a good time.

Norm: Where can ourreaders find out more about you and Don’t Step into My Office?

David: I recommend peoplerefer to my reading list if they’re curious about me and mywriting: http://www.davidfishkind.com/2016/07/books-ive-read.html.

Norm: As we conclude,the open ending invites readers to ponder unanswered questions,fostering engagement and personal interpretation of Jacob’sjourney.

What do you hopereaders take away from Jacob’s journey, even without completeclosure?

David: Redemption isn’tguaranteed, but opportunities for it do present themselves. Realityis slippery. There isn’t one reality. It’s always collapsing andreforming. Indulge your dreams, literally the ones you have whileyou’re asleep.