This week’s story is about a writer writing about being a writer—“the sort of navel-gazing drivel that I’d regarded with contempt while I was blithely finishing my first book,” the narrator says. Why did you want to take this on?
I’ve always disliked reading characters that are writers, or even reading stories where literature/books play a large role—for example, narratives that contain instances of a character’s life being changed significantly by a book or a poem annoy me. I mean, I get it: writers like books, thus, books and literature play an outsized role in the worlds we create on the page. In reality, though, at least the world I live in, people don’t actually read with any regularity or put much stock in the importance of literature in general. That being said, I enjoy reading about people working jobs, and I suppose writing is a job, of sorts. It’s not an especially interesting one, as far as jobs go, and I don’t think I’ll be making a habit out of writing writers. I’m also fairly certain my twenty-four-year-old self would not have enjoyed this story much. Maybe that’s progression.
The story, in some ways, invites us to think that you’re the narrator, from the descriptions of the book he’s written, which sounds a little like your collection of stories, “Dog Run Moon.” Do you want us to think he’s you? Do you want us to believe that events here are invented or based in reality?
Everything I’ve ever written has started from something I’ve overheard, witnessed, experienced, etc. The story that develops from this catalyst often has no relation to true events, but that’s how a story starts, at least for me. I don’t know how you could fully invent a narrative completely removed from reality. It seems like creating something from nothing, and I’m pretty sure this goes against the laws of physics. I think most fiction can be assessed as a ratio of invention to reality. With most of my stories, I start with a very small bit of reality, say, a piece of eavesdropped conversation, and then I invent the broader story around it. In this case, I flipped the ratio—more reality, less invention. It’s the same model, just inverted. I don’t think this makes the story any less or more “fictional.”
The narrator thinks about the way he plunders the lives of those around him. How much of a liability is it, do you think, to have a close relationship with a writer?
As fiction writers, I think we too often hide behind our genre. It’s very easy to pull the fiction card to avoid the sticky situations that can sometimes arise from writing about people you know or just writing about yourself in an honest way. My character in this story is starting to become concerned about certain ethical ramifications of what he’s doing—specifically, what obligation he has to the people whose stories he’s twisting and reshaping for his own ends. Along those lines, I would definitely advise people to not get into close relationships with fiction writers, if they can help it. I can’t speak for all practitioners of the genre, but I feel that, in order to do fiction well, there has to be a certain detachment, a cold ability to render real people and situations into characters and narrative. This in and of itself isn’t a problem, but what generally seems to happen is that the process of writing usually starts in the moment. For instance, you’re a fiction writer and you’re having an argument with your lover. Your lover is consumed by the real-time specifics of the disagreement, while you’re noticing the particular way her lip moves before she starts to cry and how you’ll describe it when you eventually get around to writing a lovers’ quarrel in your novel. To be a fiction writer means that you never get to fully join the world because you’re constantly compelled to wrest observations from it.
An ex-girlfriend of the narrator’s has shown up at his house. She’s been volunteering at a refugee camp in Serbia, which houses migrants who are trying to make it across the Hungarian border and into the E.U. She wants him to write about this, but he won’t. Why is he so reluctant to take on the subject? Is there a significant difference between fiction and reporting for him?
I think, for the writer in this story, the prospect of interviewing a bunch of refugees is terrifying. It’s one thing to create “realistic” pain and suffering in a fictional story; it’s quite another to sit and listen to someone recount the tragedies and triumphs of their life and then be entrusted with doing this narrative justice on the page. I think, in many ways, fiction writing has lower stakes. In this story, the writer is confronting this knowledge within himself; basically, he’s trying to determine his path forward both in writing and real life, if these things can really be separated. Does the world need yet more lyric treatments of the Western tableau? Should a fiction writer be concerned with what the world needs in the first place? I don’t think my character reaches a conclusion on these questions, but maybe just considering them is a good first step.
How do you think the character M from the story would respond to its publication?
I think she’d be pissed off initially. But she’s a strong character with an admirable degree of idealism. If she read it to the end, I hope she’d come to recognize it for what it is: an apology letter.
We’re living in an era where the latest news from the White House can sometimes appear to smother any other narratives. What’s it like to be writing fiction right now? Do you think of “A Refugee Crisis” as a political story?
In short, yes, I think this is a political story. In many ways, our current Administration has hijacked my genre, and I resent that. I used to freely traffic in untruths, mostly with a clear conscience, because there were long-established places one could go to find truth. Now that we’re under a regime that routinely and purposefully muddies the waters, I’ve been feeling an increasing need to go in a different direction. Since the rise of “alternative facts,” what, exactly, does the label “fiction” even mean? I’m starting to think that, if the White House wants to sell us fiction as a stand-in for reality, then maybe I should do the opposite. In this story, my aim was to write fiction, but have it be true in a more essential way.
You spend the summers working as a fishing guide, so this is your busy season. Can you get much writing done over the summer? Do you think about your fiction as you’re guiding? Or do you empty your mind of it?
Answering these questions is the most time I’ve spent writing since April. I do try to think about it, at least a little, every day. I know there are more serious writers out there doing it every day for hours and hours, but I still like being out in the sun and rowing a boat, so I’m willing to sacrifice a little productivity for quality of life. I used to get more anxious about this and feel like I was wasting my time guiding (i.e., not writing). At this point, though, I’m pretty sure that, when it all comes down to the end, I’ll be willing to trade several books’ worth of nicely composed sentences for one more hour surfing or floating a river with my friends.
