Good afternoon everyone I am dr. Jennifer Lancaster. I am the academic dean here at Saint Francis College and
Before I get started I want to introduce you to one of our students. This is romelo over here
Lamellas got the most jobs of any student in the college. He was out there setting up the
Refreshments greeting our speaker now. He's working the video camera, so let's give roemello a nice hand here
So I officially welcome you to
What I believe is close to 20
Walt Whitman writers series lectures and panels this started as a
brainchild of English department faculty
And some other colleagues here at Saint Francis and has really developed into a program where we welcome some of the
best and brightest
Talented writers to our campus to share their thoughts and stories with us
I'd like to welcome today our speaker Ron curry and
Extend my thanks to dr. Ian Maloney
professor Theo Gangi and the rest of the
English department
for putting this all together
I think we're in for quite a treat, and now I'd like to introduce professor Gangi to introduce our featured writer. Thank you
Thank you, thank you Jennifer
dr. Lancaster
We we thank you at the English department and the MFA program the dean's office for supporting
All these great literary events here at Saint Francis College so our walt whitman writer series
continuation of
the college's commitment to supporting brooklyn writers community in addition to visits by these authors the college author offers a
$50,000 biannual literary prize for mid-career authors we have also rolled out our
MFA program masters in fine arts
graduate degree in creative writing, and we just in our in our very first year of it and
So our Whitman series is a part of our commitment to you
know celebrating the
Writing and arts and right here in Brooklyn
So we'd like to welcome Ron. Curry the author of the one-eyed man is
the next author to speak
Curry's other works include the novel's everything matters and flimsy little plastic
miracles and the short story collection God is dead which was the winner of the New York Public Library's young lion Awards in
2009 you received the Addison Metcalf award for American literary Arts and Letters his books have been translated into 15 languages
And he lives in Portland, Maine
and
I would also like to introduce dr. Ian Maloney who will be doing a
Q&A after reading with with Mr. Curry and
He's one of our very own
talented driven
professors here at st. Francis College in the English department, so
Should be a great event and let's let's give it up
For some reason I always end up following somebody who's either a lot taller or a lot shorter than me, which sometimes can be
problematic if you have
Technical difficulties was microphone which you almost always do
Thank you all for being here
It's wonderful to see you all Thank You Diann for inviting me and of course to the College and the Department of English for
Having me here
So I'm gonna read a couple of short things the first thing is a
Very brief essay that I wrote years ago
I was in an online writer's workshop called zoetrope which was funded by Francis Ford Coppola
And I think at the time the idea was that this was like the late 90s so the internet was really new
Probably hard for you some of you to imagine but most of us didn't know what the internet was at that point or what?
how a function or what it would become
and at the time I think Coppola believed that if he
Started is everybody who Francis Coppola is the filmmaker the Godfather ever heard Godfather seen The Godfather, okay, so that's Francis Ford Coppola
among many other things and
I think he imagined that it was going to be a place where he could find talent for for his films
and
It really turned out that way
But what it did end up being was this
Clearinghouse of really talented writers that I was that that was where I did my apprenticeship
I didn't go to school not like you guys I dropped out
One of the writers that I met there remotely is a woman named
Chimamanda Adichie a who some of you may have heard of she's sort of a rock star now and she like hangs out with Beyonce
And shit's crazy
but she was just like me back then and
She told me she would write these stories. She's from Nigeria and she write these stories over and over again about Nigeria
No pairs working for American couples
And I would read one after the other and I eventually said to her you should write about something else
I think and she said to me in her calm regal way. She said Ron we all have our obsessive topics
and
As writers, that's true, and so this essay
Is about one of my obsessive topics?
And it's called some thoughts on grief and fiction
Everybody hear me okay
Grief is a central theme in all my novels and the one-eyed man. My latest is no exception
Being as how grief does often though not always preceded by death it follows logically the death appears in my writing as well
It can be embarrassing sometimes all this death
Why do I return to it over and over like a kid who can't keep himself from touching a hot stove top
My first experience with grief came at the death of a hamster
funny, right
It would have otherwise been the death of my grandfather
but he treated himself so poorly and was unlucky enough besides that he died at age 49 when I was only four I
Have no recollection of his passing and anyway at that age. I certainly had no understanding of death in its intractability
It's never will you see this person again permanence?
so the hamster
By then age eight or so I understood death just fine
Knew what it meant when I found the little guy stiff and cold on his blanket of sawdust
He was albino his stark white fur was still soft his eyes closed
The day before I had been conducting his hamster business as usual running around his cage
Enjoying the network of clear plastic tubes that assembled for him
Now he was gone
just like that as they say I
Felt his godness
Unmistakeably holding him in my hands. I felt and was alone
the hamster departed the room empty other than me and
I grieved as hard as I ever have since
We buried him in the basement, and I was in counsel bull
even then the force of my grief seemed to overwhelm other people I
Had a strong sense of the adults in my world being frightened or at least made uncomfortable by it
Since then grief has been the same experience every time
Seeing the stitches that held my grandmother's mouth together as she lay in her casket
Viewing a high school buddy, so slathered in an Undertaker's makeup that he looked like a mime
Kissing my father over and over while his forehead cooled under my lips
There's a childlike shock at the moment of a death with steam, which seems to stop your own heart
Then the slow blossoming of a sadness so black and bottomless that you're sure nothing about you could survive it
But we do survive, right
And I often marvel that we manage to trudge ahead in the face of grief
it seems to me a massive heroic thing to go on but we all do it all the time every day and
That's what I'm really after in my books
I'm trying to understand
How we throw all that loss on our backs and keep walking all the while aware that someday the thing that grieves us
so we'll reach its hands out for us as well I
Still grieve them all from the hampster to my father
Contrary to popular opinion and pop psychology grief is not a process you move through it's a permanent state of being
Like the tide. It's eternal. However it may have been flow and
We're out there moving forward heroically in the face of it that
to me seems something may be the only thing worth writing about
So that's that
Thank you believe it or not I have a reputation as a comic novelist
You wouldn't gather that from what I just read up
On that yes funny right hilarious all right?
Okay, so speaking of my novels, I'm gonna read the first chapter
From this my latest novel the one-eyed man
a
little bit of background normally obviously you wouldn't get it if you're reading the book because you just started page one
But to speak to what I just read the main character is a guy named Kay
And he has he's a young widower. He lost his wife to breast cancer
and
The way in which he grieves his peculiar. He loses his ability to understand metaphor
What does that mean it means for example as you'll see in the first chapter that when he gets to the
Side of a street and the crossing signal says don't walk. He won't walk even if the crossing signal is clearly broken
He'll stand there for hours, and so that's the scenario that we run into
in this first chapter and
Like so many so many other things that he does as a result of his wife's death it gets into a lot of trouble as
You'll see
So chapter once called don't walk
That morning in an effort to restore some normalcy to my weekends
I left the house and strolled to the coffee shop for a Grande americano
Just like a regular irrational person
At the end of my street the cross signal read don't walk
So I stopped on the curb and pushed the large silver button several times
Even though I was fully aware that it took only one compression to activate the signal
Anybody else get uncomfortable about that
You know you go to the crossing signal, and you hit it like sixteen times. You know damn. Well. You don't have to do it
I always upset myself when I do that and yet I do it every time
The coffee shop a single story cut stone building with one large plate glass window sat on the corner directly across from me
It was busy as mid mornings on Sunday tended to be
People rushed in and out like they were looting the place
they push strollers and drag dogs by the leash and carried great rules of newsprint under their arms I
Watched them come and go glancing up now and again at the crossing signal which still read don't walk
While waiting for the crossing signal I received a text message from Tony. It said that Alice didn't want me at their house anymore I
Felt a twinge of regret
Like the mild fleeting sadness I'd experienced the previous night when hearing a story about Christians slaughtered like beef cattle at a Kenyan mall
But at the same time I understood why Alice didn't want me around
After all I'd vandalized her home
It was Sunday
so they likely had to wait another 24 hours for someone to come and fix the window and
In the meantime Tony probably had to tape a piece of cardboard over the hole to keep the cold out
not a great scene
Our punk-rock days insofar as we'd had any were well behind us
We were supposed to be weaning babies and fertilizing lawns in building equity
those yard sticks of nascent maturity not breaking windows for the sake of doing so I
Made a mental note send Tony a check to cover the replacement
the signal continued to insist that I not cross the street I
Shifted my weight from one foot to the other and back again
I checked my watch and saw that two hours had passed since I'd first left the house
The coffee shop was somewhat less busy now
But even though I gotten out of bed that morning intending to behave just like anyone else
I couldn't bring myself to cross against the signal
People in cars stopped stared at me expectantly then shot looks of exasperation when I waved them through
Contrails stitched the sky overhead some Titan linear others old other older ones dissipating into bulbous puffs in the stratosphere
my mind
compensating perhaps for the ongoing physical stillness wandered about
Somewhere in the world surely at that moment someone was inflicting unimaginable pain on a dog
somewhere else perhaps even quite nearby a
stranger hurried through a silent
ethical calculus while deciding whether to make up the difference on the grocery bill of a poor person in front of him as
I stood there on the street corner a mere two lanes of intermittent traffic away from my coffee
People were roasting alive and fires learning to crochet and speak rudimentary Spanish planning weddings and murders
the earth continued to plunge through the universe at an
Inconceivable speed and upon it I waited in vain for the crossing city bill to change
tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth as idea.i dehydrated slowly thighs stiffening with the cold a
modest aah at the vagaries of creation blossoming in me as it did most days those days a
Few hours later the street lamps flickered on casting circles of bilious yellow across the pavement
Headlights from passing cars drove my torso and face
The picture window in the coffee shops facade glowed a warm beckoning orange and people sat at tables before mugs that steam like scale-model
nuclear power plants
They slouched on their tail bones with their legs splayed in front of them relaxed and comfortable
They watched videos on their tablets and turned the pages of analog books with studied contemplative nests
Gradually as the evening drew on in ones and twos they all departed and by-and-by the girl behind the counter readied the shop for closing
Hands in my pockets
I watched as the girl came to the front door and through the deadbolt
Then emptied all the coffee urns into the sink and rinse them with water from the tap
She upended the chairs and set them on tabletops and gave the floor perfunctory mopping
She counted out a register and jammed a bunch of bills into a burlap cash bag hurrying hurrying
Maybe she had a date to get ready for or maybe she was meeting friends
Perhaps she was just tired of work, and had no plans more pressing than to not be at the coffee shop any longer
but whatever the reason there was a real urgency to her movements I
Shivered I looked at my watch then again at the crossings no
Despairing of my coffee thinking I should finally turn back toward home
I glanced one last time at the picture window and that was the moment when the man emerged from the bathroom and
Pointed a gleaming obsidian pistol at the girl who would serve me my americano all these years
For a moment they just stood there the girl frozen in disbelief the man trying to figure out
What came next like an actor waiting for his line?
then the man yelled at the girl in motion with the gun in the threatening way I
Couldn't hear what he was saying of course being across the street and on the other side of a thick pane of glass
But I could guess at the gist of it
He wanted money certainly
Maybe he wanted something in addition to money as well
one read about such things from time to time I
Reached for my phone the crossing signal continued to glow red don't walk
The girl took the cash bag off the counter and held it out to the man
Before our arm was fully extended. He snatched the bag away and yelled at her again
At this the girl clapped her hands over her ears and bent at the waist
trying to disappear trying to will herself to time-travel or
Disintegrate or to become any of the versions of herself that she had ever been or would ever be anything
But this version of herself who thirty Seconds prior had perhaps been
Daydreaming about a glass of Pinot Grigio and was now wondering if she would live to see another sunrise
The girl's mouth hung open ragged with terror
9-1-1 please state the nature of your emergency the woman said into my ear
The nature of it, I thought for a moment the nature of it is frightening quite dangerous. I think involves a firearm
so this of course is
He's extremely literal, right?
Sir do you have an emergency you want to report?
Thank you--for rephrasing. I said that's much easier to answer. Yes. There is a man holding up a priest at gunpoint
And where are you sir?
I'm standing across the street I said
Which Street sir?
Appleton across from hilltop coffee a
Man is robbing hilltop coffee on Appleton Street the woman said that's correct
The man motion toward the cash register and the girl moved past him careful to keep as far from the gun as possible
She came around the counter and punched a few keys, but fear made her clumsy and the register refused to open
After a few moments she began to pound on the keypad with the heel of her hand
Pleading with the machine to perform its only function and save her life
Officers are on their way sir the woman said to me. Can you tell me what's happening now?
When the girl failed again to open the register the man became impatient and pressed the barrel of the gun to a spot just below
her hairline
He did this very gently
He could have been pressing his lips to her forehead rather than a 38 he was so gentle about it
And that was when the girl that had a scream that I could both see and very faintly hear
She thought it was over. Just then I
Think I have to do something, I told the woman on the phone
Sir do not interfere the woman said officers are on their way. Tell me what's happening I?
Put the phone back in my pocket
don't walk I
Checked for traffic in both directions, then hustled across the street veering out of the crosswalk as I approached the coffee shop I
stopped in front of the picture window
this close I could see that the man in the girl would were both trembling I
Was - at this point I had no plan no weapon no black belt in Krav Maga
the door was locked the picture window thick enough that I would have needed a hammer to break it and
Then what crawled over stalagmites of glass while the man unloaded his gun at me
The expression on the girl's face was what one would expect
ghastly pathetic
But bearable to witness
Looking at the man. However I can feel the blood flush from my cheeks
He wore a murderous sneer from the nose-down capped by the wide wandering eyes of a child an impossible nauseating expression
His fingers gripped the butt of the gun so tightly that his knuckles strain the skin white and the crotch of his jeans bulged with
an erection
It was plain that the man, no longer cared about the register
No longer cared in fact about the money in the cash bag already has to take and run with
whatever was human in him whatever its upper consciousness consisted of had evaporated I
recognized without even the slightest doubt that he was only moments from doing something terrible in a revocable I
Can think of nothing else so I raised a hand and wrapped in the picture window phrase
and if you want to know what happens
You got to buy the book that's there for me
How do you balance in a sense like you know something that is as weighty as
the death of another person and grief like you mentioned in the essay with trying to take a kind of
Comic kind of darker perspective. How do you kind of balance those extremes you know it?
balancing the the pathos in the comedy is
It's tricky because you don't
If you go one step too far with the comedy or with the humor then you then your reader is going to feel as though
You're not taking the dramatic aspects of the story seriously as a writer, and they're not gonna care about it
For me the more interesting struggle though
is is between the sense between sentiment and sentimentality and I was just talking with some students about this yesterday about how the
paradox, and this is consistently true and everything that I read and hopefully and what I write the paradox is that the more stoic the
language the more affecting it is for the reader and
And I think that's true in in all forms and all genres like I think it's true in film like
You allowed that you allow the reader in the case of film the viewer
To feel the thing rather than telling them how they should feel that's the difference between sentiment and sentimentality
And it's that's actually not that final line. Yeah, you know it's it's just it's just about not being manipulative and
But so yeah, I mean balancing
Balancing these elements, so you're never gonna get it right as far as everybody's concerned. You know
Certainly
There were some some critics this time around and felt as though I'd gone a little too far with the funny
And it ended undermined what otherwise
you know what happens in the book is that I alternate chat between Kay recollecting the the slow progression of his wife's death and
The the more current storyline that you heard the beginning of here, right?
So he's remembering the past and then we flash forward to where he is now
and
Most of the flashbacks though they do have some humor in there were pretty
Are pretty rending?
because he's remembering his wife slow death and in his efforts to help her and of course when you're
Terminally ill nobody can really help you ultimately
And there's also that sense of the narrator that he's there are moments where he kind of takes it that maybe he has
More responsibility for it. I mean there's that very poignant scene that you wrote
Which definitely has this you know kind of sense of talking to the doctor that scene in the with the doctor about?
Trying to reach that point where he's asking the physician could I have found this right and that's a it's a really kind of in
terms of health care that that really interesting line because you know the doctor leader described kind of
has to kind of put up the wall and and and shut him down because
It's he it's speculative of everything is speckled it right
So there is a plan of real poignancy to it yeah, and I think that particular circumstance?
I mean Kay believes in a very real way that he's responsible for his wife's death from breast cancer
And it's not spoiling anything to tell you why it's because they they hadn't touched each other and so long that he
He never would have noticed if she had a lump in her breast
So that's all tied up in theirs their sex life, which is its own bundle of wax obviously?
But I think what that stands in for and I'm not that big on symbolism to be honest like I'm sort of a cash-and-carry guy
And and I'm not a not a lit major, so I don't it's not really what I do. I tell stories but
Insofar as there is symbolism involved with that. I think what that really represents is
Survivor's guilt which is a an experience that all of us have we live long enough, and I and you know obviously I outlive others
You don't necessarily have to have anything to do with somebody's death to feel bad and guilty about having outlived them
And and that's in a way, that's how that aspect of the story functions, I think
I'm also too. I mean one of the things that's so fascinating about the story is like the
We you know you didn't see the comic part
but the comic parts really kind of shine like one of the ones that comes out for me is when he
kind of
Trails down the guy in the pickup truck and the guy in the pickup truck out about reading that so it's a great
It's a great section or and so one of the sections that really stands out for me is is
K
Is is on a quest for truth after his wife's death?
I mean you get a sense after the don't walk sign is that he's really looking to get to the bottom of
the kind of false stories that people
promote maybe perhaps not even
Realizing it and one of the funniest scenes is when he tracks down a man who won a pickup truck has who's next and
Don't tread on America
Sticker they say I'm from America whose booze next and he needs to know
well
Who was first?
Boost reading and I mean it and and and the dialogue between the two characters like is a is a kind of such an interesting
kind of
Vision of well you know conversations of current events and stuff that we're talking about now, but also to with that idea
There's like what happens if you do have a character. That is so
completely
wedded to literal
Unadulterated truth at all times, and and there's just something naturally funny about that when people can't pick up on the humor of it
Yeah, and I think what's funny about it
And what you know what you're trying to do with fiction broadly speaking is you're trying to make people see themselves in whatever
Characters are stories of you know
Incident you've created right and so I think a lot of people would relate to Kay just says whatever is on his mind
He has absolutely no social filters anymore
And when you combine that with the fact that he's become obsessed with with factual truth
It makes him pretty unpopular he gets beaten up a lot
He eventually gets kidnapped by a gun club
Lots of bad things come as a result of this and but I think a lot of us
Spend our public lives
You know we all have social filters to a greater or lesser degree and that's a good thing
for the most part, but I think
There are a lot of us who are longing to have honest conversation especially the public dialogue that just doesn't happen right now
And again case or represents that I think that that urge that I believe a lot of us feel
like can we just cut the bullshit and say what we actually mean to each other and have that be okay, you know I
Mean the book without giving too much away begins
With a gun incident and ends somewhat with a gun incident, so I have to add a lot of guns. Yeah
There are a lot of guns
And in it
You know I said to my students say in in it
You know in a interesting without giving away too much plot
but there's there's a the ending is about a kind of militia group and and about the the
homegrown
because kind of us terrorists that we don't like to talk too much about in the news like people like the the Bundy family and
I'm interesting like did you consciously understand like that you were gonna start and kind of book?
You know kind of book end about that issue or just had no idea just haven't no idea
I you know I know a lot of novelists who will pretty carefully plot out their their stories and
Outline and you know doesn't have these really complex diagrams on the walls where each character has its color-coded line
And I'm not that guy I just sort of I I start
usually with a character
and just
Sort of let the story grow from there
But you know I don't think it's I talked earlier about how not a big fan of symbolism
What I mean by that is that I don't I don't ever want to go into a story with the intent of
Or the idea that this story is going to be about this theme
And I mean I think that's a bullshit way to write a book. It's it's you know theme
metaphor all that stuff flows from
Storytelling not the other way around you don't get to story through metaphor you get to metaphor through story and so
So I don't that's not the way that I write
But I also don't think it's coincidence as a book begins and ends with gunplay. Yeah, you know what I mean
So you know I mean, that's a pretty obvious and
Literal representation, or where we find ourselves right now
I think I just read today that 800 people have been killed by gun violence since Las Vegas
That's in less than a month. Yeah, so it's not that much of a stretch right yeah
I mean the other part, which is you know obviously them?
I think some one of the major keys is uh you know in a world that of a narrator seeking truth?
And I mean again not to give away too much, but
Reality TV becomes a major part to play in this novel the character because of his antics
develops the attention of the media and and eventually has a
reality TV show
one of my proudest moments touring for this book was when I went on live television an evening news show and got the
The very straight-laced anchor to say the name of the television show in the book which is America you stupid
That's good, it was a great moment. Yeah. I really enjoyed that yeah
What's the inspiration for coming together like kind of putting together Kay? I mean that we did
Did you kind of draw from when you were thinking?
I mean I'm assuming that he was the first character you started the idea. I'm gonna make some references to stuff
That's pretty old and so yeah, maybe you guys may not know this stuff from maybe you do
confederacy of dunces Ignatius Reilly and you know that book
And have you so those of you don't really ought to pick it up pick it up before mine actually
And also and this comparison was made in some of the reviews of the book
Network the film oh yeah, yeah, okay
The mad as hell
I'm not gonna take it anymore like that's sort of I mean Kay doesn't get mad like that although he does, but in his way
but
You know those two characters in particular like so it's it's almost as though ignited che Reilly from
Confederacy of dunces has his own TV show. I'll I network right like
And of course Ignatieff was just I mean how would how do you even even describe him he's uh, it's almost like Robin
you know from
Rebellious something it's just like this larger-than-life figure and be completely absurd yeah
But also brilliant, yeah
And just a complete
Iconoclast you know doesn't believe in anything
But also has his own very rigid code about how things should be right and that pretty much sums K up. Ya know
that's right, so if I sort of picture him as a you know I
Don't know Kafka well yeah the circumstances are more that where Kafka comes in at least insofar as I can channel them
But no, I see him as sort of K sort of an update of Riley hmm
That's a great story for that book - I mean that that book you know talk about writers that are out there. I mean that
Book was actually sold by his mother his mother
he had actually committed suicide and
His mother was peddling that book all around town and finally got Walker Percy
- she begged him to read it and he was like why would I read your dead son's book?
And he was like she was like it's a it's a great book and he agreed
So it's interesting and then I won the Pulitzer yeah
So just goes show keep plugging away. Yeah
Don't give up
Are there questions that any the audience members would have for Ron
You have a question about
Writing in chat anything at all anything. Oh, yeah
Influences is really tricky to trace I feel like I'm not trying to avoid the question. I'm sort of preface in my answer I
Feel like mine is really the first generation of American writers that grew up watching a shitload of TV
So it's sort of inevitable that that's going to that's going to make its way into our books. I think
So I could tell you honestly that you know
Falkner is a huge influence and that's true, but Falkner is probably not any more of an influence on me then you know
the Fonz and
I mean that in all sincerity like it. It's it makes for
You know my third book. I have this probably too cute by half
Epigraph at the beginning of the book where I go on and on about how you know I'm uncomfortable with epigraphs
I don't really want to write one because I feel like when people write super serious epigraphs
It's like they're trying to latch themselves to the Canon and you know put themselves next a Hemingway or whomever they're
Quoting and then at the end of it I quote Mickey good good bill from from rocky
Like fuck it here. You go. I'll give you a fucking epigraph here
You go and it's women weaken legs from Mickey and rocky so like and I admitted in that epigraph like I'm more familiar with
with Rocky Balboa than I am with like
Senegal you know
So anyway influenced but to but to answer your question I mean
As far as writer concerns
You know the sixties post modernists Barth
pension baram a
Huge influence when I first read that stuff when I first read post-modernism at all whether it was you know David Foster Wallace
Or you know a handful of others like I realized that was up until that point. I had been writing some very serious
realist fiction that was perfectly serviceable, but the world totally did not need there was nothing vital about it I
Promise refining it maybe I want to get sure I mean I read I read Vonnegut early as a lot of people do
he's an influence, but I've actually sort of come to resent a little bit the
Comparison because I don't think it's terribly apt
But yeah, I mean
But I love grace Paley as much as I love pension. You know I'm all over the map
And I think they are all influenced me in one way or another
Influence can be something as simple as sending me to my desk
You know I read something. I think is really hot shit, and I and I get fired up to write, and then I go right
So like I said, it's a very slippery thing. It's hard to define influence for me
Just sort of tagging along on on that particular question
People always seem to ask
writers, you know
Who's your influence what inspires you
As though it is and it could very well be so I mean something that gets you to sit down and write
I
Guess I have another part of that type of thing is is there anything that ever gets in your way I?
Mean are there freaking figures out there that get in your way are there things in your life that
Stop you from writing. Well yeah, and the paradox is that oftentimes I can read something
That's really good, and it paralyzes me because I think I can never equal that
That definitely gets in your way, but life gets in the way, and I'm teaching a class right now
I don't do a whole lot of teaching, but I do these little 10-week standalone courses sometimes and
This one is about getting across the finish line with the novel like they're just trying to push and prod and sometimes carry them to
the conclusion and and
You know I we talk a lot about
What I term emotional patronage
Which is the way it the way? I define that is like you need somebody in your life usually a partner
But not always who's going to allow you to be an artist which means that you're gonna be a selfish bastard
You're gonna spend a lot of time and energy emotional currency on your book that you should be spending on them etc etc etc
without that
It's really hard to get this sort of work done. I think
But also you know, I think as writers, we're more often that we're getting in our own way
I can't tell you how many times I've cleaned a toilet because I was trying to avoid writing
And I use the toilet
Example because that's not something that anybody actually wants to do so that gives you an idea like I found cleaning a toilet more appealing
Than sitting down with my book, right?
More often than not we're getting in our own way
and that can mean any number of different things, but it always it basically boils down to
I'm my own biggest problem in terms of we're done
Pick up on something we talked about a little bit before how are you feeling like that in a sense the transition between?
Say perhaps writing for television and writing a novel like as as you prepare mentally for that like
What do you think about the transition between those two things because you know so much good writing now is happening on television
so how do you make you know that distinction between you know sitting down and writing a
300-page novel as opposed to say trying out script you mean from an approach standpoint like nuts and bolts not small
It's not that different from me
Sitting down the experience is different, but the strategy is not different for me
You know this book was the
Most dialog heavy thing I've ever written, so it was much closer to a screenplay than anything else. I've done in a novel form
So I didn't feel like that big a transition for me like I was moving that direction in my fiction anyway and in fact I
actually had to
unlike the 15th round of edits on this book
I realized I actually had to provide scene
Setting like I had to put ground under my character's feet and give him air to breathe because I hadn't yet
Probably not the best approach for writing a book so maybe the answer
I'm sort of answering your question in the reverse like I was sort of writing a script here
And I had to backtrack I had to double back and actually write a novel
but
Screenplays are fun man. It's fun to just one of the things I enjoy most about writing
Novels is getting characters in a room talking to each other
And that's all that screenwriting is basically you're just you putting people
Together and seeing how they relate to one another and it's almost all dialogue like when you're ready to screenplay
You you're not supposed to be writing stage direction all that much right you basically set the scene very briefly, and then it's all dialogue
It's it's easier than writing a novel to be perfectly frank. It's much easier once you figure out the form yeah
So I wanted to you know because it's it's integral to the to the story
How much you know research did you have to do in terms of like thinking about reality TV
And how it worked its way and like when I was reading this book
I was thinking about how do you find this balance between?
You know the things that are current events that are riding everyone's mind
And they're in there everyone's newsfeed every day and finding that the right balance between
What is current in everyone's mind like you know the the gun violence the reality TV?
That's in our face every single day
And how to kind of have an artistic distance and be able to say something meaningful when it's almost like there's
Saturation that people have over like these current event topics here
You know yeah, I mean. I'm not sure I compost hat to be honest like it
I was reading through it today, and I thought man who wants to think about this stuff right now
That's that's the paradox, and that's the irony like nobody wants to think about it
And it's all we think about right and nobody wants to think about it because it's all we think about
but the reality TV thing is actually interesting because
when you're asked about the research like I didn't go on the set of a reality TV program or anything like that and
as I was saying to answer your question about influence like I've I've
Easily spent as many hours watching TV as I have reading
So I sort of and I've watched reality TV like the rest of us
I watched the first the first reality TV program in the real world which was on an MTV in 1990 I think
So I understand the tropes
You know what I had to do was go out and make sure that there wasn't anything out there. That was more art
That was real that was more ridiculous than what I was writing and to give you an idea of how?
Ridiculous, the show is were that I came up with one was called funeral home confessions
Another was pimp house
Which was six pimps living in a house? That's in the book?
But I really I mean things are so absurd now that I had to go. I'm like
I'm gonna make sure there's nothing as ridiculous as pimp house, otherwise. It's not gonna land right because somebody's gonna be like well
There's there's already a pimp house out there somewhere
so that research went down and
I'm happy to report that there was no nothing even resembling pimp house. Yeah
But I'm hoping to spin-off actually that's a great idea yeah, that's a segue to the yeah the next step. I'm not gonna
Just I'm not gonna sell the book itself. I'm gonna sell the concept. It's a great itis tree neural home confessions ya
Casket confessions, I sir I certainly think the writer has an obligation to entertain
I really do firmly believe that and I wish more writers to it frankly
But no, it's not I mean where I feel like we're talking about two different things we're talking about art capital a and
talking about entertainment
not all entertainment is art right strictly speaking, but no I mean I I
Don't think that there's any one theme or subject matter. That's
Better than than all the rest I think
What I think is that the human emotional experience is about this wide, and and there's something that all of you in this room
Have experienced as human beings that I have an analog for to me. That's really the connection right and so
No matter how trivial something some experience some theme may seem
I think it's all part of that as I said earlier. They trying to make the the particular Universal
That's really what that that means and so you can approach that from any number of different ways and it can be highbrow or lowbrow
It doesn't matter. It's just what I my concern is am I
Am I inspiring and empathic reaction and a reader? I don't care how I get there
And that's what matters to me to read this read this essay I
Mean again I'm hoping that people will recognize their own experiences and what I'm describing
but also it sort of sets the stage for what the book is as a whole right and and rather than going into a
Dry five minute explanation of the of the incident in the book. I'd rather give an impression of what its emotional content is
To sort of like
Set everybody up like this is where this is where we're living in this book emotionally
So that's the purpose of reading it in this context
And that's like kind of when you think about the bout what one of the the real
Interesting thing that Ron does in the book is like
it's it's difficult to balance a dark comedy where a character is literally going after people all over the place from the
Whole foods total foods right total foods. No one gets suit
And asking them as you're selling pumpkins. Why are you you know gaga for gourds?
They don't make this doesn't make any sense
It the balancing is like the the absurd kind of comic actions of a character
But driven by the backstory that you get which is all about
Watching him deal with the unimaginable like just watching common everyday things of watching. You know you kind of separate from your your
significant other and and watching that person having to suffer and then
Then kind of seeing this character of how this leads this character its grief. I mean a lot of the book is about how people
Cope with grief differently and and this is in a way Kay's
Experiences this extreme version of you know not only going to seek truth from society
But there's also I mean as he makes his way through the the story
There's also kind of grappling with is he he may he's constantly being asked. Are you trying to?
Self-destruct is this all about you trying to almost
You know give yourself nobody is under the impression that it's a very elaborate suicide plan for him, yeah
But I think what Ron is trying to say is like you if you come to her if you come to a book and you
Think I'm gonna write a book that deals with someone
grieving
And you and I'm gonna make sure that you know I'm gonna hit you over the head with this
The symbolic nature of this action you're gonna have a pretty bad book
But if you if you figure out how what the character's motivation is and then flush out that scene then
Then you've got something to work with where people can latch onto it
You know and that's what I meant when I said that that themes and symbol
Follow story not the other way around
You know the story is the horses and the theme is the cart you know?
It's pretty simple you don't
You don't put the cart before the horse right so there you go, okay?
All right, so I've got to do this because you mentioned it before
the the next project cuz I'm
Curious can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on I got to do this are you yeah? I
am writing a novel
about
The most famous basketball player on earth
Who's long since retired but some
it's the the the I
Never make things easy for myself
I can never just write a straightforward story
so instead of just writing a closed third-person narration about the most famous basketball player on earth I
Instead wrote the story where sometimes in the same chapter we start with the second person, which is you right we're addressing?
That character that famous basketball player you you you telling him about his own life
but the the
Then it switches to
First-person plural we write the Royal we and that is sort of a chorus of
Basically young white men in the 80s and 90s
Talking about their own lives, but also
Within the context of what this basketball player meant to them and to the country and to the culture
So it's a mess, but it's I'm having fun writing and I think
I like to believe that
That from my perspective as a young man who grew up watching a very famous and and agile ating a very famous basketball player
In the context very similar to the one in the book I
Think that that says something really important about the country
so this is a good good example of what I'm talking about like I would never sit down and say I'm going to write a
book about
America
you know
But I am gonna write a book about basketball or a basketball player a particular basketball player
And then I come to realize that this this story if done right can say something really
Important about the country so that's what I'm talking about you come to that
indirectly obliquely
Or. I'll never see the light of day listen, but
But it's certainly different from anything. I've done before that's for damn sure yeah
We all know who he's talking about right. It's not LeBron everyone gets it. Okay. Good all right except
I'm not talking about him at all. It's not about let's be clear. That's people. This is fiction. Yeah, there's nothing
Hey, hey Bill Russell
Are there any questions that you guys have for on any questions you know about writing and
Process
Typically how what do you know every is you uh?
You a daily is it a yeah for the most part. Yeah. Yeah, I think it
You know you go through dry patches for sure like
It's inevitable and you sort of have to let yourself off the hook for it sometimes, but not let yourself too far off the hook
But yeah, I mean I think it's important that it be a daily practice yeah
And if you're gonna tell students like undergraduates who are perhaps
considering a
You know a career as either fiction or asking the questions that they can't bring themselves they can't they're too shy
But I you know I'm trying to you know if you were gonna give them
Certain things practices or books or in kind of words of wisdom?
Would you tell them to?
Just spend their time doing what would what would you tell them to think about just that?
I
Guess I would say that there's really no tricks to the whole thing
it's work like any other I
believe if you're reasonably intelligent
intelligence does even really figure into it that much it's more about being willing and
and capable of
observing other people closely for a long period of time
And coming to understand them in a way that that enables you to render them
Convincingly on the page and then doing that and practicing and practicing and practicing it. There's there's no trick to it
There's no secret. Handshake. It's just about
Reading the best things you can get your hands on and writing and writing and writing and really being a student of humanity
Because ultimately, that's that's the raw material of our stories is other people
And it's pretty simple, I I don't I don't like to pretend that it's any more rarefied or complicated than it is for me
Which is not to say that it's easy because it's not it's not easy at all, but but it's not complex
you know
Redress is off if you run if you want to write well read a lot. It's it's that simple
And study study psychology and and and and
Maybe philosophy, I think it's like psychology and philosophy courses are probably more useful to the young writer than then writing courses or late courses
Again because it helps you
Like you can learn you can learn about people's mannerisms the way that they speak the way that they dress the way they behave from
Observing them you can learn their motivations from psychology, right?
You can learn their interior landscapes, which is also a useful tool for a fiction writer to have
You know whereas a literature course is really about analysis of trying to kind of figure out. How it works right which is yeah?
I mean you want to you want to also read like a writer like you want to get under the hood you you're not just
Reading for pleasure you should do that you should stay too connected to that
But you really want to get under the hood of a narrative and figure out what makes it run
But you can do that outside of a lit course, I'm sorry doc no, no no probably courses
heard nothing
Any other questions for Ron
Well I just wanted to thank you for coming and talking to us, thank you
You
