{"id":36037,"date":"2012-04-12T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36037"},"modified":"2025-02-18T10:30:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:30:35","slug":"issue-72-a-conversation-with-susan-orlean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-72-a-conversation-with-susan-orlean\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 72: A Conversation with Susan Orlean"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Willow<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0Willow Springs\u00a0<\/em>72<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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April 12, 2012<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

MICHAEL BELL, KATRINA STUBSON, ERICKA TAYLOR<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE ALMOND<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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\"Steve<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit:\u00a0Sharona Jacobs Photography<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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The voice in a Steve Almond story <\/strong>or essay or blog post is unmistakable, shaped by a tone typically anchored in dry wit, and a sharp, hungry intelligence that seems capable of taking us anywhere. The world, as Almond observes it, is at once hilarious and pathetic, sad and intensely beautiful. And it\u2019s his willingness to engage the world that demands our attention. We follow him as he navigates his or his characters\u2019 movement through anger and passion, sex and song, confusion and clarity and political rage, sometimes as a call to action or a commentary on our culture, sometimes as a portrait of the individual in crisis or struggling with the risks and dangers of being alive, and often from a depth of obsession\u2014about music or politics or candy or sex or whatever else engages his curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat people are really reading for is some quality of obsession,\u201d Almond says. \u201cThey have this instinctual sense that the person who\u2019s writing can\u2019t stop talking about this, is super into it\u2014scarily into it. Because everybody has what they\u2019re obsessed with, but you\u2019re sort of taught not to get into it because it seems crazy and makes you weird, and you should be able to get past that and stop collecting Cabbage Patch Kids or whatever your obsession is\u2026 But we are all, inside, obsessed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, three of which he published himself. In 2004 his second book, Candyfreak<\/em>, was a New York Times<\/em> bestseller and won the American Library Association Alex Award. In 2005, it was named the Booksense Adult Nonfiction Book of The Year. His Story, \u201cDonkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched\u201d from his latest collection, God Bless America<\/em>, was selected for Best American Short Stories<\/em> 2010. He is a regular contributor to the New York Time<\/em>\u2019s Riff section and writes regularly for the literary website, The Rumpus. Two of his stories have been awarded the Pushcart Prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met with Mr. Almond at the Brooklyn Deli in Spokane, where we discussed small publishers and big publishers, politics in fiction and nonfiction, obsession and more obsession, what makes a good editor, and how, \u201cin the most emotional moments of a story, writers are trying to sing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KATRINA STUBSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve published books with different houses, and you\u2019ve recently put out chapbooks yourself. What has your experience been like working with different publishers, large and small?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STEVE ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you write something accomplished enough that somebody will buy it, that\u2019s an important and amazing accomplishment. But in the euphoria of that\u2014what I tended to overlook, anyway\u2014is this unnatural arrangement, the artist in partnership with the corporation. It\u2019s strange and unsettling for the weird, little freaky things that I have to say\u2014whether in fiction or nonfiction or letters from people who hate me\u2014to be turned into a commodity. What I want is just to reach people emotionally. I don\u2019t want to feel that there\u2019s a price tag on that, though I do charge for those DIY books I make, because they cost money to print and I\u2019ve got a designer I want to pay and I also want to get a little bit for the energy and time I put into them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s fair for artists to get paid. And I will say to people now\u2014though I wouldn\u2019t say it earlier in my career\u2014I will not work for free. If you\u2019re getting some money out of it, I\u2019d like some money too. Doesn\u2019t have to be a ton, but if you\u2019re getting dough out of it\u2014if it\u2019s a nonprofit thing, a charity thing, okay. I\u2019m thinking about this agent who sent me a note saying, \u201cWould you be willing to contribute to this anthology?\u201d And I was like, \u201cSure, just tell me who\u2019s getting paid what and we can decide what seems fair for me.\u201d And he just kept ducking the question. Turned out he was getting a fifty-thousand dollar advance. I was eventually like, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m not cool with that. If you\u2019re getting money, then all your contributors should be getting some money too.\u201d I\u2019m not na\u00efve enough to be saying, \u201cOh, we\u2019re just artists, everything should be free and open.\u201d No. You work hard, you should get paid. We should have enough esteem for people who make art to acknowledge it\u2019s worth paying for, worth supporting them in their endeavor. But working with a big company\u2014I knew that they liked my art, but they were mainly trying to figure out a way to make money. They saw Candyfreak<\/em> and thought, Oh, with our platform and marketing, maybe we can get this guy to write a bestseller. I understand that most editors are interested in good books. But most editors aren\u2019t the ones who acquire books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a whole marketing team and committee and they have to decide if this thing\u2019s going to make money or not. That\u2019s a calculus that can start to infect your process if you think about it too much. You think, Well, maybe I should do this or that, and then you\u2019re not really following your own preoccupations and obsessions. You\u2019re worrying about what the market wants, what the marketing people want in a particular book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Candyfreak<\/em>, the publisher begged me to take out a line at the beginning of the book that had the word \u201cdick\u201d in it: \u201cYou give a teenage boy a candy bar with a ruler on the back of it, he will measure his dick.\u201d She was like, \u201cCan\u2019t we please take that out so we can broaden the audience of this book.\u201d I understood what she was saying. That was a corporation speaking directly to the artist, saying that even though that\u2019s the right word, and even though you want to write a book with a profane edge to it, we could really broaden our audience here. This could be a young adult book that could be marketed in a whole new way, be happily and safely given to kids, and so forth. I\u2019m not blaming this woman for saying it\u2014it\u2019s just the voice of the corporation\u2014but I had to say, \u201cNo. Sorry you\u2019re pissed off at me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as those chapbooks go, I think if you\u2019ve spent long enough making decisions at the keyboard, and if you feel like you have a book or books that you\u2019re ready to move out into the world, books that don\u2019t seem to need an editor\u2014I mean, I had my friends edit those little books\u2014then why not? The technology exists, the means of production for literary art has been democratized to the point that all of us can make a book tomorrow if we want to. Why bother to get a corporation involved when the project is a smaller, more idiosyncratic book? Why not put it out in a smaller, more organic, personal way? To the extent that your patience and talent allows, you can choose your publishing experience now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m happy to have books published with big publishers. I\u2019m happy to have anybody help me out with this stuff. I don\u2019t like schlepping books around and having to do all that stuff. It\u2019s sort of low-level humiliating and kind of a drag. I\u2019d rather have somebody else do it all for me and I could just be the artist, with my little artist wings saying, Yes, I\u2019ll sign your book. Now let me go off and write some more. But that\u2019s not really how my career works. The culture doesn\u2019t have that kind of passion for the work I do. But as long as the means of production exists and I have these little weird projects I want to do, why not try to do them in a way that feels more natural? It\u2019s a smaller thing. I like the feeling of making a book with another artist, putting exactly what I want into it, sometimes in consultation with readers early in the process. There\u2019s no marketing team, no publisher, no editor to mess with you about that\u2014it\u2019s liberating. And even though I charge money for the books, they feel more like an artifact that commemorates a particular night, a reading or some other interaction, rather than a commodity you could get anywhere, not that there\u2019s anything wrong with buying books in stores. But I don\u2019t think a lot of people walk into a bookstore and say, \u201cWhat do you have by Steve Almond?\u201d Nobody does. Or very few people. My mom does. I realized at a certain point that people find my stuff because I do a reading or give a class, and they think they might like more. You sort of have to recognize where you\u2019re at, and for me, these DIY books make a lot of sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m delighted God Bless America<\/em> came out with a small press. I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t try to put that book out myself. It really only works economically when they\u2019re little books. And Ben George at Lookout Books was a phenomenal editor, and helped make all the stories in God Bless America<\/em> way better than they were before, even if they\u2019d been published in the Pushcart<\/em> or Best American<\/em>. That\u2019s the thing that matters\u2014finding a great editor. Stephen Elliott says there\u2019s no point in putting out twenty thousand copies of a mediocre book. You only have enough time in life to put out so many books, and you invest all this energy, so you\u2019ve got to find the editor who\u2019s going to help you make it the best book possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STUBSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes a good editor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good editor pays attention. They get what you\u2019re trying to do, they see the places where you\u2019re falling short, and they can explain the problems in precise, concrete terms. Ben George would go through these stories and say, \u201cYou have this character shrugging here and I just don\u2019t think it\u2019s doing any work.\u201d A good editor targets what\u2019s inessential in your work, every moment you\u2019ve raced through when you should have slowed down, every place where the narrative isn\u2019t really grounded in the physical world and you\u2019ve missed an opportunity. It\u2019s a revelation to get that kind of editing, and it has everything to do with the quality of attention they\u2019re paying to your work. It can be oppressive when it\u2019s somebody like Ben, who\u2019s so compulsive about it, though it\u2019s also an incredible gift to have somebody who understands your intention so clearly that he can zero in on places where nobody else\u2014great magazine editors, editors of anthologies\u2014has said anything. He zips right in and says, \u201cYou don\u2019t need this line. That word is a repetition. You need to show me the airport right now because I cannot see it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That hasn\u2019t always happened for me. My editor at Algonquin was great, and my editors at Random House\u2014I had two\u2014did the best they could. But I think they were under certain constraints, and they weren\u2019t line editors. They were essentially trying to figure out how to get a return for Random House on an investment they\u2019d made. Their job wasn\u2019t to make every essay shine and every line perfect and every word essential. I don\u2019t think that makes them bad editors, in terms of how their jobs were defined, but it didn\u2019t help me make the books better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not as true of Rock N Roll Will Save Your Life<\/em>. My editor on that book was sharp about saying, \u201cYou cannot write ten thousand words about Ike Reilly. Nobody\u2019s interested. You\u2019re going to make the book worse and less accessible to the reader.\u201d That\u2019s a lot of what a good editor does\u2014tells you when you might be confusing the reader, boring them, or writing in a way that isn\u2019t compelling. Not because they want to sell tons of copies, but because they\u2019re sensitive to the places where you haven\u2019t made the arc matter enough to the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ERICKA TAYLOR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you distinguish between being a political writer and a moral writer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do write about politics, and I get that people want to put whatever label on that, which is fine. I\u2019m interested in cutting beneath the version of politics that\u2019s happening on cable TV, though, and getting to the fact that it\u2019s really all about policies and how people behave toward one another. In American politics, the big argument happening on cable has obscured the fact that we have elected representatives who decide how kind and compassionate and generous we\u2019re going to be as a country or if it\u2019s a moral duty for extraordinarily wealthy or even comfortable people to help out those who have less. There are moral implications to these decisions, and they\u2019re almost entirely obscured in our political arena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when I\u2019m writing political pieces, I\u2019m trying to remind people that real moral decisions are being made about how your kids are going to be educated, or whether people in our culture are going to have the opportunity we say America offers. I want to remind people that we have great ideals in the abstract, but we almost never live up to them. America has the best ideals of any country on earth, and yet we\u2019re the worst at living those values and enacting them. We\u2019ve gotten completely distracted by this circus sideshow. But as I say that, I also recognize that I\u2019m up on a soapbox, and that people don\u2019t want to hear that. There are tons of people shouting from the soapbox, saying, \u201cHere\u2019s who you should be pissed off at, here\u2019s what you should do.\u201d You can become a kind of mirror version of what\u2019s happening on talk radio. So I try to write in a way that forces people to realize that I\u2019m talking about what it means to be a human rather than how they should behave morally. I don\u2019t always succeed. I\u2019m not sure my writing is always moral writing. Sometimes, when it\u2019s not quite as good, it feels political and pedantic. I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s worthwhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MICHAEL BELL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you handle that in \u201cHow to Love a Republican\u201d versus God Bless America<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow to Love a Republican\u201d started as a story based around the 2000 election and its aftermath. A liberal guy falls in love with a conservative. They\u2019re both idealistic, political people working on campaigns, and when I originally wrote that story it was like 15,000 words, and 8,000 of them were me saying, \u201cHow can we have an election that\u2019s so unfair?\u201d and, \u201cDick Cheney\u2019s such an asshole,\u201d and, \u201cThe Supreme Court totally sold us out,\u201d and blah blah blah. I had to look at those 15,000 words and see that they were a polemic, not a story. What\u2019s more interesting is this human question: Can you love somebody when you don\u2019t respect their basic sense of fairness and morality? How much do you have to agree with someone\u2019s values in order to conduct an enduring romantic relationship? That\u2019s the real question. And so the political polemical stuff got cut out of the story and what remained was this question of what you do when you love somebody and respect their ambition but run into this historical moment in which you can\u2019t agree and you can\u2019t let it go. Many relationships reach this point. It\u2019s not necessarily about the 2000 election; it\u2019s about some other thing\u2014I cannot deal with the way you treat my family, or whatever it is. That to me is a much more universal idea to pursue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories in God Bless America<\/em> are reflective of the next ten years, the Bush years, and also since Obama\u2019s been president. Our culture\u2019s become meaner, more paranoid, angrier, more self-victimized. I think a lot of that comes out of how we processed 9\/11. That was not a tragedy that caused us to do any reflecting. We just went into a crazy, bullying, narcissistic, jingoistic, proto-fascist psychosis. And of course 9\/11 was a terrible thing. It\u2019s not something I am going to try to appropriate\u2014the grief of 9\/11. That\u2019s the crazy thing that happened on TV, because it\u2019s a good story, and it became like every other story the media puts out: meant to press our buttons, not to really make us think about our duty as citizens or why we might have been attacked or what our empire\u2019s up to. When I think about how we reacted to that, I feel like it\u2019s cowboys and Indians. It\u2019s this narrative of America as a heroic country that\u2019s actually so empty inside that we have to regenerate ourselves through violence, make up a story about those nasty Indians attacking our forts we built on their land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories in God Bless America<\/em> are morally distressed stories, and they\u2019re pretty depressing, and I feel bad about that because I like to write stories that have some humor\u2014 which is how I try to cut that moralizing I do. But that\u2019s how I felt the last ten years. I walk around my house renting my garments and tearing my hair out, driving my wife crazy, saying, \u201cWhat is this country doing? When are we going to grow up? It\u2019s got to stop.\u201d When I\u2019m able to deal with that most effectively is when I\u2019m able to imagine my way into a character contending with that world, a character who\u2019s not me, who\u2019s not an ideologue or a demagogue, but is just a person struggling with the first day back from war, having witnessed the kind of violence and chaos that young men are witness to in these wars, and coming back and somehow trying to deal with it. And he can\u2019t. He\u2019s broken and he\u2019s going to take it out on someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amount of that stuff going on\u2014you don\u2019t hear a lot about it. We\u2019ve developed a narrative that the veterans are noble, wounded warriors. But when he comes back, we don\u2019t listen to what he has to say. Maybe somebody\u2019s paid to listen, but as a culture, we just clap in the air and say, \u201cThank you for your service,\u201d and put a ribbon on our car and think we\u2019re somehow dealing with somebody who got his legs blown off or had to kill someone or had his best friend killed or was shocked and freaked out by the kind of extreme violence he was exposed to. That strikes me as a fraudulent and immoral way to contend with that. So those stories with veterans in God Bless America<\/em> are my effort to acknowledge that this is what happens. Like most people, I\u2019m a civilian; I\u2019m just trying to imagine my way into it. Maybe I\u2019m doing a bad job, but I\u2019m making an effort to ask what it would really be like to be nineteen or twenty and to be in that kind of moral chaos. To be in that violent chaos. What would it do to you? Who might it turn you into?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TAYLOR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were talking earlier today about putting characters in danger. Since you were writing Candyfreak<\/em> while you were depressed, were you conscious of the same M.O., and thinking, This book is manifesting me<\/em> as a protagonist in danger?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s interesting that I was in the Idaho Candy Company factory and there\u2019s Dave Wagers showing me around, and he\u2019s such a nice guy, and I\u2019m trying to distract myself. But then I have to go back to my hotel room and the reportage is over. If I were a journalist, I\u2019d say, \u201cThe factory is so wonderful,\u201d and it\u2019s not really about me. It\u2019s about how wonderful their chocolate pretzels are. And that\u2019s fine for a piece of journalism. But with Candyfreak<\/em>, part of my job was to turn the camera inward and be like, Also, I\u2019m super depressed and fucked up, and that\u2019s part of the story, too. It\u2019s not the only part, but it\u2019s a part. Maybe for some people it\u2019s an indulgent or uninteresting part. But if I\u2019m going to write about that experience, flying around to these places. I\u2019m not going to ignore the fact that I was in a depression and doing everything I could to try to avoid it. To me, that\u2019s what\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when I talk to the guy who makes Valomilks, of course I\u2019m picking up on the fact that he\u2019s this sort of desperate character who, on the one hand, has this story about how we\u2019re bringing back old time candy and isn\u2019t that awesome and wonderful? But it\u2019s also a pitch he\u2019s making, which he makes to all the journalists who talk to him. And that might be interesting as far as it goes, but it\u2019s not literary. Literary is the sudden moment when a mirror is held up and somebody goes, \u201cOh, my god.\u201d It\u2019s the reason I left journalism, because the questions weren\u2019t interesting. Who, what, where, when, why\u2014not, Why did this guy fuck up his life? Why did this person have an affair? Why did this person make such bad decisions? What part of him got distorted into this particular evil? Those are the interesting questions, the literary questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Candyfreak<\/em>, my editor said to start right when we get to the factories. And she was pretty convincing and a good editor; she\u2019s paying attention to the text. But I was like, I need people to know that I\u2019m the person to write this book. And maybe what I was really saying was, \u201cMaybe the book\u2019s partly about me.\u201d That sounded too indulgent to say directly, but I needed people to know that I have this especially pathological relationship to candy. And if they\u2019re going to follow me on this, I want them to know they\u2019re going to be following the craziest person about candy they\u2019ve ever met. That happens to be the truth. I\u2019m not some random reporter. With Candyfreak<\/em> I wasn\u2019t going to ignore the fact that it was me as a person who was obsessed with this one particular thing. The rock and roll book was the same way. I write out of my obsession. I think that\u2019s the engine of literature. What people are really reading for is some quality of obsession. They have this instinctual sense that the person who\u2019s writing can\u2019t stop talking about this, is super into it\u2014scarily into it. Because everybody has what they\u2019re obsessed with, but you\u2019re sort of taught not to get into it because it seems crazy and makes you weird, and you should be able to get past that and stop collecting Cabbage Patch Kids or whatever your obsession is. But kids are obsessive by nature, and they are the most voracious readers of all. They\u2019ll read a book over and over again. They\u2019re naturally obsessive, and we\u2019re only trained out of it. But we are all, inside, obsessed. It\u2019s just polite society that says, \u201cStop talking about that band so much. Stop talking about that TV show or website or painting or whatever it is.\u201d I think most great books are obsessive either in their manner of composition or their plot, sometimes both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STUBSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re all obsessive by nature, but it\u2019s okay because someone else is expressing it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. People find stories or essays pleasing because they realize they\u2019re not the only person who\u2019s crazy, who\u2019s that ruined or stuck in some way, or that joyful about something. I feel like everywhere outside of art, in the world of marketing and the day-to-day, nobody\u2019s really telling the truth, nobody\u2019s really going into any dark, deep, true shit. Everybody\u2019s faking it. But a certain kind of person actually wants to get into that other stuff. It\u2019s more painful to live with that kind of awareness, to be honest with yourself and other people, but I\u2019d rather spend my time on earth that way, even though I\u2019m now going to be poverty stricken and choked by doubt and all the rest of it. I think this is why so many people are getting MFAs and trying to do creative writing, or whatever art they\u2019re trying to do. Because they\u2019re deprived of the capacity to feel that deeply by the culture at large and, significantly, by their families of origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in a family where there was a lot of deep feeling and not much of it ever got expressed. It got expressed mostly through antagonism and neglect and a kind of avoidance of what was really happening. I think that stuff gets into the ground water of most writers. I write about it in This Won\u2019t Take But A Minute, Honey<\/em>. That\u2019s where it comes from, that unrequited desire to say, \u201cNo, I\u2019m gonna talk about this shit.\u201d A lot of that is reaction to the fact that you come from a family where that stuff isn\u2019t talked about. Your parents are like, \u201cAre you depressed?\u201d Their take is, Wow, it really would be easier and more efficient if you would just get a business card and a healthcare plan and have a more conventional lifestyle. I\u2019m lucky that my folks are psychoanalysts, because they\u2019re interested in the insides of people. But a lot of the people I encounter don\u2019t have that advantage. And it\u2019s not because their family is trying to silence them. Parents want their kids to have a happy life, and they see the life of an artist as an intense engagement with feelings\u2014oftentimes painful feelings\u2014and the struggle to make ends meet and to be heard in the world, and maybe a lot of disappointment along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BELL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You talk about questions you\u2019re interested in, for example the questions journalism asks as opposed to literary nonfiction. Are those nonfiction questions the same as the ones you approach in your stories, or are those central questions different?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stories allow you to construct a world that\u2019s completely aimed at exposing those questions. With nonfiction you have to choose your topic and root around through the past to find the moments that really mattered, and then you try to unpack them. But with fiction, my sense of plot is extraordinarily primitive: Find character. What is character afraid of? What does character want? Push character to scary cave or happy cave. When you know you have a character who\u2019s a closet gambling addict and a shrink, then you know how the rest of the story has to go. Of course a famous gambler has to walk into his office, and of course they have to wind up across the poker table at the end of the story. As soon as you know what your character desires and fears, you have some sense of what you\u2019re pushing your character toward\u2014or I do. That\u2019s my conception of plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With nonfiction, it\u2019s much more a process of archeology and digging through and saying this moment is important, and so is this history. You can choose where to look around, but you can\u2019t choose to make shit up like you can in a story. You\u2019re engineering the world for maximum emotional impact in a short story. Whether you have the courage to do that or you get lost with all the possibilities is another question. When you have no constraints on reality, you can engineer any world you want, put your character in a room having sex with his secretary and in walks his wife, and boom\u2014you just did it, it\u2019s a dramatically dangerous situation. You can\u2019t do that in nonfiction. You might write about your fantasies or wishes, but you have to write about stuff that actually happened and stuff that happens in your head. You can\u2019t make stuff up to make it more dramatic. If you do, you have to call it what it is\u2014fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TAYLOR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your flash fiction feels particularly lyrical. Do you approach very short work in a different way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of those started out as poems. But I realized they weren\u2019t poems\u2014they were little stories, little bursts of empathy. I read flash, and I always have a pleased feeling when a writer has somehow plugged into this exalted way of communicating. I feel like they\u2019re singing to me. In those little stories, I\u2019m just trying to capture moments where something devastating happens. I\u2019m trying to capture five seconds in amber\u2014like my great-aunt being walked across an icy street by this handsome young guy who calls back, \u201cCan I have your number?\u201d in front of his friends\u2014a moment of gallantry and how beautiful that is. Nothing more than that. You don\u2019t need to know her whole life. You don\u2019t need to know where she grew up. This is the moment that matters. That\u2019s what those flash pieces are about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STUBSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life<\/em> you write that songs taught you a lot about story.
Would you talk a bit about expression in song versus expression on the page?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music allows you to reach feelings you can\u2019t reach by other means. The best writing does that too, although it\u2019s a lot more inconvenient because you have to sit there and pay attention, whereas if a great song comes on, boom, you\u2019re in it. You have an immediate set of memories and associations and an emotional reaction. Reading is harder. In a certain way it\u2019s more fulfilling, because with a piece of writing you have to do much more work than any other art form. You\u2019re an active participant in the construction of these images and so forth. You\u2019re making the movie in your head; I\u2019m just giving you the perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that\u2019s very exciting, but the reason I listen to a lot of music, and kind of always envied musicians, is that it just gets across much more quickly and intuitively through the primal and instinctual language of melody and rhythm. There\u2019s no comparison. And you could ask almost any writer, at least any writer you\u2019d want to spend time with, \u201cWould you rather be a musician and go on tour and be able to do your crazy ecstatic thing of making music, or would you like to be a writer, sitting in your fucking garret going, Ughhh I hope, I hope, I hope?\u201d That\u2019s not to degrade writing. I think it\u2019s great, I love it, blah, blah, blah. But the thing I learn from listening to songs and listening to albums\u2014these guys want you to feel something and they\u2019re not being coy about it. They\u2019re not writing their little obedient, minimalist short story or earnest autobiographical essay. They\u2019re singing; they\u2019re trying to get across to you emotionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think all young writers think, I have to be taken seriously; people have to know I\u2019m a serious artist; let there be no confusion about that. And they\u2019re more reluctant to get into the real reasons they\u2019re working on a particular piece\u2014to get their characters, whether it\u2019s fiction or nonfiction, into that real emotional trouble we talked about. With a good song, you\u2019re in emotional trouble right from the first chord. It\u2019s an ecstatic, immediately emotional experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my writing. I want to construct a ramp to these important emotional moments, slowly drawing the reader in. But I also think that in the most emotional moments of a story, writers are trying to sing. That\u2019s what James Joyce is doing at the end of \u201cThe Dead.\u201d That last paragraph is like a beautiful song. That\u2019s what Homer is doing, that\u2019s what Shakespeare is doing, that\u2019s what all great writers are doing\u2014Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, Denis Johnson, whoever. They reach these ecstatic moments, and in order to describe the complex, contradictory feelings they\u2019re experiencing, the language has to rise up and become more lyric and sensual and compressed in order to capture that kind of exalted moment, whether it\u2019s grief or ecstasy or some complicated mix of emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening to songs makes me wonder why I am not writing towards those moments where you just open your throat and sing. And if I\u2019m not, then what am I doing? Of course, you can be sentimental and screw it up and I hate that kind of writing. It\u2019s playing it safe. If the character isn\u2019t at some point in real trouble, if the language doesn\u2019t reach up into a sort of lyric register, what is the point? I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s how all writing should be, but that\u2019s my feeling about it. If you\u2019re not writing for those lyric moments, what are you writing for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BELL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are those germs for story? Do you know the moment, or do you start with the character and get there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I usually start with characters and I have some sense of what they want or what they\u2019re after, what they\u2019re frightened of. And the rest of it, at least to the extent that you can, you\u2019re trying to let your artistic unconscious steer. You might have broader sense of, Okay, Aus is a closet gambler and that\u2019s got to be revealed somehow, and Sharp\u2014I didn\u2019t know who Sharp was\u2014he walks in. I like that he\u2019s got an attitude, I like that he\u2019s sharp and jagged and well- defended, but I didn\u2019t know he was going to start talking about his kid and reach this moment where his wife is on the brink of leaving. That\u2019s just stuff\u2014I don\u2019t even know how to explain it. As you\u2019re writing the character, suddenly that\u2019s who he is, that\u2019s what pops out. Undoubtedly it comes out of my own preoccupations and obsessions, but I\u2019m not trying to figure that out as I\u2019m writing. I\u2019m just hoping my artistic unconscious is going to feed those moments where characters come apart against the truth of themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can engineer the plot to an extent, but the lines themselves and the journey that a particular character takes toward that moment should be a mystery to you. That\u2019s the joy of writing fiction. There\u2019s this mysterious thing that takes over. And to some extent, nonfiction as well. I didn\u2019t know that Candyfreak<\/em> would lead me in this, that, or the other direction. That\u2019s part of the pleasure of writing. If you know it all already you start to feel self-conscious and predetermined. There should be lots of stuff you don\u2019t know. That\u2019s what allows you to surprise yourself and keep a preserved sense of mystery in your work. Your artistic unconscious has to deliver so much to you. It\u2019s way more powerful than your conscious efforts to jury-rig things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STUBSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you consciously train your subconscious so that you can make those kinds of discoveries?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All you can do is be honest about the things that stick in your craw, without trying to psychoanalyze them or understand why. As a nonfiction writer, Susan Orlean becomes completely obsessed with orchids, and she just follows it. She doesn\u2019t wonder, Why am I interested in this. What is it about? She just follows the trail. Can somebody teach you to be that way? No. You\u2019ve got to find it within yourself. I tell my students to write about the stuff that matters the most deeply to them. In fiction, you don\u2019t always know you\u2019re doing that; you have to sneak up on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote this story years ago called \u201cAmong the Ik.\u201d It\u2019s in My Life in Heavy Metal<\/em> and it\u2019s based on something that happened to me. I went to visit my friend Tom in Maine, whose mother had just died. Also, he\u2019d just had his first child, a baby girl. I walked in the house and there was the baby and the baby\u2019s mom and Tom\u2019s brother-in-law and sister in front of the fire, and they were having tangerines. This beautiful tableau. But I walked into the kitchen first and there was Tom\u2019s dad, and Tom introduced me to him, this grieving widower, and he\u2019s nervous and for whatever reason, rather than allowing me to move into where the action is, where the new life is, he nervously cornered me and found out I was an adjunct. He was thinking, I guess, about when he was an adjunct, and he told me this story about having to identify the dead body of one of his students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a weird story, but as a fiction writer you\u2019re always on the lookout for that. It stuck in my craw. I don\u2019t know why it did, it just did. I sensed that he was frightened to integrate with the rest of the family. So for whatever reason, this lonely guy telling me this story about a dead body gets in my craw and I start writing about it. I\u2019m not investigating why. I just know it\u2019s stuck in my craw and that usually is the signal to me that I need to write. So I write this story and I change a bunch of things\u2014he\u2019s a poet in real life, but I make him an anthropologist. My artistic unconscious feeds me this memory of when I was in second or third grade and we watched this film about a tribe somewhere called the Ik, and how the environment there is so unremittingly harsh that parents sometimes leave their children behind. It haunted me for years, rolling around my subconscious, and up it pops the moment I needed it in this story, when I\u2019m writing about parents and kids and families and how they connect emotionally or are unable to connect emotionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I finish the story and when My Life in Heavy Metal<\/em> comes out, my dad sends me a long note saying, \u201cOh, gee, Steve, your mother and I really like the stories; we\u2019re very, very proud of you, and about that story \u2018Among the Ik\u2019\u2014I just want to tell you that I never realized I was such a distant father.\u201d And my immediate reaction was, What are you talking about, Dad? That story\u2019s not…about…you. It\u2019s about that episode that got stuck in my craw. When I wrote it, I didn\u2019t sit at the keyboard and wonder why I\u2019d been thinking about it so much. I just chased the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think you can train your mind. But you can spend time at the keyboard and you can try to be relaxed when you\u2019re at the keyboard and write about the things that you\u2019re preoccupied with and be as unselfconscious and as unremittingly honest as you can be. That\u2019s about all you can do. I don\u2019t know of any push-ups for your artistic unconscious. I just know that the best work I\u2019m able to do is when I\u2019m writing about stuff I\u2019m obsessed with, especially with fiction, when I have no idea what I\u2019m doing; my characters are acting on my behalf and my obsessions are disguised and I just sneak up on them.<\/p>\n\n

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The voice in a Steve Almond story or essay or blog post is unmistakable, shaped by a tone typically anchored in dry wit, and a sharp, hungry intelligence that seems capable of taking us anywhere. The world, as Almond observes it, is at once hilarious and pathetic, sad and intensely beautiful. And it\u2019s his willingness to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":2267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36764,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36037\/revisions\/36764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}