q&a | jason mott
Creativity unleashed ©MICHAEL BECKER PHOTOGRAPHY
Bestselling author Jason Mott embraces comedy, absurdity and catharsis in his revelatory new novel. Hell of a Book (Dutton, $27, 9780593330968) is a dazzling, perfectly balanced novel that mixes fantasy with devastating reality, wit with sorrow, loss with hope. Jason Mott discusses how he crafted this novel about an unnamed author who encounters a possibly imaginary boy while on tour for his own novel, which is also titled Hell of a Book.
Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of Hell of a Book.
Your protagonist has an unusual relationship with his own imagination. Does this sense of fantasy and reality bleeding together come from your own experience as a writer? Most definitely. For myself, and for many others I’d bet, the real world gets a bit overwhelming most days. That’s what led me to books and, later, to writing. The real world was more bearable if I could escape into imagination on a regular basis. I’ve been living in imaginary worlds so often and for so long that, well, it’s sorta hard to turn the dream machine off! But I wouldn’t change that for anything. I feel bad for people who only live in the real world when there are entire universes waiting to be imagined. The novel’s descriptions of book touring are surreal. What’s the strangest tour experience you’ve had as an author? Oh man . . . this is a loaded question. I’ve had quite a few strange book tour experiences ranging from a man very obsessed with my teeth, to finding love— briefly—to passing out in the middle of an airplane aisle from exhaustion. I should save some of the strangest stories for future writing projects, so how about a more heartwarming story about a mix-up caused by the letter “e”? I was in St. Louis, and this woman comes out to my event with her 11-yearold son, dressed in a beautiful St. Louis Cardinals jersey. Everyone takes their seats, and the bookstore owner gives me a wonderful introduction. As soon as I step up to the podium, the boy wearing the baseball jersey raises his hand. He says, with a mixture of confusion and annoyance in his voice, “You’re not Jason Mott.” And well, obviously I was Jason Mott. But it turned out that I wasn’t Jason Motte, the relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals whom the boy had convinced his mother to bring him out to see in the hopes of getting his baseball signed. Pretty strange how something as small as an “e” at the end of a name can ruin a boy’s dreams for the evening.
What did you learn about yourself through the writing of this book? Honestly, I’m still unpacking what I learned from this novel. If I had to give an answer, I would say that I’ve learned to lean into who I am as a person and as a writer. I’ve wanted to write this type of novel for years but avoided it for various reasons. I’ve gained a new confidence, and I hope that it leads to more creative exploration and new paths of storytelling in the future. Hell of a Book is contending with a lot of Black Americans’ pain at various points in the story. How did the writing of this novel serve you? There was a lot of meditation and catharsis in this novel. A massive amount of its creation was simply the act of me trying to figure out my thoughts on life as a Black American. While countless others have added to this conversation, I felt that there were still parts of this topic going undiscussed and, even more, not explored through fantasy/absurdist methods. So this novel served to help me find my own way of—hopefully—contributing to America’s ongoing conversations on race, identity and healing. The snappiness of the novel’s language sometimes feels like the story is set within the world of a black-and-white film, like His Girl Friday. Tell us about this style. Film noir is a beautiful time capsule of language. Its use of slang, its pacing and cadence—film noir treats the American English lexicon in ways that few other media have, and that fascinates me. Hell of a Book allowed me, finally, to play with language in a way that I hadn’t been able to before, which “Longtime made for some of the most challenging and fun writing I’ve ever done. How do you hope readers will approach this book, and then leave it? One of the mottos I live by is that you have to be willing to meet others where they live. I believe that mindset leads to better understanding and empathy overall. So I hope that readers come to this book willing to meet it where it lives, which is a place of absurdity, tragedy and uncertainty. I know that can be a lot to ask of a reader, which is why I worked hard to offer something rewarding: sometimes comedy, sometimes catharsis, or if I got lucky enough in the writing, maybe even joy once in a while. As for when the reader leaves? Well, I hope they never leave. I hope this book stays with people. Because, if that happens, maybe the real-world events that these characters are so haunted by can be changed in the real world. And then maybe these types of stories won’t need to be written anymore. Wouldn’t that be something? —Matthew Jackson
KRISTIN HANNAH
fans will love The Girls in the Stilt House.” —POPSUGAR
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