31 minute read
Scott Semegran interviews James Wade
Two Texans Walk Into a Coffee Shop…
On Saturday, July 12th, I drove from Austin to Wimberley, Texas to spend time at Fair Dinkum Coffee Shop with award-winning author James Wade, and to talk about writing and books and his latest novel Narrow the Road, an excellent work of historical fiction that—in my estimation—is somewhere between Huckleberry Finn and The Body by Stephen King. It’s also, I believe, his best novel yet. At this point in time and history around our interview, Texas had just experienced its worst flooding in a while. Initially, we glumly talked about the victims from Camp Mystic in Kerr County and the poor response from political leaders in Texas, but that wasn’t our focus for this interview. We were there in that quaint coffee shop to talk about Narrow the Road, and so much more. Here’s where we started.
Scott Semegran: Let’s talk about your new book, the new novel Narrow the Road. It’s your fifth novel in six years. You’re quite the prolific writer. It’s such a fantastic book. You received your first Publishers Weekly starred review. What was the initial nugget of inspiration for you and this story?
James Wade: I had spent a good deal of time researching East Texas around the Great Depression era for my last novel, Hollow Out the Dark, and even after I’d written the book it still felt like there was more to tell about this time period and this place. So I had my setting, but I wasn’t sure what the story would be. I decided to start in a town I’d always wanted to write about—Manning, Texas. It was a mill town. Now, it’s nothing more than basically a historical marker, but Manning was a thriving mill town in the early 1900s, and my great-grandmother was born there, and so I had always heard of Manning growing up, and how it was purely a company town. That means the company built your house. They stocked the store and the commissary where you spent your wages. There were movie theaters that the company would pay for movies to come in and for performers. So it was really the most labor-focused community. Also, it was segregated. They had whites in one area Blacks in the other. They also had Italians in one area, which I didn’t know there were a ton of Italians in East Texas in the 1920s. So, I was fascinated by Manning and the way that the town worked, the way they got supplies there on the rail and brought in things like great blocks of ice that took several people to unload off the train. So I had all this interest and background with Manning, and then when I sat down to write, I realized it was going to be a story about this boy’s journey, in both the physical and spiritual sense. So alas, we had to leave Manning pretty early on.
As both a reader and a writer, I love stories where you have a point A and a point B, and then you just go along the path to something. It’s a lovely metaphor for grander themes, but on a more practical level it kind of keeps the momentum going for the writer. It takes a little bit of the pressure off. You already have some built-in motion happening.
SS: I’ve read all of your novels and I noticed something starkly different with this one. So, unlike your other novels, which have these unrelenting forces coming in from the outside causing the protagonist to do something in particular, whether it’s people from the outside, coming in doing things to them, someone dies, or someone’s making decisions for them. In this novel, that inciting force is coming from within a family and, particularly, the repercussions from William’s father’s decisions. So, can you talk about this change in focus? Because for me, at least having read four of your books before, it was rather a stark difference, and I really became fascinated with the story earlier on because of that difference. Can we talk about that?
JW: With this novel and for this character, William Carter, his circumstances are still dictated by outside forces. He’s in the position he’s in based on a number of things: the Great Depression, failing cotton farm, his mother’s illness and her refusal to be treated by doctors, the choices that his father has made. All of this is outside of his control, certainly. But to your point, every action in the book happens because William makes a decision. First one, then another, and we see him take agency of not just his life but of the plot, and that is very much on purpose to where, from the moment that he makes the decision to leave to the moment that the book ends, he is the one who was in control of the story. And that is part of the hero’s journey, and it puts him in that light, and it lets the reader be close to him. We see how he agonizes over some of these decisions.
He gets very conflicted about whether he is making the right decisions and that conflict weighs heavy on him as we get deeper into the novel and the characters get deeper into the woods both physically and metaphorically. Hopefully the reader can feel the fear and frustration and hesitation and uncertainty that dogs him at every step. I know I empathize with those emotions. I tend to feel overwhelmed with indecision in just everyday life, but particularly big decisions and important decisions. And so I felt everything that he feels in these different moments of, am I going down the right path, right? And that’s where the title comes from—Narrow the Road. There are so many paths and there are so many ways to live your life, but it feels like there are only a narrow few that will ever work out the way you want. And, of course, you have to figure out for yourself whether that’s actually true. But for the story, I wanted everything to come from William. That way, all the good things were because of him, but also all of the bad things were because of him. He has to wear both of those on his heart for the duration of the novel.
SS: How is it that the stakes for a young-adult protagonist seem so much bigger and so much grander than for adults? I mean, it just seems like the choices they make are just so agonizing. For your adult protagonists, of course, they’re thinking about things, agonizing about them. But for William, it just seems like it’s on such a grander scale.
JW: Well, do you remember your yard when you were a kid? Is it bigger when you were a kid than when you come back to it as an adult? I think that’s part of it, right? We’re seeing these things through William’s eyes and through William’s eyes, everything is this grand decision. You know, that part of being human is having these unwieldly emotions in general, because certainly as a teenager, you really are stuck, kind of in between boyhood and manhood, and a lot of folks have to grow up quicker than others. And we get that with William. We see where he’s trying to be a man or where he’s trying to make himself taller when he’s talking to the banker. But we also see that he’s just a kid and he’s scared of losing his mom. He wants to go find his father in order to have another adult handle it. It’s a journey towards manhood, yet what he’s really seeking is kind of the ultimate boyhood.
I feel like when I read stories like Sometimes Island (note: he’s referring to the novel The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island by Scott Semegran), when the stakes are presented to the reader through a young person’s eyes, everything just seems more immediate and stressful. Maybe that’s because kids don’t know to act like everything’s cool the way adults do or something. They just they don’t know how to lie to themselves as well as adults do yet. They’ll get there.
SS: I can’t help but compare William’s retreat out west to Jonah from your underappreciated novel River, Sing Out, his escape down the river and out into the ocean. Hope it’s not a spoiler alert. It came out few years ago, but whatever. I think these novels are cousins in a way. I remember after I read River, Sing Out that I had kind of a bad taste in my mouth because of some of the violence in the book, but I couldn’t escape thinking about Jonah and River hiding in the woods and then Jonah escaping all of that violence by going out to the ocean. So, why do these two young men escape to nature at the end? What is it about both of them that they’ve experienced these traumatic events, these experiences, and then they decide to retreat out into nature? What is it about that, for you as the writer, that seems like the idyllic way to kind of remove themselves?
JW: It works on a lot of levels for me. For one, personally, that’s my escape, is getting away from everyone and everything and getting out into nature on a hike or in the mountains. Or even just in my backyard, in a place that I can be quiet for a little bit. And then, also, I think that it works in terms of a literary device, a literary tool, classic literature, like when you escape to the sea, or when you see water as redemption, or in William’s case, going out west. Think of the Elvish ships in the harbor to take our heroes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy west to Valinor at the end of their journey. So, I think there’s a little bit of that metaphoric nature there. But then, I think most importantly, is that you’ve just had all of these incredibly impactful and even traumatic things happen in both of these novels. How are you supposed to stay? If you’re these boys and you’ve just undergone all these things, not only do you not want to stay just on like the practical level of, like all this crazy stuff just happened and it’s probably best that you leave. But also in terms of processing, how do you process something if you’re still in it? You’ve got to go somewhere else. Like Larry McMurtry said, he had to go to Virginia to accurately write about Texas. And so, for William, he has to get away from all this before he can really process, not just what happened, but what it means to him and for him. He has this great moment on this mountain that I intentionally mirrored a little bit of Moses on Mount Sinai, and coming to this realization. And I think you need that. I think you need that space. So, I always want to have them get away a little bit, because that’s when I really think they can understand what’s happened to them.
SS: William has a real respect for his mother’s strength and Lena’s survival skills. William’s earliest memory is of his mother comforting him after he hurts his knee (p133) and he’s impressed rather than belittled while witnessing Lena dress a rabbit as well as start a campfire without matches (p211-212). Can you expand on this idea that young men should find comfort and inspiration from strong, independent women in their lives?
JW: Lena is more capable than both boys when it comes to surviving. And William’s mother always contained an element of grace and a strong, comforting nature—even as she is dying. William doesn’t have either of these things. At least not to the degree that these two women do, but instead of lashing out against that or being wary of it, William understands that these different skillsets are necessary to create wholeness. We all bring different things to the table, and to embrace our varied strengths means to become stronger as a collective. William, Lena, and Ollie’s only shot at surviving this ordeal is to lean on one another. It shouldn’t matter what sex someone is. Strengths are strengths. That said, yeah, the strange notion that boys are supposed to somehow dominate girls is obviously incredibly outdated. A man shouldn’t fear a strong woman unless he’s afraid of being called on his shit and ultimately having to better himself—which I think is likely the case when men are put off by strength and independence in women.
SS: Your description of the Texas landscape is as beautiful and as detailed as ever. Why is this important to you?
JW: For me, as a reader, I love to see that stuff. I think it really brings us into the story more. I can just place myself there and see it in my head better.
So, I like that, and I also like to use natural setting as a character. The kids are not only contending with nefarious characters and with their own desires, but they’re contending with the landscape. I want to really give readers a sense of how claustrophobic it can be when you get in these deep woods or, how tough it can be to manage a river in a boat. It’s just important to me. I think I’m drawn to naturalism as a reader and so, it can’t help but come out in my writing. I also think it offers—craft wise—writers a chance to develop their own prose style to show folks how they see the world. When I move through the world or move through the woods, I’m noticing these things. I think it’s a great way for writers to express the way that we observe what’s around us.
SS: When I finished this novel, I was really inspired to get back to my own writing. Who’s inspired you lately to get back to the desk and do some writing? Who’s knocked your socks off lately?
JW: Lately? Everybody. (laughs) I just read Orbital by Samantha Harvey. It was so good, it was depressing. Because I just thought to myself, try as I might, for as long as I might, I don’t think I can ever do what she did. I was jealous because it was a great idea. It has a great structure to the novel and I was jealous that I had not come up with something like that first. I think Orbital was the one that really lit the fire under me that I’m gonna have to step up my game. I mean, she’s just won the Booker Prize and that’s leagues from where I am in terms of popularity and publicity, but in terms of being my own best and worst critic, I definitely think that that novel lit a fire, but everybody’s doing great stuff. And such different stuff.
You know what I mean? I was looking at Starman (note: he’s referring to the novel Starman After Midnight by Scott Semegran) the other day. It’s so different than other stuff you’ve done. It’s so different than Orbital, which was so different than Rednecks by Taylor Brown, which is so different than Brother Brontë by Fernando A. Flores, you know, just take your pick. I’m going back through William Gay’s catalog right now. I just finished The Lost Country. I would say it’s not as good as Provinces of Night, but I would say, it’s just as good of writing. It just isn’t as tight of a story, probably because it was cobbled together after he died. But just going back through his catalog, is he the most unsung, uncelebrated genius of a writer that we’ve ever had? I don’t know, maybe not, because I know who he is, but it just makes me wonder: who’s out there toiling away writing the most brilliant stuff?
SS: I remember after reading Fernando A. Flores’ book Brother Brontë and just being like floored that he was swinging for the fences with his metaphors and similes, like they were almost so wacky that at first, I thought, ‘Well, he’s being really brave.’ And then I thought, ‘No man, he’s like fucking going for it.’ I mean, the book opens up where he’s describing the rain as like big slabs of deli ham hitting the asphalt, and the first thing I thought was ‘What the fuck?’ And then, I thought, ‘You know, I can hear that, it makes sense.’ And then, I’m like, ‘Why am I not being more like, just fuck it?’ It just made me think that his style is nothing like what I do, but also, why not just swing for the fences, all the time?
JW: To be honest with you, Scott, I don’t even know what that would look like for me. This next novel that I’m working on right now, I’m not gonna call it a ‘swing for the fences,’ but I’m definitely trying to stretch a single into a double or something. I’m hitting one in the gap and trying to go for three. It has sci-fi elements to it. And that’s obviously completely out of my wheelhouse. It’s modern day with sci-fi elements. Other than River, Sing Out, I’ve never even done modern day, let alone anything outside of stark realism. I think most writers who aren’t under the umbrella of generic or trendy fiction—like writers who are trying to create something intimate and singular, as opposed to playing to the market or appealing to the masses—I do believe they swing for the fences just by writing. Fernando does this. Jennifer du Bois, Lindsay Stern, Stewart O’Nan. They all take big swings just by writing at all.
SS: It’s a good segue into something I wanted to talk to you about. According to recent surveys, people are just reading less. The most recent SPPA (Survey of Public Participation in the Arts) survey recently said that only 37 percent of people in the U.S read one novel in the previous year. And that’s the lowest in their three decade history. And then with men, it seems that most men, statistically, are not reading fiction. They’re reading non-fiction, if they’re reading at all. And so there have been articles asking, “Where is the literary man?” The man that would go to the bookstore. He would read novels. Where did this person go? I find it to be a peculiar question because here’s two literary men sitting right here at the table. (both laugh) I read like 30 novels last year. And so, to see a statistic that says that barely anybody read one novel is disheartening. What do you make of that of? We seem to be at a time where people are not looking to fiction for empathy. They’re not looking to fiction to escape, and what do we do with that, as writers of literary fiction? It’s not the popular genre anymore.
JW: I’ve seen so many articles over the past five years that try to address this question, and I think a lot of the times they try to address it from within the industry. You know, men aren’t reading because, ‘What is there to read?’ I think that the reason that the publishing industry is so geared toward women right now is because women are the ones who have continued to read. I don’t think it’s a chicken and the egg situation. I think that what happened is men stopped reading, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the books that were being written or the authors that were being promoted. I think it has far more to do with things outside of the publishing industry and the publishing industry’s control. I think that you’re competing with video games. You’re competing with the manosphere. I think you’re competing with outside entertainment, but even more so, I think you’re competing with a culture that, for decades now, has promoted a type of anti-intellectual masculinity and has said that that is what a man is supposed to be. And ultimately, I think that you’ve rewarded that behavior. And this is me, of course, speaking in generalities. But I’m not in the more refined, liberal bubble that a lot of my peers are. I live in a red town in a red county in a red state. I grew up in a red town in a red county in a red state. I am all too aware of what folks believe qualifies as manly behavior.
SS: I realize that I’m an outlier in Texas. I don’t watch football. I don’t play first-person shooters. My idea of fun is hanging out with my wife and traveling, reading books, and writing. And it’s frustrating because I feel intelligence should be rewarded. I feel like empathy should be rewarded. And that’s something that we’re offering in our novels, is that here’s a perspective to think about, here’s beautiful language. Here’s maybe a scenario you’ve never been in before. I’ve always considered myself a feminist, and I’m frustrated with the state of the way things are in Texas right now and in the U.S. And that type of masculine figure that you’re explaining, the anti-intellectual figure, is repellent to me. I feel like there’s more to offer men than stepping back intellectually, you know? And just being primordial.
JW: You’re preaching to the choir. I think there was a time in this country where the more intellectual man was revered and rewarded, and I think we’ve gotten away from that as well. I don’t know. I mean, I sound like an old man right now. I sound like ‘the culture is deteriorating.’ And maybe it is? I don’t know, but it really just seems like the reasoned voices are drowned out by the loud ones. It seems like the kind and empathetic men are pushed aside by the seemingly strong and tough. Which, of course, we know that they are that way because they are the least secure in who they are. They are the most scared.
I don’t know, man, I think fearful, reactionary masculinity is something that went unchecked for so long and now we’re trying to deal with it. I don’t think we have a grasp on even what it is, let alone how to fix it.
SS: That’s one thing I noticed that we have in common, that although our writing styles are very different and our books, story wise are very different, one thing I noticed right away is we’re both asking similar questions concerning, ‘What makes a man? What’s considered masculine? What are the repercussions of violence? Why is it that this just keeps perpetuating over and over again? How come men can’t just step out of it and talk about their feelings? Why did we grow up with these men that wanted to scare us to death, scare us into submission, maybe hit us? Do these kind of things and then expect that to be role-model behavior?’ We both had overbearing fathers. My father was an overbearing guy, got that from the military. You’ve been very open about your relationship with your father. But this is taught behavior for these people, right? And why is it that we can’t just move forward? But I have noticed that you and I have both talked about this, thematically, in our work. What have you gotten from exploring masculinity where you grew up? How do you think you’ve grown exploring this thematically in your work? Has it made you a better father? Has it made you a better husband? Do you feel like you’re a better friend and a more well-rounded person for it?
JW: I don’t know that I have grown from that side of it. I think any time that you put something under the microscope and really dissect it and take a look at every part of what makes you “You,” I think that there is a certain self-awareness that comes with that. I don’t think it necessarily always equals growth. And for me, I think I’m still in the ‘being aware of things’ phase. I want to grow. Perhaps I have. And perhaps I will continue to. I think that looking at my past, looking at the role masculinity or toxic masculinity has played, the role that rural Texas has played, the role that bigotry has played, the role that child abuse has played, the role that complex PTSD and panic attacks has played, any of that stuff—I think you just have to be aware of all the things that make up the operating system that’s inside you that is essentially making decisions. If you’re aware of the things that make up who you are, that’s when you can actually start to grow and change. Right now, I’m still kind of just in the trying to be aware of all the different parts of myself.
SS: How important is your wife Jordan to your writer life? This is something I wanted to ask because you don’t really hear a lot about partners. Doesn’t necessarily have to be spouses, just someone in your life. It could be a romantic partner. It could be a spouse. It could be a parent. It could be a neighbor. But as a creative person, I know she supports you. How important is she in your writer life?
JW: The limit does not exist there. It’s invaluable. There’s nobody that has supported me the way that she has from day one. What Jordan has done is supported me while also pushing me. Without that, I mean, if I go back and look at all the waypoints of the last 15 years of my life, every big decision that was a net positive for my life was either influenced or absolutely directed by Jordan. So, if something were to go bad between us, and she realizes she could find a way cooler, richer husband, and left me. I would be devastated, but I would also still say in interviews, ‘without my ex-wife, who’s now married to a hot billionaire, without her, I would not have ever been able to be a writer.’ I mean, that’s on the record as true as could ever be, no matter what happens in the future. She’ll always get that credit.
SS: There’s definitely a demarcation in my life from before my wife, Lori, to after we married as far as my writing quality and output. Before I married my wife, my writing was just garbage. My writer life was garbage. What I was producing was garbage, and then afterwards, in fact, the first few years we were married, I wasn’t writing at all because I had stopped before I met her. And told her that I missed it, so she, for the first few years we were together, she didn’t know me as a writer, really. I mean, she knew I had written books. She knew I had written things. But then once, I kind of got that little nudge from her, she said, you should start writing again. I’ve just been more prolific than ever because she offers to not only read my work, but she edits my work. She goes to book festivals with me. She encourages me to do some of these things, and it’s just an invaluable part of my life, where she’s giving me free reign to do that, because there have been times in my life where I didn’t have free rein to do that. I’d have people saying, ‘Why are you doing that? You’re not going to make money at that. What’s the point of writing books?’ These are things that people have said to me, to my face. Why are you doing that? And my wife has said to me, you should be doing that. So, I imagine Jordan in your life is like that with you.
JW: Oh yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head, man. When you have that kind of support in general, but especially from a person that you care about, and like you said, it could be any type of relationship, but a person that you care about and that you care what their opinion is. There are a lot of people that can support you, and that’s very nice. But I don’t need their support in order to do this. It’s significant when it comes from a person who is one of the people that you’re closest to. It’s not just about support, it’s about how to support. It’s not just about help, it’s about the help you need in the way that you need it.
SS: What is it about Narrow the Road that is different for you from the previous books? Because I’ve noticed not only the difference that we talked about earlier about the forces being internal in the family instead of external forces coming in, but there’s also a confidence there. I would say that now, to me more than any of your other books, that this is you emerging as a storyteller. Rather than just a writer or novelist who maybe is atmospheric, or maybe reminds people of other writers in style, but that there’s a real story here, and a confidence in the storytelling, to me, that’s different than before. Why do you think that is?
JW: I don’t know, but I’m glad you think that.
SS: I think when someone says you’re a storyteller over being just a writer, storytelling to me is like you’re hypnotizing people, right? There’s something so compelling about it, and I find that in this story. What do you think that is?
JW: I think a percentage of it is that I got back to the travel story. I just think that as a reader, I enjoy that so much. Journeying to me is like the ultimate symptom of humans. Whether it’s a physical journey or emotional, spiritual journey. To have a novel where I knew right off the bat, we’re in a place, and we’re going to go to another place—that does give you a little bit of confidence because it takes a little bit of the pressure off. You still have to figure out everything that happens in the middle, and you have to figure out what you want to happen with characters and how you want things to end up. But in terms of where is the story going? Well, at least you have a little bit of an answer, even if it’s only like the physical place. It’s going to this place. I think that freed me up a little bit to tell the story, to have more confidence in the choices that that I was making.
That’s the answer I would give you just sitting here because, honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think writers try to answer every question, a lot of times, even if they don’t actually have the answer. I think that what I said could be a percent of it. But I don’t really know. At the end of the day, I’m just glad you liked it. I’m glad some other early readers have seemed to like it. But now it’s time for me to turn the page and move on to the next book and try to do it all over again and hopefully make it a little better each time.
SS: Now that you’ve had five books out, what is your relationship to things like reviews and what people say about your work?
JW: I think I learned just with the first one—I don’t think it took five—to just tune most of that stuff out. I’ve been called great, I’ve been called terrible. Neither of those things help me write. Bad reviews are a part of the business. Being overly praised is too. Everything is so reactionary. So subjective. I’ve won some nice awards that I’m incredibly honored to have won. But those awards were based on judges, and those judges are just people, and that’s just subjective. I got lucky that the right people at the right time were reading the right book. That’s not to downplay accomplishments or to downplay criticism, which can sometimes be helpful. But for the most part, I just tune all that shit out. It doesn’t help me get better at or execute my craft. And that’s all that I’m concerned with.
SS: Percival Everett said recently, when someone was asking about him winning the Pulitzer Prize, he said ‘Next week, it would have been somebody else.’ He kind of looks at it like, ‘I won the book award lottery that day.’
JW: That’s a really good way to look at it. Next week, it would have been someone else. That guy’s kind of smart.
SS: What’s up next for you?
JW: I’ve got one year left of grad school. During that time, I’m working on a sixth novel and I’m terrified of it because it’s unlike anything I’ve done before. It deals with astrophysics and a little bit of sci-fi and just things both philosophically and tangibly that I haven’t dealt with in fiction before. We’ll see what happens. I mean, we talked about swinging for the fences. I’m gonna swing out of my shoes. Let’s just hope I make contact, because if not, it’s gonna be a very embarrassing swing and a miss. But, we’ll see.
SS: Wow, I look forward to science fiction from James Wade. Finally, I have a speed round of questions. Short answers only. Faulkner or Steinbeck? If you had to choose just one.
JW: Steinbeck.
SS: Best unleaded beverage: hop water or decaf coffee?
JW: Neither. Those both sound terrible.
SS: Best way to learn fiction writing: grad school or reading books?
JW: Reading.
SS: Best writing location: an Airstream in West Texas or a cabin in the Hill Country?
JW: Oh God. Airstream in West Texas.
SS: Who is smarter: Trump or a horned lizard?
JW: Horned lizard.
SS: If you were stuck on a deserted island and you could only have one book, would it be something by Cormac McCarthy or Larry McMurtry?
JW: McCarthy, and not even close by the way. McMurtry would not even crack the top 20.
SS: Who has the filthier potty mouth: Kimberly Garza or Stacey Swann?
JW: Oh, Kim Garza. She’s been known to inscribe books with “fuck James Wade.” And I don’t know how to explain that in a context that makes it endearing and shows that we’re good friends—but it is and we are. And apparently, I need to hang out with Stacey Swann more.
SS: What’s better living: city living or country living?
JW: God. Country living, by the slimmest of margins. Whatever the margin is between McCarthy and McMurtry, it’s the opposite of that.
SS: If you weren’t writing books, then what other profession would you be doing?
JW: Breaking rocks. I want to be like John Henry, hammering railroad ties.
SS: What is your idea of happiness?
JW: Wholeness is my idea of happiness.
***
And that’s what James Wade left me with: wholeness is his idea of happiness. After that, we hugged it out. I hopped back in my car and drove back to Austin where my wife and daughter were waiting for me. I thought about Steinbeck and Narrow the Road and all the things we discussed about writing and books and publishing and why the hell men aren’t reading more fiction. It was a lot. But wholeness? That’s it right there. That’s what it’s all about.
