by Trevor Newberry
Steve Almond is the author of two story collections, My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the non-fiction book Candyfreak, and the novel Which Brings Me to You, co-written with Julianna Baggott. He lives outside Boston with his wife and baby daughter Josephine, who can and will kick your ass with cuteness.
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Q: In your most recent full-length work of non-fiction, (Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions, you have an extended piece about Kurt Vonnegut. You speak of your admiration of his work, his life, and even write about your hours upon hours of relentless research on his life, to your pregnant wife’s chagrin, no less. This piece leads me to ask: Why Vonnegut?
A: Well, I read him compulsively as a high schooler and actually wrote my undergrad thesis about him. But later, like a lot of people, I wound up dismissing him as kids stuff. Then, a couple of years ago I went to see him speak on a panel and it was just like: wow. As our species gets more and more vicious, his work seems more and more prophetic. He’s also the guy anyone can read and say, “This is a smart guy who gets it.” His books are sad and funny at the same time, which is an important lesson about life. So that’s why I wrote the piece. I want some 19-year-old kid to get all worked up about Vonnegut and pick up one of his books, and maybe he’ll become a reader.
Q: You also mention writer/producer/director/actor John Hughes quite a bit. Why John Hughes?
A: I was a 35-year-old guy the first time I saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I thought it was just going to be a teen movie. But it turns out to be this very heavy Oedipal drama. Ferris’s best friend Cameron has what amounts to a nervous breakdown. He finally stands up to his dad. It captures the rage of being an adolescent. John Hughes snuck real art into the multiplex. It’s a clever movie that’s incredibly deep.
“Well, I don’t think it’s exactly a state secret that the young people aren’t reading as much as they used to. We’re raising a bunch of little screen addicts. And my feeling is, I want to get people—young people especially—reading.”
Q: As a poet, I really admire that your quick, witty prose finds time to savor its own rhythm. That is, you’re not one of those prose writers who just gets to the story and forgets about your diction. Your writing has a distinct sound. With that, who is one of your favorite poets?
A: C.K. Williams. He’s a very narrative poet, but he’s absolutely fearless about investigating his own past, the most intense and painful moments, and slowing down through those moments, so that the brutal truth can lift the language into beauty. “Tar” or “Flesh and Bones” or best of all his collected poems. Astonishing. I’m also a big fan of Yehuda Amichai, the late, great Israeli poet. And Thomas Lux and Stephen Dunn.
Q: Now, Steve, I know you worked with writer Julianna Baggott on the collabo-written novel, Which Brings Me to You. How did that come into being?
A: We already knew each other through literary circles, and she called me one day and said, “I think we should write a book.”
Q: Was it difficult to write with a different mind moving the other half of the narrative?
A: At times it was as sweet as can be. It was like dating. We would send each other new chapters via email and it was so exciting, to know that another very smart, beautiful writer was going to read your stuff. What a sexy prospect. But then, inevitably, we started criticizing each other’s work. First it was the characters fighting, but by the second draft it was us going straight at each other. A real shit storm. Two writer egos in the same book. The thing is, as a writer, we’re used to being the boss of our own obscure worlds. That’s the one payoff. Maybe nobody ever reads the work, but at least you call the shots. But the truth is, the fighting we did made the book better. It created a real tension between the two main characters, a chance they might not get together. And a love story without that risk is boring as hell. Just ask Jane Austen.
Q: I know you’ve written successful works of both fiction and non-fiction. Do you prefer one over the other?
A: I’m happiest, I think, writing short stories. They feel less self-involved, and more imaginative. That’s the rock bottom truth. But at the same time, there’s plenty of what I do—the political ranting and the wisecracking comes to mind—that just doesn’t belong in a piece of fiction. Non-fiction gives me a venue where I can express those parts of my mishagoss. In either case, it boils down to telling the truth about the stuff that matters to you most deeply. It’s just a matter of whether there’s a fictional disguise or not.
Q: As a writer who values the power of the expletive, what is your favorite curse word?
A: Fuck-nut. As a derogatory term, it’s so hostile yet incredibly euphonious. There’s an internal rhyme in there: the soft “u” sound. It’s also got those hard consonants, the “k” then the “t” sound. It’s a very pleasing word to say. Give it a try.
Q: Who is a writer whose work you’d prefer to bury, never to be seen again?
A: Bury? That’s a little harsh. A writer who disappoints me is Chuck Palahniuk. I’ve read two of his books and I’m always thinking to myself: why does this guy make so many tampon jokes? He’s clearly smart enough—intellectually and psychologically and emotionally—to dig deeper into his characters. But he sells them and himself short.
Q: Who is a writer whose work you admire?
A: Geez. How much tape do you have? But okay, I’ll limit myself to John Williams. Not the guy who wrote the music for Star Wars. This is John Williams the writer. He wrote three novels, the second of which, a book called Stoner, is about my favorite novel in the world. It should be taught in every modern American novel class.
Q: Are you working on anything at the moment? Anything we should know about?
A: Only a couple of stories I’m kinda disappointed with.
Q: And, finally, your writing has somewhat of a dual personality: It draws the literary crowd, but it has a broad appeal among “everyday” readers. It’s literature with, dare I say, a pop edge?
A: Well, I don’t think it’s exactly a state secret that the young people aren’t reading as much as they used to. We’re raising a bunch of little screen addicts. And my feeling is, I want to get people—young people especially—reading. I want to expand the community of readers. And one of the ways I do that is by writing about stuff that has often been considered outside the dignified precinct of literature. Such as candy and heavy metal music and female ejaculation and Michael Jackson’s dick. I’m interested in our cultural pathologies. Writers need to explore that stuff, too. And one of the by-products, at least I hope, is that this makes my work more accessible to people who may feel that literature doesn’t speak to them. You know, when I do a reading and I’m goofing around, my hope is always that there’s some freshman from some composition class who’s been bullied into attending, doesn’t even really want to be there, and he or she listens to what I have to say and maybe this is one thing that might eventually lead them to pick up a book, to become a reader. Because I agree with my man Kurt Vonnegut on this basic point: America is doomed, the species is doomed, if we can’t find ways to engage with works of imagination. That’s what art is for: it’s there to make us more compassionate, more Christian in the best sense of that word—to make us feel more than we did before.
