Collected Miscellany

I really enjoyed Laila Lalami’s new novel Secret Son and so inquired about having her answer some questions via email.  She graciously agreed.

Here is a brief bio for those who may be unfamiliar with her work or background:

Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. She earned her B.A. in English from Université Mohammed V in Rabat, her M.A. from University College, London, and her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts grant and a Fulbright Fellowship. She was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing (the “African Booker”) in 2006. Her debut collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Norwegian. Her first novel, Secret Son, will be published in the spring of 2009. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside.

My questions and her answers are below.

1) What is the most challenging part about moving from the short story format to a novel and what is the best aspect?

The structure of my short story collection made it possible to take out one story and revise it, or even get rid of it and replace it with another, without having this affect the shape of the entire book. But with the novel, changes to one chapter inevitably meant changes somewhere else in the novel, so the revision process was much more labor-intensive. On the other hand, working on a novel really enabled me to stay with the same story for a long time, to inhabit it, if you will, and to keep adding layers to it.

2) How would you describe your writing style? What authors have influenced your writing?

Perhaps it is up to critics to describe my writing style. I have a hard time looking at my work with a critical eye, since there is no possibility of being completely objective. My favorite authors-and I think these are the people who have influenced me the most, since I go back to them often-are J.M. Coetzee, Chinua Achebe, Ahdaf Soueif, Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, Leila Abouzeid, Mohammed Choukri, Tayeb Salih, among others.
3) What sparked the idea for the character of Youssef?

I think I started with this image of a young man walking back home to the slum where he lives, having just watched a movie. In some sense, this journey from idealized dreams to stark reality-from lies to truths, if you will-takes place throughout the book. For instance, when Youssef’s mother reveals to him that he is the illegitimate son of a wealthy businessman, she only gives him a small part of the story of his birth, and then she changes that story several times in the book. Or when Hatim promises Youssef that he will publish an article about what happened at the university, the piece that comes out bears only a small resemblance to the events as Youssef experienced them.

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Cover of Knockemstiff

I will admit it.  I am a bit of a squish; a wimp; a prude even.  It is not that I don’t read books that touch on darker subjects or explore issues like sex and violence.  But I will admit that I prefer those subjects in small doses.  And I will further opine that few writers do these sorts of subjects well.

All of this is a roundabout introduction to my feelings on Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock.  I ordered this collection of short stories on my Kindle after having heard about Pollack’s unique path from mill worker to Ohio State student to author.  As an Ohio based blogger it seemed something I should check out.

So I did.  But I ran into a small problem.  While I could recognize that talent was involved in writing these stories, I just couldn’t bear to read them in anything but small amounts.  So I would read a story or two on the bus or before bed, but I had to spread them out over a period of time.

Publishers Weekly’s review might help give you a sense of why I had this reaction:

A native of Knockemstiff, Ohio, Pollock delivers poignant and raunchy accounts of his hometown’s sad and stagnant residents in his debut story collection that may remind readers of its thematic grand-daddy, Winesburg, Ohio. The works span 50 years of violence, failure, lust and depravity, featuring characters like Jake, an abandoned hermit who dodges the draft during WWII, lives in a bus and discovers two young siblings committing incest on the bank of a creek, and Bobby, a recovering alcoholic who must face the imminent death of his abusive father. The language and imagery of the novel are shockingly direct in detailing the pitiful lives of drug abusers, perverts and a forgotten population that just isn’t much welcome nowhere in the world. Many of the characters appear in more than one story, providing a gritty depth to the whole, but the character that stands out the most is the town, as dismal and hopeless as the locals. Pollock is intimate with the grimy aspects of a small town (especially one named after a fistfight) full of poor, uneducated people without futures or knowledge of any other way to live. The most startling thing about these stories is they have an aura of truth.

Amazon listed it in their Best Books of March last year and summed it thus:

Pollock pulls no punches–his prose is blunt and visceral, as well as stylish and skilled–and reading these mini grand guignols can be like crunching on a mouthful of your own broken teeth. He resists casting judgment (or sympathy) on his doomed reprobates; predator or prey (or sometimes both), Pollock contemplates his characters with all the warmth of a “frozen bleach bottle.”  It’s an astonishing debut.

All of the above is true and accurate to my mind.  It is an astonishing debut.  It is gritty and shockingly direct.  It does have an all too depressing aura of truth.  But in many ways I just didn’t want to keep reading.  Only my stubborn insistence of completing books helped get my through.

Pollack is clearly talented – the language and imagery involved prove that – but most days I just don’t feel like crunching on a mouthful of my own broken teeth.  So if you are made of hardier stuff than me – if you enjoy this punch in the gut kind of writing – then be sure to check out Knockemstiff.  It is a shinning example of this genre.

Those of you more faint of heart or easily depressed might want to avoid it or, like me, take it in small dozes.

ICYMI: Nigel Beale talks with Nam Le, winner of the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize and author of The Boat, about What Constitutes a Good Short Story.

I am working on an email roundtable that deals with the short story format as well, so stay tuned.