REAL: One thing that I really wanted to ask you about is how you’re recent work has taken a turn from really intensely plotted and violent stories into something like Last Night at the Lobster, which for me had a sort of ambient dread throughout. I kept expecting some traumatic event to occur but it never did. I guess this is because I’d just read A Prayer for the Dying, The Night Country, and Speed Queen. What I wanted to ask is how you deal with this change and how you think this change came about in your work?

O’Nan: Well, they lost their jobs; that’s traumatic enough. But to answer the question, I think it’s cause you’re always moving forward as a writer, so I look back and I wonder why the work was like that in the beginning. Why was it so—I don’t want to say stilted, but why was it so dire. And it came from what I had read. The reading always translates through but there was a sort of lag time, so the stuff I was reading as a young person or even in my twenties was a lot of heavily plotted horror, genre stuff, science fiction, and more genre. But also, when I first started writing seriously, I always wondered why there wasn’t more story, wasn’t more plot, why there wasn’t more climax in literary work. Especially literature in the 70s and 80s, which had just taken place when I started to write. I wanted to add story to the sort of writing we thought of as “literature,” because “literature” was far too storyless at the time.

So, like Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, and a few other people, I took some of the tropes of genre fiction and attached them to what people thought of as more “literary” fiction. The first books were more plotted because of this. And as I was reading more fiction through the 1990s and early I guess what we call “aughts,” I found that in a lot of the plotted fiction the plot was getting in the way of what I thought the novel does best: create depth and use time to illuminate character. So I thought a lot of the plotted fiction I was reading was not true in any sense to the life we were living in America, and I thought why was that. Then I began to read a lot of poetry, American lyric poetry, and I found it was doing a better job of getting across the complex emotions we have about the world, the people closest to us, and ourselves. I started wondering why fiction had become more of an entertainment and given up the depth and power of the fiction I liked the most.

This was when I started thinking real hard about what is important and what I wanted to do with fiction. I started to think more about people and how they endure day to day. I started writing more everyday kind of stuff—and that shows up, strangely enough, right after I finished The Circus Fire, when I interviewed all those older people about their lives and how their lives had changed, the places they lived had changed. So maybe it was that perspective: talking to more and more people about what was important to them. But then again, The Night Country, which comes later, was goofily plotted and was a ghost story.

REAL: So, do you believe you’ll return to more genre-influenced writing in the future?

O’Nan: You never know. It’s not that I think one is better than the other; it’s just what I’m interested in right now and what I want to try to do. The question is can I pull it off. You never know.

REAL: One theme I’ve noticed carry through all of your work is the question of defining America. To go back to the differences between some of your books: on one hand you have A Prayer for the Dying, which was inspired by Wisconsin Death Trip, with its image of frontier America; and then you have Last Night at the Lobster which is that same America a thousand miles and a hundred years away. They are drastically different, yet both are believable images of America.

O’Nan: And both speak to the promise of America. That promise that America makes to Americans and how we sometimes fool ourselves in terms of those promises, the expectations that we have, and the idea that we are Americans. We’re these crazy idealists and I think you see that in book after book after book. There is this expectation that characters have about how life is going to be, how reality is going to be, which runs into the actuality of how the world is. And they sustain these illusions. But what do these delusions do to them? And you see that throughout, whether the books are earlier or later. It’s about how these things go and most of the time things go wrong.

REAL: In those terms, how do you see the shift in your own life from being an aeronautical engineer to becoming a writer?

O’Nan: What also fascinates me is the question of whether there are second acts in American life. Well, there should be. There seem to be second acts in all kinds of life. How things change for people. But I’m an American writer; I write about America. I don’t shoot for the universal. I shoot for the specific and hope the universal extends from there.

REAL: Going back to the earlier works again, such as The Speed Queen and A Prayer for the Dying, how do you see violence as part of the American condition and in our culture and our narratives?

O’Nan: Those are two of the more violent books with very, very high body counts in them. Yet, they turn around the concept of American innocence and American idealism. Same thing with The Names of the Dead; it’s a war novel and it’s got tons and tons of combat in it. You know, we’re a country of guns; we’re a country of violence and that’s reflected in the stories we tell and what we find important. And in The Speed Queen with Stephen King being the confessor figure for America, he’s the person who understands this crazy, senseless violence because he writes about it so much. So Marjorie can go to him. And of course he’ll understand because he deals with this, though he deals with it in a totally fictional realm while what she experiences is supposedly real.

We’re drawn to violent spectacle as well. One of the questions I always asked in a Vietnam War Narrative class I taught was, Are we a warlike nation? And I wonder, are we a warlike nation? This country was founded with these great ideas that everybody is free but we back this up with everyone being free to have a gun as well to protect what is theirs and possibly take what is everybody else’s. I don’t know.

REAL: Then each book is a framing of a question about America and what our ideas are. But you never seem to give an answer.

O’nan: No, no, you’re always framing the question of why we are the way we are. Why do we think we can go to war and hold onto our ideals? Why do we think we can govern and hold onto our ideals? Because we’re based on them—we’re based on these promises of equality, promises of freedom, promises of happiness. Which are great and come true. But when they don’t come true there is this depressive reaction that sometimes can turn outwardly or inwardly violent.

REAL: Would you say that Manny in Last Night at the Lobster has reached the point where he’s at his turn? We know he’s going to go to the Olive Garden the next day but there is still the question by the end of where he’s going next in so many other parts of his life.

O’Nan: Well, that book is about the price of loyalty. So you see every different worker under Manny have a different reaction to the closing. And I think they’re all equally valuable, even someone like Nicolette who’s like, “Fuck you, you know I came in. Fuck you.” Absolutely warranted for the situation that she’s in. And yet Manny in his life outside of work is not loyal at all, but is loyal to the letter with every little thing that the Red Lobster/Olive Garden tells him to do. Is he a complete tool? Is he wrong to be so loyal to these relatively arbitrary rules that are handed down to him by these people who are basically getting rid of him? What’s the price of his loyalty?

REAL: Would you consider yourself a prolific writer?

O’Nan: Not at all.

REAL: Well, you’ve written at least one book a year for periods of time in your career.

O’Nan: Yeah, but some are very small. I’m very unprolific. Today, I’ve written two sentences. That’s it. Nothing.

Read the rest of the interview in Issue 36.2

Language Student

It’s easy, when I take into account all the variables, to see where I let a beautiful thing cancel itself, let one kind of silence turn into another. It’s easy to think, yeah, I could’ve done better, I could’ve said this or that, Y instead of X, I could’ve gone straight through to Napa and never turned onto Oakville Grade.

But there were two things I didn’t take stock of: one was the fog, a fatty wetness pinched between the knuckles of the hillside. Before I turned we could see it from the highway, and goddamn if Sophia didn’t even say, “Look at that fog. So dramatic. You see it? It’s like it comes out of the mountain.”

The other thing was physics. The atomic world is fickle. The more precise the location the less precise the momentum. Figure momentum, and position gets murky. Things change according to who’s casting glances, who’s storing the data in that wily little Spanish head of hers. I probably would’ve passed right through that mountain had Sophia not been there, observing me, tensing at every turn, working imaginary brakes, fingertips white against the door handle. And that silence — any man who’s ever reached for anything with a lady in tow knows that silence, silence that says he’s really done it this time.

The road was barely big enough for my little Nissan. I crept around the curves, trying not to appear timid. The headlights, clustered with moths, struggled against the gray, and I couldn’t see a thing except the few feet of road ahead of us. A truck flew up behind us and flashed his brights like he had an urgent message to deliver. I punched it faster to distance myself from him, but each turn was blind, causing jumpy and intermittent braking. It was a sinister piece of machinery, in dangerous pursuit, the lights pouring in on us.

“Don’t,” I said when Sophia turned to look. She stared at me, turned forward again.

I was drenched. I mean I was a puddle. I had the window down so the windshield wouldn’t fog up and I was shivering from the cold. I asked Sophia if she was cold too but she didn’t answer. I guess I knew already. We had spent the day in Wilbur Hot Springs out in the boonies north of St. Helena. It was New Years Day, and we thought what better, more symbolic way to spend the unfurling of a new year together than a lavish all-day soak in natural baths followed by a sweat in the dry sauna. The day was all relaxation and blissful silences, steam pulling from the pools emptying our thoughts. I hadn’t stopped sweating since, and I’m sure Sophia was soaked too, even if she wouldn’t tell me so.

Every now and then, the Nissan dipped off the road onto the shoulder and gravel crunched under the tires and I jerked back more abruptly than I would’ve liked. When it happened, there was a strong inclination to apologize, but I held back. She’d have seized it.

I found a narrow turnoff to let the truck pass. It roared by and its taillights streaked red and disappeared into the fog. We watched it go. This was one of those roads that belonged to the people who lived on it. They had it committed to memory. They knew every turn, every incline and decline, they navigated with no forgiveness for trespasses.

“It’s pretty hairy out here, huh?” I said, pulling back onto the road. “We’re almost at the crest of the hill though. I can feel it.” She said nothing. “Then it’s all downhill from there. Home free. Free and easy. Easy as pie.”

“Who are you talking to?” she said.

“I’m talking to you,” I said.

I wondered how far the drop-off was on her side. Might not have been a drop at all. Might’ve been a meadow for all I could see. Could be I flew off that road and in a gruesome spectacle torn right through a herd of cattle grazing pleasantly in the nighttime cool.

“If I were an axe murderer,” I said, “this road would be a prime stretch.” She aimed a stare my way that more or less imparted the edge of anger I was gaming for. “Really though,” I continued, “I mean really think about it. I could dip in and out of the mist unnoticed, unencumbered, free in my bloody sport. Let the world hold the knowledge that a random and grotesque end can find it at any moment.”

“Can’t you just shut up,” she said. When she was angry her English was hastened by rapid Catalonian rhythms. “It was a perfect day, and now you can’t shut up. You’re ruining it.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I know how the sound of my voice is unbearable to you.”

“You know that’s not it,” she said, “It’s what you say. The content.” She misplaced the stress on the second syllable, the tent in the word, as if she were saying: the satisfaction.

“Okay. I’m sorry, content-wise,” I said.

Sophia studied painting at a fancy art school in San Francisco. More than half of the school was comprised of foreign students and I taught an ESL course to help them adapt as they worked their normal course-loads. It was clear from the outset that she never needed my instruction. She’s fluent in many languages, spoken tongues aside. I had an ear for those unspoken signals in the beginning.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “But when you have that glow, that warmth, that aura of love and affection about you, I really can’t be responsible for what I say. I lose control.”

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of a coward,” she said. I was proud to hear her quote me so well. I looked over at her in time to see her smile a little. It was an exasperated, violent smile accompanied by a subtle shake of the head. But it was a smile.

Sophia’s a sight to see, and many old potbellied lechers did at the springs that day. Her hair all strangled brunette curls. Her slender neck fed into her body and pronounced her collarbones. At that golden triangle where the clavicles joined I saw sweat collect and threaten to jump down her chest just as she was flooded by light through the windshield. By the time she sucked in her breath I felt the jolt of impact and my head lurched forward, the bridge of my nose connecting with the steering wheel, issuing a weak chirp of the horn over the pop of metal and glass and plastic. We were brushed over the embankment and for a heartbeat or more we lacked the tether of gravity, mass-less, then were received by a bevy of mud and manzanitas.

“I’ve bitten my tongue,” I said.

My eyes were overwhelmed with water and I could see only Sophia’s rippled silhouette. “Are you okay?” I said.

“Your airbags don’t work,” she said.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said.

I heard two car doors close in succession. I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm. A fierce pain rose to meet my face.

“Did you hear that?” she said. “Someone’s coming.”

“Unencumbered in his bloody sport,” I said. I understood that this was the wrong thing for the moment, content-wise. We sat there for some time but no figure emerged from the fog. Sophia opened the door and the cab light found us staring at each other.

“What is it?” I said.

“You’re bleeding.”

I traced the source to my nose, to a cut on my eyebrow, and to my tongue, the tip mashed and disfigured. Remarkably, Sophia didn’t have a scratch. I tilted my head back and tasted the blood tinny and sweet in my throat.

*

I’d been in a few emergency rooms and never found them to be all that bad. Not how most people whine about them anyway. Sure you have to wait around. Sure you might be hurt. Hurt badly, as the case may be. Granted I’ve never walked in with a gut-shot or a dislocated eyeball. But what I like is this: We’re a bunch of sad sons of bitches with no recourse for aid, airing our competitive grievances, eyeing each other, judging each other’s maladies, thinking: my pain is greater than hers, lesser than his. We wait to trade our wounds for a suture of any sort.

The nurse at the window eyed me coldly. Her years of experience behind that glass had taught her that there’s fault in every injury, and she decided I was to blame. Sophia on the other hand managed to thaw the woman some. The woman told her the wait shouldn’t be too long, as if it were Sophia who needed the attention. I wandered around as they talked and laughed. Sophia could be very charming when she put her heart into it. I understood they were conspiring. It doesn’t take long for women to begin that special commiseration. It’s an exchange of sympathies that accuses the world, and me for being of it. I become a symptom of its illness, a cannibal hunting for flesh, for inaccessible provisions. Women circle their wagons, believe themselves to be under unrelenting assault from savages like me. And I’m just one of countless in my tribe. Nothing more. When we returned to the bench, Sophia left space between us. It wasn’t a lot, but enough to squeeze my indignation into. We’d run aground.

How laughable. How predictable it would be. We’d return to the city and Sophia would be relieved to focus on her classes. She’d have an openness to her. Someone would find delight in hearing her laugh. Good for her. It’d take a long time for my tongue to heal. Maybe I’d even quit the school, be done with foreigners for a while.

The walls of the emergency room were lima bean green.

Next to us, a baggy-eyed Mexican woman cradled a wailing child in one arm and with the other held a toddler in a tender headlock. She never broke her gaze from the infant. That pain is worse, I thought, the mother’s and the infant’s, the former terrified and alone, the latter writhing and red-faced with futile, inarticulate complaints. It’s always worse when you have no language to express it.

A man with a suitcase and leathery skin paced back and forth across the length of the room, running his fingers through his hair compulsively.

“What am I doing here?” he muttered. “This place is a dump. This place is an ashtray.” The comparison triggered dormant addiction, and he slinked outside and sucked down a cigarette and was back in, pacing as before, no comfort received. Another ephemeral indulgence, I thought. Enjoy it, buddy.

After we’d been tossed from the road, Sophia and I climbed up the embankment and the car that hit us had already driven off. It was a phantom descended from the ether to royally fuck my night. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital the EMT, a thick, inordinately pale man, pinched the cut on my brow with a butterfly bandage and wrapped gauze over my tongue.

“What kind of bastard leaves the scene,” he said. That’s one of those phrases you hear in cop talk on TV — leaves the scene. The EMT cleaned my face and repeated his question several times as if it meant something at all to him.

I tried to answer that I didn’t know, that I hadn’t seen the guy, but the gauze was sitting fat and fuzzy in my mouth, pools of saliva collecting in my cheeks.

“Who can say?” Sophia said. “We didn’t get a look.” She held my head in her arms, gently tugging at my hair and rubbing my temples and neck. Her eyes were somewhere far off.

“But I suppose it isn’t so difficult,” she said. “After all, it’s what, ten centimeters from the brake to the gas?”

The EMT blinked at her as if he were learning something new about the universe. He turned to me, still blinking, but by then I’d surrendered the conversation.