(This interview first appeared in the Marshall Messenger)
IS THIS YOUR FIRST PUBLISHED BOOK?
The Town of Watered-Down Whiskey (TWDW) is my 15th book, but my first novel. The previous books have been textbooks, technical manuals, and trade nonfiction.
WHY DID YOU WRITE THIS NOVEL?
I began the novel 30 years ago, as a series of short stories. The stories were, of course, on a topic I knew well, that is, coming of age in a small town in the prairies, in Minnesota. The stories were all located in Minneota, my hometown, and the characters were also shared. In 10 years, with a number of interrelated short stories written, I realized that by writing short segues between the stories, I had a complete novel.
As for the deeper question of why I wrote the short stories I did, the answer wasn’t clear to me until I tied them together to form a “long story,” that is, a novel. I thought originally that the novel was about me, whom one reviewer described as “… the physically inept but intellectually astute observer and participant, who has the sensitivity but not the fortitude to act as nobly as he would like.” OK, that’s pretty accurate. But seeing the novel as a whole, I realized that it was about “community,” that is, life as it is lived in small towns in America. The reviewer called it “… a superb interweaving of history, fairytale, and fascinating characters, through which both the nurturing and the destructive small-town culture emerge.” The comedy and the tragedy of small-town life.
The main character in my novel is Minneota. It’s a biography of a small town.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE NOVEL? WHAT KIND OF STORY IS IT? WHAT WILL READERS UNDERSTAND BETTER AFTER READING THIS NOVEL?
So first and foremost, TWDW is a novel about community – most of the time warm, friendly, and supportive, but occasionally cold, unfriendly, and critical. For a while, my working title was “The Dark Side of Lake Wobegon,” in homage to Garrison Keillor and his stories on Prairie Home Companion.
That said, the novel is also character-driven. There are three main characters: David Sorenson, my avatar, who displays his “physical ineptness” in several events, including the baseball game in which I made six errors on one play; Sally Engstrom, a young woman who became the victim of the community’s wrath; and The Swede, a philosophical alcoholic. These three characters describe three important patterns of development in small towns, as each reacts to common events.
For example, readers will understand David Sorenson’s personality development and the events that form the markers of that development. David stumbles through the novel, as I stumble through life, driven by two values and two desires. The values are “love” and “science,” which drive my desire to understand my life (science) and my desires to love and to be loved. Upon reflection, these are good values to live by, and I have to admit, I’ve had a good life. I only wish I would have had the courage to act as nobly as I would have liked! (But, then, don’t we all?)
WAS IT DIFFICULT TO FIND A PUBLISHER?
Once I had a complete manuscript, about 20 years ago, I began trying to sell it to publishers and agents. “I have written a novel,” I would say to these people. They replied, “That’s wonderful! What’s your platform?” “Oops,” I said to myself. “Not the question I was expecting.” But I didn’t want to appear as stupid as I looked, so I cleared my throat and said, “I use a Macintosh.”
“No, no!” the publisher said. “I mean, Do you have your own TV talk show? Do you give seminars every weekend to 10,000 people? Are you a serial killer? Do you have any way of making your book stand out from the millions of others on the market?”
“I’m a serial killer of mosquitoes,” I answered, a joke that goes over well in Minnesota, where the mosquito is the state bird. But the New York publishers and agents were not impressed. By 2009, I had decided to self-publish, get the book out at least, then retire into my dementia. At the last minute, I saw a notice of a publisher’s competition for fiction at Sol Books, with first (and only) prize being a publication contract. “What the heck?” I said to myself. “At least someone will read the damn thing.” (I talk to myself a lot. I find myself very amusing.)
Well, I won the 2010 Sol Books Prose Series Competition, and the rest is history.
WILL THE PEOPLE OF MINNEOTA RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES AND OTHER MINNEOTA CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL?
One thing I know: The readers of my novel from Minneota will try to identify the characters. I sent earlier versions of the novel to several friends in Minneota, I wanted to know if they enjoyed the story. They weren’t sure. Then they would say something like, “I didn’t know Frenchy Flemming had an affair with Pastor Dale’s wife,” completely misreading two characters and one event. They seemed incapable of reading the book as pure fiction.
Some of the characters can be identified as former Minneotans. David Sorenson represents me, for example, and David’s buddies were mine, too. Sitting Bull is played by Sitting Bull. Several other characters can be identified, if you’re careful. So “fill your boots,” as Canadians say: Have a go at identifying the characters.
However, by way of warning, several characters are amalgams of several real people. Sally Engstrom is a mix of several girls I loved in my youth, although one in particular will stand out. The bullies in the novel are similarly mixtures of several mean boys who tormented me.
Finally, although I didn’t do it to confuse the reader, the reader’s recognition radar will send the wrong signals because I often used one Minneota character to play another Minneota character. With interesting results.
WHY DID YOU NAME THE NOVEL AS YOU DID?
Most Minneotans know the answer to this question, as the odd “naming of Minneota” has been written about in several books (including my novel) and portrayed every 25 years in pageants celebrating Minneota’s history.
Briefly, a “doctor/druggist” named Doc Seals sold “bitters” (with 50% alcohol) to the Sioux Indians around 1850. When he was short of alcohol, he watered it down. The Indians were furious and stormed into Doc’s pharmacy yelling “Minneota! Minneota!” Doc thought the word, so much like “Minnesota,” would be a good name for the new village, which had been going by the name of “Pumpa,” and so he made it happen. “Minneota” means “too much water in the whiskey.”
ARE THE STORIES IN THE NOVEL TRUE?
They are all true in some degree; I really did make six errors on one play playing baseball.
The historical stuff is pretty much factual. Sometimes fiction is truer than reality, a cryptic way of saying that what I was trying to say was not always possible with the real events accurately portrayed.
YOU HAVE MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW IN YOUR NOVEL. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS PARTICULAR NARRATIVE DEVICE?
As I mentioned, it took 30 years to find a publisher. So I kept working on the manuscript, revising, trying different techniques. The first draft was written in the first person. I then rewrote the whole book in third person. Then I rewrote it again in second person (“you are walking down an alley”) — extremely difficult! But I learned what point of view could do for you, and the final novel is a collection of varying perspectives, with first person for the “voices of the community” and third person for omniscient narrative.
Construction of the novel was influenced by Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, “a play for voices”). As usually staged, this play has no visible actors, simply houses with open windows, from which stories are told by the voices within the houses. My novel is a novel for voices. First person perspectives work best for such voices.
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