Talking to Ben About His New York Stories
C: Ben, I had the opportunity to read with you recently in Cleveland to promote your new book The New York Stories from CCLaP. A lot of the press around the book boasts it’s a collection nine years in the making. After so long a time as a writer, how difficult did you find it on what to include/exclude from the collection and how far a help was the publisher in this kind of decision making? I’d imagine cutting out a story, a paragraph or line, especially in this collection, would be like leaving out a childhood friend.
B: I really love this question, and very much appreciate your interest in the book. CCLaP was very involved in the first group of stories, and then less so with each respective group, as we hit a sort of rhythm for what we both wanted and liked. I think CCLaP is very smart about what’s good, and not, what to cut, what seems to trite, and in some cases, whether certain stories pass muster at all. All of which is to say I generally, and comfortably, defer to them on things both big and small. Still, there was a story that I included in the first set of stories – “Panties” that they didn’t want to include, which I liked – and which ended-up being included with the second set of stories – but removed at the time. With the second group of pieces, they weren’t sure they liked “Stevey,” but I held my ground, which I’m glad I did, and so part of this is also a story about learning each other and me trusting myself as much as I trust them. Generally speaking though, these stories from collection to collection were consciously written as groups of stories that were intended to hang together, and then build one another, and from that perspective I never had to cut anything real big because issues of theme and connectivity had already been addressed. As far as lines, or paragraphs, someone more famous than me once said that you have to kill things you love if they don’t speak to the larger story, and narrative, and I am already a brutal editor anyway – I like things sparse and fast – and so, there is pain, but it’s brief, and more like a paper cut, than something more bruising.
C: One of the things I felt as the collection progressed and many of the interconnected characters grew in some way, is how yes, I knew that same guy or gal at my high school, my class reunion, my hometown. I think that’s one of the great triumphs of your storytelling, Ben…the characterization. How do you leverage that against setting? A small town, a local bar or pizza joint? As much as these characters are broad and universal, how do you feel they aren’t? Where don’t they fit in and is that the lesson learned here?
B: Thanks for the kind words brother. I felt I knew the place, and had already had a visual in my head as I was writing, and so much of the setting was sitting in front of me like a movie set. The question for me was whether I could make the characters seem real, and not merely for that setting – as you say there is much that is universal to them – but could they seem more than one dimensional, and do they have personalities, flaws, pain and triumphs? Did their dialogue seem like how people really speak – something that is always big to me – and then as the stories built from one section to the next, did the characters evolve, or regress if appropriate, in ways that the reader could believe? As you also say, if these characters feel like characters you know, than they have to feel that way from page to page and moment to moment and ultimately story to story as well.
C: I found a lot of humor in your writing, especially when exposing hidden faults in the people from the fictional town Two Rivers. Some of the more serious themes included a lot about neighborhood cheating husbands, domestic violence, even accidental homicides and statutory rapes. How has your work as a social worker or even just a human being prepared you to talk and write about Two Rivers or even about the past or fiction as ‘fiction?’
B: You’re killing it with these questions man and to unpack this question, first humor. I am drawn to people’s general fucked-upedness, and so I consider it important to balance what are very real incidents that we encounter, engage in or hear about, with humor whether it serves as a balm, or a means to allow the reader to catch their breath. That’s not always conscious though, nor do the reactions to some of the pieces always make sense to me. When “No Nothing” got accepted, the editor said it was the favorite humor piece they had read that day. I know I purposely added some humor, but not that much. Or take “Longing,” the first time I read it out loud, everyone stopped moving and seemed a little weirded out. But then the second time I read it, people were laughing more than seemed appropriate. Maybe I did something different. Or they were a different crowd and the laughing was because they were even more uncomfortable. I don’t know. What’s also not conscious, is how much being a social worker plays a role in any of this. What I know is that I am social worker in part because I was raised by activists and my mom was a therapist, and in part because I was always observing people’s behavior. This too started with my parents, and what my mom has said was my need to make sense of the chaos I grew-up around. Still, I always watch people’s reactions to what’s going on, and listen to how they speak – word choice, when they stammer – and on and on. This has made me a better social worker and facilitator, once I had some practice anyway, and it certainly informs my characters too.
C: Ben, you made a point at your reading here in Cleveland to point out the influence of Richard Linklater and his three films the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight trilogy (also found in your introduction essay in the book.) Did you always plan a collection in parts like this? Is is safe to say that as the characters have changed, so too, has your perspective of small town America or the human condition? Where do you see your writing or perspective in the future?
B: I did not plan for this at all. At first I just wanted to try and write a group of stories that I thought hung together like collections I loved – When The Messenger is Hot by Elizabeth Crane, Drown by Junot Diaz, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver – because I really wasn’t getting published and I thought that a collection like that might help. It didn’t. Not initially. But then CCLaP liked my first novel and later wondered if I might have something for them. After I did a blog tour about the first collection I started to see that I had more to say about these characters,and this town, I began working on more stories, and then joked about how if Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy decided to do a third movie, I should do a third set of stories. They did, the publisher asked for more so we would have enough stories for an actual book, and here we are. The characters do change, they may not evolve, but as a whole, they find some peace in the last section. Terrible things happen, and mother nature forces them to take action, any action, but with age, and survival, a sense of peace emerge as well. As for my writing, I will always be fascinated with how we fuck things up, how we fail to communicate well, tell people we love them, turn to violence or self-destructive behavior, and yet despite all of this, if we stop to breathe, pay attention, and live, we can make a path for ourselves. Not necessarily as we planned, or hoped for, but a path none-the-less, where even if happiness itself remains beyond our grasp, contentment doesn’t have to be.
Ben Tanzer’s book, The New York Stories, is available here from it’s publisher in both paperback and ebook.