From shreveport.blogspot.com:
West Edge Books and News and the West Edge Artists' Co-op are proud to host three of the contributors to the anthology "able to... a literary look at superpowers," on Friday night, May 4, at 7:00 p.m., at 725 Milam St. in downtown Shreveport, for a reading and book signing. Local writer Becky Haigler contributed the stories "Gates of Eden" and "Mr. Merrill's Extraordinary Driving Cap," David Lemaster wrote "Light Readings of Ebony" and "The Mesmerizer," and editor Neil Ellis Orts will read from "Phos Hilaron." Copies of the book are currently available, and this event is free and open to the public. For further information, please call 221-6961 or email mpbookfreak@hotmail.com. The three writers graciously agreed to answer some questions about their work. An edited version of the interview is appears at shreveport.blogspot.com, while the full text is below.
1. able to... is subtitled "a literary look at superpowers," and the term is applied broadly, given the usual pop culture associations. What particular resonance does the theme of superpowers have for you as a writer, or even as a reader?
Neil:I grew up on comic books and still have a deep affinity for many of the characters, even as I grow more and more uncomfortable with some of the subtle messages. I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of superhero stories end with a subtle "might makes right" message. I can't get behind that one. Even more, I can't get behind the notion that superheroes are supposed to "kick ass," really give the bad guys what for with hard hitting action, emphasis on the hitting. I'm a proponent of non-violent resolution to conflict, so I have ideological issues with most superhero stories. But there's a part of me that will always want to know what's up with Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman. I know and have come to embrace my own arrested development that way.
When I started putting together Able to..., my notion, as I state in my introduction, was that if superheroes were adolescent power fantasies, as they're often called, then what would grown up power fantasies be? I wasn't really interested in the real world power fantasies we see played out in war zones and Wall Street, but the smaller stories. How do we use whatever powers we have at our disposal to manipulate--for good or ill--our surroundings? I find that sort of question infinitely more interesting than how hard Superman can hit.
Becky: I read Superman comics as a kid, whenever I found them at other peoples’ houses, but I didn’t choose them for myself. (I leaned toward Archie and Katy Keene.) I have vague memories of neighborhood games where someone was Superman and the bad guys could ward him off with a chunk of asphalt we deemed ‘kryptonite.’ I read a lot of fairy tales though, Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm, and there are plenty of examples there of events that bend the usual pattern of the world. I majored in Spanish in college and had to read quite a few of the magic realism stories of the 20th century Latin American writers, but I first felt I wanted to write something in that genre myself after reading and seeing Like Water for Chocolate. “Gates of Eden,” written in the mid-’90’s, was my first magic realism story. Since then, I have finished four others and have another simmering. After Neil’s collection, I started to feel maybe there was an interest, a market for the genre.
David: I approached both of my stories by placing a character in a situation and then seeing what the character might do or say in response. The character comes first for me, and then the style in which the story is to be told. Each story has its own voice emanating from the voice of the character. Once in awhile I start with the style first, but that is rare. In the two stories in question, "The Mesmerizer" was inspired when my friends saw a professional hypnotist on a college campus and I began asking myself what kind of person could pass himself off in that role. Ebony started with a concept rather than a person, the concept of dark turning to light--and with a person in a Sprint store--I actually saw someone similar to the way I described Ebony as I waited for a Sprint technician to fix my phone. I asked myself why the girl was dressed that way (she carried a pocket Bible, too) and what she could possibly think of herself. When the concept met the description, I put a central character into the story to be the reader's guide, and the story was born.
2. Neil, you wear a lot of hats regarding able to..., as a contributing writer, editor and publisher. As an editor and publisher, did you send out a call for stories around the theme of superpowers, or did you see particular connections among stories or writers you were already familiar with?
Neil: I posted calls for stories about "people who can do extraordinary things" on various bulletin boards online. Image Journal's forum netted me Becky Haigler. I think most came to me via Craigslist. I'm not entirely certain where everyone came from, but those are the forums that I know generated some response. I knew Winston Derden before I started this process, and the rest were strangers off the internet. (It's not all danger out there, kids!)
I kept watching for stories with similar themes, and didn't find any in that way. I did find a short-short story in the journal Quick Fiction that I liked quite a lot and would have worked in the book. I managed to find the author online, but he declined participation in Able to... Which was disappointing--as a writer, I get rejected all the time, and now I was getting rejected as an editor and publisher!
3. Neil and David, both of you have stories in the collection that deal with theological implications of superpowers and individuals affected by the "superpowered" beings. What makes such themes compelling to you?
Neil: All of my questions in life, on some level, are theological. I'm congenitally Lutheran and I've been to seminary. I'm eaten up with God-schtuff. Even when I've tried to avoid the label, word has returned to me that I'm "that Christian writer guy."
Having said that, I always make a point to write about people who are religious, not write religious stories. I do find the spiritual lives of people the most interesting part of them, generally speaking, even if it’s a lack of any overt spiritual life, but I have little patience for stories that are about the business of teaching a moral lesson, even as I realize almost all stories do that. I started out writing that sort of thing and quickly lost interest in it. Life is messy and a life of faith is messy, and I know of few people who have everything turn out just right because they prayed a certain way or kept a particular moral code.
That I'm gay also adds an edge to my work without my even trying, usually. Even if I wrote the most moral and moralizing story, Zondervan isn't likely to be courting me for my next novel. And I'm okay with that.
David: Theological issues are quite compelling to me and take up the majority of my reading (I just finished Dawkins' The God Delusion and Tabor's The Jesus Dynasty). I was raised Baptist and have seen my faith take an incredible journey over my lifetime. I'm interested in the metaphorical meaning and impact of religion, and although I'm willing to question and doubt my religious beliefs, I'm not willing to give them up. I've been inspired by several books on religion and metaphor, most especially Elaine Pagel's look at the Gospel of Thomas, Beyond Belief. One of the underlying themes in most of my work is that continual struggle to reconcile knowledge and faith. It's an ongoing struggle for me personally, and one that I don't anticipate ever fully completing--but that's the beauty of faith, isn't it? If it made sense, or if I could prove it scientifically, it wouldn't be faith? Despite my quest for logic (and more than a bit of skepticism), faith still holds me and refuses to let me go.
4. Becky, your contributions to the collection have a wistfulness to them that strikes me the same way as some of the best Twilight Zone episodes, or some of Ray Bradbury's stories. The characters with the "super" powers seem ambiguous, at best, about them and their application. Does this seem consistent with what you were trying to achieve as a writer?
Becky: Thanks, Michael! Just to appear in the shadow of Bradbury or Serling is high praise. I think the ambiguity, which I didn’t know was coming through, probably is rooted in my own worldview. As a Christian, I hesitate to ascribe “powers” to people in a way that would be an infringement on the power of the Holy Spirit. If, for example, I had a character turn the world backward, Superman style, it would be hard for me to let him do that without directly invoking God. In the Able to… collection, Mr. Merrill’s “superpower” is a grace that comes to him unbidden, and he has to decide what to do with it. Evita’s gift, in “Gates of Eden,” is a gift of creating with speech, an ability which mirrors the divine creation, wherein the worlds were spoken into being. Both Old and New Testaments tell us there is tremendous power in our words, so to show that power in my character is not an instance of a human being grasping for something God has reserved for Himself.
Neil: To jump in and talk about Becky's work a minute: Becky's stories were the very first I received. I was nervous about this, not sure what to expect. When I read the first line of "Gates of Eden" ("Flowers didn't actually fall from Evita's lips--not at first and not all the time."), I nearly dropped the manuscript. This was a completely unanticipated and original "super power." I nearly accepted it on that line alone.
But her stories have a sort of fairy tale feel to them, at least for me. "Gates of Eden" more so than "Mr. Merrill's . . . " I guess, but still, they have a voice that carries you along a bit like a fairy tale, even as they're set in a recognizably real world. I think her sparse use of dialogue aids that feeling. My memories of, say, Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks and the Three Bears don't rely on dialogue but on a compelling sequence of "and then . . . and then . . . and then . . . " These sequences are punctuated with lines like "My, what big eyes you have," or "This porridge is too hot" but the story itself relies on a simple telling of events that draws you into the story. It's that tricky telling that is really showing, not telling. If that makes sense.
5. David, your stories contain some truly chilling moments, that come upon the reader very abruptly, almost cinematically. Are you influenced by some of the classic horror stories and movies?
David: I was trained in stage theater and film, and I do think cinematically. I'm influenced by Chaplin, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Foreman, Spielberg, Aronofsky, and a number of other directors. Most recently, I was awed by del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, and Von Trier's works, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville. For me in both cinema and prose, a good story must be accompanied by well drawn characters and a sense of style. There must be a complete commitment on the part of the author/director to that style. I don't see either of my stories as horror. I see them as stories about characters who respond to and interpret for themselves external events. As an audience, we are only privy to what the characters are thinking and must interpret the meanings for ourselves. I'm especially interested by how humans distort reality or what we perceive as reality to fit our needs.
Neil: To speak about David's stories briefly: I tend to not respond to horror. I read David's stories, found them compelling and well written and fitting the theme and that was that. A little dark, yes, but okay. It wasn't until I started to set up the book and figure out the order of the stories that it really hit me how dark David's stories really were. I like to think they add a dimension to the collection that would be lacking otherwise, but I also had a moment of worry that they may be so much darker than the rest of the stories as to stand out unfavorably. Maybe they do stand out, but I've only had people tell me David's were their favorite stories, never that they were out of place or too different from the rest of the collection.
(And so none of the authors get anxious---every author has been cited as someone's favorite.)
6. None of you inhabit your stories with characters leaping over tall buildings or moving faster than a speeding locomotive. Were you ever tempted to write about such "superheroes," or did that seem limiting or overdone?
Neil: During the submission process, I started noticing that the stories I liked best were not really about the powers, but about the relationships around the characters. I think to a large extent, that's what made it into the book. The powers instigate or complicate the conflicts, but the stories aren't really about the powers.
And I think that sort of story requires a more subtle sort of power. I received one story about a guy with super-speed and there were kernels of really good things in it, but in the end, the story was too much about the power and the interesting, troubled relationships were left under-developed.
But I can't lie. If DC Comics were to call me up and say, "Hey, Neil, write us a few issues of Wonder Woman," I'd be all over it. I'm just not likely to pursue it at this point. Superhero comics have always been driven more by plot than character and they've become so confined by convoluted histories that there's a certain level of craftsmanship one can attain in the genre, but not much above, artistically, that craftsmanship level. I think there are some fine writers working in comics. I also think there are comics writers, who are superstars in the field, who couldn't write a character-motivated story--maybe wouldn't even recognize one--if the fate of world depended upon it. They're superstars because they know how to write the corporation's icons in the formula expected. More power to them, they're making a lot more money as writers than I do, maybe more than I ever will. That's just not how my writing interests developed.
David: I'm not interested in superheroes. My best friend growing up collected comic books; I collected baseball cards. He played role-playing games, but I liked Risk and strategy/war games. He reads sci fi, and I read psychology, history, and theology. It's all a matter of interests. As I said in the first question, my approach to both of these stories (as well as to my other work) is to put an individual (realistic) character in a situation and see how he or she responds. My characters often misinterpret the world around them out of idiocy, senility, or stupidity--or sometimes out of maliciousness--and the reader is left to interpret what's really happening.
Becky: In a couple of my later stories, supernatural abilities are exercised by secondary characters to effect change in my protagonists. However in my Able to… stories, the “powers” affected bystanders secondarily but had the most impact in the lives of the characters who exercised those powers. So interior action, or psychological drama, is more interesting to me than stopping trains. I think Neil expressed that idea in his introduction of Able to…, and that’s probably why my stories found a home with him.
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Review of Able to...
On the radio:
Neil Ellis Orts and Jere Pfister discuss the Fieldwork workshop process and their latest works in progress on KUHF's The Front Row, Houston's arts news show: http://www.kuhf.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=19971&security=2662&news_iv_ctrl=1202
On November 11, Neil Ellis Orts and Winston Derden discussed Able to... and their stories therein, also on KUHF's The Front Row: http://www.kuhf.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=18414&security=2391&news_iv_ctrl=1202