CL Bledsoe is the
author of sixteen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love and the flash fiction
collection Ray’s Sea World. He’s been
published in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, and anthologies and has been nominated
for the Pushcart Prize thirteen times, Best of the Net three times, and has had
two stories selected as Notable Stories of the year by Story South’s Million
Writers award. Originally from rural Arkansas, he currently lives in northern
Virginia with his daughter. He blogs at NotAnotherTVDad.com.
Like several of the
writers I’ve interviewed you seem to revel in diversity, having written novels,
flash, poetry and reviews. If you could only write in one genre, what would it
be? Why?
This is a tough question. My knee-jerk reaction is to say
poetry, because it’s the genre I started with way back in middle school and the
one I think I do best. When I give readings, I usually read poetry unless I’m
specifically selling a novel. Then, I usually do a mix. I get excited about
novels, flash fiction, memoir, plays, and essays, but I’m most comfortable and
most driven by poetry. Novels are my second favorite form. I’m pretty much
always writing a novel. Every so often, I’ll take time off from that and focus
on poetry for a month or two. I used to write a lot of reviews, but I’ve become
much less interested in them lately.
What are your main
concerns? What role does magic play in your work?
My father used to say that sometimes, you have to laugh to
keep from crying. Humor is a tool to expose great, often difficult truths in a
more palatable way. I don’t always write humorous things, but I do focus on
that turn of surprise, the joie de vivre that hopefully draws us out of the
doldrums of everyday problems to re-examine our lives and reactions to the
world. (For me, this is magic, although I do also sometimes write about literal
magic.) I use myself and my own experiences as a template for this exploration,
because I am forever forgetting my way to the house of enlightenment. My work isn’t
meant to lecture on ethical principles, but it is deeply ethical in its
attempts to figure out how to navigate the complexities of modern American
society while being a decent human being, juggling questions of race,
privilege, class, and personal accountability with the idea of maintaining joie
de vivre. I explore these themes through poetry, novels, short fiction, plays,
and essays.
Arkansas, where you
grew up, is the subject of your poetry collection, Riceland. What roles do place, tradition, and your working class
origins play in your writing?
I grew up on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas. We
were not well off, but considering that the Mississippi River Delta, where I’m
from, is one of the poorest places in America, we did better than many. But it
wasn’t an easy life. I’ve lived in a few different places and had a lot of jobs
over the years. When I was younger, I hid my origins. I wouldn’t write about
where I grew up. I even got rid of my accent because I didn’t want to be
perceived as a hick. At the same time, I’ve maintained a healthy skepticism of
people and organizations that kick down because I’ve seen something of what it
is to be on the bottom.
There were many things about my childhood that I’m glad to
have left behind. Racism, poverty, religious extremism. When I was about five,
my mother became sick with Huntington’s disease, which attacks the nervous
system and the brain. Because of this and the fallout from it, my childhood
wasn’t easy. Riceland chronicles some
of this. So, for me, Arkansas is tainted by these experiences.
But at the same time, there was something magical about my
childhood. We lived on a ridge overlooking a big stock pond, surrounded by
pasture land. My sister had a vivid imagination, and we inhabited the valleys
and woods with spirits and mythology.
As a writer, how do
you view the future? Who do you write for, meaning who do you think of as your
audience when you write?
It’s hard not to fear the future. Maybe it has always been
like that. I’m sure that people feared the future during and after all the
major wars we’ve had, during the Depression, during the Civil Rights Movement
when people were being assassinated left and right. I am too pragmatic to think
that the future will be very different from the past.
I haven’t written a ton of speculative “near future”
fiction, but I have written some. To be honest, it’s pretty bleak, playing out
scenarios I see starting today. There are a handful of flash fiction pieces in
my collection Ray’s Sea World about
this. Back in my hometown in Arkansas, and in many cities across the country,
factory work has dried up because of technological advances and outsourcing. A
person used to be able to support a family on a factory wage. Those jobs are
harder to find. Many of them have been replaced with retail and customer
service-type jobs, but a person can’t support themselves, much less a family,
working at McDonald’s or Wal Mart. So quality of life has suffered. What’s even
worse is that these jobs are also being replaced with technology. McDonald’s is
putting order-taking robots in their restaurants. Wal Mart put in self-checking
lanes a long time ago. Plenty of other jobs are on the chopping block in the
near future. So, the future looks bleak for the poor.
I’m an educated, middle-class white guy, so I suppose I
write for people like me. But I also have a deep mistrust of anything that
smacks of elitism. So who does that leave? I would like to think I write for
people who work too much and still don’t make enough money to get ahead, who
would rather laugh than complain, who like cheesy movies and pizza.
What’s your main
peeve/issue about the publishing process?
The pay and the waiting.
CL BLEDSOE
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