Alex Gilvarry is the author of the novels From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant and Eastman Was Here. He was named a “5 Under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation, has been the recipient of a New York City Book Award, and has been nominated for the PEN Open Book Award. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The Boston Globe, NPR’s All Things Considered, and many other publications. He is an Associate Professor at Monmouth University, where he directs the MFA program in creative writing.
Jeff Klebauskas: We’ve been discussing the concept of propulsiveness from the reader’s perspective in our workshop. What do you find propulsive from a writer’s perspective?
Alex Gilvarry: It’s hard to talk about this concept. I don’t think I find something propulsive when I’m writing. I find something I’m writing compelling or interesting, and it requires more investigation and thinking to figure it out. And so I keep working. There’s something there that I can’t quite state when I start a story, something behind the words. An idea, a topic, or a concept I don’t understand. And I’m writing to figure out what I think about it. And I put these characters into dramatic situations in order to do that.
I find the language, the way things are stated and relayed to me, propulsive. But the language as it is working in tandem with the story, revealing things at every turn. I’m reading for the first time One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’ve never read it. Now this read is propulsive! Once I’ve written something, I may find what I wrote propulsive. And if it’s not, I do everything I can to make it that way.
Are you generally more interested in character than plot?
I don’t necessarily find plot or action that interesting as a reader. Maybe sometimes. Like in a Patricia Highsmith novel. But just as important in Highsmith is the character you’re reading about. And even more interesting are the character’s thoughts, seeing them think on the page. Like in The Tremor of Forgery or The Talented Mr. Ripley. That’s the most interesting thing to me about characters. I don’t think I’m interested in any character in a book unless I get to read what they’re thinking. But when you read my books, there is plot. So I must be interested in it too, because I really need plot to propel a character down their road.
How do you stay centered in a specific voice?
Whenever I feel like I’m falling out of a voice in a book, which happens frequently, I try and make it louder at certain points, usually the opening of a new chapter, just so I can hear it. To shock me into realizing what I’m doing, to get me out of a rut. This narrator is yelling at me: “Look at me! I’m right here, you idiot!” Inevitably, it gets me there. Then I go back and tone it down.
Is it difficult to maintain a narrative arc with such a demanding character as Eastman?
Not at all. In fact, the larger the personality, the easier I find it to create a character’s path. It’s the more quiet characters that are harder to figure out, like in the novel I’m writing now, about a quiet, private detective. Eastman was a simple man, essentially, with complicated feelings. And he often didn’t know why he was feeling things, or acting on them, but I certainly did. In that book, I knew the torturous circumstances I would put him through, because I was writing about a break-up I had recently gone through. His arc was predetermined slightly, but I always have to leave room for surprises or for things to change. You have to leave room. And the characters always surprise you.
What was the pull to write about the literary world of 1970s New York? Were you simply attracted to exploring that world through the eyes of Eastman or did you find it necessary to properly portray/critique that world?
A little bit of both. There’s a romanticism in thinking about the old literary world…Book Row in New York, where bookshops existed across the street from one another for blocks. I was always fascinated by the lives of writers, and often read their biographies: Updike, Bellow, Didion, Roth, Highsmith, Mailer, et al., even if I don’t like all their books. But in those years, a lot of what’s wrong with our industry thrived, like the sexism and many, many inequalities. It’s funny to me now the way some of these male literary lions once thought—and they were praised and given Pulitzers. So with Eastman, I wanted to put on display how silly they all were, how desperate they were to hold on to power. Kind of like Ron Burgundy in Anchorman. That movie really holds up.
To keep up to date with Alex Gilvarry’s work, visit www.AlexGilvarry.com.
