TW Interview by Rebecca Meacham
William Robinson, the featured fiction writer for our Summer 2011 issue, has had his work published in numerous print and online journals. He is currently enrolled in the University of British Columbia’s Optional-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.
TW Fiction Editor Rebecca Meacham interviewed William recently by email, asking about the intricacies of writing from the viewpoint of the narrator of “Same as You,” a character who is, in his own words, “immoderately adrift.”
She also asked which genre of writing he found most inspirational. William noted that he enjoys all types of short stories but found the style of a piece to be particularly important:
It’s the style that gets me to continue to go along for the ride, or to read beyond the first page, because that’s all you’ve really got to go on. Content comes into focus only gradually and is generally not the thing that pulls me in, whereas a curve of a sentence will quicken my heart.
TW: Your story, “Same as You,” follows the decision (and indecision) of an “immoderately adrift… man-child” narrator. This “loveable loser” character has been made classic by writers like Raymond Carver and John Updike and more recently by folks like Brock Clarke and Junot Diaz. What attracts you to writing this kind of character? Also, is there anything particularly liberating or difficult about writing a story like this?
WR: I think most writers can put a mirror up to themselves in regard to their own work. Or to put it another way, I think it’s difficult to write against essentially what you feel or think. In this story, for example, I didn’t intentionally start out by saying I’m going to write about a character who is “immoderately adrift,” but I suppose I was subconsciously attracted to this quality because I can understand what it feels like to be lost.
And I definitely found writing this story liberating in the sense that oftentimes the story I think I am writing is not the story I end up with. And that’s a good thing, because it’s important for me to be surprised by my own work. It’s the ones where I try not to control the process too much, or at least not get in the way of, that are the most interesting and layered. For instance, I had no idea that the story was going to turn toward the relationship between the protagonist and the young boy, and therefore only peripherally to be about his relationship with his girlfriend.
Regarding the difficulty of writing a story like this, I didn’t find this character any more challenging to write than any other character I have created. I do think, however, that one has to be careful that the character possesses some sympathetic qualities, or at least a single trait that the reader can latch on to. For example, the “man-child” of this story could be considered an indefatigable jerk if not for a certain degree of self-reflexivity. Specifically, when the character shows himself to be aware of his own shortcomings, I find this makes him more interesting, intelligent, and profoundly human, which I hope adds great depth to the reading.
TW: What writers (of any genre or work) most inspire you? Why?
WR: Not that I don’t enjoy all types of short stories, but I am attracted to a certain style and content. And I can tell fairly soon, by the end of the first page, let’s say, whether I am going to have to be dragged along or taken willingly. And it’s the style that gets me to continue to go along for the ride, or to read beyond the first page, because that’s all you really got to go on. Content comes into focus only gradually and is generally not the thing that pulls me in, whereas a curve of a sentence will quicken my heart.
And funny you should mention Raymond Carver, because just as in the movie Jerry Mcguire, when she says he had her at hello, Carver had me with his short story “So Much Water So Close to Home.” I was twenty-eight at the time and working in Boston as a condominium property manager. I suppose, because twenty-eight seems to be a watershed age for many, I found myself to be profoundly unhappy, which must have led me to wander into a Newbury Street bookstore and pick up a particularly thick, yellow anthology of short stories. With Carver, it was all about the economy and the musicality. I went on to devour everything Carver, while turning my eye toward Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, Tobias Wolff—getting on the entire minimalist kick.
TW: Your story is featured in our Summer issue of TW. What is on your summer reading list?
WR: I don’t have any particular writers on my list. I’m always on the lookout for work by Bev Akerman and Neale McDevitt. I love Gary Moshimer and Mary Miller. Jennifer Pashley and Sean Ennis are wonderful. Whenever I read any one of their stories, I always feel slightly inadequate. But I believe that to be a good thing for a writer to feel.
TW: TW’s Summer issue features the theme of “Guilty Pleasures.” What reading—or other activities—would you call your “guilty pleasures”?
WR: I’m ashamed to say that I don’t think I really have any. I wish I could claim something so as not to sound like a total bore. I suppose one could consider weight lifting a guilty pleasure. In my younger days I went to a very tough high school and the only way I could protect myself was to try to be bigger than everyone else. I still work out nowadays, but I do so in moderation. My wife tells me if I were a car I’d be a Volvo—dependable and safe.
TW: You have created and patented your own commercial line of artistic poetry products based on the Dada Movement. This is one of the most interesting facts I’ve ever seen in an author bio. Can you tell us more about this?
WR: Back in my undergraduate days, I enrolled in my very first poetry class. I was terrified because I had never written poetry before. After I handed in my first batch, my professor Robyn Sarah, a renowned Canadian poet, told me that I should pursue a master’s degree in poetry. She noted that I had a gift for brevity, and I suppose the idea grew from that.
Of course, the idea itself is nothing new—borne out of the Dada Movement that embraced chaos and irrationality, one creates “anti-art” through the act of cutting out random words from various magazines and tossing them about to make poetic connections. (I had a snooker table and spread a thousand words, all in different type faces, across the green velvet.) The commercial line of specialty items—mugs, T-shirts, greeting cards—was for Valentine’s Day and was called Ransom Notes from the Heart. I hired an artist who made the artwork from ripped-up colorful construction paper, which complemented the cut-out poetry. She created these terrifically beautiful sunflowers and sunset roads. For the sunflower, for example, the poem read: There ought to be colors/we could live in/like violets the size of apple trees/or yellows as big as sunflowers.
I could have pursued the line more seriously, but I eventually succumbed to my desire to write short stories. But I do think about reviving the line from time to time.
TW: David Meischen, our February 2011 featured fiction writer, was asked to generate a question for a future fiction writer like you. David asked, “What piece of your writing, by title—story, poem, or novel—are you most proud of? And how did you discover the seed for that piece of writing?”
WR: I suppose I am most proud of the story “Storm Chasers.” It was published by carte blanche, and its editorial board sent the story to the Journey Prize for the Best of 2010. Brevity seems to be my most natural form of expression, so I like the story’s compression and intensity. The quick whip of a sentence that knocks your socks off. I like to think the story had a few of those.
The genesis of the story came from a single image: Greenhead flies bite the protagonist’s boyfriend as they walk along a dirt road after his car breaks down. She hasn’t been bitten once, and he keeps cursing. But she says they must love him more than her, which is the story of her life. I had the core idea from that line right there and didn’t think the story needed a lot of tugging after that.
TW: What question would you most like to ask another writer?
WR: ‘Which point of view do you most enjoy writing? Why?”
Or, if you prefer: “Which element of writing—exposition, dialogue, setting, point of view—has been your favorite to write? Why? Which element do you find to be your most difficult? Why?”
So just before she popped in a movie one night, I was about to lay on her the speech I’d been working on—the good about her, the bad about me, and the ugly I was afraid we’d turn into if we stuck around to the end—when the phone rang. She took it in the kitchen, and after five minutes of staring at the blank screen, I started to get antsy. I even contemplated blowing off the whole thing and leaving a note, something short and sweet like, 'Seasons change. People don’t. No hard feelings?' Then she came out of the bedroom, her face ashen. “What is it?” “It’s Josh. He’s dead.”
