I had an opportunity to interview Daniel Slate, the author of of one of my favorite books, Without Hope, which is about living in New Orleans (my favorite city). The book is reminiscent of Confederacy of Dunces, and I was lucky enough to get a chance to ask Daniel about what went into writing the book, where he drew his inspiration, and about his cat, Lucky.
How much of Without Hope is autobiographical?
90%
maybe? A enormous amount. And, honestly, that might represent a problem
with it. I have all these anecdotes and stories that, for years, people
would tell me "you need to write that" or "you need to put that in a
book". And I feel I ended up putting a few things that didn't do
anything to help the plot along.
Your book
reminds me a lot of Confederacy of Dunces. What is it about New
Orleans, do you think, that draws in such vivid people and leads to such
great stories?
Confederacy of Dunces is what convinced
me that what I had written, and what I was still writing at the time,
was in fact a book. Dunces hasn't really got a strong narrative drive. I
mean that as no criticism of it, but it just moves from funny vignette
to funny vignette and is totally engaging throughout. That book, more
than any other, convinced me that humor in a book is its own reward, and
that even if there isn't a huge story building, with three-act
structure, as long as people might laugh on every page (or most pages)
then it would still work.
As for New Orleans, I have given a
lot of thought to this for years and years. New Orleans celebrates
everything. Anything is an excuse for a party or parade. We have Jazz
Funerals. We keep our dead above ground and close to bars and great
restaurants. We live below sea level and know that one single hurricane
could easily wipe us out completely. I think this living between life
and death defines New Orleans and the people who choose to live here. We
are always right on the verge of extinction and so we celebrate
everything--food, death, Catholicism, paganism, art, life,
music....everything. And we are situated right at the mouth of the great
and mighty Mississippi River, so historically, so many different types
of people had to pass through, and many settled here. And the music here
is phenomenal. Louis Prima, Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino....and
up-river not far is Memphis. As far as I am concerned, jazz, blues and
rock music were all basically born here. New Orleans is the very soul of
the United States. A lot of the rest of the country has moved on from
this, may not even believe in a "soul" and are entirely cut off from it.
But that doesn't make it any less true.
Katrina
plays a major role in your book. With the ten year anniversary of the
storm approaching, how have things changed in New Orleans? Where do you
think the city will be in the next ten years?
I had
written most of Without Hope in the years prior to Katrina. The plot of
the book always featured a hurricane stalled in the Gulf of Mexico. I
grew up here and it seemed like most summers had a hurricane or more
finding its way into the Gulf. When Katrina happened, it drastically
changed things in my book. As for New Orleans itself, I've never loved
the city so much as I did in the months right after Katrina, when people
were living without electricity and dragging refrigerators outside and
congregating at any bar that was open, serving beer from ice chests with
ice from the Red Cross. The Halloween and Mardi Gras right after
Katrina were the best I'd ever been to. The police were more friendly,
the people all felt like part of a community or survivors and
non-deserters. Eventually, some people came back, a lot of people didn't
and a whole hell of a lot of new people came in, and started buying up
property and opening new restaurants and upscale bars and art galleries
and shops. It has become harder to find anyone who hasn't moved here in
the aftermath of Katrina now. I get kind of angry when I start thinking
about the current situation here. But, really, I might just be bitter. I
could no longer afford to live in New Orleans/Orleans Parish. I live in
a suburb. More of a shanty town across the Mississippi River on the
horribly unfashionable Westbank. I only live about 20 minutes or less
from the French Quarter, but have not gone into it, or my beloved
Bywater and Marigny, in over a year. I can't really afford to buy drinks
at a bar or food in a restaurant, or even pay for gas to drive over
there. I still paint New Orleans and think about how much I love it and
hope to someday return to it, but it is just too painful to visit and
then cross the bridge back to the hovel I live in now. But, I am not
pessimistic about New Orleans. Those hurricanes that form every summer
are going to come back one day and scare all these new fair-weather New
Orleanians back to wherever they came from. It will flood and property
values and rents will come down again, and the strong and true will
remain. So....that's optimism, right?
You
have a real talent for comedy, and your book does a great job of
illustrating the ways that comedy and tragedy are so deeply intertwined.
Which is easier for you to write, the funny scenes, or the tragic
ones?
So much of the book was true, in both cases I
was basically reporting actual events. I love humor and aside from
Confederacy of Dunces, I think Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (and
everything else written by Douglas Adams) is my favorite book. But Anne
Rice's Vampire Chronicles helped define my love for this city. I
consider myself, basically, a severely depressed funny person. Part of
what I do not like about my own book, is that I wrote it over the span
of about 20 years. The parts that took place when Solomon was in high
school were things that all actually happened to me when I was in high
school, and that is when I started writing what became the book. So my
sense of humor at 17 isn't what it became after years writing weekly
humor columns in UNO's newspaper Driftwood or having weird jobs working
in a bath house or living with a dominatrix and her slaves, etc. I think
humor and tragedy are very much entwined and moreso in New Orleans than
in most places. I enjoy humor and writing humor more than the serious
stuff and I think I am better at it. If I had any guts I would have
tried stand-up comedy years ago. I've always told funny stories, but
they tend to be true, so I really don't know if I am funny or if I just
have managed to get myself into situations that are funny.
What did you learn from the experience of writing a novel?
I
learned that I always try to make things more complicated than they
need to be. I could have done a straight forward, first person story of
this guy Solomon. Most first novels are written in first person
perspective. But I decided to try to write in a limited third person
perspective and to have two separate protagonists who eventually
intersect. And I decided one of them should also be trying to write
something. And I wanted every name to be fraught with meaning. I tried
to do too much, in my opinion, though it didn't necessarily amount to
much. So for my very first outing, instead of trying to toss one ball up
in the air and then catch it, I thought I would try to juggle 10 swords
instead. I felt like I had some very good, sharp swords---everyone will
love these swords---so what could possibly go wrong?
I still
feel that the book has some very very strong stretches and has very good
ingredients. I think there is a story and characters that are real in
the book. But ultimately I learned that I tried to do too much. I was
also very conscious of not wanting to write something too long. I threw
out much more than I kept in. I wanted to say something about Truth and
about Art and Souls and Hope, and I wanted it to be funny and original
and true to the spirit of New Orleans. I needed to either narrow my
focus or be a much much better writer--probably better than anyone I had
ever read. I wanted to be Douglas Adams and Woody Allen as channeled by
Nietzsche as understood through Camus as written by Hemingway with
character names by Hawthorne, using the basic framework of Toole's
Confederacy of Dunces. I can't say I succeeded, or that anyone could.
(By the way, the title Without Hope came from Emily Dickinson by way of
Woody Allen. Dickinson said "Hope is the thing with feathers-that
perches in the soul." Later, Woody Allen titled a book he wrote "Without
Feathers" as a clever reference to the Dickinson quote. I basically
removed the cleverness of Without Feathers--which meant Without
Hope--and just called my book Without Hope. Although, I guess the girl
in my book was named Hope, so that restores a fraction of the cleverness
back.)
What are your plans for future
books? Will you revisit the characters and events from Without Hope, or
are you thinking of trying new directions?
For a while I
didn't want to let go of those characters and know that I could write
more for them, easily in fact. As I mentioned, I threw out more of that
book than I kept, so I practically have another 150 pages of them. But I
also wrote that damned thing for 20 years off and on and do want to
move on. I've been working on something that I hope will be much more
epic. I do not mean "lengthy" by the word epic, but it is more of a
journey along the lines of the Hobbit or Star Wars or Hitchhiker's
Guide. It is more fantasy than sci-fi, but still more grounded than most
fantasy. I've barely started it, so it is hard to say. But it will
feature some version of famous musicians such as Elvis Presley and Fats
Domino, Louis Prima and Louis Armstrong, as well as characters and
settings from songs. An enormous number of songs are set in and around
New Orleans, to the point where I am almost tracing something mythic
that already exists (was Johnny B Goode's cabin near where Polk Salad
Annie lived? Surely just down river from Proud Mary? These characters
exist all along the Mississippi delta--the cradle of the civil war--up
to Graceland). Hopefully this will not take 20 years, nor will it focus
on too much, but instead on one epic journey.
Lucky the cat was a memorable character in your book...any plans for future projects with Lucky?
I am going to pet him as soon as I finish with this.
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| Lucky |
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You can buy Without Hope in both digital and physical formats over at Amazon. Pick it up today to support an independent author who knows how to captivate the reader with fantastic (and true) stories!
