Chat with Jack Ketchum

Chat w/ Jack Ketchum (Dallas Mayr) – 6/16/2009

Erik Williams: Jack Ketchum (aka Dallas Mayr) is the author of eleven novels including OFF SEASON, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, and THE LOST. He has won four Stoker awards; two for his short stories “The Box” and “Gone”, one for his short story collection, PEACEABLE KINGDOM, and one for his novella “Closing Time”. Recently, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, THE LOST, RED, and OFFSPRING have been adapted into films. His latest novel from Leisure is COVER. Besides all of that, Stephen King refers to him as probably “the scariest guy in America.” Nothing else really needs to be said. Welcome.

Jack Ketchum: Thanks

Erik Williams: First question: Your voice is consistent across the spectrum of your work and is often praised for its grit and honesty. Can you talk a little about what a writer’s voice means to writing? Was it something you had to work hard on or did it just come naturally?

Jack Ketchum: The voice has to fit the subject matter, as far as I’m concerned. RED, for instance is kinda elegiac. OFF SEASON totally immediate. It doesn’t come naturally. You gotta THINK about it!

Petra Miller: I hear many authors say that their voice develops over time – so I just naturally assumed it was part of a personality, or a writing style. Does it ever happen that way? With a particular novel or piece you’ve written?

Jack Ketchum: I threw out my first novel — no, burned it in the fireplace — because I wanted to be Henry Miller at that point. Dopey. Henry was Henry. When I did that, it freed me to write more like me, like the way I talked. But I’m not a Hemingway or a Faulkner. I morph according to the story.

Petra Miller: Yes I can see how it needs to be that way. One story would have one voice and a different novel would have to be totally different. Thanks.

Kim Despins: When you first started writing novels what mistakes did you make that you’ve since learned to avoid? In other words, what advice would you offer us as we are in the early days of novel writing? Things to do, things not to do…

Jack Ketchum: Okay, avoid too much rewriting. Figure out where you want to go, emotionally speaking, before you begin. What do you want the reader to feel — this comes directly from Robert Bloch — he told me to know my ending, but he didn’t mean the actual physical ending –your characters should take you there – but the feeling you want to leave the reader with. Fear? Sadness? Whatever. If you know that, you know the tone the piece is supposed to take. Rewriting is why I burned that sonovabitch.

Kim Despins: Do you revise along the way?

Jack Ketchum: Tell you what works for me. I rewrite the previous day’s writing before I go on further. That helps me keep the continuity, so that I get a first draft when I’m done, not a rough. I revise along the way. The characters will, at some point, tell you what to do in order to keep them real and human. Then you have to OBEY. Make it real according to their individual trajectories. If the feeling you want at the end is firm, your characters won’t betray you nor you, them.

Sam W Anderson: Pardon my French, but THE GIRL NEXT DOOR fucked me up – to the point that I’ve overanalyzed it. Anyway, two things stick out. First, I think what makes it so disturbing is the narrator and his relationship to the events. Can you talk about how you came to decide on that point of view and what effect you think it had on the novel?

Jack Ketchum: Sure. I wanted a confessional. Hence the first-person voice. Then, because these events were so awful, I wanted somebody to narrate who’d seen some of what went down, but not everything — if he’d seen everything, and described everything, it might have bordered on pornography. I wanted to disturb you deeply, but never turn you on. THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and COVER were the most carefully considered books I’ve ever done. In the first case I was very aware of treading a thin line between titillation and brute facts, in the second I wanted very much not to rip off the vets, so I studied up on the war for a year before writing. I want people to feel for my characters, good or bad, wrong or right.

Kurt Dinan: Were you writing other things during the research process?

Jack Ketchum: Not much. Short pieces mostly. Things that were not related

Erik Williams: By the way, love the cover of COVER from Leisure.

Jack Ketchum: It’s way better than Warner’s first — where the vet looks totally demented. Which was not the point at all.

Petra Miller: Going back to re-writing, I find when I go back and re-read the chapters I’ve previously written, I can sense that something isn’t right, but then I start second guessing myself as to what I need to change. I make one change and then agonize over whether or not that is too drastic of a change or not a big enough change. And then in the end, I sit there and do nothing, because it suddenly seems as though any key-stroke, no matter what it is, will only screw the story up more. Have you ever experienced this, and if so, what did you do to do overcome it?

Jack Ketchum: You’ve got to trust your initial impulses to write the piece. Again I go to characters. HAVE your characters intact before you even start. Then trust them. Keep them true. Fiction is not about situations — it’s about how situations reflect upon us. Your job is to reflect the human condition as you see it. Fuck plot. Write about who and what you love and hate.

Kurt Dinan: Well, that answer sort of answers this question, but I hope you can elaborate – Most of us here have difficulty with plotting. What strategies and approaches have helped you over the years with plotting your novels? Do you outline? Just go balls out? And how do you deal with “getting stuck” in your plots, if you do at all?

Jack Ketchum: I’m not good at intricate plotting. Mine are mostly pretty simple. I’m reading Stephen Carter’s NEW ENGLAND WHITE and plot-wise, he can write circles around me. I enjoy that, but it’s not my strong suit. I guess my advice is to find out what IS your strong suit and write to that. Mine is character and theme. But you look at some wonderful books like Stewart O’Nan’s THE GOOD WIFE. Total tension, but it comes directly out of character, not situaltion. Maybe you’re just not great at plotting — so what — books are so much more than that.

John Mantooth: Sometimes, I feel like I jump into a novel too quickly. In other words, I get impatient to get started before I’ve got a good grasp of what I’m doing and where I’m going. I’ve frequently had to go back and rewrite whole chunks because I wanted a different POV, or I decided to tell it in past tense, etc. My question is how much of this do you work out ahead of time and how much do you figure out as you go?

Jack Ketchum: Do you write short stories, John?

John Mantooth: Yes. Just getting started with novels.

Jack Ketchum: Do you know for the most part where that story’s going to go?

John Mantooth: Yeah, usually, I do. For instance, I’ve been working on a novel for about two months now. After several false starts, I’m only about 12000 words in. The latest decision I’ve made is to tell the story from different viewpoints. Shouldn’t I figure this stuff out ahead of time?

Jack Ketchum: Okay, consider this. Think of a short story as a lovely affair, a book as a marriage. If you want a decent outcome, in both cases you have to know where you want it to go, in principle. But you can rush into an affair and still have a pretty good time. A marriage you’ve got to consider deeply before you commit. And yeah, you should have the voice, POV, the entire “relationship” figured out ahead of time. Never marry bitch or bastard.

Sam W Anderson: In THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, the chapter with “I’m not going to tell you what happens here” or something like that. Seems like a huge risk, but it paid off beautifully – nightmare inducing. No, literally. Can you remember writing that and why you decided on that approach?

Jack Ketchum: A lot of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR felt like magic, like dictation. It was strange. I got the first line, “you think you know about pain?” AS the first line I wrote and knew it was right. Same with the decision to write an entire chapter saying, I’m not going to tell you about this. I must have been at a point in writing where I completely trusted myself to make the right moves at the right time. That doesn’t happen all the time god knows, but when it does, all you can do is smile.

Sam W Anderson: One of the things that really enrich your work is the settings you pick – the street in THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, the campsite in THE LOST and such. A lot of your work takes place in the past. What special challenges does that equate to when working with your setting? Any strategies you utilize when figuring this out? How do you succeed so well at making the setting almost a character in your work?

Jack Ketchum: With settings, you research and you remember. With GIRL NEXT DOOR I walked outside into my mom’s backyard and wrote impressions on a 3X5 card or two. With JOYRIDE I revisited some places in Maine and NH I hadn’t seen in years — I still had some friends there. I’m a firm believer in first-hand observation.

Kim Despins: Did you go to Greece for SHE WAKES?

Jack Ketchum: Seven times, for a total of about nine months. Aside from New York City, Greece is my favorite place in the world. SHE WAKES was my poem to Greece — dark as it is. I really felt “the old gods” there.

Petra Miller: Have you ever sat and listened to complete strangers’ conversations – at bus stops, subways, etc. and then wrote down the conversations and later used them? I find myself doing this often, and I get many story ideas this way. I just wondered if you use that observation tactic along with your index cards. For your setting, your characters, etc.

Jack Ketchum: Evesdropping seems to me one of the essential tools of the writer. I listen ALWAYS.

Petra Miller: Have you gotten caught? I have a couple of times, but I never explained. I just walked away.

Jack Ketchum: No. You live in New York, it’s expected.

Sam W Anderson:
Who’s this Jerzy Livingston character, and how many pseudonyms do you have? What purpose do they serve you?

Jack Ketchum: I’ve always been comfy with pseudonyms. When I was writing for the men’s mags back in the ’70′s there was one issue of some mag in which I wrote four pieces. One was Jerzy Livingston, one was me, one was Bruce Aurthur, and I forget the forth. Publishers didn’t want people to know you’d written half the magazine. Jerzy was a particular favorite of mine because he was my awful alter-ego — misogynist, homophobic, a bad friend, a ridiculous lover — a lot of the guys you saw back then who, luckily enough, were not you.

Erik Williams: I mentioned COVER is now available from Leisure. What other projects are you working on or are coming out soon?

Jack Ketchum: I’m working on a screenplay now with Lucky McKee, who directed MAY. More than that I’m not allowed to say. Movie people! Yikes! In October the DVD of OFFSPING will be out.

Erik Williams: Well, thank you for chatting with us.

Jack Ketchum: This has been just fine. Good questions, good chat. Thank you! Best, Dallas aka Jack