The Puget News

“The Puget News” is proud to introduce our first author interview! Ryan Boudinot, author of “The Littlest Hitler” was gracious enough to talk about his darkly comical collection of short stories, channel a little Yoda, and tell me which dead people he’d like to kick it with.

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————————— * First of all, thank you for taking the time to be the first interview for “The Puget News.” I’m excited to have this opportunity.

As am I. As am I.

* Why did you choose “The Littlest Hitler” as the headlining story for this collection? Was it purely for shock value or was there something you felt that story embodied which encompassed the other stories in the collection?

There were two reasons. One, I felt like it had earned the title. “The Littlest Hitler” is the last story I wrote when I was finishing my MFA at Bennington College. I remember feeling like it was my reward from the muses for working hard for two years, and that the story would somehow take care of me. It’s the oldest story in the collection.

Second, it’s the most widely-published story in the collection. High school debate team kids recite it in tournaments. It’s been translated into Italian and published in Italy. A drama club in Seattle staged a great version of it. So in a purely pragmatic way, it made sense to title the whole book after a story that’s more recognized than the others.

* I was telling a friend about your stories the other night. It took me a minute to come up with an explanation of how they work and how they tied together stylistically. I told him that my first thought when I start one of your stories is typically “now that’s funny.” My next thought, however, is almost always, “Oh my god, that shouldn’t be funny. That’s twisted.” Was this an effect you were overtly going for?

I try to avoid “overtly going for” anything in my fiction. When I have approached a work of fiction with a consciously formulated agenda, I hate the results. If a reader expects to find pleasure in being surprised, shouldn’t a writer? That’s the attitude I try to maintain. But see, there’s the word “try” again, which I object to. I suppose it’s impossible to not sound like Yoda here, but I hope to honor the art spirit by doing as opposed to trying.

* That’s really intriguing and helps explain a bit to me about how the stories in your collection work. So just to reiterate, are you saying that you start writing your short stories without a clear idea of where they’re going? If so, do you find ever find yourself resolving something you started in multiple ways and then seeing which one “feels” the best?

Don DeLillo said it best, that he writes to find out what he thinks. Or the stories start with an idea that feels like it has the potential to develop into something else and I kind of follow it along. I don’t really write multiple versions of something and then line them up and compare them. It’s more there are areas of a piece of writing that start bugging me to the point where I decide I need them to change. I’ve also noticed that by recognizing parts that need to be changed, I sort of ask my subconscious for a solution.

There’s a great scene in that movie Apollo 13 that I think about all the time. The astronauts are up there in their capsule and the guys on the ground have to figure out how to get them out of peril. So they lay out on a table all the things those guys have with them on the capsule and have to figure out what to do with the materials at hand. This seems apt to me especially in the last half of a work of fiction. Introducing brand-new elements after a certain point starts to feel like cheating. It’s much more gratifying to me to be able to take what’s already at hand and come up with something surprising with it.

* You’ve been out on your first book tour. How has the reception been so far? Are you finding people receptive to the stories?

I have had a blast. I just returned from New York, where I had three readings. My agent and publicist sort of pre-emptively warned me not to expect many people to show up at the one reading where I was the only author on the bill, at Astor Place Barnes and Noble. But a good crowd showed up. They had to add more chairs. And the people I’ve had the chance to speak to have been very generous with their compliments on my work. I am very fortunate.

* Past or present, dead or alive, if you could select an author whose work you admire and would like to look over your shoulder and mentor you, who would it be?

John Stewart once answered a similar question by saying something like, “Dead people! Why would I want to meet somebody who was dead!” But there are two artists I would want to meet probably more than anyone else. The first is Bruno Schulz, the Polish writer murdered by an SS officer during WWII. He left behind a tantizingly rich but limited oeuvre of stories. They’re absolutely mind-blowing. And he was working on a novel at the time of his death called “The Messiah” that has been lost to history, though rumor has it it’s hidden away in KGB archives.

The second artist I would have loved to meet is Henry Darger, the reclusive Chicago janitor who created a 15,000 page illustrated manuscript about the adventures of a group of girls in the wonderfully named “Realms of the Unreal.” I just saw an exhibition of some of his work at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. The illustrations are accomplishments of vision beyond imagination. They had a volume of the novel on display. Looking at it was incredibly powerful to me. My eyes welled up.

* You’re the second person to recommend Darger’s work to me in the last couple of weeks. He was also recommended by a painter friend of mine. I’ll have to check both of those guys out. Are you secretly working on your own 15,000 page opus?

It’s already done.

* What’s your writing practice? Do you write every day or wait for inspiration to strike?

I consciously decide what my writing schedule will be based on the state of the project I’m engaged in. Sometimes I get up at 5am to write and will do that for a few months. Or sometimes it feels more appropriate to stay up late after my wife and son have gone to bed to write. Every day I have to account for my writing and whether I accomplished anything that day. And not writing for certain periods is part of the writing process as well.

* The last time we spoke after your reading here in Seattle, you said that you had wrapped up your first novel. Can you tell us what that’s been like to write? Have you found it be significantly more difficult?

More difficult than anything I have ever done.

* Well you know I want to hear more about that. Was the challenge something brought about perhaps by the process you use to write? Earlier on you mentioned that you look to be surprised in your own writing and for the stories to sort fo find their own way. Was this the root of the difficulty when moving to something larger?

I’ll politely decline talking any more about the new work until it comes out. Thanks for your interest, though.

*Well, I’ll let you have you darned secrecy then. I will, however, ask you after the novel comes out and I get a chance to read it. On that note, thanks so much for taking the time to be the first interviewee for The Puget News!

Thanks for the interview. Look forward to seeing it.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 10:28 am and is filed under Books, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.