Writers Respond: An Interview with Darrin Doyle

Darrin Doyle and I crossed paths, very briefly, while he was finishing his PhD at the University of Cincinnati. An undergraduate at the time, I was granted permission to enroll in the graduate fiction workshop to see if graduate school was something I’d like. It is because of fellow students like Darrin that I decided to pursue a master’s degree. That workshop was a terrific experience, and it is my understanding that Darrin—by that point well into his dissertation year—had signed up for the workshop just to be in the classroom again before heading on toward professional life. In any case, perhaps now is the time to share this anecdote (not just with you, the reader, but with Darrin, as well).

After workshopping one of Darrin’s stories, our professor, Michael Griffith, stood and walked around our seminar table to hand Darrin his story. Michael never did this; no professors did; they just slid the story onto the stack and the stack made its way around the circle. But that day, Michael leaned in and said—I (over)heard because I was sitting on Darrin’s immediate left—“This is really excellent work. Just attend to the issue we discussed, then send it out. It’s publishable.”

I remember being so blown away! Publishable! Did professors actually say this? Grad school was going to be so amazing! The issue, by the way, had to do with fact-checking how long sperm could survive in a used condom; and the story, I recall, was so creepy it oozed. This, then, seems the perfect entrance for an interview with Darrin, whose first novel, Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story, earned this blurb from Christine Schutt: “A deftly made, raucous tale of love and its attendant hungers and humiliations. Darrin Doyle has conceived original characters in that ‘poor twit’ Mr. Portwit and his fleshy wife, Mary Ann, whose bodily sacrifices in the name of love—self-love and other—are, finally, heartbreaking.”

1.
Writing and Writing Programs

MOLLY GAUDRY: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

DARRIN DOYLE:  Honestly, I never gave much thought to writing until I was probably 25 years old.  I was working at Kinko’s, playing in a band, and wondering what to do with myself.  I loved playing music, but that life is exhausting, and it’s a terribly tough field to find consistent success in.  I decided to go back to college (I’d dropped out three years prior) and complete my English degree.  I took a poetry workshop.  My teacher, the great William Olsen, suggested applying to the MFA program.  I thought, “Sure, OK.”  From a young age, I’d always enjoyed writing and reading.  I’d read a lot of so-called “serious” literature on my own in junior high and high school (Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, Woolf, Poe), but I never committed myself to writing until graduate school. Even after I finished the MFA, I don’t know if I ever thought, “I want to be a writer.”  I just enjoyed doing it.  I enjoyed talking about fiction and poetry.  I loved reading other peoples’ stories.  I loved waking up every morning and discovering a new thing I’d written the night before.  New words on a page to play with.  A character, a situation.  A funny phrase.  A phrase I couldn’t wait to delete.  And so on.      

MG: Where did you get your MFA? And what made you decide to go for the PhD? Any fun anecdotes? Workshop nightmares? Favorite moments?

DD: I got my MFA from Western Michigan University, and I studied primarily with Stuart Dybek and Jaimy Gordon, but also with poets Bill Olsen, Nancy Eimers, and Mark Halliday.  It was a formative experience, I must say.  There were some definitely odd and funny workshop moments, but not wanting to embarrass anyone, I’ll wait until you buy me a strong drink and my inhibitions splash to the floor in a puddle. 

After the MFA, my wife and I moved to Osaka, Japan.  We lived there for a year, teaching English, less for career purposes than because teaching was simply a good vehicle for living abroad.  Japan was wonderful, after which we backpacked through Southeast Asia and New Zealand for three months.  Then it was back to reality, back to Kalamazoo, MI.  I had no job, no plan.  I’d continued to write stories and had even gotten three or four published, which was cool, but I wasn’t on the academic job market or anything like that.  I found a job supervising two high school kids as they serviced computers for a local school district.  I did freelance writing for the Kalamazoo Gazette.  I worked as a technical writer for Pharmacia-Upjohn, a huge pharmaceutical company.  All of this occurred over a year’s time.  The tech writing job pushed me over the edge.  I missed being around other creative writers, and I certainly knew I couldn’t bear working in a cubicle for the rest of my life.  I applied to PhD programs and got into the University of Cincinnati, and this will go down as one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

MG: Let's go back and talk about teaching in Japan. I find that so romantic. What were your experiences? Would you recommend it?

DD:  I’d highly recommend it.  Japan is a beautiful, safe country with a long and compelling history, friendly people, amazing food, and enough quirks and contradictions to keep things interesting and inspirational.  In many ways, it reminded me of what the 1950s probably were like in the USA.  Smoking is allowed everywhere.  Job applicants are openly asked about their marital status, age, religion, etc, and there’s no law prohibiting employers from discriminating on these grounds.  Women are expected to get married and raise a family, while men are expected to devote themselves entirely to their job.  The man’s boss even delivers the toast at the wedding. 

Having said that, you won’t find friendlier, more generous people than the Japanese.  They are genuine, helpful, and very welcoming to visitors.  The sushi is cheap and abundant.  Plus there are all the surprises, like when a Sumo wrestler stands next to you on a train, or when a guy on a fishing show eats a live squid right out of the ocean, or when you can buy beer from a vending machine on your way home from work.  

MG: The University of Cincinnati is my old stomping ground, too. Why do you say it was "one of the best decisions" you ever made?

DD:  Brock Clarke and Michael Griffith, as you know, are terrific writers and teachers.  They helped me in lots of ways, not only in the workshops and with my novel, but because they helped bring so many fantastic writers to UC—Judy Budnitz, Aimee Bender, George Saunders, Sam Lipsyte, Percival Everett, and Heidi Julavits, to name a few. 

The other graduate students, too, were a great source of camaraderie and inspiration.  There’s something very special about the bond that forms when you’re going through the experiences of a grad program—it’s intensely stressful but very stimulating. 

The PhD isn’t for everyone, and I know many creative writers who still insist that the MFA is (and should be) the terminal degree.  But for me, I truly feel that the PhD “completed” my education.  It provided me the opportunity to explore areas of literature much more expansively and rigorously, and to be more exacting and rigorous with my own writing as well.

2.
Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet

MG: Who is your favorite character from Revenge of the Teacher's Pet?

DD: God, that’s like choosing a favorite eye.  I can’t do it.  Maybe Mr. Portwit.  I can go into detail as to why, but I’ll need more time.  He’s a complicated son-of-a-bitch. 

MG: Very true. Why, in your mind, is he the kind of guy who wants (or needs) to be referred to as Mr. Portwit. I mean, even his wife, Mary Ann, has to refer to him as Mr. Portwit. It's a strange character quirk.

DD:  That’s exactly what it is: a quirk.  To me, that’s what building a character is—giving them quirks (you might also just call them “traits”) and seeing what sticks.  I don’t mean to imply that any old quirk will do, or that writers should gratuitously and randomly pile on quirks for shock value or humor or what-have-you.  Ideally, the quirks will reside right alongside the character’s perceptions, ideologies, personal history, and so on, and all of these factors will operate in unison to create a whole person, and the reader will be able to put together (even unconsciously) how and why the quirks are organic to the character’s makeup.
 
In Portwit’s case, he has a disdain for language because he believes words are fundamentally untrustworthy due to their dependence on subjectivity.  In his mind, scientific evidence is the only way to prove truth.  But hovering over his head is the pesky notion that scientific knowledge is itself dependent upon language.  He can’t get around it.  So the only thing left to do is master language, or attempt to do so.  This is why he despises adjectives while simultaneously embracing them.  It’s why he takes apart his own name, figures out all of its possible meanings, and dictates precisely how he should be addressed.  Who he “is” is not going to be subject to the whims of some random observer!  

Of course, the joke on Portwit is that science is no more reliable than words for describing or, more accurately, ascribing causality to events, to human relationships.  There’s always the X, the unknown of human motivation, to contend with, and no matter what we do, certain momentous episodes in our lives are out of our control and their causations impossible to know.  This is why Portwit ultimately realizes his desperate gestures of control are “another sprig of parsley on his plate of steamed bullshit.” 

MG: I fell in love with Mary Ann—her outlook, her ways of relating to those around her. Why does she write lists? Where did you get that idea?

DD:  I’m glad to hear that you connected to her.  I loved writing in Mary Ann’s POV.  In talking to other people about the book, she seems to be the emotional center, and people are rooting for her in ways they aren’t rooting for Mr. Portwit.  Still, she has flaws, which is what makes a character likeable (right?).  I see the lists as one of her flaws.  Over the years, she has turned a routine of documenting and ordering her life into a straitjacket, of sorts.  I’ve never thought about it in this way before, but I am now, so I’m sticking with it.  The list-writing begins as a response to her father’s untimely death, and it proceeds in this fashion—as a way for Mary Ann to feel some semblance of control over her daily life, to vent her frustrations, to compartmentalize the people she likes or dislikes, and so on.  Unfortunately, it also freezes her into a routine and makes it so she is only thinking and not doing.  Dwelling in the moment and not looking to the future, maybe.  So the lists are a security blanket, too.  Ultimately, I don’t think Mary Ann is fundamentally different from Mr. Portwit—they both are seeking to understand the why and how of their lives.  For Mr. Portwit, it’s through the scientific method; for Mary Ann, it’s through meticulous documentation of her inner life. 

Not that the lists aren’t a positive thing.  She has this incredible record tracing back to her teenage years.  Like a diary, but much more fun to read! As for where I got the idea?  I don’t know.  I make To-Do lists now and then.  When I was a kid I went through a phase and wrote “Five Best Albums of All-Time” and “Five Best Jack Nicholson Movies” and things of that nature that would be embarrassing to run across.  Now we have Facebook for that kind of thing.

MG: One year after the novel ends, what will Mary Ann's Facebook status be?

DD:  Funny you should ask.  When I was going through the process of finding a publisher, one editor (who was going to pitch Revenge to his colleagues) suggested I come up with a Top Ten list to “hook” the reader and give some indication of the “type” of novel they were in for—a foreshadowing, of sorts.  The following list was written by Mary Ann some eight months after the novel ends:

Excerpted from Mary Ann Portwit’s Lists: Volume 2—For a Happier New Year
 
Ten Things I’ve Learned Since Marrying Dale (current mood:  sarcastic)

10.    Fish deserve my profound respect
9.    Hospitals are terrible
8.    Adjectives are even worse
7.    The wordsmiths were wise when they used the root “man” to create “manic” and “maniac”
6.    A human leg may way as much as 39 lbs., 10oz
5.    Sex is a messy, delicious business    
4.    Absence makes the heart choose less fatty foods   
3.    Crutches are overrated      
2.    Top Ten Lists—who needs ‘em?            
1.    Sometimes a mercy killing is the best thing for a marriage    

                  
MG: Without giving too much away, do you consider the ending a happy ending?

DD:  Absolutely.  I don’t know what this view says about me vis-à-vis the possibility of happiness between two people.  I think I’m terrified by, or at least nagged by, the notion that when it gets down to it, nobody can ever really know anybody else.  No matter how connected we feel in fleeting moments—of love, of chemicals, of symbiosis—we’re ultimately prisoners in our own worlds, and we can never truly inhabit another person.  Flannery O’Connor was comfortable with this idea—the wonder of mystery, the impossibility of comprehending human motivation—and she transformed it into an eerie sort of hope in her fiction.  The Christian faith—any faith—requires the embracing of mystery, and I guess I lack such faith.  I’m more like that guy in Camus’s The Stranger.  OK, maybe not that bad.  But in my fiction, I’ve probably unconsciously portrayed solitude and separation as positive traits as a result of this fear.  In other words, I want to make myself feel better by asserting that even though I can’t ever connect with someone, I can still be content.

But I’m happy to report that many people have said the ending of Revenge is very satisfying.  I’ve even heard the word “perfect” applied to it, so that makes me feel less alone.

MG: The novel's complete title is Revenge of the Teacher's Pet: A Love Story. What kind of love story is this?

DD:  Hopefully an honest one.  I don’t mean “real” or God-forbid, “realistic,” but honest with regard to the human experience of love in all its awkwardness and inflation, as well as its potential for giving meaning to our lives.  Also, it’s a funny love story, I hope.  A perverse and sexually charged one, too, though not in a conventional fashion.  I’m a huge fan of pre-Cry Baby John Waters movies (the filthy ones like Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble), and my novel was definitely reaching for those heights, although ultimately I restrained myself in this department for fear of never finding a publisher.   

MG: Would you say you compromised any of your creative interests in the interest of "finding a publisher"?

DD:  Thankfully, no.  All of the impulses I reined in were reined in because they were misplaced and/or gratuitous.  I learned through the process that “less is more” with regard to things like sex, bodily fluids, and profanity. 

MG: This book reminds me of Jane Shapiro's The Dangerous Husband. Have you read? Would you agree or disagree?

DD:  It’s amazing that you made that connection, because yes, I’ve read it.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I read it as I was writing the first draft of Revenge!  I loved Dangerous Husband and felt inspired by the notion that a darkly comic domestic story had been published.  That book is funny as hell, and I need to read it again.

Another influence on Revenge was Joyce’s Ulysses.  The wordplay, the close 3rd POV, the two alternating perspectives (not counting Molly Bloom’s), and so on.  The opening line of Revenge actually mirrors (steals?) the opening sentence structure of Ulysses.  Obviously, my dinky book is nowhere near the divine logorrhea of Joyce, but I was able to light a match off of his brilliant star.  Ha ha, that just made me laugh.  Anyway, I’ve always admired Ulysses and have almost finished it three times.

3.
The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo

MG: You have another book coming out soon, right? Can you tell us about that?

DD:  It’s titled The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo, and it comes out from St. Martin’s Press in early 2010.  What else would you like to know?  Seriously, I need a prompt. 

MG: Does she literally eat Kalamazoo? Sorry, that's the best I've got. Um, is it a novel or stories? Did you have second-book anxiety? Is there a third book in the works? Feel free to answer any or all . . .

DD:  The titular girl’s name is Audrey Mapes, and she does indeed eat the city.  It may surprise you, but very few people nowadays even remember the 1999-2000 devouring of Kalamazoo, MI.  How quickly we forget in this day-and-age of rapid-fire news! 

My book, though, is different from the numerous others that have been published about Audrey and her family.  The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo is actually compiled from the personal journals of Audrey’s older sister, McKenna.  As you probably know, the Mapeses have been notoriously private for the past ten years—not granting a single interview, being seen only rarely in public—but at long last we get to step inside the mysterious Mapes home and witness what went on behind those doors that might have motivated Audrey to transform herself into the “world’s most gifted eatist.” 

I would categorize the book as dark, humorous, tragic, and scary.  It’s quite shocking, really, to see how Audrey evolved from munching crayons as a baby to devouring refrigerators and stop signs as a young woman.  But I think readers will find the Mapes family to be endearing in their peculiarity.  I certainly did.

* * *

For more, including a full list of reviews, please visit Darrin’s website, http://www.darrindoyle.com