Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
As to the second part of the question, I’ve written more books than have been published. As for me as a writer, I’ve always relied on hearing something before it actually begins. When that does happen – and if whatever I’m hearing stays audible enough – a sort of structure begins to impose itself. Should the structure be sturdy enough, I’m generally good for the duration. Should it wobble, contract, or even fail, I’m not very good at re-configuring. (When I read about writers discarding the first hundred pages of a book that turns out to be less than epic, I am awestruck and irritated all at once. “How,” I want to ask, “can you do such a thing and keep going?” By way of an answer, I will say: “I can no more do such a thing that re-join one continent – which has drifted away on its own – to another.”
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest published book is rooted in my childhood, which was spent in a Memphis suburb, where I learned how to compete with other children, question authority (even if I may have done that, after the mandates of good behavior, politely), show up for things I didn’t want to do (while exiting whenever I wanted), participate in community events, tell the truth whenever the truth didn’t matter, implement impractical solutions, and do whatever I wanted to do first. The book itself is fractured into a series of tales that can be as structurally challenging as a novel, or maintain – after a number of these – a refreshing brevity. If a thread runs through them all, it’s that of life being a series of potholes one might either step in, avoid assiduously, or skirt with a sense of “What’s gonna happen?” They are set on ball-fields, schoolrooms, a summer camp, an academy of music (followed by a concert hall), nature as it is mediated by paths and fences, the shoebox-style houses that were conceived for the crop of post-WWII families that wanted a little space for themselves (and I do mean “little”), and – in the two stories that are set in another place – a downtown Christmas parade and that same downtown during an “normal” day. My models were hardly surprising: James Thurber, Mark Twain, Jean Shepherd, Peter deVries, and Garrison Keillor. And while its title (Laughter and Early Sorrow) was taken from a Thomas Mann short story – which, compared to mine, is a model of purposeful brevity – almost verbatim, dumbfounding adventure plays a more active role than angst-ridden analysis (though there is enough of that to give the book philosophical overtones.)
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
When I hear of other writers either having to write a few pages every day or toiling for a decade on a single book, I feel immediately defensive. Aside from the nonfiction (art criticism, personal essays, travel pieces, and “humor”) I’ve written over the years – some of which I’ve written on demand – I’ve never formulated any habits at all. When something is going well, I stick with it. (Sometimes I will perversely abandon it and see if I can, at some distant point in the future, come back. Without elaborating on what happens, I wish I’d just gone ahead and finished.) I’m not ashamed to admit that I can’t write without inspiration – which makes a story jump rather than loaf along. I’ve never worked with an outline and never will. E. L. Doctorow said that writing, for him, is not unlike driving through a fog; you can see ahead, but only as far as your headlights. Which has always been enough for him. I feel the same way.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Let’s start with Doctorow and include everything other than his last book, Homer and Langley, which eluded me when it was published. Yet I will get around to it because I believe Doctorow’s voice hath many colors. As does his breadth of human circumstance. There is, in him, those multitudes about which Whitman raved. And if Mark Twain represents a stride into a future that would diverge from European letters, I can’t say that Hawthorne should be set aside. Nor should Henry James (or Edith Wharton for that matter.) I’m attracted to comedic inflections, but I’m equally at home, at least in my reading, with the tragic sensibilities of mostly American and British writers (yes, I am one of those aging white men whose ignorance of world literature is absolutely shameful) starting with Theodore Dreiser (whose prose has to be overlooked in order for serious reading to occur), Willa Cather, John Steinbeck (a humorist whose sense of justice was not punchline-friendly), Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, Kurt Vonnegut, Grace Paley. . .not even to mention their many successors who are active – or at least undead – to this day. Among Brits? There’s almost too much lineage to be inclusive. Mine would start, I suppose, with Shakespeare and tap out with Iris Murdoch and Julian Barnes.
What are you working on now?
I spend most of my time, these days, looking for a new publisher; promoting the books that are already – or are soon to be – in print; attempting to sneak nonfiction pieces by editors who are, for the most part, hostile to the notion of publishing me; and seeing that my plays – which are comedically eccentric – are performed before a live audience. (I also tinker with novels I would like to see in print for at least a few years before my mortal coil either chokes me or unravels too quickly for me to catch it as it falls.)
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I have none.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Love words. Read voluminously. If something excites you, take it as far as you can. Believe only those people who “get” you. And don’t pretend that you don’t care what anybody thinks. In that’s the case, why in hell are you writing?
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Nothing, alas, comes to mind.
What are you reading now?
Things that are, alas, immediately digestible.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I wish I knew.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I think I would want to bring words I would want to bring to life – or re-animate – by reading them aloud. And that would be thought on. Plays were conceived for that alone. But how can one do without Don Quixote? Rabelais? And, to go back to the stage, Moliere? Perhaps it would be exhilarating to introduce Moby Dick to an avian audience. Or Much Ado about Nothing to whatever shellfish might be lying (laying?) around. And, as far as I know, desert island readings of Paradise Lost are entirely unknown.
Author Websites and Profiles
Brett Busang Amazon Profile