Bill Roorbach

Dan Wickett: Hello Bill, thank you for taking the time for this
interview
Bill Roorbach: My pleasure.
Dan: What led to your becoming a writer?
Bill: My mother reading to me when I was very small, I truly believe. Writing was also the one way to bring together all my interests and passions, which cover a lot of territory.
Dan: What is your writing habit? How did it change when you got married? How about with the addition of your daughter?
Bill: My writing habit? Two dirty needles a day, Dan. Let's see. Juliet and I have been together 20 years, married twelve years ago, just when I finished grad school. So that didn't really change anything.
Elysia is 20 months now. And those early months are
really intense--not much sleep, time all broken up. I
still managed to write a little most days. But to
tell the truth, teaching was much more disruptive to
my writing than either marriage or fatherhood. I've
quit full time teaching now, and it's really working:
daily practice. And that's my writing habit, just
work everyday. I try to do a couple hours in the
morning. I count gardening and birdwatching as
writing. And a couple hours in the afternoon. No
email till evening. No phone till evening. Nap every day after lunch. Baby in the morning, baby at night. Lots and lots of reading.
Dan: Do you find any major event being a driving force
behind our writings?
Bill: Not mine, really. I think when something like
September 11 happens lots and lots of writers,
particularly journalists, write and write and write
about it till the acceptable thing you're supposed to
say about it gets very refined, and then everyone goes around saying this thing about it for generations to come, whether it's true or not. I'm not sure who the our of your question is, but when we start thinking in first-person plural we aren't artists anymore.
(Interviewer's Note - good eye, the our was meant to be your in my question above)
Dan: The more personal [intimate] essays you write? Do they start off being written with the intention of being sold, or more for journal type of writing?
Bill: I never really write any personal essay (in the sense that Lopate uses the term) or fiction with any thought of selling it, or "markets" or any of that. I'm just trying to explore something I've been thinking about or been through and trying to find the language for it, to sort of set it to music. Really that's all. I don't keep a journal. I do have these little memo notebooks with snatches of language in them, ideas, the usual incoherent stuff. When I do journalism, which is seldom anymore, yes, it's being written to fulfill a contract, and in that way is already sold. I've written some of my books on contract, too--but that's different again. I regard the book contract as affirmation and permission, but certainly not impetus.
Dan: In terms of your topic essays. Do you feel the need to be at least remotely interested in the topic before You'll take an assignment? Say, digging up earthworms for instance.
Bill: Topic essays? I don't understand the question. The worms were sea worms, actually, and that was a journalism assignment from Harper's that eventually got killed, ouch. Creative Nonfiction published it, though, as "Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine." I put a much longer version in INTO WOODS, one that included the story of it getting killed for Harper's. I wouldn't write about anything I wasn't interested in, but I'm interested in mostly everything, really. My problem with journalism is that I'm shy talking to strangers I'm supposed to be exploiting for their stories, you know. I'm always happiest writing fiction, and that's what I'm best at, in my opinion.
Dan: Your short story collection won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. How did you go about getting involved with the contest in the first place?
Bill: I was editor of the Sandstone Prize in Short Fiction at Ohio State and wanted to learn more about how other contests were run, and what it felt like to take part, and so forth. I had this manuscript of stories my (now former) agent wasn't enthusiastic about. So I sent it to four of the big contests and absolutely unbelievably won one of them.
Dan: How did winning affect your writing career?
Bill: It's all dirty needles, Dan, two a day.
Dan: Have you read many of the other winning collections?
Bill: Yes.
Dan: I noticed a trend in the collection - the male
protagonists in each story suffer from being lonely.
Do you feel a particular empathy for the lonely males
in the world?
Bill: Are you lonely, Dan? Is that what all this is about? All these emails? All the late night phone calls? The drinking? But seriously--the original title of the collection was LONELINESS. So you've put your finger on something. Of course we're all lonely, every human regardless of gender, because we are separate no matter how close we manage to become,
which isn't always very close. I guess after death
the molecules mingle, and that's nice, a kind of metempsychosis.
Dan: Your novel "The Smallest Color," while containing many stories, can be used as a view of the counter-culture of the late 60?s. You show both the good sides and the bad sides. Do you consider yourself one who was a member of that counter-culture?
Bill: Yes. I was a little on the young side, born 1953, but was in that sick Vietnam draft lottery and was into the music and did the drugs and marched the marches and so forth. And some of that counter-culture thinking changed the world forever and for better. And as far as politics, we were right, dead right. I wish more kids were questioning things now. Because that little Bush weenie makes Nixon look like a left-winger and he's really making a mess of things.
Dan: Have you received much male from those who do consider themselves members? Do you generally hear that you nailed that time period dead-on or get accused of not having a clue from those who contact you?
(Note - another damn typo, male was obviously supposed
to be mail)
Bill: Yes, lots of male members. I get a lot of mail and email and so forth and it's all positive and even
without it I know I got it dead-on because, Dan, I was
there.
Dan: "The Smallest Color" has been optioned to be made into a movie. How involved do you plan on being with that project?
Bill: If the movie gets made, I'll get to go to the
premiere--that's about it, aside from kissing the
producers for keeping me out of the university.
Dan: Do you feel that your earlier work was a building up process to the writing of your novel?
Bill: I wrote the novel, "Big Bend," "Summers With Juliet," "Writing Life Stories," and "Into Woods" all in the same ten years, all interwoven. Work on the novel, in various drafts, spanned the whole ten years! And all of that has certainly taught me a lot, and with any luck will help make "Temple Stream" pretty good.
Dan: Which format do you prefer to write in?
Bill: Do you mean genre? Form? This sounds like a computer question. If you mean genre, I prefer fiction.
Dan: How do you regard the nature of book reviews?
Bill: They are mostly horrifyingly bad these days, even when positive. I hate synopsis reviews, for example, that just tell what a novel, say, is about (usually including the surprise ending). And the worst is a good review that just misses the boat entirely. The best is when someone gets it right, someone who can think and isn't afraid to say what she thinks, whether it's positive or negative.
Dan: What other writers do you look forward to new works from?
Bill: So many. I guess right off the bat, Philip Roth comes to mind. Janet Malcolm. A very long list. Andrew Marvel.
Dan: What literary journals do you tend to read and why do you choose the ones that you do?
Bill: I like the Paris Review for the Interviews. I'm
trying to sound like one of those Paris Review interviews, as a matter of fact. The best one was
Daniel Berrigan interviewing Jack Kerouac, and they
get really really high on pills and beer in the course of it and it just falls to pieces, with Jack's mother coming in and out of the room yelling at everyone.... And I have a policy of subscribing for life to any review that has published me, so gradually here I'm starting to get quite a load of magazines hanging around. Some are pretty good, some are boring as hell. I used to give them away to students, but now I'm not teaching....
Dan: How do you feel the internet has helped or harmed the writing and publishing process?
Bill: Oh, fuck the internet. It's good for certain kinds of research. I'm afraid it's gotten hijacked by the big boys, though. E-mail is useful, of course, but I'm still in love with my mailbox out on the street. And I think everyone knows that the only reason the internet exists at all is that it's an efficient delivery system for pornography. So I'm back to my first exclamation. Meanwhile I'll email these answers to you and wake up in the middle of the night and wish I hadn't pushed SEND.
Dan: What about e-readers, and books printed on demand?
Bill: What a dismal, profound failure. What nonsense and bullshit. How do you throw a book you hate in the
woodstove if it's on your palm pilot? Paper books will always be here. Oh fuck! The cops are at my door! What did I do? What did I say?
Dan: What effect did you see 9/11 having on the publishing industry? Do you see any long term effects?
Bill: I don't know. I guess it was pretty scary being in New York, where most of that stuff goes on. But aside from some books about the attack and terror or stuff, not much of any substance, I imagine.
Dan: Finally, if you were a character in "Fahrenheit 451," what work(s) would you commit to memory?
Bill: I would commit to memory HENLEY'S FORMULAS, a huge fat book that gives you recipes for everything from leather tanning to gun powder to glues to you name it. But literature--I'd memorize "Now You Love Me," by Liesel Litzenburger, because it's a great book and beautifully written, but also because I've already got it half memorized.
Dan: Thank you very much for the time and words of wisdom.
Bill: Wisdom? Oh, fuck, I just pushed SEND.

KB: St. Anselm, a learned egg by any standard, talked of the vital role which “the imagined audience” of a book plays during its production. Whom did you imagine reading over your shoulder while you wrote Temple Stream?

BR: I tried to imagine one reader, someone far away, smart and sympathetic, but who wouldn't necessarily know anything at all about Farmington or even Maine. Presumably many of my readers will be in this category (I once got a fan letter from Swaziland!). How to catch and maintain such a person's interest?]

KB: In Temple Stream you blend several different genres and aspects of writing. Do you see the result as unified and gestalt, or do the combining elements maintain their individual integrity?

BR: I think all books should make their own rules, answer their own needs. In Temple Stream, I hoped for a structure and presentation that would be as unified as the stream itself, with a definite flow, but of course with pools and eddies to contrast to the whitewater, lots of boulders, a dam or two, some bridges, places to linger barefoot, places to hurry along.

KB: In Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out Helen asks of a book being described to her, “but does it aim at Beauty?” What was your target for Temple Stream?

BR: Beauty is a lofty goal and always in my mind as I write. Also drama, coherence, clarity, fascination, depth, and on and on, qualities that (come to think of it) tend to add up to the first quality, that beauty Helen was talking about.

KB: Your portrait of Franklin County, in terms of our natural surroundings, our community, and of course some individual residents, is, entertaining, intimate and affectionate. Also, there is a strong narrative thread in Temple Stream linking the movement of the natural and your personal world. Is there anything particular about our area that drove or influenced the narrative?

BR: The stream. I really did want to see it whole by looking at all the pieces, but of course the stream like anything turns out to be infinite, even in its wholeness. I learned a lot studying and researching and exploring as I worked on the book.

KB: Suppose you were working in a Library or a Bookstore and someone came up to you and said, “I really loved that new book, Temple Stream, can you suggest something similar I might like?” What would you suggest?

BR: I'd say, "Temple Stream? Why, I wrote that book!" And I'd hug that customer a good one. I do love to meet readers. And then I'd recommend hundreds of books, starting perhaps with Great Plains, by Ian Frazier, or Dakota, by Kathleen Norris.

KB: Do you have a favorite passage from Temple Stream, one which cannot be read and reread a sufficient number of times? Which is it?

BR: The book is still too new for me to see it very clearly--I guess I'll have to leave it to readers to pick out their own passages...

About The Author
Interview
Bill Roorbach Author of "Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine"

This piece was a hard one to report because the wormers are Downeast Mainers and one of the great points of pride of Downeast Mainers is silence in the face of adversity, silence in the face of poverty, silence in front of outsiders. I'd seen those guys with their rakes out on the mudflats and had a couple of conversations, Maine-men-talking-to-tourist: "Oh, we're just digging up rocks for pleasure." That kind of thing, and they'd show me a rock.

When I decided to do a story I went out there as a reporter looking for people to work with and -- unusual in the world -- they wouldn't say anything at all, not even lies about rocks. Not a word from anybody. "Not interested." So I switched to saying I was a professor (this is true) interested in worming (also true) and now at least some guys were more willing to be interviewed, even if it was for publication, but only about technical things, certainly not about their lives.

For those questions, everyone said see so-and-so, down such-and-such way, so I did, and so-and-so took me out worming and he and his friends lied to me about everything outrageously ("scuba worming" was the worst of it) and made sure I got stuck in the mud and stung by two worms and laughed at me. My first worming notebook is still buried out there in the mud of such-and-such bay, full of lies. Turns out so-and-so had been interviewed about a dozen times by local papers and news stations and had always got away with lying ("scuba worming" had been mentioned seriously by a radio reporter out of Portland, who should have known better). So-and-so was the wormer's unofficial PR man, and very funny, but full of misinformation and disinformation, a properly wry and recalcitrant Yankee.

It took me weeks of (imperfectly pleasant) trips to the ocean and mudflats to find Ikey Dorr. And Ikey Dorr was special only in that he would talk to me at all. He started to trust me when I let myself be made fun of as a professor and when he saw I meant to get equipment and worm with them and when he saw I didn't believe their lies (that "scuba worming" thing is popular. Also "nude worming," and its secondary tale, "the sexy lady reporter who tried it"). Also, I didn't mind drinking a tank or two of beer with them and sitting down to "suppah." And I didn't ask lots of questions, having learned how poorly that worked. I just hung out with them with as much sympathy as I could muster. And I showed them what I wrote in my notebook. So Ikey and Danny and company started being themselves around me, and took decent care of me, and showed me the worming business from the mud up, only scaring me and kidding me when absolutely necessary.

Then there was the writing. I write a lot of fiction, so to me scene is everything. I try to avoid long sections of journalistic, billboard, or lists of facts, preferring to get as much as possible of that stuff into the weave of story. Characters, of course, are what make narrative happen. So I worry a lot about what it means to get a real person onto the page. And I don't pretend to be objective. That's me the story is coming from. And I, like all of us, am a distorting lens, quite often stuck in the mud.

THE SMALLEST COLOR is your first novel, and it's pretty ambitious in that it has numerous, fully fleshed-out characters, and two story lines intertwined-Coop's past and present. There are also numerous settings: Colorado, Seattle, Chicago, Maine, Montana. How did you come to write this story?
The places are important, yes. I've lived most of those places, and visited the others for long stays. In high school, for instance, I visited my uncle for whole summers in Montana. I grew up in Connecticut, exurban New York. Went to college in Ithaca, New York, Ithaca College. After that I played in bands (piano), traveled all over, north and south, east and west, Europe, and bartended various places, including those 70s discos, and even worked briefly on a cattle ranch. And the past is a kind of place, too. My own past includes coming up through high school really angry about what was going on in Vietnam, that our fathers thought that was all right, and really scared of the draft, scared of being square, too, uncool. There was something traumatic about the whole sixties milieu, something unsaid about both the hippie thing turning yippie and that so-called war. Both were scary as hell. And both ended up changing the world utterly, though I fear now that some of the good changes are coming undone. I came up a little younger than the main sixties players-I graduated high school 1971, tended to romanticize every aspect of what the big kids were up to, but still, I was in it, tend to think of the sixties as ending with Nixon's resignation in 1974. And even in the weirdest moments, the people around me were great. Such characters, such good hearts, such bad news at times. Such terrific, independent, daring women. I did things I don't even want to think about any kid of mine doing. Young people are always in danger, but were more so then, I think. There was a kind of naivete that was part of the hippie thing. We took up with anybody who seemed to offer an answer. We took up with anybody who seemed to have a question. A lot of trauma in there for people, both national and personal. A certain amount for me. Some you keep paying for. Time is a kind of place too-that stretch of time between then and now which is the heart of this novel. I couldn't let go of it. THE SMALLEST COLOR is the result of all that. It's true that fully half the book takes place in the present, far from the turbulent sixties, thirty years distant, in fact.

In the end, isn't THE SMALLEST COLOR really about the here and now?

It's a book about healing, as much as anything. Coop at forty-five years of age carries around this terrific sadness and guilt and fury, also fond memories, nostalgia-all this must be released, and when it is, watch out! This is no ordinary mid-life thing-Coop's been living with this devastating secret. When it starts to boil, everything Coop holds dear is threatened, and has to change if he is going to find peace, forgive himself, forgive his parents, find their forgiveness, move on. Plus, the poor guy falls in love like he hasn't since that intense summer of 1969. Sex is back, desire. His heart is full once again. He's that kid again. So it's a happy story, too. The summer of 1969 takes on mythic proportions for Coop, just as it has for many people who were young during that time. In many ways it was the best and worst time of Coop's life, with the specter of Vietnam always looming in the background.

What were you doing during that year? Did you have to face the prospect of going to Vietnam?

I was Coop's age. Like Coop I was in that first awful draft lottery. I had a bad number, too, long story. In high school, we took part in the moratoriums, going door to door asking people to ask for peace. Stuff like that. Trying to save the country, for sure, but trying to save your own ass, too. Great demonstrations, where you felt you could actually change things, and where you had a blast, met self-possessed women, met cool guys. This sense of power came home, too, the idea that we didn't have to do what our parents and gym coaches and principals said. That year I spent time in Montana--a powerful visit. First love, first horses, open spaces, that kind of thing. Some cowboys a little older caught up to me and dragged me through the park in Helena by my feet for being a hippie, though I didn't think of myself that way. It was the hair. I escaped and actually ran to the police station. They weren't inclined to help, but knew my uncle and called him. You were always fighting then, getting in scrapes. Using jazzman lingo-groovy, far out. Smoking pot, tripping. One's parents never knew about it. Meanwhile, the moon landing and Woodstock and Altamount, all this great music, all this new art in new forms. Freedom was the issue, for Blacks, for women, for kids, actually a very conservative notion. And Vietnam was a terrific specter. It still scares me, really, that people in power could be capable of such stupidity (and if not stupidity, then evil). But kids fought back, sometimes going too far, and often being just as stupid (or evil) as the people they railed against. But kids fought back and eventually prevailed. I didn't end up in Vietnam, but I ended up damaged anyway. I put some of this in the book.

You've now written an award-winning collection of stories (BIG BEND), a very successful memoir (SUMMERS WITH JULIET), and a nonfiction book about writing (WRITING LIFE STORIES).Did the novel offer any different challenges? Any ideas on what you may work on next?

The novel was much harder than the previous books. In fact, two of them I wrote while working on the novel. You have to keep the story alive and fresh in your head for years, and don't really see it whole for the longest time. I knew it was almost ready when I could start thinking of the whole thing at once, could go through the chapters in my head. It's a big shape, this novel, and just great to see it between hard covers. What's next? I'm always working on ten things at once. Next, I think, will be a nonfiction book, nature writing-I'm a real boy in the woods, and this will be a look at the stream behind our house here in Maine. And then another novel, maybe reaching a little further back in time than this one. I'm already more-or-less started on both.

You deal with some of the heady idealism espoused during the 60s in THE SMALLEST COLOR. Sexual liberation for one, which Coop embraces whole-heartedly with Tricia and Bailey, then wavers over when Hodge enters the picture and further "liberates" these young women. Another is violent revolution vs. peaceful protest.What is it as that draws you to deal with these moral dilemmas in your writing?

I think it's still important stuff. And come on, any fifteen or sixteen year old boy embraces sexual liberation. I still think it's a good idea. Plus, of course, the women in THE SMALLEST COLOR liberate themselves, and are fully people in little need of the nonsense of men. These are powerful women, women who know their strength. They just happen to like these guys. All the good moral dilemmas are still with us, have always been. Maybe we talk more now and with less embarrassment about what really matters, and that's a legacy of the sixties. And peace, peace is a good ideal. But one renounces violence, then finds one's self being attacked. Tricky stuff. All the big idealists had it right, of course--Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, Socrates. The best of the hippies just wanted to live what they'd learned in Sunday school and philosophy class, what they saw was little practiced by their parents and leaders. The worst of the hippies wanted powers of their own, with no responsibility, and this led to disasters both political and sexual.

You're recently a father for the first time. This book explores the heartbreak of both children and parents who become estranged from one another.Does having your own child change your outlook on this?

While she's a baby it's easy to say no to this question. But ask again in 14 years.

We always like to ask if there any writers or artists who have been particularly important to you as a writer.And since you were a musician for a number of years, can you tell us a little about your music, and who you listen to nowadays?

So many writers. All the good ones, and that means hundreds. I read as much as possible, sometimes as much as a book a day. With the baby I guess my favorite is GOODNIGHT MOON. Before Elysia came along I might have started the discussion with George Eliot and just gone on and on. And on. My wife is a painter, and visual art is important in our lives. I love a day looking at paintings, hanging around in someone's studio. I still play piano. One of my projects is a kind of performance called "I Used to Play in Bands." I used to play in bands. That's a plaintive middle-aged kind of thing to say, isn't it? Goodnight stars.