F.
Brett Cox is co-editor,with Andy Duncan, of "Crossroads:
Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic" (Tor, 2004).
His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications,
including "Century", "Black Gate", "The
North Carolina Literary Review", "Lady Churchill's Rosebud
Wristlet","The New England Quarterly", "The
New York Review of Science Fiction", "Paradoxa","Locus
Online", "The Robert Frost Encyclopedia", "Science
Fiction Weekly", and "Science Fiction Studies".
A native of North Carolina, Brett is Assistant Professor of English
at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, where he lives with
his wife, playwright Jeanne Beckwith.
What are
you working on right now?
Mostly, my students' papers. I do have a couple of new stories
in the very early stages and hope to finish at least one Real
Soon Now.
If you had
to pick one story of yours for everyone to read, what would it
be? Why? And where would we find it?
I have to cheat and name two: "The Light of the Ideal,"
in "Century" No. 5 (Winter 2000) and "Legacy"
in "Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet" No. 13
(November 2003). "Ideal" reflects my abiding interest
in literary history—the main characters, Richard Henry Stoddard
and Elizabeth Bartow Stoddard, were an actual literary couple
from the late nineteenth century—while "Legacy,"
my take on a footnote to the Bell Witch legend, reflects my ongoing
concern with the history and culture of my native South, and is
also as close as I've come to date to writing a straight-up
supernatural horror story. I think anyone reading these two stories
would have a pretty good sense of what I'm up to.
Describe
your writing. You write fantasy & SF in addition to horror,
correct?
Correct. My background as a reader is much more in SF than either
fantasy or horror, but little of my fiction has been SF. I'm very
interested in the intersections of genre and have published in
literary as well as genre magazines, so I guess the term "slipstream"
might come to mind, although whenever I see that word I always
think of Archie Bunker's definition of an hermaphrodite: "Too
mucha both and not enougha neither." I sometimes fear that phrase
applies all too well to my own work—although the only two
stories of mine that remain unsold (not counting apprentice work
that need never see the light of day) are the two most recent
ones, which are still making the rounds.
How do you
see your style and storylines evolving as time goes on? What themes
do you seem to revisit most often?
Most of my early stories were various shades of Southern Gothic,
and while that's still a major attraction, I've been
branching out recently. Of the two stories currently out, one
is set in New England, and the other takes place out West. I firmly
believe there's nothing wrong with writing an elegant phrase
or two, although in my most recent story (the one set out West)
I deliberately tried to dial back on the complex sentences. Thematically,
several of my stories have examined what happens when people who
have been leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation"
are presented with the possibility of change, or escape, or even
transcendence. Nothing terribly original in that, of course, but
that's OK. I've never had much use for "the
heart wants what it wants" as a guide to personal behavior,
but I do believe that, past a certain point, writers write what
they write—take it or leave it.
Which writers
(genre or otherwise) influence or inspire you? Why?
I cut my teeth on the canonical SF triumvirate of Heinlein, Clarke,
and Asimov, but I can't say my fiction is particularly influenced
by them. On the other hand, Bradbury, Sturgeon, and Ellison strongly
imprinted me with their style, their passion, and their ability
to work both sides of a number of streets (Sturgeon's "It" is
still one of the best horror stories ever). The early work of
Norman Spinrad, Samuel R. Delany, and especially the late Roger
Zelazny dazzled me. Gene Wolfe's early stories were a tremendous
inspiration. The stories, and the glimpses of the SF/fantasy/horror
community, that I found in Ellison's "Dangerous Visions" and Damon
Knight's "Orbit" anthologies made me want to be a writer. John
Kessel, Michael Bishop, James Morrow, Paul Di Filippo, Elizabeth
Hand, and Karen Joy Fowler have all been great influences by both
personal and professional example. Howard Waldrop and Terry Bisson
and Neal Barrett, Jr. and Joe Lansdale made it OK to dwell on
the South, as did the late Manly Wade Wellman. Tom Reamy knocked
me out when I was first trying to write and then died far too
soon. Two novels that arguably do everything I've ever wanted
to do in fiction are Karen Joy Fowler's "Sarah Canary" and Geoff
Ryman's "Was". I'm also increasingly aware of how Barry Malzberg's
work has influenced my own fiction. William Gibson, born in my
mother's home town of Conway, South Carolina, inspires not only
as a superb writer but also as a Southern boy who wrote a book
that changed the world. And, of course, Stephen King became a
zillionaire by writing good books—what better inspiration
than that?
In contemporary horror, I've been very impressed
with and energized by the recent stories of John Langan, Glen
Hirschberg, and Dale Bailey. I'd also mention three specific recent
works, all Stoker finalists: Stewart O'Nan's "A Prayer for the
Dying", China Mieville's "Details," and George Saunders' "The
Red Bow." I emerged from all three stories breathless, flabbergasted,
and slack-jawed with envy.
Mainstream? William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor,
whose shadows loom as large as ever. I still love Hemingway (the
stories more than the novels) and Fitzgerald and have never relinquished
my affection for J.D. Salinger. The short stories of Raymond Carver
for grace, the novels of Cormac McCarthy and Kathy Acker for sheer
nerve. A number of contemporary Southern writers such as Tom Franklin,
William Gay, Daniel Wallace—writers who can go toe-to-toe
with their predecessors and remain standing. And Joyce Carol Oates
is an ongoing inspiration. I mean, here's a writer who publishes
in "The New Yorker" and "Fantasy and Science Fiction".
What more do you want?
Finally, I must acknowledge the macabre signposts
of my youth: "The Twilight Zone", "Night Gallery",
"Dark Shadows", "Kolchack: The Night Stalker",
"The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh", Robert Arthur's
YA anthologies ("Ghosts and More Ghosts", "Thrillers
and More Thrillers", etc.) and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents
the Three Investigators", "Great Tales of Terror and
the Supernatural", "Frankenstein", "Dracula",
Aurora monster model kits, my high school research paper on the
Salem witch trials, and all those comic books.
You're also
a teacher. Tell us a little about that and how it affects your
writing.
See my answer to question 1. I have a full-time, tenure-track
position in the English Department at Norwich University in Northfield,
Vermont. It's a small school, focused on teaching, and so
rather than being tracked onto a narrow research agenda, I can
write what I want. My department is very supportive of my writing
and doesn't blink at my association with all that weird
science fiction and horror stuff. Great job, great people, and
an academic schedule that affords me more flexibility than other
full-time jobs. But it's not only a full-time job; it's
also a full-time job focused on literature and writing. If I've
spent a morning teaching writing and literature classes, and an
afternoon grading papers and preparing for class, when evening
comes I might be up to spending some more time with writing, or
I might not. But for someone of my temperament, the academic life
is definitely the way to go, and I feel very lucky to have landed
a good gig in a good place.
Though you
live in Vermont, you're originally from the South. How does your
Southern upbringing influence your writing?
My Southern upbringing provided me with a deep sense of history,
of language, and of place—all things any writer needs. My
unreconstructed Yankee wife (she lived in the South for twelve
years, but it didn't take) often grows impatient with the
way some Southerners—OK, lots of Southerners—claim
a unique storytelling heritage. She points out that the Irish
Catholic community she grew up in was as obsessively verbal and
spent just as much time swapping lies on the front porch as anybody
down South. But even as writers write what they write, people
are from where they're from, and I'm from the South,
and the South is not quite like anyplace else. (Neither is New
England.) I can't imagine my writing would be the same if
I'd been born in Pittsburgh or Des Moines instead of southeastern
North Carolina.
Tell us a
little bit about your writing process. What's your schedule? Do
you outline your stories? How do you edit / revise your stories?
Schedule? What's that? I'm horribly undisciplined
and don't even come close to writing every day—or
every week, for that matter. I do think about my stories a great
deal before I ever put the first word on the screen. (Unlike many
of my colleagues, I can barely sign my name without a computer,
and I write from first to last on a keyboard, if possible.) If
I were any good at outlining, I would have probably written a
novel by now. I wrote my early stories in a blaze and then line-edited
them with a vengeance. My recent work has been more significantly
revised, owing in no small part to my having joined the Cambridge
SF Writers Workshop, which has been an invaluable experience.
What are
the most positive trends in genre fiction / publishing today?
Although the genre walls are still standing, there are a lot more
open doors and windows than there used to be, with writers such
as Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, and Neal Stephenson crossing
over to the mainstream, and writers such as Stewart O'Nan,
Michael Chabon, George Saunders, A.S. Byatt, and Daniel Wallace
visiting from the other direction. I think this is all to the
good. I'm also delighted by the increasing number of African-American
writers turning to SF, fantasy, and horror.
What are
the most negative trends in genre fiction / publishing today?
The downward sales spiral of the few remaining professional genre
magazines.
Feel free
to add any closing comments of your own.
I couldn't talk about my writing without acknowledging how much
music means to me. My favorite albums—and that's another
topic for another time—have influenced and inspired me just
as much as any book I've ever read. Maybe more. And be sure to
check out "Crossroads:
Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic", the original
/ reprint anthology I've co-edited with Andy Duncan, out now from
Tor Books. You want it; you love it; you can't live without it.
Posted 11.10.04 |
