Welcome, lurkers and talkers, to the 49 Writers online book club discussion. Today and tomorrow (Monday and Tuesday), we’ve got an open forum for discussion of A Man of His Village by Tanyo Ravicz. Leave your comments and/or questions using the comment feature, tagged with either your Google ID, a name of your choosing, or Anonymous. If you have questions or comments for the author, start them with “Tanyo.” Stop by as often as you like over the next two days to get back in the discussion thread.
To open the dialogue, I’ll pose this question: What in the book did you find most compelling?
Tanyo, what led you to set so much of the book in the Hess Creek burn?
Well, the reported incident that gave me the idea for the novel — some undocumented workers were hired to pick morels there and then abandoned — happened at Hess Creek in 1992. The wildfire had burned thru Hess Creek the year before, and I had worked on that fire for BLM, so I was familiar with the setting, and it's a natural one to use.
Now, if you mean why set so much of the book at Hess Creek as opposed to, say, Seattle or Mexico, I guess that's where I chose to establish the 'present' of the story, where the strands of causation from the preceding years (a particular character within a particular economic system) come to a head.
Unity of place can help concentrate a book even when the story shuttles into the past as this one often does.
Tanyo:
I'm interested in what kind of research you did for this book in Mexico.
Hi,
While writing the book, my active Mexico research was confined to Tijuana and the northern border area, where I had the time and means to go and spend some time.
Altho I've been to Oaxaca and the Mixtec villages many times in the past, at the time of writing it had been a dozen years since I'd been that far south. Whatever changes had occurred in the interval I had to make good thru book and newspaper research — eg, abundant first-hand accounts of Mixtec migrants here in southern California — and by consulting contemporary anthropologists. I did a lot of this research while I was living in Irvine, CA for a few months in '94-'95, supposedly as an MFA student.
"I found the way the woman who was hunting mushrooms treated the men whom she hired to help her the most compelling or upsetting is maybe a better word. She seemed worse than all the farmers that the main character had worked for before. Tanyo, did some interaction or relationship you had in your life lead to your idea and portrayal of such a mean and greedy woman?"
That's interesting, Tanyo – the real-life Hess Creek anecdote that inspired the story. How did you feel your way through weaving the present day narrative with the rich backstory? And I have to ask, since we've had so much MFA-related discussion on the blog, about your experience as a "supposed MFA student." Did you become disillusioned?
That's a good point, Steffie, about Donna. Maybe it's because Florentino seems initially attracted to her that we feel her depth as an antognist. I found it interesting that even after how awful she'd been, he still felt guilty about not trying to save her. Gender issue or something else?
Steffie,
Wow. No, actually, I didn't even invent her. I probably spiced up her villainy, but Donna was more or less already there for me. The original 1992 News-Miner article, which I refer to in my first post above, says that the undocumented workers "flew from Washington to Fairbanks … pursuing jobs picking mushrooms for a woman who had employed them in Washington. The woman, about 55, picked them up at the airport and drove them 100 miles north up the Dalton Highway to Hess Creek, the remote site of old forest fires expected to produce a big crop of the gourmet morels. Once there, they asked the woman for food. She said they had to buy their own. Neither did they have any water or water bottes, mosquito repellent, or a tent." Two days later, having found few mushrooms, and being tormented by mosquitos, "the men asked their employer for a ride to Fairbanks. The woman refused."
You get the picture. It does make a strong impression.
Deb,
re. Donna, and Florentino's wanting to go back for her, there's a pattern suggested at some point: Florentino abandons his sister when he shouldn't have, so he perhaps compensates later by not abandoning Donna when he arguably needn't.
Yes, the first powerful impression she made on him in Seattle must be factor in the dynamics too.
***
Re. the chronology — Earliest version of the novel was straight chronological, starting in Mexico. Once I decided to cut a lot of the Mexico stuff, and to start the novel in Seattle, the jumping off point to Alaska, weaving in the backstory became a necessity.
Just when and where to weave things is a feel thing and a pacing thing. It's always a relief to find a smooth place to put some passage you need to put somewhere.
Seattle seems like a good place to start – the beginning of the end. What do readers think of the ending?
Deb, I wasn't dodging your MFA question, but went and dug up a published essay from Jan. 2005, "A House Without Laughter," in which I lay out my thoughts about MFA programs and my own scary 4-month experience in one. I'll send you a copy if the subject interests you, or maybe I'll upload the essay and make it available.
Thanks, Tanyo. The MFA piece sounds like it would be a great blog post, if you want to send it: 49writers@gmail.com or debv@gci.net.
Another question: You opted to self-publish the book. Some agents and editors warn this will bias them against an author, yet we've all heard the stories of self-pubbed books getting mega-contracts from the big houses. What's your take on self-publishing? What frustrations await the self-published author? What rewards? What changes do your foresee in the self-pubbing scene?
Tanyo, I would love to read the essay "A House Without Laughter" here. I hope to see it. Thanks.
Hi Tanyo, I haven't yet read your book but am eager to do so and appreciate what you're sharing here; my interest is piqued! Would also love to hear about whether you feel you've managed to reach your audience, given that you went the self-pubbing route. (And we all know that even conventionally published books face distribution difficulties.) Are readers finding your book, to your satisfaction?
Deb & Andromeda,
That's funny — agents and editors being biased against a POD author. Fancy that! Hopefully that won't dissuade the writer who hasn't clicked with an agent or editor anyway.
I think if you get an opening with a traditional publisher, it's better. Easier. A little money. Respect. Whatever. There's certainly a bias against self-pub books. Every book I sell POD is a blow to the old publishing model and its profit chain and those who take their legitimacy from it. I can't get into the Author's Guild, for example, because my books aren't considered quite real.
It's also true there is a lot of bad stuff out there, a justifiable reason to be wary of POD books. In my case, A Man of His Village was my third time going through the mill with a book manuscript — you know, letters, queries, synopses, chapters, SASEs, creeps, delays, all that stuff. No frustration of self-publishing will equal the frustration of that process.
A writer reaches a certain "point." And you'll never know for sure why you can't get someone to take on your work. But you really have only one question to answer: Is it my writing? And for the writers who believe in their stuff, and know it's not their writing, but one of the many other variables that they can't control, then for them POD technology is pure liberation.
If you publish POD and want to sell your books, it does take an effort — sending copies out, trying to get reviews, set up booksignings, and so on. A whole alternate reality has developed around POD with people peddling the latest promotional edge. I'm sure that'll continue.
I wouldn't say, Andromeda, that I'm satisfied with the number of people finding the book. But more people are reading it than if I hadn't gone ahead and published it. After all, we're only talking right now because I self-published two books and managed to interest some readers.
Deb & Andromeda,
That's funny — agents and editors being biased against a POD author. Fancy that! Hopefully that won't dissuade the writer who hasn't clicked with an agent or editor anyway.
I think if you get an opening with a traditional publisher, it's better. Easier. A little money. Respect. Whatever. There's certainly a bias against self-pub books. Every book I sell POD is a blow to the old publishing model and its profit chain and those who take their legitimacy from it. I can't get into the Author's Guild, for example, because my books aren't quite real books.
It's also true there is a lot of bad stuff out there, a justifiable reason to be wary of POD books. In my case, A Man of His Village was my third time going through the mill with a book manuscript — you know, letters, queries, synopses, chapters, SASEs, creeps, delays, all that stuff. No frustration of self-publishing will equal the frustration of that process.
A writer reaches a certain "point." And you'll never know for sure why you can't get someone to take on your work. But you really have only one question to answer: Is it my writing? And for the writers who believe in their stuff, and know it's not their writing, but one of the many other variables that they can't control, then for them POD technology is pure liberation.
If you publish POD and want to sell your books, it does take a lot of effort — sending copies out, trying to get reviews, set up booksignings, and so on. A whole alternate reality has developed around POD with people peddling the latest promotional edge. I'm sure that'll continue.
I wouldn't say, Andromeda, that I'm satisfied with the number of people finding the book. But more people are reading it than if I hadn't gone ahead and published it. We'e only talking right now because I self-published two books and managed to interest some readers.
I've thought a lot about the ending of the book. On one hand, it seems tidy after the violence and brutality at its climax. Yet there are also complexities.
Tanyo, what are you working on now?
I have two things going on.
My 'homesteading novel' (there's info about it on the news page of my website) is done but seasoning before I go into the ms. again.
Also, I'm about halfway thru the first draft of another novel also set in AK. I know where I'm going with it, and I'm not worrying too much about the length right now. One thing about POD is you're totally responsible for the quality and quantity of your words. They're both always important, but there's a risk that obsession with quantity cripples genuine breadth.
Thanks for asking.
And thanks Deb and everyone for your interest.
T
Ravicz did a masterful job of putting a face and personality of an explosive political issue his writing is compelling and authentic.