interview

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Third session interview with Charles Prowell by the editors at Thumbprint Press March 2005

Editor-Guy
Beiderman

I wonder if we might delve into some areas this morning that are not so directly linked to your work in the shop. Some candid insights, perhaps, into your personal life.

Prowell

Sure, although I can't imagine my personal life is all that interesting.

A relative consideration, really. Monet's life was quiet and redundant if compared to, say, that of Van Gogh. And yet--

Prowell

You're comparing me to Claude Monet?

Well, no. Although from all I've read, I do picture him with a similar work ethic to yours.

Prowell

Well, it's ludicrous to make that comparison, and yet there are role models in my life all of whom share his approach.

Would you mind elaborating?.

Prowell

Well, I like routines. I like to wrap my days with what we'll call the redundant peripherals. If you're tied up from 4:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. with, well--creative pursuits, it's best to have something you can count on the rest of time. You know, like lunch, where I have a sandwich and a yogurt and a few cookies and read my Harpers followed by a 30-minute nap. This is a repeating peripheral. They are givens, grounding the days so that whatever energy is spent with work can be harbored and not wasted trying to decide what to have for lunch. A bit weird, I guess. But I imagine if we look at Monet, he returned to that garden of his day after day, concentrating on his technique and his unique approach to that same garden decade after decade. Moving--relocating--would constitute a huge upheaval and a break of these grounding peripherals until things settled down and you remembered where you put that box with such-and-such. I haven't moved for 20 some years.

Let's talk about your early mornings. I know you, for the most part, through our shared interest in writing. Your dedication to the sentence--'building sentences', you once said. This is something you've been practicing for what--25 years now?

Prowell

Is it that long? I'll admit, my time in the early morning is a long-standing addiction. And you're right, for me it does begin with the sentence, that sense of blocking out all distractions to focus on the meter and cadence of a sentence. Working it and re-working it and again and again until it drops into place like a puzzle. The passing time, at this level, simply doesn't exist.

Have you ever considered the similarities with writing and what goes on in the shop.

Prowell

Sure. I've thought about it.

And--

Prowell

They don't have that much in common. One pays, and the other doesn't. They are both awarded about the same number of hours each day. The shop of course being far more efficient. The writing is a joke, really. And yet inexplicably I continue to wake early and waste my time in pursuit of something so ephemeral and so intangible and so fleeting. It makes for long days.

I guess that's where the nap comes in.

Prowell

It's more than just a nap; it serves to help pace the day, to prevent the pace of the day from escalating.

So really, it is as if you're pacing not only your days, but your career.

Prowell

My career. I've never thought of the time in the shop as a career. Although one wonders if the days in the shop were eight hours long, rather than three or four, would the work remain interesting over a 50-year career?. I don't believe I have the capacity to pursue any single pursuit day after day, year after year.

.Along that line, let's consider another example. Not as a comparison, but maybe to illustrate more this thought of managing careers and how a career can be redifined over the years. Two people I happen to know you admire, if not for their work itself, then the dexterity of their careers. Frank Loyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller.

Prowell

.Over the years I acquired a taste for Frank Loyd Wright's work. Growing up and through college and even my 20's, I was drawn to a warmer approach to design but in my 30's I took hold of his Prairie House period and in my 40's his more eclectic designs with their open paritionless rooms and in my 50's his graphic designs illustrated in the stained glass windows. With Buckminster Fuller, I was drawn in college toward his theories and less his designs. On another level I admire them both, primarily, for repeatedly redefining themselves.

This is interesting. Becausae I'm not familiar with examples within the design world, I'll default to something everyone understands in that if we have, say, a Brittany Spears--

Prowell

Brittany Spears?

Bear with me. If we have an artist like her, who doesn't write her own work or play an instrument and who has a sound that is more or less recognizable from one CD to another and yet who is, I assume, a talented artist nevertheless--and if we compare her to this heirarchy of dexterity and look at Madonna, who seems to embody more of a cultural phenomenon in that she is continually changing, redefining herself. And I guess, to consider the ultimate example within this genre you would have to mention the Beatles, who not only wrote their music and played their instruments, but who precipitated cultural change by this constant metemorphasis; you could listen to Rubber Soul and not realize this is the same group who wrote I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Prowell

Yes. Exactly. There is Alexander Grahamn Bell with his single telephone and there is Thomas Edison with an inventive curiosity seemingly without bounds and then his ability to carry those inventions on to the marketing and business levels. Picasso would be a good one, comparing his Cubism phase to his Blue period against, say, Rembrandt. If you weren't familiar with Rembrandt and you saw an early painting, you would then be able to recognize his work throughout his career. Not so with Picasso.

Oddly, I cannot think of many writers who have established themselves in this way. A novelist--every novelist that comes to mind--has a style that is carried through his entire corpus. Tolstoy's works are all recognizably similar. Dickens. Twain. London. Swift. Now I'm stumped. Why don't we see this heiarchy within literature. Where are the Picassos and the Frank Loyd Wrights and Edisons and the Beatles--where are they in the literary world?

Prowell

Hmmm. Well, by the nature of the progression, you can only consider those whose careers have played out. Truman Capote comes to mind. His early stories and novels bear an innocence drawn from the South. His In Cold Blood attempts to redfine reportage into the novel form. His much anticipated Answered Prayers was to again redefine the novel into a form of conversational gossip. There are some fine young writers today, bending the rules with a distinctive voice, but to assume or hope that they will mature in a way that continues to experiment is hypothetical. Also, the availibility of the publisher willing to take a chance. I think it's clear to say that none of these new exciting writers are being seen from the major publishing houses. It's the small independant presses carrying the ball here.

Good point. Picasso's painting sold directly to the collector, therefore he has to convince only the one buyer or one gallery-owner of his vision. The Beatles, I believe, had their own recording label and by the time they were changing, they had the name recognition. Edison had only to convince his investors. Frank Loyd Wright, well, he would have the homeowner or commercial patron, but again, a single entity rather than the conglomerate of the publishing industry. So we should look, instead, to similar comparisons such as the movie and music industies, mandated by corporate bottom lines and quarterly reports.

Prowell

In film, you have the Sundance festival, trying to fill that void and yet, still, a filmmaker establishes a style and whether he's Roger Moore or the Coen brothers, their style is unchanging. So if we look at these three industries, they unfortunately do not lend themselves to the kind of expansion and artistic freedom as we would like to see. The artists are prisoners to this corporate accounting.

This all makes absolute sense and I'm suddenly depressed. These three industries--and we might consider them to make up the most fundamental entourage of America's entertainment offerings--all three are directed by a force that has little to do with artistic expression. With music, we have Clear Channel, playing it's canned programming on 2200 stations across the country. In film, we have four or five studios at the top responsible for 80% of what reaches the theaters. In literature, there are no independently-owned major publishing houses left--all of them now merged and merged again into the tiny rivulets of some massive corporation like Gulf & Western or Time Warner. You can no longer approach an editor of one of these houses and convince them on the merits of your work. The editor is simply a hired hand to the moguls and the moguls are owned in turn by their shareholders and shareholders have only their investment interests at heart. How terribly sad.

Prowell

What this tells you is that you must choose a field of interest not bound by corporate shareholders.

That may work for you, selling to individual patrons across the country and Europe, but to the writer, there is only the option of self-publishing and with that comes the quagmire of distribution and marketing and competing for shelf space with the muscle of the corporations.

Prowell

Well, it seems to me you have managed it with Thumbprint Press. You're culling from a list to publish writers who would be considered risky by the better known publications. You're doing your part. And there is also this example of Dave Eggers, here in San Francisco. He writes a book, a few years back, titled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Published in the United States by Simon & Schuster, a division of a larger and more powerful company called Viacom Inc., which is wealthier and more populous than eighteen of the fifty states of America, all of Central America, and all of the former Soviet Republics combined and tripled. The book is a success. His second, much anticipated book, a novel, he elects to publish himself and the first chapter begins on the cover of the book. He also manages his distribution so that it is available only through selected independent bookstores across the country. You could not buy this book at Borders or Barnes and Noble. He also, like Thumbprint Press, founded a literary magazine in which he publishes works that are obviously outside the box. But Eggers, admittedly, is the rare exception. But in the end, it really depends on what the artist is after.

How did we get on this subject?

Prowell

You brought it up.

Tell me about the garden. The Contributor's Garden in front of your house.

Prowell

It began several years ago when I comandeered from my wife a section about 3 feet square so that I could have a lawn. I wanted a lawn. I stacked some cute stones around it and quickly my friends are presenting me with ridiculous miniature trinkets as accessories .The following spring I elevated it and enclosed it within some miniature stone walls and built a wood arbor and replaced the grass with Baby Tears ground cover and planted a few bonsai trees. Passersby began leaving stuff, more trinkets and offerings. That next year I expanded, adding another section and every year since--five years now--and currently there is the newest expansion with miniature field stone walls and well, much more elaborate than the original walls. So it becomes something of a landmark, I guess. The regulars within the neighborhood and the little kids--who are provided with little animals and whatnot to amuse themselves--but also from elsewhere, strangers, milling about in front of the house and leaving their offerings and every so often I am forced to clear it out and as a result I have two buckets full of these trinkets.

A very strange hobby.

Prowell

I guess it does qualify as a hobby. What time I spend out there is passed in a sort of dreamy state of mind. Mindless pursuits like weeding and pruning the bonsai's and because it fronts the sidewalk, there is a social element to it all. Visiting, you know.

How important is social interaction to someone who works alone? I'm thinking of, say, Hemingway, who following his mornings at work, always had so many guests for lunch that it was something like a party.

Prowell

Very. Very important. Although within reason. On one hand, we have a Truman Capote, who was so geared toward socialbility that you wonder what more he might have accomplished had he reined that in some. And on the other hand, a Dostoevsky, with his need for solitude and often his only contact with the local shopkeeper or pleading landlords and, well--that can exact a price on one's mental equalibrium.

How would you describe your own equalibrium?

Prowell

Like everyone, it is linked to the present tense of any given day. If I were to wake one morning and many mornings thereafter, with nothing to occupy my days, my equalibrium would tilt off its axis.

Is that a bad thing? Some of our best work over the centuries has been produced by tilted equalibriums.

Prowell

It would make for a more interesting interview. A talk with Van Gogh or Capote or Dostoesky or Andy Warhol would never be dull.

Well, they weren't exactly available.

Prowell

No. I reckon not.

Are you writing now? In the early mornings. And if so, what is it that occupies you.

Prowell

I've been making notes for a book, a farm book. The architecture of it, which is so different from writing sentences itself. A multi-layered metaphysical pot-boiler. Not a linear novel, so to speak. A little more complicated. An example of a classic linear novel might be Kerouac's On the Road.

Kerouac happens to be a writer who I admire greatly.

Prowell

Kerouac was, at best, a talented typist.

If I wasn't a gentleman and a scholar, I'd take you down.

Prowell

You're neither and you forget that I was once the most famous wrassler in Sydney, Illinois. Population 600.

That was 30 years ago and you're 7 years older than me and I feel confident I could take you down. teach you some respect for our literary forebearers.

Prowell

Kerouac represents, in our literary lineage, what might be construed as a bad case of dhiarrea. The driven snow under the galoshes of literature. I make that statement as a reader.

Someone, I forget who, once made an arrogant statement like that to Hemingway and Hem challenged him to a boxing match and broke the fool's nose. One punch. POW!

Prowell

You want to break my nose?

Maybe. It could be fun.

Prowell

I don't know how to box, unfortunately. But I was once the most famous wrassler in . . .

Beiderman

Yeah, you said that already.

Prowell

Did I?

So you saying you'd rather wrestle than box?

Prowell

I've gone 32 years now without losing a single match. You should know that. I just don't want you getting hurt.

That would be from the last year you wrestled, in college, to now. 32 years of not having wrestled at all. It's all symantics with you. You can't lose if you don't compete.

Prowell

Nevertheless, the statement remains true.

Symantics.

Prowell

Step outside

Gladly.

Okay. Where were we?

Prowell

Symantics.

The book. Describe it for me. In fact, as an exercise, provide us a description in five words or less.

Prowell

Five words or less? I get plenty of exercise as it is. I ski, swim, body surf, play golf, and, as you know, basketball. I don't need yer stinkin exercise.

Five words or less, Chump.

Prowell

A 500-page metaphysical potboiler. Although technically 500 is two words.

It's all about symantics with you.

Prowell

About love and affection. About death. About sustainable farming at a time when sustainable farming was suspiciously suspect. About tornadoes and ice storms and droughts and more love and affection. Compassion. Touching. Obligations. Responsibilities.. Growing pains. Language. It's about language.

And yet you say there is no connection between building sentences and building in the shop. Are you sure?

Prowell

Hmmm. Well, the best projects, those that provide the most returns--and I'm speaking of an intangible return, such as an unconscious whistling, singing, all the cylinders working in sync--those projects are embarked upon without drawings. An idea arrives and shifts over time into a coherant mental plan and as the work begins, the details are often entrusted to the confidence that builds with each day's work. You simply know, and as the work progresses and the confidence grows, you come to almost invite those dilemnas of methodology and design.

Inviting dilemna. I like it.

Prowell

In the sense that it allows you to stretch your hurdling techniques. At some juncture those cylinders are operating at such an optimal rate that you don't approach a dilemna, you don't circle it and scratch your chin as if sizing up an opponent. You hurdle it. Without breaking stride.

Somewhere in Mississippi there's a flundering Baptist congregation, waiting for you, waiting to be lead to the Promised Land.

Prowell

So in a sense, with a long protracted work like Seasons, you gather steam, attending to the nuances of language that cannot follow an outline, a drawing, but trusting, even relishing, the hurdles as they present themselves with a confidence that grows with each day's work. Subtlies become huge in that a character will change course as the result of an accumulation of subtle causes and affects. The storyline will turn on the weight of accumulated reactions to outside forces. When a storyline is the reaction to outside forces, you have a novel drawn upon an outline. When the storyline shifts and adjusts to the character's reaction to outside forces, you have a novel realized from the confidence of hurdling dilemnas.

So like the shop, it's an approach to writing that requires daily attendance.

Prowell

To a point. For me there has always been a need to regulate the ratio, not allow those cylinders to fluctuate from one day to another. In that sense we return to the need for routine, the nap to prevent the day from escalating out of control. The sameness of certain repeating activities bordering the days that tend to frame those hours in the shop and those early morning hours spent writing with a comfortable familiarity. Every morning at 4:30 there is a sentence waiting to be completed, a scene that is part of a larger scene that is part of a larger chapter that is part of an overall design, waiting for your attendance. And because the subtlies are everything, the idea of a now-and-again attendance is ludicrous.

I should mention that during the 18-months of that last draft, I was asked to come aboard as one of your critical readers. About every three weeks a new chapter arrived by email and we made our comments and posted them in a manner that allowed us all to enjoy, for lack of a better word, a forum. You participated, although not necessarily as the author, but as if your were gossiping about your own characters. Something like that wouldn't have been possible without email. The instant communication of several participants on a single subject. It allowed for an exchange that was, to my experience, very unique.

Prowell

I think the idea of doing that depended entirely on the choice of participants. Each of them brought their own distinct talents so that the feedback really covered a full spectrum.

But to me it was similiar to writing in a serial form. Posting your chapters the way, say, Dickens and Thackery published their weekly installment of the longer novels. Only once do I recall a delay.

Prowell

If I remember, there were the distractions of the holidays and the whole Google fiasco where the web site lost it's listing, requiring me to turn instantly to that or starve. But it was more. It was chapter 14, where we were taking what had begun as a simple, yet innovative technique in the first chapter of juggling several conversations at once, and with chapter 14 escalating that technique to a new level. I finally went away, going down to the central coast near Hearst Castle where I spent a week writing in the mornings, playing golf in the day, and writing again in the late afternoon and evenings. There were no distractions whatsoever--beyond my golf swing. I spoke to no one except for the waitress at a local eatery and whomever I was coupled with on the golf course. But the chapter benefited in a way it might not have, had I remained home.

I just had a thought.

Prowell

Well, what is it.

I was just thinking about bullshit.

Prowell

Bullshit? As in cow shit?

Not exactly. More like bullshit, as in full of it.

Prowell

Oh...................Is that an insult? Are you insulting me, you little Poopyface? You have any idea what happened to the last person who insulted?

Let me guess--you wrassled them and got your tail whupped.

Prowell

I pounded him down to the size of my knuckle and tossed him to the bullfrogs.