13 Questions for Troy James Weaver
Troy James Weaver is the author of Witchita Stories, Marigold (recently translated and out in Romania), Visions, and Selected Stories (both soon to be published in Spain). He lives in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and dogs.
Troy, self-portrait
What are you reading now?
I’ve been reading a lot of Peter Handke, Patrick Modiano, and more recently, like today, W.G. Sebald. I’m interested in writers who seem to write the same books over and over. Of course, they’re different, but their concerns are the same, the styles are the same, the difference is that they may take on a new angle, a more objective stance, or a subjectivity that seems insane until it doesn’t, but, at the end of the day, they’re the same book, part of the same project, because they never seem satisfied with the results of their last attempt.
I dislike people who think one kind of writing is better than another. It limits you.
What book(s) most altered your taste in literature?
When I was 15 or 16 I read The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll. I had some shit going on in my life that wasn’t great, and he showed me a way to express it through literature. Shortly after that I discovered The Stranger by Camus, then I moved on to Dostoevsky, then Faulkner, but by the time I hit my twenties, I got really into Beckett. He’s still my favorite writer. So I’ll say Beckett’s trilogy had the biggest impact on me. I wouldn’t say he altered my taste, just impactful. I like all kinds of writers: Hemingway, Joyce, Kafka, Colette, The Brothers Grimm, Halldor Laxness, Oe, Fosse, Frisch, Kawabata, Jean Genet, William T. Vollmann, Raymond Carver, Hob Broun, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Cynthia Ozick, Patrick White, Camus, and on and on. I dislike people who think one kind of writing is better than another. It limits you. Everybody is a false idol.
Describe the last time a work of literature affected you physically?
Earlier this year, when I was reading aloud to my wife. It was a section from This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski. I broke down and sobbed. I was nearly inconsolable. Before that, a year or two ago, two books stand out: The Solid Mandala by Patrick White and The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner. They’re both devastatingly sad, but very beautiful books, and I think I cried at least a few times while reading each. I’m lying though. The last book that made me cry was Fights! by Scott McClanahan. The best American writer doing it right now.
Please share a passage from the book nearest at hand.
Opened Colette’s Break of Day randomly, page 51, and read this:
The other day they found an old person dead and quite dry, like a dead toad burnt up by the mid-day heat before a bird of prey had had time to gut it. Death becomes more decent to our living eyes when it is thus cheated of much of its corruption. Will my own final lot be that of a light friable body, hollow bones and a great devouring sun over it all? Sometimes I force myself to think of it so as to persuade myself that the second half of my life is making me take a little more thought and care for what happens after....The illusion soon passes. Death does not interest me—not even my own.
I mean, what can I say, it’s Colette, it’s beautiful—I love how she basically is just saying, Fuck it, I don’t want to waste the second half of my life thinking about things that may or may not be real. Also, she’s one of the greatest stylists who ever lived.
How do you treat the books you read?
All of the above [dogear, bookmark, highlight, underline, write in the marginalia, compile notes in a notebook, etc…], depending on the book. Obviously, if it is a first edition or rare, I keep it on the shelf. I write in books that I read over and over again. Underline, highlight. I take notes in notebooks and write quotes on my hands.
What quality do you most appreciate in a novel?
Beautiful language, perfect sentences, whether or not they’re minimal or cranked up and sprawl for pages.
Who is an author you feel should be more widely read?
I know he won a Nobel Prize, but I rarely see people talk about Patrick White. I feel like he should be mentioned in the same breath as Joyce, Proust, Musil, etc. Also, Scott McClanahan, a national treasure, if we ever had one. I think he’s one of the best writers alive.
What book are you avoiding reading?
Remembrance of Things Past
What novel would you add to our current season (on Family) and why?
The Vivisector by Patrick White. It’s an insane, maddening, beautiful, sad book about an artist, and more importantly, in my opinion, the family who shaped who he became, especially his deformed, hunchbacked sister. Also, as a bonus, I would add A Burnt Child by Stig Dagerman.
What book would you like to be the last one you read before you shuffle off this mortal coil?
The Collected William Blake. I love William Blake. I could read his poems forever. And plan to continue reading
If you were to design a literature course around a singular word, what word would that be, and what books might appear on the reading list?
Ineffable
The Sybil by Par Lagerkvist
Septology by Jon Fosse
The Body Artist by Don Delillo
I mean, I have no words.
In what character in literature do you most recognize yourself?
Fuck. I’m a delusional dumbass who tries to do the right thing, or thinks he’s doing so, while fighting windmills and garden hoses and traffic signals, so I guess Don Quixote, right?
Why read literature?
Isn’t it a beautiful thing to be able to breathe some life into each other while the world is on fire?
Read an excerpt from Troy James Weaver’s forthcoming novel The Mountain here.
Troy James Weaver is the author of Witchita Stories, Marigold (recently translated and out in Romania), Visions, and Selected Stories (both soon to be published in Spain). He lives in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and dogs.