John Wray was born in Washington, DC in 1971. His first novel, The Right Hand of Sleep won a Whiting Writers’ Award. He was recently chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists 2007. Jennie recently enjoyed and reviewed his latest offering, Lowboy, calling it “a thriller, a coming of age novel, and an immersion into the head of a schizophrenic boy.” We caught up with John to ask him about his craft.

Photo credit: Amber de Vos

Are you a bookgeek?

I’ve never been asked an easier question in an interview. Yes, absolutely. I’m a geek, and I love books. But of course Mother is the ultimate authority on this issue. Perhaps you might ask her.

When you are writing do you have an audience in mind? Is it a person, real or imagined, or a group?

It changes from novel to novel, I think—with The Right Hand of Sleep, my target audience was a single person: my first girlfriend, whom I was trying, by any means necessary, to get back together with. (It didn’t work.) Canaan’s Tongue was intended as a political allegory, so my audience in that case was, ideally, people pissed off with the first-term Bush administration and the influence of special interest groups on the apparatus of government. With Lowboy, I’m trying a bit of an experiment: I’m not going to specify a specific audience, not going to show those particular cards. I’m curious to see who’ll like it. Maybe nobody. Maybe I’ll finally get back together with my first girlfriend.

What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given?

When I was but a young sprout, writing-wise, I was fortunate enough to hear Ray Bradbury speak in Los Angeles. It was hands-down the most bombastic, self-glorifying, hyperbolic speech I’ve ever heard, and I savored every second of it. His advice for ambitious youngsters was the following: “Don’t write about what you know. What you know is probably boring.” I’ve taken that very much to heart.

Did you set out to make the city of New York almost a character in Lowboy?

I did. I’ve lived in NYC for fifteen years now, and it’s taken me most of that time to process it’s crazy-making superabundance, let alone get up the hootzpah to write about it. It took me nearly a year to feel capable to picking which movie to see on a given evening, so I’m pretty proud of the progress I’ve made. All the people in my home town who told me “New York City will eat you alive” were right, but they didn’t realize that being eaten alive by New York City is actually a pleasant experience.

What sort of research/investigation did you do to get a feel for what it would be like to be Lowboy?

I go about research in the standard painfully boring way, then at some point cut the cord and actually start having some fun. I’ve developed the following M.O. over the years: gather information assiduously until the magical moment when you find that you feel comfortable making stuff up. Then you can really begin. Lowboy does have the one advantage, from a research standpoint, of being set in the present, in the town that I live in, which means that I was able to get a lot of my knowledge firsthand—by riding the subways, by visiting institutions, by interacting with schizoprenics directly, rather than simply reading about them.

Where do you do most of your writing?

That also depends on the project—for Lowboy, I decided to write as much of the first draft as possible on the New York City subway: I liked the idea of being in constant motion as I worked, and also, of course, of spending as much time as possible in the environment and under the conditions I was writing about. But at the same time, I needed a place to work that was cut off from temptations like the internet and the presence of my girlfriend, who works at home. Also, it only cost four dollars a day—two if I never left the subway!

Has the subway also been fascinating to you or did that grow out of the book?

My mother’s brother, with whom I’ve always been close, was one of the planners of the Vienna subway, and often took me to visit construction sites while I was growing up. Once, we were able to walk the equivalent of about 7 stops through a tunnel that was about to be opened. I could never shake the feeling that we were about to be run over by a train. That made its way directly into the book.

Music is very important to Lowboy. Did that grow out of an interest of your own, or or did it grow out of the character you created?

I generally deny that my characters are actually portraits of me and/or my family and/or my ex-girlfriends in disguise, but certain traits of mine do find their way into my books from time to time (sorry, Ray Bradbury). I’m as much a music geek as a book geek, and writing a novel set in contemporary New York gave me the chance to indulge that particular weakness a little.

Do you read reviews/critiques of your books?

I do. Good or bad, they never fail to depress me. They’re always testaments to imperfect transmission. Some of my most glowing reviews have been the least perceptive. It’s probably not a good idea to acknowledge that in public.

What is the editing/writing process like for you?

Writing the first draft is thrilling and frightening in equal measure; with each revision, of which I generally do eight to ten, both of the above sensations diminish, to be gradually replaced by drudgery. But without that drudgery—years of it, each go ‘round—I’d be absolutely worthless as a writer.

John Wray, thank you very much!

Interviewers: Jennie Blake and Simon Appleby

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