Grant Tracey is the featured
reader at the November Final Thursday Reading Series, which happens one week
early on November 21, due to Thanksgiving. Tracey is the author of the Hayden
Fuller Mystery Series, which includes the books Cheap Amusements, A
Fourth Face and the forthcoming Neon Kiss. Tracey is also Fiction
Editor at the North American Review and a Professor of English in the
Department of Languages & Literatures at the University of Northern
Iowa.
Can you share a bit of your
writing process for the recent book?
GRANT TRACEY: The first two
drafts of Neon Kiss were written by hand. My mind works differently when
I put pen to paper. I don’t chase the narrative as much; instead I develop the
characters, context, and situation. Mood resonates. Even with final revisions I
have to work off computer printouts to really see the story, to really feel and
live it.
What led you to write it?
GT: I enjoy writing an ongoing
series. Each novel is self-contained, but there’s a larger character arc,
involving Hayden and his girlfriend Stana and Hayden and his father Ira, that
closes out with the fourth book, Shot, Reverse-Shot (which I wrote on
sabbatical last spring and I will be substantially revising this summer). I
guess I’ve always liked serialized stories, and that’s part of the fun of a
series like this, seeing how the characters evolve across the various
adventures and challenges they take on. How are they constantly re-defining
themselves?
I also really
like mysteries, hardboiled detective stories, and since I was seventeen, I’ve
been writing them. There’s something about a figure who is both inside and
outside the law that’s fascinating to track. Hayden sports a 1950s buzzcut, but
he has a 1960s liberal outlook, valuing people and believing in collective responsibility.
But aside
from all this serious-minded stuff, I want to tell crackling stories that
entertain. I know I’m writing in part for other writers, but I get the biggest
kick when I hear folks at Bob’s Guitars have read my books and dig them.
What are you most hoping
readers will gain from reading your books?
GT: Hardboiled detective
stories are more than just entertainment. Yes, the best stories are
wonderfully told yarns, but they also say something about love and loss and
pain. My hero was a victim of child abuse and that’s something he carries with
him, and over the course of these four books he learns to forgive about
himself. There’s a perception that the hardboiled tradition is rich in sexual
prurience, pornographic violence, sadism, and sexism. That’s not why I read the
genre, and that’s not what I’m about.
What writers inspired you?
GT: Favorite writers? Raymond
Chandler. He was a master of interiority; mood, and presenting us with a lead
character who is a tarnished knight who empathizes with those he encounters.
Chandler’s prose is literary and lyrical, rich in similes and psychological
nuance.
Mickey
Spillane. He always said he wrote thrillers not whodunits. I love the energy of
his two-fisted prose and the shock endings to his books. They’re a cathartic
rush. For some critics, Spillane is an American primitive; for me, he’s just a
great storyteller.
Ed McBain.
Inspired by the documentary realism of Jack Webb’s Dragnet, McBain took
the police procedural to new levels of crime writing, humanizing the detectives
of his 87th Precinct, and opening his narratives up to the lives of the
criminals too. His stories have incredible pacing. And they’re smart.
Jim Thompson.
His characters are unreliable and nuts. Reading Thompson is like hanging out
with a bunch of alcoholics: the day starts off slightly slant; by late
afternoon the characters are irrational, full of mood swings; and by late
evening they’re violent and deadly, and there may be a body in the kitchen. Savage
Night, The Getaway, and A Hell of a Woman are tour-de-forces.
You’re a citizen of Canada.
How does this impact your writing?
GT: Well, I love hockey which
goes without saying, and in the latest Fuller novel, Hayden’s back in the NHL,
playing for, of all teams, the bleu-blanc-rouge of the Canadiens. I’m a
Torontonian, so having my hero play for Montreal is, well, it just is.
Anyway, on a
serious note, I may be a Canadian citizen, but I love the US and I love Iowa,
and every day of my life I live in a space of double-ness, here and there,
drawing connections, comparisons. My Fuller novels all set between 1965-1966,
and the Canada I’m writing about is the Canada of my childhood, not the Canada
of today, so even in my fiction I live in that double space, between past and
present. It’s a place I’ve kind of grown accustomed to. I guess in that way,
I’m like Hayden: I’m a retro guy who loves 1950s porkpie hats, short hair, and
blue jeans; but I’m also a product of the 1960s, someone who cares about social
justice and change. Hayden is me, but I’m not him.
—Interview conducted by Joshua
Baird
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