An Interview with Marc Dickinson

 

September brings UNI English alumni Marc Dickinson back to the Cedar Valley. Dickinson is the author of the new short story collection, Replacement Parts (Atmosphere Press). A UNI English alumni, he teaches creative writing at Des Moines Area Community College and coordinates the Celebration of the Literary Arts reading series.

The Final Thursday Reading Series takes place on September 26 at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls, Iowa. There will be an open mic at 7:00 p.m. (bring your best five minutes of original creative writing). Marc Dickinson takes the stage at 7:30. The featured reading will also be simulcast on Zoom. Click HERE to register for a link.

Interview by Grant Tracey.

GRANT TRACEY: Love the new book, by the way, the grime and grit of hard scrabble, working people in small Iowa towns along Highway 20. I wonder if you might comment on what town(s) triggered your versions of “Dexton” and “Bridger” and how these settings fire up your artistic imagination?
MARC DICKINSON: The setting is definitely a character in the book, informing the lives of its inhabitants. The fictional town of Dexton is a conflation of several small places in Iowa, but it was particularly influenced by my first teaching position in town whose factory—and main employer—had been shut down. Many laid-off employees came back to college and were in my classroom, and these ex-assembly-line workers—who were replaced by exported labor, who could’ve been bitter about the raw deal—were the most inspiring students I’ve ever had the privilege to teach. They taught me so much through their stories they graciously shared with me. 

But the town was hit, economically, which inspired the fictional town of Bridger—a neighboring town with a similar status, until a new highway is built—and all the money, infrastructure, and jobs funnel from Dexton to Bridger. It’s a common kind of rural gentrification, wherein a seemingly small town gets absorbed by urban sprawl. A place that once had a single gas station becomes an affluent city that no native citizen can afford—while other small towns bear the brunt of being left behind. 

GT: I’ve known you for over twenty years. You’re a well-read, articulate man. A champion of the humanities and profoundly aware of the human condition. But, what I admire about your characters is the dignity with which you present vulnerable, somewhat lost souls. What is it that compels you to tell the stories of those who can’t fully understand or act upon the forces that shape their lives?
MD: Once again, it’s partly due to my experience teaching with working class students, a community that often gets overlooked, made to felt replaceable/expendable—or they’re turned into stereotypes. But all I saw was some of the best of humanity in them. Despite hardships, they never saw themselves as victims. Yet, whenever I read about “lost souls,” especially in blue collar culture, they’re often presented as angry, ignorant, or even extremist. 

 

So, the goal in all my writing, but especially marginalized communities such as the working class, is to simply present them as people who suffer and struggle the same as anyone. Who have the same existential questions we all share. Maybe they don’t always have access to the language that can articulate these complex issues, and as a result their trauma may express itself in unforeseen ways, but I try to always honor the rich interior life of all—at all times. 

 

GT: Heath, the county sheriff in “Jurisdiction” says, “Doing the job, I’ve learned not to judge people too fast. They may just surprise you.” This edict could stand in for all your stories which, in some ways echo Grace Paley’s open destiny of life or “enormous changes at the last minute.” Several of your endings are truly surprising and full of little miracles. I have the feeling that you are as surprised as we are when we reach these dramatic turns. I’m thinking of the stunning endings to “Smoked” and “Vanishing Points.” Perhaps you could comment on this and suggest what young writers should look for in an ending that works. 

MD: Endings are tough because it’s the one thing you can’t teach yourself beforehand—only the story itself can tell you where it ends. I know writers who know the ending before they write the first word—but they always admit that just because they know the action, or line, or image they want to end on, they have to write the story to understand what it means. I’m on the other end—I have no idea where I’m going when I start, so it takes forever to find the ending. Yes, surprise is key, but it also goes back to that old line about endings have to be “unexpected yet feel inevitable.” Which really requires you to listen to your story, allow it to teach you what it wants to say, and the only way to do this is through (tons of) revision. 

Also, we often talk about change or transformation when it comes to a character’s climax. And I think that is necessary—everything should head toward change since it’s what gives the story its stakes. But how this manifests itself is complicated. I tell my students to think more along the lines of turn or shift, as opposed to change—a word that’s always too big to hold onto when drafting. And sometimes what manifests is no change at all—but this can be equally unexpected, full of an urgency that can feel transformative in its own way.

GT: I’m impressed with the authentic inner lives of your stories: from the sensibilities of army veterans and reflections on their time in the Suck to an old man working an assembly line to adolescents holed up in a group home to a county sheriff working the first watch in a small town. Tell us a bit about your research process.
MD: I love research, but it’s also dangerous because not everything can go in the story—otherwise it’ll feel like a Wikipedia page. I have to have a bit of a blind spot when I do formal research—I want information but only the right information that moves me. I want to get the details right, but insignificant details clutter up a story. I always look for a detail with a story buried in it.

Often talking (or rather, listening) to people is the best form of research, because when they talk about their jobs, for instance, they always tell it in the context of a story. For instance, when I talked to my neighbor who’s a cop, he’d begin with “One time on patrol…” and then a story is presented to me, full of only significant details that inform, enhance, or maybe even become the essence/point of the story itself. It’s about finding the right detail that reveals.

GT: Your title story, “Replacement Parts,” has faint echoes of Charles Baxter’s “Gryphon.” Maybe, I’m wrong about that, but I wonder if you might talk about ways in which a writer can use scaffolding from other stories to take things in bold, new directions. Your sentences and stories are so well-crafted. Pick a favorite story in Replacement Parts and share with us revision strategies (macro and micro) you used to get the story to the point where you could let it go into the world.
MD: Revision is my entire writing life. For me, drafting is quick, skeletal, full of wrong notes and turns. clutter and cliche—I’m just trying to survive the story, trying to find the spark. And sometimes I never do, which means no amount of revision will help, either it doesn’t speak to me, is just an interesting premise and nothing more—or maybe it just isn’t my story to tell.

But if there is a spark, fanning the flames takes months, if not years, of steady revision. For instance, the title story (which had a different title until the last minute, speaking of non-stop revision), I started years ago, in my MFA (the only story to survive the program). Then I revised it for years and got it published. But if you put it next to the draft in the book, the bones are there but it’s almost an entirely different story, even after I placed it in a magazine.

I love the voice of the young narrator so much—it’s probably my favorite story in the book (which is why it was got the title), but it never felt fully realized because the two main characters, both in elementary school, never interacted beyond Q&A, or exposition, or small talk. There were so many flat moments, no energy, and as you say, I was probably copying too much Baxter for my own good.

So, I cut it in half and made the kids interact more, telling their stories through play, wherein our narrator starts to learn things, make choices, question authority. Soon, there was more urgency, more action, more at stake. Their conversations became mysterious but more meaningful as the relationship grew. As a result, the ending—which never changed—held more resonance. And our narrator, who now had more agency, does transform—even if the last image shows him doing the opposite.