Interview with Anthony Neil Smith

Jacket copy:

Octavia VanderPlatts is wealthy, powerful, and “comfortable with her weight”–or to hear her say it, a “rich fat b****.” Her IQ is at the genius level, and she uses it to manipulate and frighten anyone who tries to get in her way. She controls an empire built on discrimination lawsuits won against some of the nation’s top companies. On top of that, Octavia doesn’t care one wink what people think of her.

So when she offers her old friend poetry professor Mick Thooft some help in his impending divorce, he smells an ulterior motive. Maybe because Frances didn’t invite Octavia to the wedding for fear of her clearing the buffet. Not only does Octavia want to help, but she’s got evidence–plenty of scandalous photos. That’s not Mick’s style, so he turns her down flat…until he discovers that Fran’s trying to take their home based on a near-perfect forgery of his signature. After that he and Octavia charge forward, but soon find they’re in deeper than they realized–robot pens, swinger clubs, and a blackmail scheme that holds an entire college faculty hostage.

Anthony Neil Smith is a veritable boomtown of crime fiction. Striking black gold early with his Biloxi, Mississippi set crime novel Psychosomatic, involving a quadruple amputee crimeboss, Smith has landed gem after gem on the grit-ridden world of independent fiction. Now, with his recent ebook, he’s taken aim and fired at one of society’s darkest, but lesser known underworlds, those lofty halls of Academia.

We sat down, somewhere deep within the internet, a beer in our Matrix hands, and shot the bull:

Tell us a little about your two key characters, Mick Thooft and Octavia Vanderplaats. What gave birth to these personalities? And is there any auto-bio in Mick?

I got the idea for Octavia after seeing a very angry overweight woman on Dr. Phil or some show like that. She just seemed ready to rip into anyone for any reason. And since I was a fan of the Nero Wolfe novels already, I had an idea about an angry modern fat woman with Wolfe’s intelligence and wealth. And so Octavia was born. And everyone who has read it falls for her pretty easily, which is what I hoped for.

As for Thooft, that took a while. One of the things that annoys me about a lot of literary fiction is how many protagonists are either writers or academics. Goddamn, I just don’t like that. So I tried to make the “Archie” character (Wolfe’s narrator, the one who does all the legwork) someone else—a jr. high school coach at first—but it didn’t work and I finally realized I would have to go over to the dark side and write about a writer. But I couldn’t make it a fiction writer. I just couldn’t. So I made him a poet and academic. And, wow, that voice just jumped out at me. He’s not, say, a guy everyone roots for. They cringe at him, more or less.

There might be a little auto-bio as far as the academic stuff profs worry about, but I stretch this waaaay out. There can be a lot of drama in college departments, so I had fun with it. But in many cases I stay out of the drama and watch others get pulled in, and that’s, you know, where a lot of Mick comes from: cautionary tales I’ve watched from across the room at faculty parties.

The writing here, on a sentence level, is sharp, abrupt, and angular, which feeds into the story’s momentum and brutal charm. Would you care to give us some thoughts on your writing style, on the idea of a writing style in general, and anything else regarding the craft?

I think my overall style is to make the sentence look like it’s on its last legs. Lots of minimalist, cracked and broken phrases nailed together. I try for a good pace, moving forward quickly, rather than overcontemplating. With CHOKE ON YOUR LIES, though, I was after the voice. I love Voice in fiction. A good character telling his or her own story can bemuch more compelling than Plot. So once I had Mick’s “woe is me, but I’m still better than you” voice in my head, the writing became a little more lyrical, fluid, and pissy. After writing Octavia and Mick, it’s necessary to go back to broken, jagged sentences.

Will we see any of these characters again?

I hope so! I want to do a series of these because I’ve always wanted to do something like that—like Maigret, Poirot, Wolfe. What’s appealing about Wolfe is how it’s both a hardboiled “on the street” tale (Archie) and a snooty upper-class detective mystery (Wolfe). While I don’t expect Mick to be hardboiled, I guess I like the idea of the vile, transgressive Octavia bumping heads with the hipster poet academic.

I told everyone that I would write a second Octavia book when I hit 1500 sales of the first one. I’m now over the halfway mark and crossing my fingers that the numbers will snowball (it’s been out since January).

Okay, we held on this long, but now we have to ask: What made you choose to set a noir in your own front lawn, i.e. that of a university English department? Seems a bold, potentially limiting choice. Was there any degree of personal experience here (because this editor can draw a lot of parallels with his own experience, which likely speaks to the book’s quality)?

I don’t consider the book a noir, for one. But I did use the university setting in YELLOW MEDICINE, too, for parts of it. That was noir.

But it was a struggle. As I said, I tend to steer clear of protags who are writers and academics. My favorite example of an academic “farce” is my buddy Victor Gischler’s THE PISTOL POETS, which is kind of a wild-assed take on STRAIGHT MAN by Russo. They all tell me “You’ve got to read STRAIGHT MAN! It’s so real.” But I just can’t because it’s my day job, man. This was the one case where it felt as if there would be no other way to make it work. Mick had to be a writer and academic.

They say that the fights are the most fierce where the stakes are the smallest, and that’s the university for you. Gargantuan arguments and seething anger among PhDs. Lots of personal drama, too. Not necessarily in my own current department. More like a national trend for a long, long time (maybe international, right? Go back to LUCKY JIM). But I also see Mick’s character as a key to entering the worlds of fine arts, the literary scene, all the things hipsters are attracted to in cities like Minneapolis, which I love, too. Plus there’s the restaurant scene, which will always have a big place in Octavia books.

Last question, and probably the most key, in terms of literary analysis and discussion: the model, on the cover, who is she and is she single?

Ha! I regret to tell you she’s engaged to be married. That’s Erin Zerbe (http://zerbetron.com/), and I found her on Flickr while looking for a cover photo. I wanted to go with a sort of throwback 1960’s exploitation novel feel, a photo of a scantily clad woman, but I also wanted a beautiful full-figured woman, too. That’s what I like, anyway. And it fit with Octavia pretty well (I didn’t want the model to be Octavia, though. Just wanted a new sort of pin-up). Erin is gorgeous and brilliant (check out her art school thesis, “Control”) and has scores of great pics online. So I asked if I could have permission to use the pic, and she was very enthusiastic. So I’m really hoping we can do it all over again on the next Octavia book.

Anthony was also kind enough to leave us just enough of the book to whet your appetite. Read the first chapter right here:

ONE

When I arrived for Sunday lunch at the Dakota Jazz Club on Nicollet, Octavia VanderPlatts was already seated, all 340 pounds of her spilling off both sides of the chair, walking stick hooked on the edge of the table. Before I even sat down, she looked me in the eye and said, “Let’s punish the bitch.”

Octavia was the smartest person I knew. Two master’s degrees—Classics and Criminal Justice. She probably would have gone to law school or pursued a Ph.D. if she hadn’t found school so boring. She hated men, hated women, hated liberals, hated conservatives, hated children, tolerated the elderly, hated pop culture and high culture, although was for some reason taken by the struggles of the working class—in particular, the “white trash” of daytime TV. Basically, she looked down on damn near everyone. She was my friend, but I’d rather stab myself in the crotch than spend more than a couple of hours with her.

She didn’t offer advice that often, though, and when she did it made sense to listen. She’d obviously heard that my wife of eight years was divorcing me. I was a wreck, showing up in two-day-old jeans that stunk of cigarettes and spilled scotch, plus my old Columbia College of Chicago sweatshirt with the torn collar. Four days of additional growth on my usually well-kept beard. That was how many days Frances had been gone, run off with the provost of the small private college in Minneapolis where we both taught, her an American Lit professor specializing in Domestic Fiction, and me a poet in the Creative Writing Program.

I say run off, but she was really only a few miles away at his house. I’d been there before for parties. I suppose my wife had been there much more often these past several months. I had wondered why she was taking the extra shower each day, going out on weeknights with “the girls”, coming home from campus an hour later than me, “catching up on grading”. Good thing she waited until the beginning of summer break to split, or I would’ve killed myself rather than face both of them and my colleagues at work. The kicker of it all is that I didn’t see them making it in the long run, not that they were planning for that. Really, she asked for the divorce so she wouldn’t have to look at my pathetic puppy-dog face, hoping to guilt her into an admission of whatever was really keeping her late. Grading, my ass. The other English professors vouched that lately in her classes, she’d just been gathering the desks in a circle and talking about “sexual experimentation” a lot.

But me, I’d wanted to talk about our marriage. I wanted to share feelings. Work it out. Try to give her whatever it was she felt I lacked. Too late, too late. I was never there for her. It wasn’t working. “Please,” she would whine, “Let’s just…accept that we no longer have what it took to be together.”

Frances left. I started drinking. Just wine at first, some nice South African shiraz. But a lot of it. It was day three before I cracked open the single-malt scotch. And now here I was at the Dakota being marginally humored by the maitre d’, who probably would’ve never let me in if not for Octavia. I mean, her Escalade was parked on the curb, her driver and butler Jennings waiting patiently. They hated each other, but that was another story.

Octavia looked meticulously clean—no make-up, smelling of cucumber body wash—with a two hundred dollar salon do for her jet black hair, dyed since high school. She was really a redhead. Her dark gray suit was probably tailored for her by a boutique only she and thirty other people knew about. She’d told me before that if you’re going to be stared at anyway, might as well be fashionably huge. She was right, though no amount of style could make you forget about her incredible girth. I leaned over to kiss her cheek. She wrinkled her nose at my four-day funk.

She said it again. “I said, let’s punish the bitch.”

It had been a while. I’d forgotten how direct she could be. It was the Dutch in her. “You mean Frances?”

“Have you married any other bitches lately? I think we should destroy her in court. In fact—” Octavia held up a finger while she reached for her purse. She pulled out a small manila envelope and handed it across.

I didn’t want to take it. “What’s that?”

“Find out for yourself.”

I folded my hands together and laid them on the table cloth.

She huffed, then leaned the envelope against the tall glass candle holder at the center of our table. “Okay, okay, play a little game with me if you want. We both know you’ll peek inside. Once the mystery envelope is out in the open, there’s no turning back.”

“You really don’t have to buy me lunch.”

“But I want to because I think you’re already a cuckold and I don’t want to see you bloom into a full grown pussy. Open the envelope.”

Smug. Confident. Arrogant, even. Those are the words you’d think if you’d only met her once. I knew there was more to her than that. She didn’t help anyone unless there was something intensely personal about it. With Frances, it had been loathing from day one, doubled in size when my lovely bride-to-be had requested that Octavia not be invited to the wedding reception.

Frances had said, “She’ll polish off the buffet, darling. I’m not joking.”

I tried to explain—yes, Octavia was a gigantic woman with a huge appetite, but she was also a terrible snob. Wedding food didn’t do it for her. Still, a man in love has to take one for the cause. Octavia and I didn’t speak for nearly three years after that, which was actually a relief. Being friends with Octavia is a downright burden. As newlywed bliss faded into annoyance and then into resentment, I rekindled my ties just so I could complain to someone who would sympathize with me rather than my innocent deep-feeling wife. Octavia had never mentioned the wedding slight since.

I picked up the envelope, unclasped the flap. Inside were photographs. In color. My wife fucking the provost. My wife sucking the provost. My wife in the shower fucking the provost…and the basketball coach?

I reached for my water, took a big swig. My hand shook, tingled the ice cubes against the glass. My throat was still dry when I said, “What have you done?”

“I simply got the proof you needed to see. Otherwise, you’d never take the fight to Frances like she deserves.”

“So you hired a PI to stake out my wife?”

“God, no, get a fucking grip. Jennings took the photos.”

I shook my head, pretended to study the menu. Furious didn’t begin to describe my feelings. And yet she was absolutely right about me. I was willing to let Frances go if that would make her happier. I was blaming myself, as usual. The photos, though, showed Frances to be much less of a victim than I had imagined.

Octavia waited until I was looking at her again, dying to share her satisfied expression. “You knew it was happening. Does seeing it make it more real? Keep going, though. There was one you didn’t know about.”

I flipped to find another setting. Her car. A student and Frances, his pants around their ankles, hers nowhere to be seen, having sex in the backseat. I knew that kid. He worked for me.

“David Carter?”

“He was a sophomore then. I don’t think it went far. We only caught them once, well before the new guy. One more, please, so we can order.”

I looked up. “How long have you been following her?”

“Keep going.”

The last photo wasn’t of my wife having sex. It was a picture of her leaving an abortion clinic.

Octavia expected me to eat after this?

“Whose?” I said.

Her expression remained smug, dry. “Yours.”

I was about to speak when the waiter arrived with our tea. Octavia didn’t drink alcohol. She saved herself for other pleasures. As I tried to absorb what she’d just told me, the waiter asked if we had decided.

Octavia said, “Start with the large Baby Arugula Salad, then the Petite Greens. I imagine my friend will want soup.”

“Excuse me.” That poor sap of a waiter shouldn’t have interrupted. Too young and stupid, hair purposefully hanging in his eyes. “You realize those salads are meals on their own.”

“Then list it under entrees. Right now it’s listed as ‘salad’ and I consider ‘salad’ a separate course. Don’t you agree?”

Why would Frances end her pregnancy without telling me, especially if Octavia was right about it being mine? Was it a mistake? Frances must have thought it was another man’s child. That’s the only explanation. We had really wanted a child of our own. We really did. Or at least I really did.

Octavia continued, “Then the Romano Crusted Walleye Salad. You know, the one listed as an entrée?”

The waiter, surely gritting his teeth. “I understand.”

“I’m right in guessing the fish is fresh today?”

The waiter said, “Absolutely, yes it is.”

“You’re a liar. I know for a fact that your shipment is late. You’d really try to pawn your old fish off on us?”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am. Really.” No fear in his eyes yet. Soon, I thought. “Fresh is in the eye of the beholder. I assure you we wouldn’t put it on the menu if it wasn’t of the highest quality.”

She laughed at him. Raised some red in his cheeks. “You dumbass. I don’t suppose the chef would allow me to come back and inspect this magical fish of yours that somehow stays fresh in spite of at least three days in your refrigerator. Or did he catch one early this morning on his way to work and just so happens to have waited until I asked about the fish to remember it’s still in the front basket of his bicycle?”

The waiter stammered, cleared his throat. “Again, I apologize. I don’t believe Chef would allow a patron into the kitchen—”

“Is the goddamned fish fresh or not? And answer as if I’ve got you by the short and curlies.”

He blinked. Quite a bit, really. I saw it then, the fear. “I will be most careful of how I describe our menu choices in the future. Please, again, my apologies. I did not intend to mislead you. It’s not my fault, but we’re instructed to—”

“Jesus, kid. At least take it like a man instead of trying to push all the blame off onto your manager, whom I happen to know very well. I don’t know you at all, though.” Octavia nodded at me. “My friend will have the Yucca Root Gnocchi.”

Sometimes I thought she was trying to get her food spat on.

Check out more of Anthony over at Herman’s Greasy Spoon.

And, for God’s sake, man, go buy the book now!!