A Normal Interview with Justin Hocking

By Rusty Birdwell

Justin Hocking on surfing, the White Death, Melville's ghost, and his new memoir, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld which was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers selection, and of which he says, "I took my cues from Moby-Dick—a sprawling, polyphonic, multivalent work that blends the personal with the political and the metaphysical."

 

Rusty Birdwell: How did you decide on the book’s structure? The titled sections range from one paragraph to several pages (one of my favorite sections being ‘Samsara’)—how do the short and long sections, and white space, serve the book?

Justin Hocking: Wonderworld revolves largely around my longtime preoccupation with the life of Herman Melville and his novel Moby-Dick. Writing about a classic work definitely involved some risks, and one thing I wanted to avoid was any sort of literary ventriloquism. On the other hand, I did allow myself to draw inspiration from what I found in Moby-Dick's unconventional structure, which is that all things are admissible within the bounds of a single work: short sections, long sections, fiction and nonfiction, stagecraft, slapstick humor, reportage, meditations, environmental writing, literary criticism, etc. This freed me up to digress and meander and experiment with form. I organized one of the longer, crux sections, "The City Swell," as a series of surf reports. Within the shorter sections, I was striving for a kind of economy and compression of language that we find in work by poet-memoirists like Nick Flynn. Flynn and others allow for white space and gaps in their poetry and nonfiction, in a way that trusts the reader to make their own connections, without leaning too heavily on conventional, linear narrative. Most poetry collections rely on a slow accretion of resonant images, themes and language, and that was definitely part of the effect I was hoping for in the memoir.


 

RB: The best books strive toward the universal and the personal; this book steps seamlessly between the two. In some ways this could occur without the larger tale of the American spirit’s dark journey. Why was it so important for you to include the political, industrial, American-spirit landscape in the book?

JH: In the narrative I took some deep dives into my own messy emotional territory, but I also tried to repeatedly bust out of the traditional memoir format. I needed to get the reader (and myself) out of my head quite a bit, to hopefully avoid the sense of claustrophobia that can sometimes plague a memoir or any first person narrative. So I did quite a lot of outward expansion and weaving in news of the wider world, in hope of rendering the deeply personal material more balanced and bearable for the reader. I also wanted to risk some of the grand, sweeping historical/political/philosophical gestures that Melville did, especially since much of the story took place at the height of the war in Iraq. I got fascinated, for instance, with the history of surfing, and how it ties in with the history of American colonialism in Hawaii and elsewhere. And the more I read Moby-Dick, the more I began noticing parallels between the historic whaling industry (which was all about whale oil), and our contemporary petroleum industry. Another chapter deals with the environmental repercussions of the this industry, specifically a massive oil spill that took place in North Brooklyn in the mid 20th Century. It was a much larger, more insidious spill than the Exxon Valdez disaster, but most people have never heard about it, even though it happened in a city populated by eight million or more people. These are all important issues to me, and again, I took my cues from Moby-Dick—a sprawling, polyphonic, multivalent work that blends the personal with the political and the metaphysical.



RB: Melville eventually becomes a physically present character, following you around, sort of torturing you or communing with you in your own dark period. From the first hint of his almost-presence on page 61 to his finding you in bed or in a bathroom stall, how did this come about in the book?

JH: I'm a big fan of literary writers who delve into the surreal—George Saunders, Karen Russell, and Borges all come to mind. I wanted to see if I could pull it off in nonfiction, as a way to lend some narrative immediacy to this sense I had, while in New York, of feeling both haunted and inspired by Melville. It was another somewhat risky move that I worried might come off as maudlin. There were a couple moments, though, where I utilized Melville's specter as a kind of stand-in or body double for some of my darkest emotions, in a way that I hope actually helped me avoid melodrama.



RB: Could you talk a bit about the L train becoming sentient and somewhat omniscient? It tells a random woman on the subway a lot about you, about some pretty deep moments of internal turmoil for you. It’s the train that really introduces us to you starting to lose your shit. Did this have something to do with the book needing narrative distance at that point?

JH: It was absolutely about narrative distance. Revealing my struggles with anxiety and phobias wasn't easy; the shift from first to third person allowed me, as the writer, a little distance and perspective. I also hoped it would give the reader some respectful breathing room while I explicated my personal problems. Utilizing the L Train voice was also another way to experiment with the surreal, and to channel some of the of chaos and noise and weird allure of New York City life.

 

RB: You give us plenty of examples of other writers and artists who have suffered the White Death. This is the form of obsession the book uses as a lens for all sorts of ailments of spirit and addiction. Do you consider the White Death beneficial if it runs its course without killing the carrier?

JH: During my research, I was surprised to discover how many other writers and artists struggle with bouts of the White Death, which I define as an all-consuming obsession with Moby-Dick. The visual artist Frank Stella spent twelve years creating fifteen hundred abstract paintings and sculptures, each inspired by Moby-Dick; he claims the obsession nearly destroyed him. More recently, illustrator Matt Kish made one drawing a day, every day, for all 552 pages of his version of Moby-Dick. The writer Sena Jeter Naslund grew obsessed with Moby-Dick at age thirteen; she later wrote the 666 page novel Ahab's Wife. So yes, I think the White Death is more of a creative catalyst than a disease. Probably my favorite example is the playwright Tony Kushner, who claims Moby-Dick as the single most important influence on his work, and that he learned from Melville that it's better to risk total catastrophe than to play it safe as an artist.


RB: Much of the book deals with obsession and addiction—from emotional need and drug addiction to American’s continuing petroleum binge—are these in some way, necessary first steps in a Nekyian journey?

JH: I first encountered the term "Nekyia" in a book called Melville's Moby-Dick: An American Nekyia by the Jungian analyst and critic Edward Edinger. Edinger defines the Nekyia as a kind of "night sea journey" through despair and meaninglessness that we all embark on during our development as individuals and a society; he interprets Moby-Dick as a quintessentially American version of the Nekyia. The word Nekyia derives from the eleventh book of the Odyssey, wherein Odysseus descends to the underworld to commune with the dead. These archetypal voyages often begin with a literal or metaphorical descent, and the potent darkness we encounter there is often a necessary first step in the circuitous journey back home.



RB: Overall the book seems to beg us to see dark times as first passages toward journeys that involve revelation and self-awareness. Reaching something good also seems to come out of a sense of community—deliverance through interdependence (not codependence) seems like a big theme of the book as well. Is this the best track for the deepest problems in the realms of both the personal and the social?

JH: When thinking about or discussing Moby-Dick, most people focus on the narrative of Ahab's revenge against the White Whale. That's certainly a huge part of the story, but it brings up the question of ownership. To whom does the story really belong? In my opinion, the narrative of Moby-Dick belongs principally to the narrator, Ishmael. And his is a story not of revenge, but of interconnection and survival. So I'm much more interested in the book as a survival story. Not just our survival as individuals, but also survival in a larger sense, as we continue to encounter massive, late Holocene extinction of species. And especially as we enter this new, Anthropocene era, where the entire planet's survival will require that we challenge the notions of humankind's disconnection from and dominion over the natural world.

 

RB: Surfing definitely brought you closer to Melville’s understanding of the ocean—can you talk a little about the process, about how surfing changed your understanding of the ocean and of your internal self?

JH: I grew up in Colorado and California, so the lack of true open space in New York was definitely a shock to the system. The one true open space I found was the coast, at spots like Rockaway Beach, in Queens. As I grew increasingly disillusioned with city life, I gravitated toward Rockaway. Surfing became my solace during an otherwise difficult time. The combination of salt water and physical exertion leaves you feeling scoured out and completely at ease in the world. Melville literally spent years at sea, whereas I only dipped my toes in, so to speak. So I don't think I came anywhere close to his level of understanding of how the ocean can connect us with a sense of primal universality. Melville wasn't a starry-eyed Transcendentalist, though; he was keenly aware of nature's tremendous dark side. As things got more emotionally precarious for me, I started taking some unnecessary risks in the ocean, and eventually had my own modest yet terrifying experience of what Melville called the "sledgehammering seas."



RB: Any trepidation about calling the book a memoir? In recent years memoirs have gotten a bad rap. Does this categorization worry you at all?

JH: Not really, because all my favorite works in recent years are memoirs: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn, Lit by Mary Karr, The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, just to name a few. These books all push hard against the traditional boundaries of memoir. They take big formal and emotional risks. I challenge anyone to read Another Bullshit Night or Chronology of Water and then try to tell me there's something inherently "wrong" or "bad" about the genre. Memoir has gotten a bad rap because every time some asshole like James Frey fabricates an entire narrative, people use it as an excuse to bash the genre as "failed journalism." But memoir is not journalism. To me, it's one of the most elastic and dynamic literary forms out there, especially when handled by writers who stretch its limits and expand our notions of what it can accomplish, both as an art form and as a vessel for deep communion between writers and readers.

Justin Hocking’s memoir, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld, was published by Graywolf Press in early 2014 and was a Barnes and Nobel Discover Great New Writers selection. Hocking is a recipient of the Willamette Writers' 2014 Humanitarian Award for his work in publishing, writing and teaching. His nonfiction and fiction have appeared in the Rumpus, Orion Magazine, Portland Review, The Portland Noir Anthology, Poets and Writers Magazine, Swap/Concessions, Rattapallax, and elsewhere.

A Normal Interview with Hayan Charara

By TNS Fiction and Online Editor, Randa Jarrar

Hayan Charara talks about growing up in Detroit and living in a community of Arab American artists in New York City; how he uses the lens of the mundane; and the story behind “1979”, his poem about flipping the bird and vehicular assault. His new book, Something Sinister, comes out in 2016.

 

Randa Jarrar: I love how subtle these two poems (“1979” and “GAZA”) are. Both deal with large subjects through the lens and intimacy of family. Why did you make that choice?

Hayan Charara: I often make that choice in my writing. A war, for example, is never just a news story, never just an abstraction I can turn off. The wars we’re involved in now and have been for some time are taking place where my parents grew up, where my father still lives, and where friends come from or had to flee. Growing up in Detroit, every time the economy collapsed, so did the lives of friends, neighbors, family who lost jobs, lost livelihoods. The house I grew up in is worth less today than it was in 1974, when my parents bought it. I don’t know how not to talk about the big issues when these are the lenses I see them through.

Obviously, though, knowing the larger subjects intellectually still matters. But if you happen to know the subjects, to experience them, in an intimate way, then they don’t feel so out of reach. They become familiar, and that familiarity—what I think of when you say “intimacy”—gives me a way in, which is also my reader’s way in. It allows for the larger-than-life to enter into everyday life. Then you can see the larger picture in a way that makes it once again what it ultimately is—something that shapes the lives of people, something personal.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that a lot of people lose their minds if they can’t get an Internet connection but they don’t miss a beat over what’s happening in Gaza, for example, or to Arabs living in America. I can complain about this, and I do, but I also use this knowledge when making poems. Often, the person I have in mind—the person I’m trying to teach—is the one who doesn’t give a shit. “War” and “racism” bore this person to death. But a guy getting run over for giving the finger—he’ll pay attention to that.

I should also say that I wrote these poems while teaching Homer’s Iliad. Homer describes a battle between the Greeks and Trojans this way: “It was glorious to see—if your heart were iron/And you could keep from grieving at all the pain.” I write the way I do believing that a good number of people possess iron hearts. Ultimately, I want them to see the pain and to grieve at it. One path back to this most basic perspective—to open up your heart—is through family, through the lens of the everyday and the mundane.

 

RJ: You've been writing and publishing poems since you were a teenager. Can you tell us about the Arab-American community in New York that nurtured you?

HC: When I moved to New York City Lawrence Joseph, who I’d met a few years earlier, was welcoming and helpful. Like Larry, D.H. Melhem also generously offered her time and wisdom. She’d gotten in touch with me after hearing me read poems on Barbara Nimri Aziz’s show on WBAI. D.H. and I ended up becoming close. We’d often meet at her favorite diner on the Upper West Side to talk poetry, among other things, usually over coffee and pie. And Barbara, of course, had founded the Radius of Arab American Writers, a few years before I got to New York, and RAWI played a huge role in connecting me to other Arab American writers and artists, and it still does today.

The younger writers I came to think of as friends included Suheir Hammad, who lived on the same street as me for a few years. I regularly saw Nathalie Handal, Kazim Ali, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, and many others—poets, but also novelists and story writers, journalists, visual artists, filmmakers, photographers, musicians. It’s really incredible, when I think back on it, all those people living in the same place, at the same time. Even more so when I consider that most of us had started our lives as poets and artists feeling that, at least as Arab Americans, we were doing it alone. We found the opposite to be true. We reached out to each other, we supported one another, and we became friends. In every sense of the word, we were a community. And since then, though many of us who met in New York went to live in other cities, we still come together when possible—at AWP, at the RAWI or DIWAN conferences—and when we do, it feels like a family reunion.


RJ: Your new book, Something Sinister, comes out in 2016. Though your poems have always dealt with identity, otherness, loss, and grief, this new collection seems to be more of an indictment of US policy in the Middle East. Can you talk more about that?

HC: You know, a while ago I ran the numbers on the poems in Something Sinister. I calculated the percentage of “political” poems in the book. And I was pretty liberal with what I considered to be a “political” poem. So, roughly 20% of the poems fall into that category. Of course, not all of the “political” poems deal with US foreign policy in the Middle East. Put another way, 80%, the overwhelming majority of the poems, are not political. They’re deeply personal. Just the same, even I consider the book the way you describe it, and so have others.

But when only 20% of a book, at most, touches on US foreign policy in the Middle East and the book counts as an indictment of that policy, it’s maybe indicative of a culture and a poetics in crisis, not to mention in deep denial, especially given the fact that US foreign policy in the Middle East is basically the political crisis of our times. Poets do write about this, and some devote large portions of their books to it, if not entire books. But the number, relative to the poets who do not write on these issues, and relative to the daily reality of the crisis...well, there’s a reason the book makes a point about “something sinister” going on.

The other thing, my being an Arab often makes for circumstances in which the political and the personal, the public and the private, come together. One of the hardest tasks for an Arab to accomplish is to live nonpolitically. Plenty enough times, when an Arab experiences grief or loss, politics plays a role. When questions arise about his place in the world, in his own country, among his own people—whether in the United States, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, France, the UK, or wherever—I would bet the farm that US foreign policy plays a big part. At that point, the separation between the personal and the political gets blurred or else it altogether disappears.

 

RJ: "Gaza" has a surprising turn-- it mentions the phenomenon from this past summer when Israelis would watch bombs drop in Gaza from mountaintops and cheer. How did you find the space and energy to create a poem out of that, especially so soon after the event itself?

HC: I’ve had years to think about it, actually. Nearly every incursion by Israel into Gaza, or elsewhere—like Lebanon—comes with stories like this one. As far back as the 80s and 90s, I remember seeing images of Israelis—men, women, and even children—writing messages on missiles, which they took to be cute or funny, like “From Israel, with love.” These are missiles that kill people, crushing them to death, exploding their bodies, scattering them into bits and pieces. So why didn’t I write about this until now? I have children now—two boys, a two-year-old and a three-year-old. With this latest invasion of Gaza, I had a very basic reaction. As a parent, I imagined my own children in the shoes of these other children. The thought kills me. But I was more devastated by the realization that this perspective, that of a mother or father, could be so comprised, so corrupted, that mothers and fathers were dancing and singing over the deaths of other people’s children—boys and girls like their own boys and girls.

Something in you is dead when you celebrate the death of children. My writing a poem was a pushing back against that kind of destruction—of human life, yes, but also the destruction of what makes a person humane and human.

 

RJ: "1979" works spectacularly even without a reader's knowledge of the energy crisis of that year. But it's such a powerful poem if a reader has that knowledge-- that the "camel jockeys" use the gas in an American Buick to literally run over a racist by pushing down on the pedal. Where did this poem come from?   

HC: “1979” is a true story, unfortunately. I took some liberties with it—I was six, not seven, for example.

I don’t think I ever told anyone about that day, and I took thirty-five years to write about it. What I imagine the reader goes through is what I did at the time and, maybe more importantly, what the guy who called us camel jockeys experienced. No matter the circumstance, anyone who realizes he’s about to get hit by a car experiences shock. But this guy’s shock was two-fold because I have no doubt he believed he could say what he did without consequence. I remember vividly that he showed no fear, no hesitation when he told us to “Go home” and gestured his “Fuck you!” at us. Had he known my father’s rage, maybe he would’ve kept walking.

The thing is, things aren’t that different today. Maybe they’re a lot worse. Whether it’s some guy on the street, a politician in front of a news camera, or a supposedly intelligent and respected writer, actor, or whatever, people can and do speak with impunity against Arabs and Muslims, not to mention a whole host of others. In this way, unfortunately again, “1979” is a quintessentially American poem.

The Fifth Annual Normal Prize Winners

Winners and Finalists Announced for the 2014 Normal Prize in Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry


 

Nonfiction Winner: “Learning to Breathe,” by Jon Kerstetter

“The subject matter of "Learning to Breathe" is what initially pulls us with its heat, but what's more impressive about the essay is the way it circles back on itself and its terrible subject, its irresolvable difficulty, each time opening up to bring something else into its orbit: triage, breathing, how to consider the enemy, faith, responsibility, and focus. Yet at the center of all this gravity is the pair, binary stars, each turning around the other: am I a soldier-doctor or a doctor-soldier and how do I reconcile and negotiate the two? Read the essay.” – Ander Monson, Nonfiction Judge

 

Nonfiction Finalists:

“Interrogating Old Muskego,” by Jennifer Bowen Hicks

“Broken Sword,” by Matthew Gallant


 

Fiction Winner: “Our Mom and Pop Opium Den,” by John Jodzio

This was a really strong batch of finalists and though it was hard to choose, "Our Mom and Pop Opium Den," really stood out. The writing is so confident and clean and the story is witty, strange, and a little sad—a lovely combination. – Roxane Gay, Fiction Judge

 

Fiction Finalists:

“Storm Windows,” by Charles Haverty

“A Proper Bargain,” by Debka Colson



Poetry Winner: "Perennials," by Shelley Wong

Exquisitely crafted, underscored by an aching musicality, "Perennials" reminds us that regret and longing are elemental forces. Divided by oceans and silence from a beloved, the speaker's memory glitters with blossoms, arias, and fish sauce. In other words, with temporary pleasures, which remind us of the fleeting nature of all human relationships. This is a moving and startling poem.  – Eduardo Corral, Poetry Judge

 

Poetry Finalists:

"Naubade," by Sam Sax

"Day of the Dead," by Jennifer Givhan