Writer on Writer: Tim Hall vs Scott McClanahan

Scott McClanahan's first collection, Stories, has just been published (by the consistently excellent Six Gallery Press). Dubbed "non-fiction/fiction," Stories might be described as creative nonfiction in the best sense; i.e. the naked look at one's subject without sensationalistic fact-fudging or slumming sentimentality or Everyman posturing or alcoholic inertia etc. etc.--pick a trap, any trap. Scott avoids these by inserting something into these snapshots of his life in Rainelle, West Virginia that is all too lacking nowadays: genuine compassion, even affection, for his subjects.

So yes, you get the cruelty, drugs and alcohol, bad relationships and misery that are the staples of the American experience even more than any apple pie daydreams, but you also get an author who seems to have a pretty normal relationship with his mother, for example, and saves the hottest heat for his own obsessions and narrow-mindedness (in stories like "Randy Doogan" and "The Homeless Guy"). In "The Telephone Girl," a wrong number becomes a flirtation that turns into something more serious before turning creepy, leaving the narrator shaken but also pining for something he didn't initiate or ask for. Like any great old southern soul record, it's the painful truth and ambivalent courage of personal responsibility that makes these stories so powerful.

I emailed Scott some questions about his work, life, and budding film career.

Tim Hall (TH): Your book is built around my two favorite themes of creative writing: autobiographical fiction mixed with a geographical/sociological postcard of a place. It's like a portrait of the artist in the "staycation" from hell. What made you decide to "go Winesburg" and create the semi-fictional town of Rainelle, WV to tell your stories?
Scott McClanahan (SM): Well first off, Rainelle is a reality. We’re famous for our high rates of teenage pregnancy and prescription drug abuse. Of course, the world’s quickly becoming the same place—if it’s not already. It’s only in weird and wild mountain towns like Rainelle you can still see two women having a fist fight on the sidewalk. That’s refreshing for me at least.

In terms of deciding to do this—I don’t think I thought too much about it. I think the worst thing a storyteller can do is start thinking like an intellectual. These are just stories I tell all the time. It’s like what Rilke says— it’s only when a memory becomes a part of the blood that a poem appears. There’s nothing post-modern or meta about it really. My name really is Scott McClanahan and I’m really from a town named Rainelle, etc.

However, with that said—I tend to disagree with Thomas Wolfe when he claims that even Gulliver’s Travels is an autobiographical book. At the end of the day I’ve created this character named Scott McClanahan too. Hopefully, there is a definite element of authenticity to it—like in country music. But if you really look at it, Hank Williams is as strange and space-age as anything Bowie or Marc Bolan ever created. I mean he’s a country kid from Alabama wearing a rhinestone suit and a cowboy hat. The same goes for Twain. Samuel Clemens is the fake person. Mark Twain is the real person that the fake person Samuel Clemens had to create.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is these stories are a part of who I am, but they’re covered in rhinestones too.

TH: Long Island, where I grew up, certainly has a lot of the same types of people and problems that you describe in Stories; it's almost a spectacularly evil place, filled with horrible people who have been driven insane essentially by traffic jams and a culture of pure consumption. You write about some pretty intense, damaged, but very recognizable and human types in your book: what would you say drives the extremes of their behaviors? Do you see Rainelle's problems with drugs and teen pregnancy, for example, as something unique to to the local economy or demographics, or [due to] more universal American qualities?
SM: I'm sure there are variety of socio-econmic factors people could go through in order to make an argument about so called "social problems." For instance, there's a certain part of the population that understands the true nature of politics here. Politics in West Virginia is usually something that is done to you. For instance, Long Island enjoys a great deal of wealth now, but don't ask the poor farmers and fisherman who Robert Moses destroyed if it was worth it. The same thing happened here and continues to happen here with timber and mineral rights.

Of course, Appalachia (whatever that means) has been a poster child for a number of social programs throughout the second half of the 20th century. FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, JFK, LBJ, etc. all took on the so called war on poverty. However, it's always the same enlightenment/liberal mentality of cut off your leg, so we can give you a crutch. Please don't mis-understand me, I'm by no means a conservative.

I'm sure you can look at the problems of any culture from a sociological/anthropological POV. I just don't think it's that interesting. For instance, Oxycontin was prescribed here because we have a higher rate of industrial accidents--coal mining, logging, etc. You can say that a great deal of wealthier people have access to certain acceptable means of altering their consciousness and protecting their rights to reproductive health--psychiatry (legal drug dealers), access to free birth control and abortion services.

At the end of the day, I think it's all just behavior though in the end. It's universal human qualities. Read Villon or Rabelais and I'm sure you can see people were destroying themselves just as much in 15th and 14th century France, as in a little mountain town called Rainelle. I love these people. I truly love these people. I'd rather keep them the way they are with all of their blemishes and scars (and sense of humor and sense of life)--than try to replace them with this Planet Starbucks we've created.

TH: Your love for the people you're writing about comes through very strongly, it's one of my favorite things about the book. It also reminded me of all the ways New York has changed over the years, the most depressing being that it is now almost completely missing the kind of odd but brilliant characters that used to be everywhere, especially in lower Manhattan. The most depressing, stifling, moneyed conformity has smothered most of New York City, and very few people seem to notice or mind. On the other hand, many of the local characters I've met out here, in small town Illinois where I live now, suffer from what I'd politely call a chronic incuriosity about the world. I guess what I'm getting at is, what is the role of culture in all this? Sophistication? Worldliness? Meaning, is there a sense in Rainelle that culture and art truly matter, or is it just tolerated like it is here?
SM: I think using words like "culture" and "sophistication" and "art" could get the shit kicked out of you in Rainelle. I guess the question depends on whose definition of "art," and whose definition of "culture." Of course, these are definitions typically made by others, not by anyone I know. For instance read Sherwood Anderson or James M. Cain or Jean Paul Sartre's works on W.V. and it goes beyond patronizing (and these are all writers I deeply love). However, I also believe that the only true art comes from the provinces. Most of what we consider culture in this country are fine arts, and fine arts by their very nature are dead arts. They have no relevance or meaning to your typical individual.

For instance, we're dealing to a certain extent with the gentrification of certain towns in this area such as Lewisburg and Fayetteville (based around the tourism and whitewater rafting industries). I don't know how many conversations I've had with people talking about bringing "culture" to this area. Of course, we have a culture here--Nascar, professional wrestling, cooking, storytelling, etc. (these are all alive and thriving), but we have the tendency to fail to recognize this as culture because of our own cultural hang-ups. For example, I believe "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes is every bit as powerful an artist and performer as Edith Piaf or Maria Callas (I'm not being ironic about this). What we seem to forget is that culture only occurs when something from a "so called" lower art form bubbles up and influences the society as a whole. I'm sure Don Quixote was just a stupid comic book to some people in Spain in 1610. I guarantee hanging out with a bunch of guys who work at a sawmill will provide you with the same amount of artistic juice(if not more) than going to a symphony hall and listening to Stravinsky's The Firebird.

At the same time, don't get me wrong. I've spent my whole life fighting rednecks, and racists, and homophobes, trying to sneak my Dostoevsky or Oscar Wilde or William Burroughs onto the school bus without my football buddies giving me hell about it. Unfortunately, these things are linked in their minds to homosexuality. And sadly, homophobia is one of the last accepted discriminations. This is not only true in WV, but probably the rest of the country as well. I think Faulkner says it best about the place you're from--"I don't hate it, I don't hate it, I don't hate it."

TH: A lot of the people who move to the big cities are those who came from towns or families where being an artist, or gay, or just different could get them beaten or worse. So it's certainly understandable and even necessary for them to go someplace where they find like souls and feel secure to be themselves. Have you thought about leaving West Virginia and relocating someplace else, like L.A. or NY or S.F.?
SM: I'm sure from time to time I've thought about it. I'm sure there's not a writer alive who hasn't been caught up in the romantic notion of "the city." I mean this is an idea in everything from Virgil to the films of Fellini. I've had family members in all of these places you mention at one time or another, and I just had a brother in law move back to San Francisco. But at the same time, I think I understand it's just an idea, an ideal. For instance, I've heard Lou Reed talk about the same concept, and how people romanticize the NY music scene of the late 60's. He says listen, you might have a city of 7-8 million people, but at the same time there are only really 3-5 "cool" people living there at any given time.

I think it's a very American idea to think this way. But I'm not necessarily an american in the way that most of the country is. I'm from a particular region. There have been Scot-Irish McClanahan's in Greenbrier County since 1754. My accent is thick, my ideas are somewhat old fashioned. For some reason, we've substituted the Henry Jamesian idea of "europe" with this new idea of "the city." I'm a big believer in the idea that people don't even understand the place they're from, let alone a place they're going.

TH: Speaking of art and love, you've got a film company, Holler Presents. The Education Of Bertie Mae McClanahan is brilliant; it's the best dog movie I've seen since My Dog Skip. How did you get into filmmaking and where are you going with it?
SM: My Holler Presents partner, Chris Oxley, and I have been making movies for a couple of years now. We make em on these cheap consumer model digital video cameras(you can buy one for a couple hundred bucks). The whole idea behind it is that, just like punk music in the 1970's, the aesthetic of what we consider a movie is going to change. There is the plastic "majority" idea of what constitutes a film (this is what's in theaters), and then there are these more "homemade" movies people are going to shoot about their dogs, or their Mom, or why they like to eat chicken wings.

I like to think about them in relationship to a story I heard about the re-discovery of Mississippi John Hurt and his Avalon Blues. He recorded the track in like 1930 something or maybe 1929, and disappeared for thirty years. A couple of collectors in 1962 loved his record and wondered if he was still alive and making music. So they simply followed all the clues he had in the song: a town named Avalon, the state of Mississippi, a shack at the end of a dirt road.
They went to Mississippi.
They went to a town named Avalon.
They went down a long dirt road.
At the end of the long dirt road was a little shack.
On the porch of the little shack, was a 65 year old man.
His name was Mississippi John Hurt and he was playing his "Avalon Blues" before he ate dinner.

I like to think the movies will be clues to find out where we live 50 years in the future, so we can get to meet the people looking for us, and maybe get to know one another. It's like that old Renaissance poem Henry Adams quotes..."When I am ashes, my future readers, will be my children in wishes..." or something like that.

TH: Thanks for your time, Scott. Last question(s): What are you working on now? Also, anything else you'd like to say about your book before we sign off?
SM: Right now I'm working on a third book of stories and getting ready to send in my 2nd book of Stories to Six Gallery Press (hopefuly that'll be out in the next year or so). I have about five years worth of stuff just sitting around. Also, I'm working on a blog/kindle book about my woman who is a nurse. There are some legal/privacy issues I'm gonna have to work out though. They're the craziest stories you've ever heard in your life. Also, I'm making some more films this summer.

I have nothing more to say about Stories. If people buy a copy though, I provide complimentary hugs. Seriously, I'll drive to wherever you live and give you a hug.

For more information on Scott McClanahan please visit his website and for more from Tim hall please check out his blog.