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| photo: Olive Beverly | |
Bill Beverly grew up in Kalamazoo, Mich., and studied at Oberlin College and the University of Florida. His research on criminal fugitives and the stories surrounding them became the book On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover's America. His debut novel, Dodgers, will be published by Crown on April 5, 2016. Beverly teaches American literature and writing at Trinity University in Washington, D.C.
You grew up in Michigan and reside in Maryland. You write about The Boxes--the projects and drug houses of Los Angeles--with the great familiarity. Have you spent much time there? What drew you to this setting and these characters when you began writing Dodgers?
I never spent any time in L.A. until the last 10 years. But for me and a lot of people, L.A. is an imagined city, an imaginary city. I grew up in the 1970s; I grew up digesting LA stories--Nathanael West, Chester B. Himes, Joan Didion, James Ellroy, Steve Fisher, Chinatown, Blade Runner, The Player, Boyz n the Hood. I read The Last Days of the Late Great State of California, Curt Gentry's imaginary earthquake apocalypse, over and over again, I mean, when I was seven or eight. City of Quartz, City of Nets. I had spent a lot of time dreaming California before I ever landed there, ever got to see the light and smell the air and listen to people deciding things.
You have an easy yet authentic approach to street language. How did you go about tackling the question of authentic speech and slang in dialogue?
I let East's voice take its tense, bristly shape. He speaks to instruct, to steady things, to survive. Other characters complement him.
"Authentic" can mean a lot of different things. I never tried to tune him to some neighborhood. Folks have said, Oh, East's from Compton: he's not. I don't know Compton. I invented The Boxes so East could sound like himself, so his voice could be tuned to his way of seeing the world. That's the only wavelength I sought to maintain.
Whether in fiction or culture in general, a cast of four kids from the hood risks being written off without a closer examination, which is precisely what makes them such great characters. Describe the personalities of East, Ty, Walter and Michael Wilson, and how they differ from each other.
The book says this:
"East looked quiet and kept quiet. He didn't look hard. He didn't look like much. He blended in, didn't talk much, was the skinniest of the bunch. There wasn't much to him. But he watched and listened to people. What he heard he remembered."
He is fifteen, which is to say: a very old boy, a very young man. He is in charge, has been for some time. He's good at what he does. Yet he's blindly naïve to how small his chair is in the world, and how easily that chair might knock over.
The other three rile East up. Michael Wilson is smart, proud, good-looking. He gets what he wants in the world, and he wants a lot. Walter is a computer kid. His toughness is put on. He doesn't belong here, perhaps, and he's a mess: he appalls and impresses East both. And Ty is a frightening kid--casual with a weapon, sleepy like a snake. He's East's brother, and there is no love lost.
Dodgers is, in a sense, a road novel. What was it like taking characters whose identities have been so formed by their violent, impoverished environment and putting them out on the road? What opportunities did that afford you as a writer?
American road stories are again and again about finding yourself, right? About seeing yourself reflected in the landscape, whether it's Easy Rider or Wild or Thelma and Louise or Invisible Man. That by riding around we'll discover ourselves, we'll heal ourselves. It's a myth, maybe a terrible one. But we're deep inside it.
Richard Price's Clockers made me start imagining in this direction. At the end of Clockers, Strike hits the road. New Jersey has become dangerous for him, probably terminal. Getting out is saving his life. And the book ends there. But I always was red-hot at the end of that book, and the movie Spike Lee made. I was always burning to know what happened out there. And maybe the out there I imagined is the landscape I chose for East.
Dodgers fits in the great crevice of "literary crime/suspense." I'm reminded of Richard Price and Dennis Lehane, as well as other stylists, like Richard Lange and Tim Johnston, who provided great blurbs for the book. Yet, you are doing so much here that is wholly your own. Who are some of your heroes that shaped your writing?
It is a great crevice, but less hidden than it's been. Those fellows are all real writers and I am happy that people know it. My debt to Mr. Price I've mentioned already. I studied with Padgett Powell at Florida, and so had been taught to attend to sentences. Denis Johnson is the first writer I ever read again and again, enviously, the first whose sentences hurt me. Then I started on Baldwin. I am not sure anyone touches Baldwin's sentences.
There's one book I got to when I was about 10 or 11 that has stayed with me: Roald Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World. Dahl's books for kids are great. But Danny is a fifth-grader's crime novel. I read it to my fifth-grader last year.
You use a lot of distinctive devices to maintain tension and suspense in the story. There is the uneasiness that one of them might have a gun, when they are supposed to be making the trip clean. They aren't supposed to leave the van, yet they almost get arrested in Las Vegas because one of them wants "just a taste" of the casinos and big lights. After that, you don't know what's going to happen next, or if they even stand a chance making it to their destination so far from home. Tell us about the different sources you drew from to create suspense throughout the novel.
Oh, it's the characters. These four were going to find trouble. A good hand to play. I just bet the talent.
What do you think your novel reveals about the widespread experience of drugs, crime, violence and poverty in America, a topic that often goes unexplored in fiction?
That is a good prompt, and I thank you. It's tempting to try to take that extra base, especially when my day job is in the what-does-this-reveal industry. Meeting any person shines some light behind them, on the places or people or experiences they come from.
But I'm gonna stop here, on first. I hope that Dodgers can keep people turning the pages. That's the main thing.
Dodgers is a refreshing read. I only hope this is a trend we see more of in American fiction in 2016, because it is desperately needed. Thank you!
More reading, more refreshment. I couldn't agree more. Thank you!