{"id":65886,"date":"2014-01-30T13:38:33","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T18:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=65886"},"modified":"2014-02-03T09:20:31","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T14:20:31","slug":"visible-man-an-interview-with-mitchell-s-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/30\/visible-man-an-interview-with-mitchell-s-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"Visible Man: An Interview with Mitchell S. Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Portland\"<\/a>

A still from the book trailer for The Residue Years<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mitchell S. Jackson\u2019s debut novel, <\/em>The Residue Years, was published last fall and drew immediate notice for its amazing use of language and voice, the cadence of its sentences, and the authenticity at its center. It tells the sweet, sad story of Grace, a recovering drug addict, and her drug-dealing son, Champ, as they both struggle in an African American Portland neighborhood that was ravaged by crack in the nineties.<\/em><\/p>\n

Critics said the novel was about race, or poverty, or America\u2019s failed war on drugs. Big, social themes. Personally, I disagree: to my mind, <\/em>The Residue Years is a personal story, a novel about love, redemption, and freedom. Interspersed throughout are a blank form for a rehabilitation center, a police report, a Baptist church member registration form, a petition for child custody\u2014subtle reminders that this novel is also about all the ways in which we are held captive by institutions that, more often than not, fail us. Between these pauses lie some three-hundred pages of beautiful sentences that mix urban slang with pitch-perfect lyricism, resulting in a new way of expressing American English\u2014at least to my European eyes. Victor LaValle agrees: \u201cIt\u2019s tough to write beautifully about ugly things, but Mitchell S. Jackson makes it look easy.\u201d Amy Hempel has said that Grace and Champ are one of the fictional families she has cared about the most. And that\u2019s at the heart of Mitchell\u2019s novel: family.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last month I fired up Skype and talked to Mitchell for more than an hour\u2014I was in Milan, and he in Brooklyn\u2014about his novel, his writing, and the dangers of how books are marketed today.<\/em><\/p>\n

Your language is a fantastic mix of literary, poetic, lyrical English, and urban slang\u2014it goes up and down and back and forth. I\u2019m curious to know if you tried to bring together those worlds consciously. <\/b><\/p>\n

I do feel like I\u2019m in the middle there. I have my preliterary experiences in the urban world, listening to a bunch of hip-hop and listening to my uncles, my friends. When I got in school and started reading, I found people who were writing about a similar kind of experience, and whom I thought the canon respected. But I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m in a tradition. I don\u2019t think I read deeply enough in either field to really know about a tradition. I do have influences\u2014James Baldwin, of course, and John Edgar Wideman. But also Denis Johnson and Barry Hannah. I like to stay in the middle. I think that that tension lets me play around with voice.<\/p>\n

What was your starting point for the novel?<\/b><\/p>\n

I started writing autobiographical scenes and tried to string them together. I didn\u2019t understand the characters\u2019 motivations. It took me years to figure out what they really wanted. I had a premise\u2014mother on drugs, son sells drugs\u2014but that\u2019s not human. Those are just things people do. It took me some time to figure out what the humanity in the characters was. I saw that this story was really about a mother and a son, about their will to redeem themselves from the hurt they\u2019d caused. Once I realized that, I went back and rewrote a lot of stuff. When I started, the characters were so close to my own life that I felt like they had to speak and act and behave like the people they were based on.<\/p>\n

Champ and Grace began as avatars of you and your mom? <\/b><\/p>\n

At the beginning, and then they became composites. But the origin was in truth. Once you realize the characters have a life of their own and you let them do what\u2019s right for them, the work opens up. I wish I were as smart as Champ, but I\u2019m not as smart as him. <\/p>\n

How was your book marketed? Did they go for a hip crowd? A literary crowd? Did they focus on the African American angle?<\/b><\/p>\n

I did a lot of literary events because, I suspect, my publisher didn\u2019t want me pigeonholed as an urban writer. You know, the hip, urban black crowd\u2014they’re not buying many books. It was smart of my publisher to do that, because I have a feeling that black people will get to the book later, if they feel like it\u2019s a success. But reading a positive review in The New York Times<\/i>\u2014I don\u2019t think that\u2019ll make the book a success with the urban crowd. I have a couple friends in the music industry, and I sent them the Times<\/i> review, and I got nothing. No response. But then, this girl who\u2019s a hip-hop promoter was doing some sort of meet-and-greet and she did an event with me\u2014she called it an \u201cauthor meet-and-greet.\u201d It wasn\u2019t even a reading. She sent out an e-mail blast, and all my friends got back to me and were like, Great, man, you\u2019re really doing it! And I was like, Doing what? This is nothing! It\u2019s like, this is what you guys value? Like, fuck the New York Times<\/i>, <\/i>all you care about is a girl who gives you free drinks at a meet-and-greet? I realized those friends of mine don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

Who was your perceived audience? Are the\u00a0literary<\/b> and African-American<\/b> audiences separate worlds? It\u2019s similar to what happens with Junot D\u00edaz\u2014he\u2019s a Latino writer, but his books aren\u2019t perceived to be books for the Latino community. They\u2019re literary books, which means, to a large extent, that they explain the Latino experience to white people.<\/b><\/p>\n

I think what happens, simply, is that people end up writing about their experiences. If you\u2019re a black person writing about a black experience, they give it that marketing term to find an audience. But it marginalizes the work. Even before the literature, it\u2019s like, here\u2019s a black writer. If you hear the conversation about the guys who have six to eight books out and you start to hear phrases like \u201cGreat American Novel\u201d or \u201cone of the greatest writers of his generation,\u201d they almost always refer to a white man or a book by a white man. But maybe Junot will be the exception. The thing about Junot that\u2019s special is that, from the jump, he was christened as the guy they were gonna let through the door. He was in The<\/em> New Yorker<\/i> right away, and some people work their whole careers for that. I think that they single out one or two people so they can say, it\u2019s not a fair playing field, but we\u2019re gonna let a few of you over here. And this is not to say that it\u2019s not deserved. Junot D\u00edaz is probably my favorite living writer. I think he deserves it, but I do think that he was singled out. I mean, if I was part of the establishment and I was trying to maintain some kind of hold on it, I wouldn\u2019t allow that many people through either.<\/p>\n

Now, this next part is hard to say. I think that part of the problem is that a lot of black writers are \u2026 satisfied<\/i> with being successful outside of what you\u2019d call literary fiction. And if you take that satisfaction, you don\u2019t get in the club. You have to write literary fiction to get in the club. And there aren\u2019t that many black writers that they\u2019ve allowed in the club to choose from. As examples, Edwidge Danticat and Junot D\u00edaz are great. But where are the other Caribbean writers the gatekeepers have given a pass?<\/p>\n

That said, I recognize that my backstory will bring people to the book who wouldn\u2019t ordinarily come to it. On the other hand, I\u2019m really hypersensitive to people judging it as an autobiography. I want people to come to the work, but when you get there, I want you to judge it by its merit. Not because of the fact that I might have been in prison or I might have seen some of the stuff that I talk about in the book. That\u2019s the kind of position you put yourself in when they market you in a certain way. You get readers coming to the book for the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n

Is it easy for you to write?<\/b><\/p>\n

No. It\u2019s easy to write notes. But I have such a high standard for myself, at the sentence level. I want to write a book where every sentence is beautiful. Where every single sentence is beautiful. It prevents me from putting down bullshit. But it also kind of stifles me, because it stops me from getting involved in the messy stuff. I\u2019m never like, Let me slap this down and get on to this other thing and worry about that later. I\u2019m so concerned with every single sentence that it\u2019s kind of troubling.<\/p>\n

Are you worried about what you\u2019ll write next?<\/b><\/p>\n

In a way. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s about having other things to say, or about waiting for stuff to happen to you so you can write about it. It\u2019s more about going back to that one story and telling it in different ways. I was listening to an interview with Jay-Z and he said that he\u2019s only written about five stories in his whole career. He\u2019s only had five things he wanted to say, but he said them differently. I want my writing to stay in Portland. Edward P. Jones only writes about D.C.\u2014be it D.C. a hundred years ago, or today. There are so many stories in a place. And nothing beats writing about home.<\/p>\n

Would you consider moving back in time, maybe writing more historically?
<\/b><\/p>\n

You know, I never thought about that. And maybe there\u2019s something there. People often write about the South during slavery, but there\u2019s not much about Oregon in those days. You just gave me an idea, man! Right on!<\/p>\n

I want five percent.<\/b><\/p>\n

Sure. I\u2019ll give you five percent of zero.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mitchell S. Jackson\u2019s debut novel, The Residue Years, was published last fall and drew immediate notice for its amazing use of language and voice, the cadence of its sentences, and the authenticity at its center. It tells the sweet, sad story of Grace, a recovering drug addict, and her drug-dealing son, Champ, as they both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":422,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[12732,8226,1132,6128,12730,4306,3861,12731],"class_list":["post-65886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-book-marketing","tag-family","tag-interviews","tag-junot-diaz","tag-mitchell-s-jackson","tag-oregon","tag-portland","tag-the-residue-years"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVisible Man: An Interview with Mitchell S. 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