[Article by Robbie Fraser]
Brian Doyle’s most recent novel, Mink River, manages to showcase the Northwest in the same way that Irish authors like James Joyce showcased their own country. It’s not a claim one lightly makes, but it is a claim that the book nonetheless deserves. While a multitude of genuinely unique characters paint a portrait of the fictional town of Neawanka in full, Doyle also manages to present a novel that is accessible to the reader in a way that writer’s like Joyce famously never did. It is a highly entertaining story in its own right, and provides the readers with a page turning presentation of events amid Doyle’s unique brand of philosophy. In this month’s issue, Doyle was kind enough to sit down with Synchronized Chaos and offer his thoughts on his novel, as well as give a little insight on his life as a writer
“In a small town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There’s a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there’s an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it’s thinking…”
–Oregon State University Press
Synchronized Chaos: How long has the general idea for Mink River been floating around in your mind?
Brian Doyle: Probably 25 years. I wrote a short story in the mid eighties, published it, thought I was done with the characters, but they kept chatting away in my head – I could actually hear and see them – very odd. They are not based on anyone – they were, for whatever reasons, real to me. I tried then for years to push and see what would happen, but I am an essayist, not a novelist, and I’d stop again and again. Finally I set about just writing one tiny story a day of the town and its people, and that was the key to it – then it ran loose, and after a couple of years of one hour a morning, quite early, it wanted finally to be a Book. A wonderful soaring puzzling pleasure to have lived with those characters for so long. I miss them, actually.
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Robbie Fraser is an associate editor for Synchronized Chaos Magazine. Fraser may be reached at robbiedfraser@gmail.com.
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SC: When did you first start actually writing the story itself?
BD: In this final version that’s stitched and braided and woven? a few years ago – 2004 or so.
SC: In the book you jump very quickly from one character or scene to the next – what challenges or advantages did this style present when you wrote it? Was it ever difficult keeping up?
BD: Not really – it was more that everyone was doing something, everyone had stories to tell, everyone was on a journey, and they were all clamoring so for me to pay attention to them it was hard not to. I’d really open the book every morning and look at each character and without fail two or three would start talking or running and I’d type to keep up.
SC: One effect of the book’s structure is that there are a surprisingly large number of well-developed characters. As a writer, what’s your process for creating characters? How much do you draw on people you’ve met? Do you create a story for the characters beyond what usually appears in your books?
BD: None of those people, it seems to me, are anyone I know, but all of them are real to me – I was startled to discover that characters who were just there initially as plot devices or context or background turned out to be fascinating tales themselves – for a long time the lesser characters were more interesting than the supposed stars…I found with this book, and with my short stories (I have a book of short stories coming out in Oct, called Bin Laden’s Bald Spot) that I hear them talk, I hear them start telling stories, and that’s who they are, does that make sense? ‘Dialogue is character is plot,’ as my late friend George Higgins said.
SC: Also, your characters are often a bit odd and certainly unique (e.g. a Puccini-loving policeman). What comes first for you, the character(s) or the overall story?
BD: O, the characters. All I knew about the plot was that I was interested in the nature of Time and that somehow the two main characters, Cedar and Worried Man, would pursue that obsession. Then away it went. To me the great pleasure of writing a novel was discovering what was happening. It really was a matter of constant discovery and surprise to me – I typed to find out what was happening next. Very little advance planning. The characters lived their lives and I wrote to make record of their doings, sort of. In fact often what I had planned was shoved aside by what they wanted to have happen. In readings and interviews now I often find myself saying things like, “why does Michael love Tosca so? I haven’t the faintest idea. He just does.”
SC: Your passion for the natural beauty of the Northwest is very apparent in your book – what is the extent and history of your ties to the area? What makes the area special? What is your hometown like compared to Neawanaka?
BD: O twenty years of total gratitude and celebration and thanks to Oregon. I really really really wanted to write a Great Oregon Novel. I wanted to write Oregon. I want this book to be read for centuries here. I want every kid in Oregon to read it to dig Oregonness. I came here twenty years ago because I fell in love with an Oregonian, and then the Coherent Mercy gave us three small Oregonians, and I am totally in debt to wild sweet wet green comic tough bruised graceful lovely moist muddy gentle huge Oregon for joy and shelter and kicks. I live near Portland, but have spent many many thousands of hours at the coast, and very much wanted to write a town there, to write a village, to write down the light and mist and grace under duress that I think is particularly Oregonian. For years to come when people say what are the great Oregon books I want to be in those next minutes of answer when people say Ken Kesey, Ursula Le Guin, Robin Cody, Duncan, Don Berry, Barry Lopez, Bill Kittredge, Craig Lesley, Beverly Cleary….Brian Doyle’s Mink River.
SC: There is a strong presence of animism in your story, and you often present animals in a very human and spiritual manner. Can you talk a bit about why you took this approach?
BD: Everything that lives is holy, as old Billy Blake says, and he’s right. Know your neighbors, of all species and shapes.
SC: Your style reminded me of a wide range of authors, from Dylan Thomas to William Faulkner. What author do you feel your style most resembles?
BD: Geez, I don’t know. Style’s something a writer ought never to think about, seems to me – it’s for someone else to comment on. I just write headlong and sprinting and trying to get at deep true wild hard joyous things. I love David Duncan’s riverine prose, and Jan Morris’s lucid ease, and Orwell’s honesty and clarity, and Twain’s humor and honesty, and E.B. White’s artful artlessness, and my dad’s clean clear crisp sentences.
SC: Going beyond Mink River, what do you like to do when you’re not writing?
BD: Bark at my kids.
SC: At what point were you certain that you had a future as a writer?
BD: When I got a job as an editor on a Catholic magazine – my dream was to be a reporter and editor – I figured I’d try to write my own stuff, but that was a huge kick to get a journalism job out of college —
SC: What’s the most low-brow book, TV show, or movie that you’re willing to admit you’re a fan of?
BD: I love animated movies and cartoons. The greatest movies ever made are the Toy Story trilogy. Genius.
SC: Do you have any odd habits or superstitions when it comes to writing?
BD: Nah. Just start. Never expect anything. Just start typing and see what happens.
Brian Doyle’s Mink River is available through the Oregon State University Press at http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Mink-River-Brian-Doyle/dp/0870715852.