Go Read author took in Virginia's atmosphere
Jann Malone/Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Sunday, January 28, 2007

This year's Go Read author, William Henry Lewis, has a strong Virginia connection. Lewis, who goes by Hank, now teaches English at Colgate University in New York, but in the'90s, he was a graduate student at the University of Virginia and taught at Mary Washington College.

The Virginia countryside figures in his short-story collection, "I Got Somebody in Staunton." The title story involves a road trip from Fredericksburg to Staunton.

Go Read, now in its fifth year, is Richmond's community reading program designed to encourage discussion in book groups and schools.

The program's finale takes place Feb. 7-8, when Lewis comes to town to speak to area high school students and to read and sign his book at two public events.

For this interview, he spoke by phone from New York.

Did you absorb the Virginia countryside when you lived here?

When I was in graduate school, I was a delivery truck driver, so that took me to a lot of the roads in Virginia.

When I was out of grad school and teaching at Mary Washington College, I found that I was driving a lot to Charlottesville and taking country drives. I lived in a rural space on an old farm. I was constantly taking in the atmosphere.

Where did your gift for storytelling come from?

I enjoy story, and I enjoy the narrative behind certain situations. So I'd say that my gift as a storyteller comes from witnessing a lot of good storytelling but also from being very curious about the stories behind a particular person or situation.

I love to speculate about what might have happened in a certain situation.

I think a lot of that might have come from my grandmother and my mother. My grandmother who did tell stories and encourage me to share stories and make up stories with her.

My mother really encouraged us. She'd take us to a museum and would say, 'Make sure by the time you leave that there are five things you can tell me about what you've seen.' That kind of stuck with me.

You advise aspiring writers to wait for the moment after they think they know everything there is to know. Is that how you get details for your own writing?

Most certainly. Although I really have a lot of faith in the inspiration behind a story and idea, some part of me is waiting to see what that produces, what that triggers.

The initial inspiration is the thing that gets the bullet out of the gun. I'm more interested in what happens afterwards, what it hits after that.

How does that work?

I don't feel like a story really works for me until I feel like the decisions that are being made feel like decisions that the character would make.

There are certain things I want to have happen in my stories, but it's like any relationship. I like to make sure that we both agree about what's happening.

I wait for that moment when the characters come alive. I like to see what they do.

How do you write?

My first drafts are very messy, very disorganized. But the feelings are there, sometimes just the language, the flow of the words and the sound. There are lots of markups, lots of questions.

As I go further on, I start cleaning up, remembering that great Miles Davis quote. He talks about when he's recording in the studio, he always listens for what he can take out.

For a story that ends up 15 pages, I might write 25. I am looking to make it clean, to make it crisp.

Music plays a big role in your writing. What's the connection there?

My earliest memories are listening to music. Even though I'm not a musician, it's something that's a very strong part of who I am and how I connect up with things.

I like music as a nutritional aspect of writing. Although music can be a highly intellectually perceived thing, when you first take it in, it comes in on sound and tone, the way sound waves vibrate in your body. And all those things are important to you before you decide what it means.

I very much would like readers to have things happen on the gut level when they're reading that aren't necessarily explained, then to start to think about the story later on.

What do you hope people who read this book will talk about?

I hope they pay attention to how the stories are told and why these people tell stories. In those first-person narratives, what investment does that person have in that story being told and how does that say something about that person?

And the value of memory. I hope people talk about how important memory is to the characters in the story.

Do you learn anything about yourself when you write?

Most certainly. It takes me a long time to finish a story. I'm constantly working at it, but I think I very much enjoy the process of having a story grow and speak to me. I learn a lot about it.

I don't really keep a journal, so I find when I look back on old drafts and story ideas, I can think about what I learned, what I was feeling and what kind of person I was. In that way, writing stories is a way in which I learn a lot about myself.

Jann Malone is The Times-Dispatch's book editor.