Teddy Wayne on writing and "The Winner"

A new book from one of my absolute favorite working novelists.

One of the fun parts about getting older and persisting in the same general area of activity is connecting to others in the same field do the same, and seeing their careers progress.

For me, one of those people is Teddy Wayne whose new novel The Winner will be available wherever books are sold starting this coming Tuesday. My first connection to Teddy came way back when I was editing the McSweeney’s website and he was one of the most frequent contributors. Starting with his first novel, Kapitoil, published in 2010, I think Teddy may be the most perceptive explorer of the ways American society warps the male psyche, and the result is books that are some combination of darkly funny, psychologically tense, and often, powerfully disturbing in what they reveal about how quickly we can crumble in the face of these challenges.

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (2013) is the story of a pre-teen, Justin Bieber-ish singer on an increasingly desperate tour that’s both a satire of celebrity culture and a poignant mother/son story.

Loner (2016) is a look at the structures of privilege in elite academia and a portrait of the kind of young male frustration that manifests into violence.

Apartment (2020) again explores class and questions of art and authenticity set against the backdrop of an MFA program in New York City.

The Great Man Theory (2022) is about an individual man unravelling as he is undone by the collapse of publishing and higher education systems in which he once found home, as well as the pernicious effect of a Sean Hannity-like news personality who he has decided is his bête noire.

I realize that I’ve made Teddy’s books sound “timely,” but if you look at those dates of release, he’s really been ahead of his time, which is what makes his books so enjoyable to me. Rather than mining well-trod territory, he’s out looking for something new to bring back to the reader.

I was pleased to find Teddy willing to chat at length over email about reading, writing, and The Winner.

What we read

John Warner: Most of our email exchanges are sharing our recent impressions about what we’ve been reading where we give each other a safe space to air both our pleasures and our grievances. I’m curious what kinds of books do you wish we saw more of?

Teddy Wayne: There are two kinds of novels I seem to respond to these days. The first are impeccably paced books in which you can’t help but be swept up by the story, and there’s still enough depth of character and theme and prose to complement the plot (not always the case with plot-driven novels). The second are books where I can sense the author has truly put themselves on the line, excavating their most deeply held feelings and thoughts, especially those that aren’t predestined to meet with nodding approval. And humor, too, though in fiction I only like a certain kind of restrained humor that isn’t always viewed as “comic.”

JW: We’re going to talk about the first category later when we get into The Winner, but for the second category, Big Swiss is one that really achieved that for me last year. The character is a bad person with bad thoughts doing some bad things, and it was funny too! I’m curious about that line you’re drawing on that “restrained humor” that isn’t necessarily comic. What’s that like? What’s a good example?

TW: I’m currently adapting for film a novel that fits the bill: Last Resort by Andrew Lipstein. There aren’t “comic scenes,” in the sense of something silly or absurd happening, there isn’t “funny dialogue”–no one makes any quips–and there isn’t a sitcom rhythm to the internal monologue that lesser comic novels have. It’s driven by the comic worldview of the author as expressed through prose. An example more or less at random, describing the narrator’s girlfriend’s visits to her ailing father, Emmitt, around his home aides, who tend to be “devoutly Christian” men from Ghana or Namibia: “Sandra was wary not to offend. The one time they listened to Dave Chappelle without headphones she was careful to make it clear to the aide, by talking loudly to Emmitt, that the comic was black.” There are no zingers here, but this small observation says so much about racial discomfort, and doing so through how we convey information to a second party that’s really meant for a third party is, to me, quite funny–but, again, in a restrained, not laugh-out-loud fashion. (I hardly ever laugh out loud when reading fiction; I suppose I’m looking for more of a sort of internal smile.)

JW: I really enjoyed Last Resort too, and I think your illustration is great in that the humor is conveyed through the narrative sensibility, the authorial voice. It’s hard to be truly “comic” at book-length. There’s a few novels I can think of where I laughed out loud at least a few times. Big Swiss had a couple of those spots. Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land is LOL. There’s some set pieces in John Irving’s Water Method Man (like when Bogus is trying to learn to ski) that come to mind, but they’re the equivalent of an action scene in film where we take a break from the story to have some laughs. They’re tough to do and it isn’t something you want constantly anyway.

TW: Fiction has a big disadvantage compared with film and TV and live comedy: you don’t hear voices or see people, which offer the element of surprise, which is necessary for laughter. With actors/performers, other people are doing the speaking and movement (and timing) in ways the audience may not expect; consider how much comic mileage a skilled actor can get out of a raised eyebrow. When the reader imagines a scene, she’s the one coming up with how they speak/act (and at reading speed), which means she can’t really be surprised. So what I look for in fiction is this subtler comic worldview I described above, where the author observes the humor already present in the world or lets it speak for itself rather hammering it home with setups and punch lines.

On ambition, writing, and success

JW: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of ambition and success. I don’t really see myself as particularly ambitious, and yet, I look in the rearview mirror and I see all these things that I’ve managed to do. Do you see yourself as ambitious?

TW: I do, relative to the general population, but compared to the people who try to conquer the world–not just the sociopathic Trumps and Musks of our time, but simply those who are in constant motion, who feed insatiably off achievement (whether it’s material or not), who are always doing more, more, more–I’m not. I’m happiest when I’m working on something that engages me, but there’s something fundamentally unambitious about anyone whose work mostly involves staying at home in sweatpants.

JW: It’s interesting because I’ve always thought of you as ambitious in the sense that you’re always writing the next book, or if you’re not actively writing, it’s clearly gestating, but this suggests that it really is just the activity of writing that’s motivating. I talked to Adam Gopnik about this recently, the difference between accomplishment (doing something meaningful) and achievement (external recognition), and I wonder how much, if at all, do you worry about achievements versus accomplishments? 

TW: I once heard Woody Allen (can I mention him? Well, I did) say in the Q&A at a screening that when he doesn’t work, he feels restless. (It was for his 2000 movie Small Time Crooks, and if I remember right, he plays a thief who says something similar, along the lines of how he can’t sit idle while there are things to steal.) I’ve got some of that in me. I don’t have another job besides writing, unless you count parenting, so if I’m not actively working on something–not every minute of the day, but having work to do every day–I feel unproductive and lazy. But more than that, my mind needs somewhere to go, something to do. I’m not a workaholic by any means, but I understand the mentality of people who escape into their work.

JW: I’m excellent at being lazy, but there comes a time when it’s enough and I need to get my mind gnawing on something. I’m both more stressed and more happy than usual when I’m hot on a big project. It’s nothing I’d want to do every single day, but I don’t mind long stretches of it. (Whether or not the people around me feel that way isn’t for me to say.) The other reason I ask, is that your characters often want some kind of recognition or sense of belonging that’s often rooted in accomplishment. It’s clearly a subject of interest.

TW: Every single one of my books deals with ambition as a central theme, and usually that comes with some analysis of the accomplishment/achievement schism, though I’m more driven by the tension of an unheralded happy life versus its opposite. I greatly admire writers who are indifferent (genuinely indifferent, not the cool pose of feigning it) to worldly success, whether that comes in the form of money or recognition (and it doesn’t count if they’ve already achieved it and can therefore now afford their indifference). There’s some form of ego attached to any work of art one puts out in the world, otherwise why not just keep it to yourself? But the artists who are simply compelled to create, and for whom the broadcasting of it is a distant concern, remind me of the artistic purity that drives my 5-year-old son, who feels a need to draw pictures of sharks or build Legos and doesn’t seek attention for it. (Though as he ages and gets attention for his “works,” I’ve noticed that he increasingly, inevitably does.)

When I’m in the midst of writing and enjoying it, I can say that I do indeed feel wrapped up in the pleasure of creation, of accomplishment. When I’m not actively working, I probably think more about achievement than I should.

On The Winner

JW: My first comparison when I read The Winner was the 1981 film Body Heat starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, which I think might have jump started my puberty when I saw it on the Chicago subscription TV service ON TV back in the day. Did you know what kind of book it was going to be when you started?

TW: I did, and I rewatched Body Heat in the early stages of writing it. I also thought about and rewatched The Talented Mr. Ripley, Match Point, and several others of that ilk. Without giving it away, there’s a certain plot turn I knew this book would have, so I boned up on novels and movies that use it. I also knew it was going to (try to) be closer to the first kind of book I described above–where the pacing is what primarily sets the tone–and that it might therefore veer into “literary thriller” territory, which is how my publisher is categorizing it.

JW: You’ve written other books that generate a lot of narrative tension around plot. I’m thinking of Loner and The Great Man Theory specifically, which both move towards definitive plot climaxes, but it does seem like there’s something a little different with The Winner, more deliberately propulsive. Does it feel that way to you?

TW: It does. The other books all build inexorably toward a (I hope) suspenseful climax, and while there may be some plotty material before that, it tends to fall away in the face of character building and thematic exploration. The Winner is almost two separate books, each with their own set of narrative tensions that intertwine around the midpoint. The novel required much more intricate outlining to make sure it all fit together, for various Chekhovian guns to appear and fire at the right times.

As I said before, I appreciate novels with strong pacing. It’s so rare, for me, at least, to be that immersed in a fictional world, so when I read a propulsive book that I can’t put down, I’m hugely grateful to the writer for writing it, maybe almost as much as to the writer who articulates sentiments I haven’t been able to express. 

JW: You mentioned above that you’re adapting Last Resort for film, and I understand The Winner is moving through the stages of production too. I also know you’ve had some close calls with other projects that haven’t come to fruition. I don’t have a better question than, what’s that like? How do you deal with it?

TW: It’s frustrating, obviously, when things don’t work out, but also expected. The nice thing about film (more so than TV, where projects do typically die completely and don’t go into “turnaround”) is you often have another shot at making it, which is happening now to at least one of my previously stalled projects. I really enjoy screenwriting, and I’ve found the collaborative process of it fun, too; when people give you notes, they’re very exacting to a degree that is inspiring. 

JW: Your wife, Kate Greathead is also a writer. (Note: Teddy championed her first novel Laura & Emma here at the newsletter.) She has a new novel coming in October, The Book of George. Big year for the Greathead-Wayne household. I guess my question is how do you guys manage these sorts of moments which feel like (and in many ways are) a big deal, but which are also largely out of your control in terms of the fate of a book?

TW: While having a book, or two books out, certainly makes for a more exciting year personally, neither of us is under the illusion that the rest of the world perceives it as a big deal. Most novels tend to get attention for a few weeks at best, then they find readers haphazardly after that. In my experience, the buildup to publication is when your hopes rise highest, and they’re dashed fairly quickly thereafter. The only remedy to that disappointment, as many others have noted, is to be working on something new and to remind yourself that you actually like writing–to embrace accomplishment, not achievement.

Links

At the Chicago Tribune this week I offered my two cents on the singular genius of Alice Munro.

In other John Warner writes stuff news, at Inside Higher Ed I explored how college-age young people are experiencing higher levels of anxiety and depression than other cohorts, and that one of their “solutions” to the problem is to embrace “selling out.”

In John Warner talks to the media news, I was interviewed by EdSurge for an article on an interesting attempt by some Carnegie Mellon researchers to create a reined-in version of an AI writing tool.

At LitHub,

Maris Kreizman

explores the truly strange practice of “comp titles” in the publishing process. For the record I described my forthcoming book, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI as Shop Class as Soul Craft, only for writing instead of auto mechanics.

At Esquire, Adrienne Westenfeld interviewed Stephen King about “What I’ve Learned.”

The New York Times is here to tell us the “best books of the year (so far).”

Caleb Carr, author of the mega selling The Alienist has passed away at age 68.

In timely, literature-related humor this week, McSweeney’s gives us “The Handmaid’s Tale or Harrison Bukter’s Commencement Speech?” by Miriam Jayaratna

Recommendations

1. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
2. The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel
3. Nine Lives by Peter Swanson
4. The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
5. James by Percival Everett

Matthew R. - Niles, IL

I feel like Matthew is a good fit for a recently republished, tragically neglected classic, Dem by William Melvin Kelley.

1. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
2. The Voices by Susan Elderkin
3. Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People by Tracy Kidder
4. Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim by D.T. Max
5. The Absent Moon by Luis Schwarcz

Karen R. - Beverly Hills CA

A very interesting mix of books that is quite challenging, even for an expert such as yours truly. Leaning into the republished classic angle, yet again: Speedboat by Renata Adler.

1. Harbor Lights by James Lee Burke
2. Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
3. Knife by Salman Rushie
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patrica Highsmith
5. Table For Two by Amor Towles

Joe F.- Channahon, IL

For Joe, I’m leaning into a kind of crime novel that is also not just a crime novel, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell.¹

It’s is Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. Not until I moved to Charleston, South Carolina did I learn that one of (if not) the first Memorial Day remembrances was a parade through the streets of Charleston in 1865 by free Black citizens celebrating their liberty and the sacrifices of the Union soldiers.

Was this missing from anyone else’s school history books?

For all those who celebrate, I hope you have a great holiday. I’ll see you again next week.

JW
The Biblioracle

1. All books (with the occasional exception) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $73.50.