Josh Weil is the author of The New Valley.
–Name a childhood hero.
Daniel Boone. I even changed my name to Daniel for a couple years. I still have, somewhere, the chewed pencil from my third grade year with the lettering along the side: Daniel Weil. Maybe it was the call of the frontier, the freedom inherent in that, the woods-skills, the image I had of the man as practically existing as an animal in the wild – or just the coon-tail hat. I had dreams of getting myself a hat like that. My uncle even scraped and dried a squirrel hide for me, but I never did find a milliner to make it worthy of the head of Boone.
–Name a work you wished you’d written.
The short story “My Aeschylus” by Jim Shepard.
–If you had to order your work by how successfully you completed what you set out to accomplish, what would that list look like?
1. The three novellas in The New Valley. It’s my first book, so that’s probably natural that I feel that way about it. But I also think it came together in a way that felt right to me, a way that still surprises me a little. Of the novellas, I guess I’d say “Ridge Weather” accomplished most successfully what I’d set out to accomplish, but “Stillman Wing” changed my idea of what I wanted to accomplish most substantially, and “Sarverville Remains” seemed to defy, for me, a simple idea of what I wanted to accomplish, so it’s kind of out of the running.
2. My short story “Tree Thieves” in Granta.
3. My short story “Angle of Reflection” (the unpublished version; a different version was published as “Mirza” in Narrative, but that was geared towards a different goal).
4. There are other short stories in there, too, but I’d probably say that the thing that’s closest to completing what I want of it, that I’m most excited about getting to that point, is a novel that I’ve worked on for a while called River Horse. When I get it there – to the realization of what it should be – I think I’ll move it up near the top of this list.
5. Somewhere way, way down at the bottom of this list is a novel that I wrote a few years ago called Swimming Season. It’s close to my heart, but so fatally flawed I’ll never let it see the light of day. I did write a story based on it, though, and that I think accomplished what I wanted the novel to accomplish far better than the novel ever did.
–Name a writer in history you would’ve like to have been a contemporary of and why.
John Steinbeck, because his books were the first that pulled me towards literary fiction and grabbed me by the way I felt about the characters more than the plot. He set me on my path, in many ways, and he wrote so boldly, and with so much heart; I wish, sometimes, when I’m feeling scared off by a particularly large moment, or grand scene, that I could visit him and find a way to share in some of his bravery.
–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.
“Sarverville Remains”, the third novella in The New Valley. I truly didn’t know how that would play: it’s told in first person, in dialect, in the voice of a mildly mentally challenged man, and there’s a lot of disturbing stuff going on, and the plot structure is extremely complicated. My first agent hated it. So the fact that it moves people more strongly, and more consistently, than any other thing I’ve written, well, I’m a bit shocked – and very grateful – for that.
–Correct a misperception about you as a writer in fifty words or less.
That I’m a Southern Writer. I’m a New England boy who happens to have been born in Virginia, and to have returned there, and been struck with love for the people and the mountains. I’ve come to think of the area as home – but I’m not truly of The South.
–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.
Lack of imagination: More than anything I hate coming across a scene, a moment, a description, that feels like I could have read essentially the same thing somewhere else, written by somebody else.
–Name your five desert island films.
- Five Easy Pieces
- Ratcatcher
- Barton Fink
- Old Believers
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.
Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison
–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.
The Bible
–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.
The first serious novel I ever wrote, which was called The End of the World at Sweetie’s Café. Or, more accurately, two of the story-lines that were part of it. I think my heart was as fully in those as one’s heart can be, and I think there was a freshness to the stories that came from my first discoveries about writing, even if I know the novel as a whole failed. But I’d love to make the parts of it that are most dear to me work some day.
–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.
Now, if I shared that, I’d never know another piece of gossip, would I? But the biggest inside scoop that I will share is this: Maud Casey’s new novel (a section of which I heard her read this summer), when it eventually comes out, is going to blow people away. Watch for it, and remember I told you so.
–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.
- Absalom! Absalom!
–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.
- Sitting down at the desk before dawn, always.
–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.
- Not reading more of the classics in college…or, heck, not reading more of them now.
–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.
- Focus. Daily distractions do me in. The internet and email is a killer.
–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.
- “Where do your ideas come from?”
–Name a question you wish you had been asked.
- “Where do your ideas come from?”