Fiction Award

Candid Interview

with Brian Heston 2/23/06:

CY: Congrats on your award – can you tell us a little bit about how you felt the night that you read?

Well, there’s always that tinge of excitement and nervousness before I do any reading. But it never lasts long. To be honest, I’ve done enough readings by now that they’ve become pretty common place for me. But I still enjoy doing them. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to being an actor, or a stand up comic, which is what a fantasized about doing while growing up. But I never had the guts or opportunity to follow through with it.

CY: Can you tell us a little bit about the material you read? Where did it come from, the creative process it went through?

The story began in autobiography, which I think is where most of my stories begin. However, being a fiction writer, I felt what really happened was far less interesting than what should have happened. After one or two drafts, I discovered that the story’s narrator wasn’t just a naïve love struck puppy, but was really a stand up comedian, or, more importantly, a failed stand up comedian. After two more drafts, I realized that he was a failure not because he wasn’t funny, but because he was funny in a brutally truthful and despairing way. In a way, the character became like a closet genius—a tragic hero of sorts, the very traits that make him unique and brilliant were the very same traits that will cause him to fail again and again at getting what he wants. The stubbornness that goes into his pursuit of stand up and this woman he so desperately wants, I felt got at the crux of the creative process. To get to that mountain top, you must always be committed and loyal, regardless of what else is happening, even if what you’re committed to keeps kicking you in the groin, slugging you in the face, sleeping around with the neighbors, and does nothing but make you feel used and abused. I guess this is why we have imaginations in the first place, to invent things like humor in order to make things tolerable. But what happens when imagination smacks head long into reality? Chekhov’s saying, “I always see everything both funny and sad” is very revealing here. The funny is never too far from the serious. In fact crying and laughing are closely related bodily acts: both bring tears to the eyes; both cause convulsions. For example, if we see someone slip on a banana peel then get up rubbing their ass, we think it’s the funniest thing in we’ve ever seen. Yet if that same person slips on that peel and cracks their head open, we don’t think that’s funny at all. Well, maybe Hannibal Lector would. But I would imagine most people wouldn’t.

CY: Was this the first time reading at the Candid Yak?

Nope. I’ve read at the Yak all three years I’ve been at GMU. I also did the open mic a couple of times.

CY: What is your revision process like and how much has these piece(s) changed before and how much have they changed since you read?

My revision process is constant. My main interest is the short story, so I can’t speak for those working on novels, but revising never ends. The first draft of this particular story was written for visiting writers with Steve Yarbrough. He wasn’t much impressed with it. I didn’t blame him because it really wasn’t all that great. It was ten pages, had no humor whatsoever, and was based on a pretty pathetic character. Pathetic characters can’t work in fiction. We can always feel sorry for pathetic people, because we see them, talk to them—can feel their pain. Characters in fiction, though, must always be capable of more than we are. I think readers demand it. Even if a character is failing miserably, they must always be heroic. Even characters we don’t like very much. So, the main character in the story needed to be heroic in some way. And it was later that I discovered his comedic aspirations. Once that happened, I had a real story to work with, not just an idea. I did about five or six drafts before the reading. Since, I’ve done three more. I imagine I’ll do even more. Short stories are a mysterious beast. Novels you can build up to things, their effect is a long arching process. Short stories are a sprint, they must stab the reader in the heart at the end. A reader must bend over gasping for breath after finishing that last sentence—just like a good poem should. If they don’t, then they are a failure. So, if you write short stories, you are forever tinkering with them, trying to bring them closer to that effect. Good examples of stories that do this are “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” “A Small Good Thing,” and “Sonny’s Blues.” I feel like I’ve spent half of my life trying to recreate what these stories do.

CY: Do you feel that different pieces are better out loud than on the page?

I think if you know how to read, to engage an audience, you can make most things sound interesting. Some things are not as successful out loud. Like if you have a story that jumps around in time, or a poem that doesn’t follow a straight narrative, this is harder for an audience to follow. I mean, it would quiet difficult, I think, to follow most Becket stories out loud, or John Ashbery poems, because there’s just so much going on their. Humor, though, I have found is usually most successful in readings. The writer knows immediately if the audience is following because they will laugh. With serious pieces, there is always this pristine quiet, and I personally find this off-putting. It feels too much like a eulogy when that happens. I enjoy reading much more if I can hear the audience, gage their reaction. And laughter is the only time an audience lets you know that they’re following, unless of course, the entire audience starts balling at the same time, which I’ve never seen. And if this has ever happened at anyone, I’d really like to hear about it.

CY: What did you do before you came to George Mason’s MFA program?

I was an office temp in Philadelphia. It was during that first year or so of Bush’s presidency, when there were absolutely no jobs to be had. I had just finished a Master’s degree at The University of New Hampshire in English and Poetry and was looking forward to a break from school. I had applied to several MFAs, but was still debating whether or not I wanted to jump into another graduate program. However, after a year of scraping by with temp work, when I got that acceptance letter from GMU, I was more than ready to go back to school. Before UNH, I did everything from Marketing Assistant at a Jewish book publisher, to dishwashing for an Italian restaurant. When I got here, I met so many people who had come from doing such cool things, like traveling South America, or working in editing and magazine writing. And I felt incredibly out of place, because I hadn’t done any of those things. I pretty much had spent my life working blue collared jobs, trying to read enough in order not to sound like an idiot in my college classes.

CY: What do you think you’ll do afterwards?

Well, I applied to the Phd program at Florida State. I also applied for the writing fellowship at The University of Wisconsin. Basically, I want to do anything that will allow me to keep writing. I really don’t want to go back to that slave world of eight and ten hour days. My family calls me a professional student, and for the last few years that has been true. But graduate school has allowed me to get away from the brutal realities of that working class world, in which every day is about getting that paycheck. Everyone in our society is so overly impressed when they hear the kind of hours big shot execs put into their work, or high priced lawyers. What no one ever talks about is that the working class puts in just as many hours, yet get so little in return. My parents are in their sixties. My father worked in a factory for thirty plus years. My mother worked as a check processor for forty. They both are collecting retirement, but they still work. They’re still working eight to ten hour days. They couldn’t survive otherwise. So, I’m trying everything I can to avoid that. To avoid adjuncting at a college for basically a minimum wage salary, or working in an office and coming home zapped of all creativity. When I think of school, like the Phd, I think of an another opportunity, another way out from a culture that seems to do nothing but chew up its workers and spit them into their grave.

CY: Anyone special you’d like to thank?

I’d like to thank God for being so good. I’d like to thank coach for never giving up on me. And I especially like to thank the fans, because they’re the ones we do it for. Without them, I’d just be a guy playing ball in some empty stadium.