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****Duncan B Barlow’s A DOG BETWEEN
US is #115 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from
a fiction genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE
THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the end of this piece.
Name of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? My most recent book is entitled A Dog Between Us. This was always the title I imagined for it, but I had also entertained Delicate Machines for a moment. There was a period before the book was published where I was trying to think of a new title, but I continuously came back to the original title.
(https://www.stalkinghorsepress.com/). It was my second book with them. James Reich
is wonderful to work with.
What is the date you began writing this
piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of
fiction? I’m not sure of the exact time. It was
in the later winter of 2013. (Left: Duncan in October 2013).
My father (Right: Duncan's father in his early days) had passed in May of that year and I was
just writing to make record of my time in the hospital. I wrote maybe two
thirds of it in a remarkably small window of time—a month maybe. I returned to
it sometime later and began reading it over, and it and felt like it wanted to
be a book, so I listened to it and spent a few months writing and revising
until it had become a novel.
I shopped it for a couple months, but on a whim
sent an older manuscript (The City, Awake) out to Stalking Horse Press
and he picked that book up, so that and Of Flesh and Fur came out before
A Dog Between Us, and I was busy for a couple years supporting
those books.
Where did you do most of your writing
for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please
include a photo? I don’t I’m afraid. At the time
I was writing it, I hated my apartment in Denver, so I did a good deal of the
work during the day at my friend’s bar called The Sputnik. The days are
generally quiet there and they supplied me with ample diet soda. It’s my home
away from home bar. Whenever I visit Denver now, I spend a good deal of time
there catching up with friends. I suppose it’s all a bit comical since I don’t
drink alcohol.
What were your writing habits while
writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write
in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? This was different from my normal writing practice since
so much of it came out in one period of time. My typical process is to write in
spurts. Small increments over a series of days. I’m often busy with teaching
responsibilities, so I can’t always keep a piece going. I have to come back.
When I do this, I tend to use the opportunity to review the pages and edit
them. I’ll revise a novel hundreds of times during the process. This, for me,
is where the true magic happens. I can meditate on a sentence for an hour at a
time, sometimes many hours at a time.
What is the summary of this specific fiction work? Oh, I’m thinking summaries are available
online, so I won’t trouble you with that. I’ll give you my cocktail party pitch:
It’s a novel about profound losses and how one navigates that murky territory
to find hope again.
Can you give the reader just enough information for them to understand what is going on in the excerpt?
In this scene, Crag
(the protagonist) has been called away from his father’s side in Florida for a
meeting with his department chair in Seattle over a student complaint (Crag had
cancelled classes to be by his father’s side. The student was going to fail and
used this as an opportunity to force a passing grade). The night he arrives
back in Seattle, he receives a call that his father has passed. This is when he
receives that call.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
Language,
at least that is what it was meant to be. The click and hiss and oh. But it was
sound. Nothing hitting the ear quite right. A mouth hitting the drum on an off
rhythm. In the fold of the ear. Hairs and bones. Small, small, small. My skin
tingled. Eyes swelled. The skin tightening. Wrinkles smoothing, perhaps. I
forgot about the other person in the room. About the television. About the dog
nuzzled into my armpit. My muscles contracted. Legs straightened. The light
became unbearable. The weight of breath impossible.
The
door squeaked and the floor moaned. There was still a voice. Still words that
had forgotten how to be language. Sounds. Movement and small things shifting. I
repeated these sounds. I nodded. Gave other nonverbals that were lost through
the phone. Hung up. There was something prickling my skin. Hundreds of things.
Grass. I was lying down. Staring at the sky. I couldn’t remember lying down. I
was watching TV. I was watching TV and the phone rang. Vibrated. Then, my back
was against the ground.
Lights
hit me. The neighbors’ car as they rolled in from dinner. They spoke. A
question. I replied, just looking. Looking at what, I wondered. Stars, I said
to myself. Barely audible. Juliana’s voice from the door. Another question.
Stars, I said. Perhaps not an answer to her question. She sighed. She asked
another. No. The door closed. She knelt next to me. Kissed me on my head. Left.
Her car stereo: boom boom boom. And gone. I tried to remember my father’s face.
Project it. A new constellation. I knew this was coming. I’d spoken to the
doctor. Forced him to speak to me directly. There was no feeling in me. A vast
network of wet organs shifting. I was only aware of my body as a machine. My
chest rising. Falling. Rising. When would it stop? The lungs in me that came
from my father. The ghost of my father in every part of me. When would the
world’s machination suspend me? Cool my flesh? My breath? My eyes?
There
was a gurney somewhere. A body draped in something like a sheet. A thing that
was no longer my father. No longer human. Waste shaped like someone who I once
knew. Once loved. A bug crawled in my ear. Its throng of legs tickled me.
Circling the inside until there was a long screech almost quiet enough to miss.
The dog scratched at the door. The stars remained still. Perhaps long since
dead. The light a ghostly gravestone. The opposite of a body. A drunk walked
by. He asked me a question. I said, fine. I stood. My knees popped. My head
fogged. I tilted forward. About to keel over. A step and I was righted.
I
entered the house. Pet the dog. Stared at the couch. It took me time to
remember it. To remember the room. To remember my name and my skin and my life.
The dog licked me. Her tongue warm and damp. I backed to the wall. Slipped to
the floor. Pulled the dog between my knees. Buried my nose into her head.
Kissed her and sighed. Stars, I whispered. We are not stars. (129-130)
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you
as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of
writing this specific excerpt? This is a very
close recreation to my experience in hearing of my father’s passing. Though
this section came rather quickly in its original draft, it always pricks me
with a bit of pain when I do public readings of it. My father and I were quite
good friends.
Were there any deletions from this
excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your
marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I don’t
have any photos of stacks of revisions because I revise so many times and
lugging around that much paper would clutter my spaces and I like an organized
office and home. Clutter distracts me. I make so very many deletions and
additions while writing. In A Dog Between
Us, I placed all the chapters on the floor and rated them. Anything that
had a 1, was instantly removed and I wrote entirely new selections. With twos,
I slashed and burned paragraphs. I pulled from the work, the best moments and
focused on that, always playing close attention to the quickness, poetry, and
balance of the line. This is a photo (Above Middle) I found yesterday (actually) while
cleaning out some of my back up hard drives. This photo was taken sometime
after Stalking Horse Press had asked for the manuscript in 2018/19.
Other works you have published? I’ve had three novels, a brief novella, and a book that was the
result of collaboration with a visual artist named, thaniel ion lee. (The City, Awake, Of Flesh and Fur, The
House, The Haunts, The Manner of All Things). My first novel, Super Cell Anemia, went out of print in
2008.
Anything you would like to add? Thank you for your questions!
duncan
b. barlow is the author
of A Dog Between Us (Stalking Horse 2019), The City, Awake (Stalking Horse 2017), Of Flesh and Fur (The Cupboard 2016),
and Super Cell Anemia (2008). His work has
appeared in The Denver Quarterly, The Collagist, Banango
Street, The Fanzine, Sleeping Fish, Word Riot, The Apeiron Review, Meat for
Tea, Matter Press, Masque and Spectacle, among others. He teaches creative writing and
publishing at the University of South Dakota, where he is the publisher at
Astrophil Press and the managing editor at South Dakota Review.
Before
writing, duncan b. barlow was a touring musician who played with Endpoint, By
The Grace of God, Guilt, the aasee lake, The Lull Account, Good Riddance, and
many more. His interviews about music and subculture have been published in
academic texts, books, and magazines such as: Straight Edge: Clean-Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social
Change on Rutgers University Press, We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet Collected Interviews on
Akashic, and Burning Fight on Revelation
Records.
http://www.duncanbbarlow.com
http://www.duncanbbarlow.com
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