James (Jim) Sallis (and his cats) continue to amaze me

​Matthew Turbeville: Mr. Sallis, it’s an honor to get to interview you.  Sarah Janestruck something deep within me, and I loved it, just as I do your other books.  It’s such a compact, compressed, piece of dynamite type of book. How do you manage to compose so much and pack it into so little without everything being crowded? What do you think is the value of a short novel as opposed to a long, sprawling epic, excluding reading time, and other basic uses?
 
James Sallis:  Much of this comes from my beginning as a poet.  Poetry’s progress isn’t logical and linear; it makes its own way by association, by cognitive, intuitive, sensual leaps, by imagery, by the rhythms and sounds of its lines.  A great deal of information of every sort – emotion, connection, conflict, impression – gets loaded on.  One of the things my students hear over and again is: Get as much of the world as possible in every phrase, every sentence, every line and paragraph.
            The novels are in no way minimalist.  For me, a novel like Willnot or Sarah Jane has the stuff, the material, of a novel three or four times its size.  Every action has a history and a future; shadings of those plead to be in your limning of the present, in the heartbeat and breath of what you write.  You want to get it right, get the whole of the experience, not just throw words up against it.
 
 
 
MT: Who were your influences? I remember hearing that James M Cain wrote to make every sentence count, and every sentence must count toward the story and the novel.  What authors affected you most growing up, and books too, as well as now, those living today, and those whose legacies live on? 
 
JS:  The first fiction with which I fell in love was the first I read, purloined from my older brother’s bookshelves: science fiction.  That led to my first “career” as writer, to my editing New Worlds in London, to my oldest friends, and to the books column I’ve written for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for many years now.
            The writer who first got me wondering how in the world he did it, who made me look close to try and figure that out, and who finally caused me understand that this was what I wanted to do, was Theodore Sturgeon.  I go back to his work regularly.  I am still amazed and empowered by it. 
 
  
 
MT: The titular character of the novel, Sarah Jane, is somewhat forced into the role of sheriff, and also into a certain kind of destiny, or fate (there was a wise quote I heard recently, about young and older people, and the difference between destiny and fate relating to the two). Do you mind elaborating on what choices you think characters have in noir and crime fiction, and what role fate and destiny places in the genre? 
 
 
JS:    I dislike the term noir, which, like jazz, long ago lost its ability to signify. But if we return to the classic stamp, noir is a form in which the novel becomes the record of that utter damnation for which the individual protagonist is heading from the first page.  It is, in that sense, a demotic tragedy.  By contrast, the classic mystery template is socially oriented and conservative, shaped around disruption of the norm and a bringing-back to order.  We say “crime fiction” now because the language cried out for a generalist term.
            Rather in violation of standard novelistic practice, Sarah Jane’s early history had to be sketched, to prepare for the quite individual manner in which she simultaneously accepts and challenges her fate.  Both here and in Others of My Kind I’ve become invested in individuals with truly horrible pasts – my character in Others was kidnapped as a child and kept in a box beneath a bed – who emerge as truly good people.       
 
 
 
MT: What was writing a novel like this like? I know a lot of people must assume “Writing a short book is so much easier than writing something Proust-sized,” or something like that, but I’ve always found compacting things and making something small, and making it work and have the same effect as a longer novel, is so much tougher.  What’s your writing process like, and what is writing shorter novels like for you? Are you drawn to length or do things just unfold that way?
 
JS:     Often with students, after reading a story or chapter in which there are, say, six scenes, I’ll ask them to go home and rewrite all of it to one scene.  Reject the first things that come to mind. That’s transcription, not creation; you’re mimicking things you’ve read and seen.  Rethink it.  How much do you need to tell?  Where do you want to start?  What a character notes of his or her surroundings, body language, the sound of a fly buzzing in a glass, trucks spilling waste as they pick up garbage in the alley – what might this contribute?  It’s all about information, on every level.  
            My favorite quote concerning revision is from Jim Burke.  He says he rewrites again and again, till the page fairly crackles in his hand when he picks it up.  And the other half of that art lies in the reader not even noticing this because it goes down so smoothly.  What Durrell called “the thread of blood from the unfelt stroke.”  
 
 
 
MT: You also wrote Drive, among numerous other great novels.  Drive was turned into a hit movie, and it has a sequel too (I’m not sure if as many people are aware of this, but go pick up a copy now, if you, the reader, have not already).  What draws you to characters and storylines, and what drove you back to the story behind Drive, the novel? 
 
JS:    Lew Griffin came to life in a single story, which became The Long-Legged Fly, which then became five more novels – because I was interested in the character, wanted to know more about him.  With Drive, we know the story told in the novel, and we know how Driver’s life ends, but we know nothing of what happened between.  And that’s what Driven provides.  In 
some ways, it seems to me a better novel than the first. 
 
 
 
MT: You also write series as well, and I’m always curious how mystery writers decide what fits into a series novel and what works as a standalone, other than really obvious things.  How do we determine a certain mystery belongs in a series with certain characters—and do you begin deciding a mystery based on characters, or does the mystery draw recurring characters to the story? 
 
JS:   My mantra here is “Listen to the text,” it will tell you what it wants to be.  Ideas for a story may become a poem in the actual writing, a story idea becomes a novel as you write forward into it, what you believe will be a novel (“Dayenu,” published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, reprinted in Rich Horton’s best-of-the-year science fiction anthology) finds its form as a 13,000-word story.    
 
 
 
MT: What book or books do you hope to be remembered for most? What do you hope people—readers, Americans anyone—to take away from your work? 
 
JS:   Any of the novels will do, they’re all pretty good kids.  What people will remember and take away?  The intense and simple humanity of my characters.
 
 
 
MT: There’s been—I don’t know if I’d say an explosion—but a bit of an opening for rural noir, for Southern noir (something you’re often categorized in) and I wonder what you think the importance of regional noir is for writers and readers? What about Southern noir specifically, and how does this play into Sarah Jane and her story? 
 
JS:    Certainly a part of it is that as readers andas writers we grew weary of story upon story set in cities.  Also, relentless homogenization.  We see those towns, these mini-cultures, fading away, recognize that we are losing them and with them a vital diversity that formed this nation.  They’re tearing down the crossroads and putting up a CircleK.
 
 
 
MT: Would you mind sharing with your fans what’s coming up next for you? I for one would be delighted to know anything about a future work in progress, and hope there’s much more to come in your career. Please feel free to share what you feel comfortable with. 
 
JS:    A new story collection is due from New Rivers Press early next year, as is a double volume of critical essays, combining a new edition of Difficult Lives with a new collection of essays on crime writers,  Hitching Rides, from Soho Syndicate.  I’m working on (groping in the dark, stumbling and recovering) two new (maybe?) novels.  New stories appear and are forthcoming in F&SF, Asimov’s, North Dakota Quarterly, Interzone, Analog, North American Review, Hitchcock’s, EQMM, various anthologies.
 
 
 
MT: Thank you so much for allowing me to interview you, Mr. Sallis.  It is always a pleasure to read your books, and I’m so glad I got to pick your brain briefly.  I am so thankful for your writing, as I know it has changed my own writing, and affected the writing community immensely.  Thank you so much, and feel free to leave us with any lingering questions, thoughts, or feelings.  Thank you again. 
 
JS:   Thank you, Matthew.  I suppose I must make a choice now: get back to work, or go play with one of the cats. I’m going to sit here a moment and think it over.