Jere Hoar Interview

Jere Hoar
Interviewed by Linda M. Castellitto

BookSense.com: Some writers say they know from the beginning what the end of a book will be like, and others say the characters just lead them where they want to go. Was either true for you?

Jere Hoar: I worked my way through this book. I first "finished" it about 1990, and entered it in the Hemingway First Novel Competition. It was a finalist. I put it away for years before looking at it again and rewriting it completely. Then, years later, I rewrote it again, beginning to end. The first version had three endings, the final version two, and neither in the final version is like the first three.

You take two fantasies -- finding and rekindling lost love, and committing the perfect crime -- and dash them to the ground. But first, you twist them together and make them seem possible. Are these themes one you've long been curious about?

Interesting question. These fantasies are universal, or close to it, among imaginative people. They are probably foolish fantasies, but do we abandon our fantasies because they are foolish? Ah! you see... I wrote "probably" foolish. Even now such things seem possible to an ordinary, law-abiding citizen like me.

I didn't consciously select the themes of The Hit. Themes that work arise in and from writing. Once the characters and backgrounds of Luke and Kinnerly were settled, and they shared the same fantasies, these themes were inevitable.

There is another theme in The Hit that I consider the heart of the book. I was conscious of it, and may have concealed it too well. It is the disintegration of honor -- a fighting man's loss of the last of the personal code of conduct which sustained him.

Your short-story collection Body Parts was also well received when it was published in 1997. Have you been working on The Hit since then (1997), or have you pursued other writerly endeavors in between?

All but one of the stories in Body Parts, and many others, were published before Body Parts made it to print. Writing and publishing stories in quarterlies went on for a long time. I also wrote an unpublished novel titled Levitation before beginning The Hit. It won the Deep South Writing Competition with Ernest Gaines judging. Then Flannery O'Connor's old agent accepted it, and I thought I was on the way. She put it at auction...and got not one bid.

What was it like making the transition from writing short stories to writing a novel? Do you like one form better than the other?

It was difficult. From journalism I had the habit of working a story to a logical ending or to the length I was allowed. The short stories ran 15 to 40 pages and reached an epiphany or an ending. With the novel, I had to learn to write a continuous narrative of 80,000 words. I learned by making mistakes and correcting them.

You're renowned for your work at the University of Mississippi, and have done a great deal of other work (television scripts, magazine articles, etc.). Have you always thought you would try your hand at fiction? Are there other avenues you are going to explore, or do you think you will write another novel?

Writing fiction was my boyhood ambition. I tried it as a young man, had a reasonable amount of skill, but nothing to say, or nothing worthwhile I was willing to say. I'm sure I'll continue to write novels as long as I can.

Mississippi and the South have been the backdrops for both books; the way you write of the area makes it become a character in itself. Can you tell us a bit about your experiences living there, perhaps how the region is different from others in the U.S....

Why would any writer not want to live in a town where William Faulkner's nephew's farm falls into the hands of developers who turn it into a complex named Tara? Where, mixed in with the decent majority, Snopeses walk the streets -- clever and conniving as ever, rich men now, some of them developers and members of the professions. As Faulkner and Phil Stone did before me, I laugh and laugh.

. . .why you remain there, how it has affected your work, etc.?

I live in the South because I am Southern, and while I've enjoyed visiting Great Britain, Scotland, Ireland and other parts of the United States -- particularly the Pacific Grove area of California -- only here is home. I know these people and this land, the trees, plants, animals, architecture, the patterns of speech and the literature. I feel a deep kinship with it, something generational and rooted.

The John Grisham blurb for The Hit was a great one! He said, "I wish I'd written that."

John volunteered that blurb. He'd been given an advance copy of The Hit by Lisa or Richard Howorth at Square Books in Oxford, MS [Howorth is also mayor of Oxford]. After landing from an overnight flight from London, during which he read The Hit, John wrote me, saying how much and why he liked the book, and offering the blurb "if I didn't mind." How generous for a man at the top of his field to reach out to a beginning novelist!

Every writer who blurbed my book did it at cost -- not only is it a matter of giving up one's work-time for awhile, there other pressures. Tom McGuane had been feeding 300 steers on an irrigated pasture, taking care of the animals and moving irrigation pipes with only the help of a high school girl. Harrison had a tour of France to do, and had strained his one eye by reading his own proof. It was bird season in Montana, and that is a spiritual time for him. Steve Yarbrough, who has commitments to students, had injured his back and was on the floor. Julie Smith, a highly disciplined writer, had taken on other pressing commitments. Barry Hannah -- the teacher of many writers -- juggles the duties of writer in residence at the University of Mississippi with his own writing, and with calls made on his time by present and former students.

Have you blurbed any books by other writers?

At 73, I'm aware of the limited time I have to work, so I turn down requests from strangers for a critical reading of manuscripts. I always feel bad when I say no, but I shouldn't. As Barry once said to me, "You can have too many bad sentences clanging in your head!" Some of my former students ask for a reading, and I have friends who write books. They have first call on my time. If a talented young writer I'd met had an acceptance and asked for a blurb, I'd do my best to find time to read the book. I can never repay the debt I owe writers who made time for The Hit.

What has been the most exciting aspect of having The Hit published and met with such praise?

The encouragement it gives me to write another novel, and another, and another.

I see from your notes at the end of the book that your military service was not performed in wartime or in Vietnam. What was your process like, then, in terms of conveying what Luke had experienced there, what he had learned, and how it may have influenced his actions and viewpoints once he returned home?

Thank God, Luke is not typical. I've known veterans of WWII (my father was one), Korea, and Vietnam. The most introspective suffered most, and Vietnam vets -- because of changes in the culture and the generation to which they belonged -- were more likely to let their suffering be known.

These are generalities, but WWII vets buttoned it up. Korean vets followed the same rule, but I've known men among them to kill themselves years later. Some Vietnam vets -- perfectly ordinary American boys, the sons of working parents -- came home with such psychic wounds. they were unable to integrate into society. They are on the streets now, homeless.

I have feeling for this. My family have been civilian/soldiers since the Revolution. The South makes up a disproportionate part of America's fighting force. Traditionally, the three routes "up" have been the land, the law, and the military. In every poll I read, the level of patriotism is higher here. I've read memoirs of the warriors among us, and of ordinary men drafted to serve. I've integrated that with observations, talk with combat veterans, and a good bit of empathetic reasoning and imagining.

The notebook device was an interesting and effective one. What led you to write the book that way?

From the beginning, The Hit was a spoken narrative. I wanted direct, fast, window-pane prose -- transparent, without any display of writerly skills that might cause readers to stop reading to think, "What a word choice! What a wonderfully written passage!" I thought of using a recording, a diary, or letters to gain flexibility in narrative structure.

In the third full rewrite of the novel, I finally put Luke in a veterans hospital, and had him write notebooks as therapy. I thought that idea was original until a listener at a reading came forward to say she had been trusted to read the notebook of a Vietnam combat veteran, and although he had not said so, it was obvious to her it was written as therapy.

You've been compared to numerous writers, from Raymond Chandler to William Faulkner. What is your favorite -- and/or least favorite -- comparison?

Several people compared The Hit to the work of Jim Thompson. That was interesting because I had not then read Thompson. I've read only one book by Chandler, but I plan to correct that ignorance. So long as my work is compared to that of many writers, that's fine. I like to think I have a flexible style that adjusts to what's best for the story. I'm a learner, and learning craft -- to tell different stories in different ways -- is the fun of it.

Who are your favorite writers? Have you met any of them?

I'm leaving out former students, and Oxford and Mississippi prose writers I know, because every one of them is a favorite for one reason or another. William Faulkner and Barry Hannah are Oxford writers, too, but I leave them in the list because -- well, because I want to. Asterisks indicate writers I know, knew, or have at least shaken hands with.

William Faulkner*...Hemingway...William Trevor...Steinbeck...Chekhov...Frank O'Connor...Barry Hannah*...
Jim Harrison*...Tom McGuane*...Richard Ford*...Flannery O'Connor...John Gardner...Anne Tyler...
Lewis Nordan*...Tim O'Brien*...Allan Gurgunas*...James M. Cain... John O'Hara...Fred Chappell...
Clyde Edgerton...Anne Lamont... George Saunders*... Annie Proulx... Alice Monroe...Richard Bausch*...
Dave Smith*...Galway Kinnell...Dylan Thomas...James Dickey*...Beth Ann Fennelly*...James Seay*...
A. E. Housman...Walt Whitman...D. H. Lawrence...Thackery...Kipling...Shakespeare...Arthur Miller...
Boswell... Melville...Thoreau...V. S. Pitchett...Marquez...H. E. Bates...James Carey...John Updike...Charles Williford...

I've left out dozens of writers who have enriched my life or in whose company I've spent some pleasant hours.

What are you reading now?

Two days ago I finished Tom Franklin's Hell at the Breech, and five days before that, Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. Before that, Jim Harrison's Off to the Side; Ace Atkins' Dark End of the Street; Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage...and a lot more.

My friend Ace Atkins is introducing me to the literature of crime. I had read little of it: James M. Cain, one of Chandler's, a good bit of John D. McDonald, two books by Williford. I have probably 15 more books here to read, the first of which will be Tom McGuane's The Cadence of Grass, and The Angel on the Roof by Russell Banks.

Do you have a favorite independent bookstore or stores? Do tell!

No problem with that one! Square Books[1] in Oxford, Mississippi, is my absolute favorite. I hardly ever go to town without finding a reason to spend time in Square Books. It is the cultural center of Oxford.

Lemuria Bookstore[2] in Jackson is fascinating. All those little rooms...books to the ceiling devoted to single subjects! Burke's[3] in Memphis, Tennessee, is another of my select bookstores, and I'd like to visit The Poisoned Pen.[4]

I have never browsed in a good independent bookstore that I didn't find the experience rewarding, so if I traveled I could fill the page with favorites. In independents I find knowledgeable clerks, and surprises on the shelves.

Have you done any touring/store visits for The Hit?

I've had readings/signings at three nearby independent bookstores. I wonder about the effectiveness of reviews and mass media appeals, unsupplemented by direct contact, in getting many people to come out at 6:00 p.m. after a day's work. My guess is the most effective advertising Square Books does is to compile a computer list of their customers who have bought a particular writer's books, and combine it with a list supplied by the writer identifying people in town she thinks likely to attend her reading. An attractive card announcing the reading/signing, with a cover picture of the book, maybe a blurb and a good quote, is then sent to the most likely customers.

The emotional connection between protagonist Luke and his dog Adel rang honest and true. You have dogs at your home in Mississippi, yes? Did any of them inspire you in the way you portrayed Adel?

Do we have dogs? How about five English Setters, a Belgian Tervuren, and a German Shepherd? I've had dogs from the same family of Setters since about 1956. The Setters hunt, the Terv herds sheep or ducks, and the German Shepherd guards the premises. I have not found the all-purpose dog Adel was to Luke, although I came close with an old-style German Shorthair. I couldn't resist sending a picture so you can see the dog, Brownie, that inspired the description and characterization of Adel [see photo, above].

Is there anything I haven't asked you that you want to say?

It's been a pleasure.

The Hit was a July/August 2003 Book Sense 76 Pick!

"Find the most comfortable reading zone in the house and spend the night with this lean, fast-paced Southern thriller. Vietnam vet Luke Carr's wartime survival skills come in handy when he is challenged to 'off' his lover's sleazy husband. Don't be tricked into thinking that you know what's around the bend -- you won't till the end." -- Kathryn Clark, Square Books, Oxford, MS

[1] Square Books, 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, MS, ph. 662/236-2262 or 800/648-4001
[2] Lemuria Bookstore, 202 Banner Hall, Jackson, MS, ph. 601/366-7619 or 800/366-7619
[3] Burke's Bookstore, 1719 Poplar Ave., Memphis, TN, ph. 901/278-7484 or 800/581-5156
[4] The Poisoned Pen, 4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., Ste. 101, Scottsdale, AZ, ph. 480/947-2974 or 888/560-9919