Among the Missing (31 page)
Authors: Dan Chaon
SP: In “Prodigal,” the narrator suggests that parental failure is inevitable, even natural; and certainly estranged parents and children crop up again and again in your work, often despite one or the other’s efforts to mend things. In “Passengers, Remain Calm,” though, the relationship between Hollis and his nephew F.D. seems very loving and healthy. Imperfect as he is, Hollis seems determined not to let F.D. down or disappear on him the way his father has. Is this in any way a conscious counterpoint to the strained parent-child relationships in the other stories?
DC: I don’t think it was a deliberate counterpoint, but I do think that I probably gave Hollis more unconditional love than I gave to any other character in the book. Hollis is a kind of thank-you letter to a number of the older male cousins I had who helped raise me, and who were enormously kind despite their own troubles. Some of those people have died, and I think I was particularly conscious of them when I was writing “Passengers, Remain Calm.”
At the same time, I think Hollis exists on a certain continuum of parental figures I was thinking about. I like the fathers in “Burn with Me” and “Big Me,” and I like the way Sandi and her girls interact in “Safety Man.” And even in “Prodigal” I don’t think the narrator has a terrible relationship with his children. Many of these stories came into being as I was trying to negotiate through the early years of being a parent myself, and I think that a lot of my own anxiety is inherent in the fears and mistakes that the characters make. As strained as many of the relationships are, I hope they don’t
come across as being stories about innocent children being victimized by cruel parents. To my mind, all of the parents in the book are doing their best under their various circumstances. I share the dislike that the narrator of “Prodigal” feels for “precociously perceptive child-narrators one finds in books … clear-sighted, very sensitive.” It’s harder to be an adult than those kids think it is! As parents, we make so many mistakes, and we can’t help but be aware that in one way or another whatever we do will end up becoming a permanent scar that our children will have to struggle with; and the way that even small actions and mistakes can travel through time is fascinating to me. Some of the parents in the book are more successful than others, but I don’t think any of them are monsters.
SP: This is your second collection of short stories. At what point did you realize you were writing them well enough to publish? When you started getting attention and winning prizes, did that come as something of a shock?
DC: As a writer, I feel like I’m always teetering on the edge between colossal egotism and soul-crushing humility. I’ve been writing stories since I was in junior high school, and even back then, when I was fourteen years old, I would finish a story and immediately believe that I’d created brilliance. A few weeks would pass, and I’d reread it and realize that it was crap, and that I was in fact the crappiest cranker-outer of crap who ever existed. I still haven’t fully escaped that fourteen-year-old mind-set, though I now think I am able to come to a
more balanced opinion eventually, and I’m more patient with the process of revising.
Ultimately, though, the process of trying to publish still seems totally random to me. Many of the stories in the collection that went on to win prizes were flat-out rejected by any number of magazines, and even when I personally feel confident that something I’ve written is the best that I can do, I can’t hold on to more than a hope that someone else is going to like it. It’s always a shock when a story gets attention or wins a prize, and it doesn’t seem like it will be less of a shock as time goes on, because it always feels to me like I’m starting over every time I start new work. I immediately enter into that old cycle: It’s great! Wait! No, it’s terrible!
SP: The stories in
Among the Missing
cover some pretty intense emotional ground, and while I’m aware they’re not in any way autobiographical, I still wonder to what degree they reflect your personal experiences and background. Are there incidents here that were drawn from your own life?
DC: Inevitably there are various incidents that have their roots in real experience, and there are even details that are more or less “true” in that they formed the core around which a story emerged, though none of the stories are “true” in any historically accurate way. Rather, they are lies that reflect various autobiographical states. Certainly I’m drawing on my own experience with the landscape of the stories that are set on the Great Plains, and I’m often aware of starting the stories around the details of various bits of gossip,
rumors, news reports, even the specific things I’ve observed. I suppose that more than anything, there’s a degree of emotional autobiography. The stories were written in the years following the death of my parents, both of whom passed away in 1996, and a lot of the intensity of the experience of losing my parents was channeled into the themes and moods of the stories, even when the specific incidents and characters were imaginary.
1.
Among the Missing
is full of stories about parents and children and siblings who have lost touch with one another, who rarely communicate, or who are completely estranged from one another. Do you sense love between these characters nonetheless, or regret?
2. In the story “Safety Man,” Sandi longs to see the ghost of her dead husband. Does the artificial man of the title fill that function in any way? What other characters in these stories could be read as ghosts?
3. In “Falling Backwards,” the central character argues with her father about the ambiguity of a film they’ve just watched. Are the ambiguous conclusions of “Here’s a Little Something to Remember Me By” and “Among the Missing” akin to the feeling one gets with a tabloid news story, one whose solution may never be known? In these stories, is wondering more satisfying than knowing?
4. In “Big Me,” the author takes the common fantasy of visiting one’s younger self to dispense advice and turns it on its head: The boy imagines he’s spying on his older self, to the bitter amusement of the disappointed man he’s watching. What function do the characters’ fantasies play in these stories?
5. Secrets withheld from loved ones play a large part in “Here’s a Little Something to Remember Me By” and in
“Late for the Wedding.” In what ways do the withheld secrets affect the relationships involved? Would the secrets have been easier to reveal early on in those relationships, and would their revelation later cause more damage than relief?
6. As a small boy, the narrator of “Burn with Me” clowns around with a boiled egg the day of his grandfather’s funeral in much the same way that Hollis in “Passengers, Remain Calm” keeps going on and on about the dog with the missing leg as they drive his stricken father to the hospital. Is this reaction a failure to notice misfortune, or a means of coping with it?
7. In “Late for the Wedding,” Trent plans to ask Dorrie to marry him, despite the difference in their ages and her condescending attitude toward him and his background. Given that it seems likely she’ll say no, even before he slugs her son, what do you think makes him want to take such a step?
8. In “I Demand to Know Where You’re Taking Me,” Cheryl believes that her brother-in-law Wendell is guilty of the heinous sex crimes of which he’s been accused, whereas her husband and his family fervently believe in his innocence. What are the costs of her silence to her family and her marriage, and what does she get in return?
In memory of my parents,
Earl and Teresa Chaon
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is a pleasure to be able to thank a few people in print: my wife, Sheila Schwartz, best beloved, muse and mentor; my agent, Noah Lukeman, and editor, Dan Smetanka; my good buddy, Steve Lattimore, whose encouragement was invaluable; Reginald Gibbons; Heather Bentoski, Peggy McNally, and Scott McNulty, who walked through large blocks of this book with me. For their kindness in reading and commenting on early drafts of these stories, I would also like to thank Tom Barbash, Martha Collins, Joan Connor, Tom Gilmore, John Martin, Laura Rhoton McNeal, and Sylvia Watanabe. I also wish to thank the Ohio Arts Council for their generous support during the writing of this book.
ALSO BY DAN CHAON
Fitting Ends
You Remind Me of Me
Await Your Reply
D
AN
C
HAON
is the acclaimed author of National Bestseller
Await your Reply
and
You Remind Me of Me
, which was named one of the best books of the year by
The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor
, and
Entertainment Weekly
, among other publications. Ballantine has also published two collections of his short stories:
Fitting Ends
and
Among the Missing
, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award.
Chaon’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Best American Short Stories of 1996 and 2003, the Pushcart Prize 2000, 2002, and 2003, and the O. Henry Prize Stories, 2001. His fiction has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction in 2002 and 2007. He was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Chaon lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College.