Jack recently was generous enough to shares his thoughts with us at Nossa Morte about the job of writing, story inspirations, living in New York, and more:
You've worn many hats in your lifetime. But what is it about writing that made it your primary passion?
Nothing else really works for me. Any job that requires a boss is long since out of the question -- I've been known to raise my fist. Acting, singing, teaching, all were good while they lasted and taught me a lot but I think I'd have dead-ended had I chosen them as careers. What's great about writing is that you're your own boss, extending your own best efforts, with nobody to compete with but yourself. It's like being a kid again and your games are all of your invention. You're getting paid to play. It's high-level play but it's still play. You're flying solo inside your own imagination, which is a wonderful freedom.
After three decades in this business I assume that writing pays all the bills (bar tabs included), but have there been times when you had doubts about whether writing full-time would work?
You doubt constantly until the day you get that first big check. No, I take it back -- that second big check, which validates the first and tells you you're not some one-hit wonder. From then on it's all a matter of realizing and honoring how lucky you are. And applying ass to chair.
How have you changed as a writer today versus early in your career? Is the experience of getting the story down on paper any easier now than it once was?
Writing's always been easy for me, even as a kid doing blue-book test essays. At least in the sense that it was easier than anything else I had to do -- you should see my checkbook at the end of the month if you don't believe me. I'm certainly a more skilled writer now than when I started professionally, with more tricks in my bag than I had back then, and I make fewer goofy mistakes I think. But the rest of it is much the same. What's always hardest is getting started, knowing that you really want to write this particular story, and knowing that you pretty much have all your ducks in a row so you're not liable to muck the thing up halfway through. That's the same now as it was back then.
It's no secret that some critics have been offended by the in-your-face violence of some of your work. But what about the personal side? Has it ever been hard to show your fiction to friends and family out of fear of offending them?
When I was writing for the men's mags back in the seventies I only showed my parents selected samples. So that was fine. The only time I really sweated the problem was with OFF SEASON. You couldn't very well not show your parents your first novel, for godsakes! But the damn thing was so violent I didn't know how they'd take it and I gotta say, it worried me. It needn't have. They were proud as hell that they had a real live writer in the family. As far as friends go, some have told me, I hate this book or that book. You've really gone over the top with this one, buddy. I don't mind. I don't aim to be comfy. But most just shake their heads and I can almost hear them saying, well what the hell, it's Ketchum again.
Your readers have probably become accustomed to the fact that no character is safe. No matter how attached and immersed we become into one of your characters, we know that their death is always potentially a paragraph away. Perhaps that's why we become so emotionally committed to your stories, and horrified when things get ugly. Does it affect you in much the same way? Are you surprised or saddened when the characters you've set loose on the page meet an untimely end?
Surprised, no. I always get clued in beforehand! Saddened, often. A reader of mine once told me he thought that all my novels and a lot of my stories were about loss, emotional loss. I'd never thought about it before but I think there's a good deal of truth in that. If I went into specifics I'd be spoiling a lot of endings so I won't. But yes, sometimes I hurt myself pretty bad. It's the only way I can see to hurt you.
Do any of these characters continue to haunt you?
Sure. The one who haunts me most in a really bad way is Ruth from THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. I think it's because I know there are so many more real Ruths still out there. The one who haunts me most in a good way is Avery in RED. He's pretty much my role model. He's the guy I wanna be when I grow up.
Your recent short story collection featured a wonderful piece called "Station Two" that seems to be the epitome of your ability to build a roster of characters that we can't resist being interested in, though we know their lives are about to become horribly intertwined in some way. How difficult was it to assemble a story like this? And do you find that putting the majority of your focus into creating believable characters is the key to invoking so much emotion in a reader?
As a kid in high school I read Thornton Wilder's THE BRIDGE AT SAN LUIS REY and it made a big impression on me. The first time I actively tried to use his structure for the intertwining lives of strangers was in my story THE EXIT AT TOLEDO BLADE BOULEVARD. Even the title's an obvious homage. The second time was STATION TWO. It was easy to write and fun, because all the characters in it were based on real people I knew and liked -- even the waiter who goes batshit -- mostly from my local bar. To answer your second question, for me, character is more important than voice, action, plot, setting -- pretty much everything. I won't even begin to start a story until I know who my characters are and know my own emotional response to them. Personally I want to read about people, not events. I want that human connection that the best writers give you and the worst don't seem to bother with. And I try to do that with my own stuff.
"Closing Time", the title story from that same collection, was in a way your re-entry back into writing after 9/11. Was it therapeutic to put this story down on paper?
Here we go with the theme of loss again. In fact it may have been this story that my reader was referencing at the time, I don't exactly recall. I do remember re-reading it and realizing that while I thought I was writing obliquely about terror, it was really loss all the time. I just didn't know it. I'd recently parted ways with a woman I'd been with for several years and cared very much for, so there was that loss. And then there was the loss of the Towers -- and a strange kind of American innocence. So yes, as often happens with us writers, expressing those feelings, revisiting them while you're writing -- under controlled circumstances rather than the lack of control you're otherwise visited with daily -- had a healing effect.
Have there been other times when writing has helped you move forward from difficult times in your life? Any stories in particular that were the result?
Many times. I've written poems for departed cats and lovers and one for my favorite uncle. THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, being basically a horror story grafted onto a memory-play about what it was like growing up in the 50s, helped me deal with the loss of my mother and the home I grew up in. COVER helped me get over my residual fury at the Vietnam War. HIDE AND SEEK was a way of working out my feelings for my first true love in college, a woman hooked on crystal meth. I've written about her directly for the first time, by the way, in the afterword to the new Gauntlet trade paper edition. THE DUST OF THE HEAVENS was written when I learned my oldest friend from high school was dying of AIDS. Then there are the short stories. The list actually goes on and on.
You've said that Weed Species is perhaps the most vicious thing you've ever done. Could a story like this have been published 20 years ago?
In 1987? The Reagan era? Ha! I don't think so. If you go back further, maybe the Underground Press might have tackled it in, say, 1968. But nobody would have seen it other than maybe Paul Kantner and a bunch of us hippies.
Were you worried that the point of this novella would be lost on the reader due to today's somewhat desensitized audience?
You can't worry about stuff like that when you're writing. You just tell the story as best you can the way you see it playing out and hope it finds its audience. And I really don't know about this desensitized thing. Mostly I think it's just the media doing its usual bullshit hand-wringing. Seems to me that most of the people I meet -- even meet on the net -- are quite capable of being revolted and angered by the "weeds" among us.
Many of your short stories seem to be inspired from your observations and experiences of living in New York. How important is this city to the style and concepts of your fiction?
Before I brought out the first story collections, THE EXIT AT TOLEDO BLADE BOULEVARD and then BROKEN ON THE WHEEL OF SEX, Edward Lee once said to me that he wished I'd do some Ketchum stories that were set here in Gotham. He didn't know I already had. But he was right about the novels and still is. Not one of them's set here. Greece yes, New Jersey, Maine...but not here. I think that has something to do with the isolation -- both good and bad -- that you experience in more open, less crowded spaces. Gives a writer and the characters room to sprawl. On the other hand most of my life I've been living in cities -- first Boston and then Manhattan, so I know city rhythms and city people and sure, they get into the work. You should count the number of stories I've set in New York bars alone sometime. It's shocking!
Could you imagine yourself living anywhere else? Are there other parts of the world that you'd like to be inspired by and explore in your fiction?
I can imagine living in a more rural area as I did as a kid. Or by the sea. I can imagine a home in Greece. But any of these would have to be in addition to living in the city. All these people, all these lives around you -- it's a goddamn drug! Besides, my apartment's way too cheap by New York standards to give up now. I'd have to be nuts.
Your earlier work used to be damn hard, or expensive, to get a hold of. The recent re-issues by Leisure seem to have helped that problem. Could you tell us more about how this deal came about? How successful has this been at getting your fiction out to a wider audience?
Very successful I think. Richard Laymon was the one who talked me into giving Leisure a try, saying that they were great about keeping books in print and on the stands, which it turns out they are. They'd approached me years before to bring out new editions of OFF SEASON and HIDE AND SEEK but the deal was terrible -- rights-wise they wanted everything but your first-born son. So we turned them down. But Laymon said their contracts were much more flexible now so we gave them a try. And I'm glad we did. They've even kept PEACEABLE KINGDOM in print which initially was a commercial flop. Mass-market story collections for some obscure reason usually are.
Can you still walk down the street, or are you forced to don dark glasses and a wig while crazed fans chase after you, screaming to get an autograph from that twisted fucker that tortured/killed/ate that poor girl/lady/guy?
So far so good.
Are there any books that you've written that you feel are underrated? That maybe haven't received the attention that you think they should?
I think COVER's been largely overlooked. Probably because Warner Books just didn't know what to do with it and dumped it on the market with the word NOVEL on the spine and gave it cover-art that made it look like a war novel. Who the hell buys war novels? Probably about 1% of the population. Then the Gauntlet hardcover came out and that was kinda pricey. It's still available by the way, and Barry's trying to bring the cost down. But I worked my ass off on that book trying to get the Vietnam vet, my antagonist, exactly right, because I didn't go to Vietnam and I didn't want to rip off the guys who did. Researched for a year before I even sat down to write. And according to the vets who read the book, I guess I did my job. I'd like to get it back in print soon in a more affordable edition. Seems to me that its relevance has come back to us in spades with the vets returning from the Gulf. So I'm gonna push for that.
What can we look forward to from you in the future, either from Leisure or the small press?
Next summer Leisure will be doing a pair of long novellas of mine -- an original one called OLD FLAMES paired with RIGHT TO LIFE. It'll carry the OLD FLAMES title. Meantime they're releasing a new edition of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR as their first-ever movie tie-in, with cover art from the Anchor Bay DVD and interviews with me, the screenwriters, producer and director as an afterword. That's in January I believe. Then also in January they're publishing TRIAGE -- three novellas by me, Richard Laymon and Edward Lee, each story-line diverging from Richard's initial idea for a shoot-em-up opening chapter. As to small press, Cemetery Dance are releasing a first U.S. hardcover edition of JOYRIDE, Overlook Connection Press are doing BROKEN ON THE WHEEL OF SEX: THE JERZY LIVINGSTON YEARS, THE EXPANDED EDITION, which are stories and articles from my days with the men's mags, god help me, and Gauntlet will release a trade paperback edition of HIDE AND SEEK, with that new memoir I mentioned as an afterword. Some time next year they'll also be doing the first U.S. hardcover of ONLY CHILD aka STRANGLEHOLD -- and I promise to keep the price down, okay? Okay.
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