Jamel Brinkley (Witness) on Bearing Witness and How to Write a Good Ending
Episode Description
Jamel Brinkley is the author of a new short story collection called Witness and previously published the short story collection A Lucky Man which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
His writing has appeared in A Public Space, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, Guernica, Glimmer Train,The Best American Short Stories, and many more. He was raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and now teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
We talk to Jamel about his upcoming collection, Witness, and about what attracts him to short stories as a form.
Hosted by Phillip Russell and Ben Thorp
You can learn more about Jamel Brinkley here.
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Phil 0:18
What's good everybody? Welcome to origin story, the podcast that interviews creators about where they came from to understand how they got here. My name is Philip Russell and I'm with my co host, Van Thorpe. Ben, I'm really excited for this conversation. We got to talk to one of my personal favorite authors. Jamel Brinkley, the author of a lucky man, which is a short story collection that came out back in like, 2017. I want to say 2018.
Ben 0:48
And I just pulled it up. And it does. It's 2018. Yeah.
Phil 0:51
2018. Yeah, he just really has a new collection coming out called witness, which is coming out August 1, and we got to talk to him about it. Read the book early. And yeah, it was a really, really, really great conversation. I thought,
Ben 1:06
You know what I was, I was noticing as we were reading this is, boy, it's good to be back at short stories. I forget I forget about them. I think I am someone who tends to read novels. But anytime we'll come back to him, like do you ever think about short stories like great actually.
Phil 1:21
100% Yeah, I mean, Jamal is definitely in my opinion, like one of the current greats, you know, American short story writers. He's I think the endings which we'll get into in the conversation really hit. But also just like, I think, especially at this collection, compared to his first just, it feels very subdued and subtle and kind of leaves you with a lot to chew on afterwards. So we kind of get into all that in the conversation. But how about before we give everything away, we can just run the conversation and then afterwards, we can jump into discussing all the things we learned.
Jemelle Brinkley is the author, author of a new short story collection called witness and previously published the short story collection, a lucky man, which was the finalist for the National Book Award, the story prize, the John Leonard prize, the pen Robert W. Bingham prize and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and the winner of a pen Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines award for literary excellence. His writing has appeared in a public space plowshares, the Paris Review, American short fiction, where Annika glimmer Train, The Best American Short Stories and many more. He was raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx and now teaches at Iowa Writers Workshop. Jamel, thanks so much for coming on. We're so excited to talk to you about witness.
Jamel Brinkley 2:58
Thanks so much for having me.
Phil 3:00
So first off, congrats about witness which is coming out August 1 2023. It's almost here. I'm curious, like, how are you feeling about it? And how does it feel to kind of have this new set of stories in the world?
Jamel Brinkley 3:16
I think I'm supposed to say that I'm excited. And I'm actually terrified. It's terrifying. I find it terrifying. It's, I find it I become very anxious, leading up to publication day. In fact, I think I'm even more anxious because I'm at least somewhat of a known quantity. No, I'm not just some rando, who's publishing a first book, you know? I mean, there's there's great comfort in being a Rando sometimes. So yeah, I think I think there's there's always the threat of the sophomore slump. You never know how people are going to react, you know, it just feels like, like riders are more public than ever, you know, with with social media, you know, so in addition to reviews, you can just have any old person saying any old thing and having no the whole of the whole prospect is scary. I'm probably overdoing it in terms of the anxiety. But I'm mostly anxious. And I have found moments of joy, but I'm mostly anxious. Yeah.
Ben 4:30
We recently had Victor Lavell on and he kind of talked about his relationship to like reviews and like reading reviews and like, how, you know, I think early on, he was saying, you know, early books I used to, like, go through and look at every Goodreads review and then just get like really upset about some of the things that I'm seeing and I don't know what is your relationship to a book coming out? And are you someone who reads everything that's out there? Or are you someone who's like, and now I'm just gonna go into my hole and pretend that none of this exists?
Jamel Brinkley 4:58
Yeah, I think I'm I think it will evolve. I don't look at good reads, I try to avoid as much as possible. I mean, I've looked at it for other people's books, but I don't want to look at it from my own book, because it could just be such a cesspool, you know, I wish I had the sense of humor and their resilience to kind of shrug it off, like people read their bad reviews and just kind of laugh at them or even post them, you know? Yeah, I can't do that. I just, I, yeah, I'm too sensitive. In terms of reviews, I think someone told me that. earlier in your career, it's probably good to read them, you know, whether they're raves, positive, mixed, or pan's just just so because you're early in your career, hopefully, you have a lot of artistic development coming in, it's kind of good to know what people are saying about your work, you know, in terms of professional reviews, and then maybe later down the line, you can kind of not read them or read them very selectively.
Ben 6:04
I really like that.
Phil 6:06
That makes sense. I mean, I obviously you're kind of you're getting at it already. But to kind of situate maybe my relationship to your work like I first discovered you right, I think right around the time when a lucky man came out and does a couple of months prior to that. I was in a master's program at Ohio University for prose writing. And my teacher from for a fiction workshop at the time had just introduced me a couple months prior to Edward P. Jones, and in class, and it kind of felt like a perfect conversation happening as like a black male writer, kind of trying to think about short stories and everything. And, you know, obviously, a lucky man kind of blew up and had a lot of success. I'm curious, like, after that kind of wave, when you were starting to work on the next things like what was the genesis for you with witness? Or did you set out to write another collection? Like just kind of what did that writerly life look like post Teleki? Man?
Jamel Brinkley 7:07
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I guess it's important to note that, you know, when I wrote the stories that were in a lucky man, I was in graduate school, I was in my own MFA program. And most of the stories in that collection were drafted while I was in that program. So I had that institutional home whenever those stories, which was really helpful in a lot of ways. I guess somewhat similarly, I had an institutional home for a lot of the stories in witness to I was at Stanford for two years. In the in the Wallace Stegner program. And I don't know, there's all kinds of discourse about CO writing programs and can writing be taught and, you know, a lot of critique some of it valid, some of it strange to me. But for me, having those institutional homes and writing programs really facilitated the work. I did want to write another collection. I know that, I don't know, my agent may not have been happy about that, or publishers might not have been happy about that. But I love the short story form. And new stories were coming. You know. Another thing I would say is that, you know, I'm really happy with with the way things went with a lucky man. Obviously, it's the first book. So you know, I think I made some errors in that book that I would hope not to make again. But I think with this book, I was also reacting against the reaction to a lucky man, if that makes sense. Because and I don't know if this is generally true, but I have a suspicion that a lot of artists, writers specifically, maybe chafe against being kind of labeled or boxed in, you know, and for reasons because of, you know, the stories that were in a lucky man focusing so much on male characters because the collection came out, you know, during When When Me too, was really a thing that's in the news. Sort of the discourse around the book became, this is a book about masculinity, black masculinity, toxic masculinity, some form of masculinity, right. And, of course, I recognized that that was true to some extent, but I also was like, Well, I don't want to be the masculinity writer. You know, it's I felt like with this collection, I wanted to spread my wings a little bit, try to do something Things I didn't do focus on different kinds of characters in addition to male characters and see what happened.
Ben 10:08
I'm looking for this quote, because we wrote out, you know, I think we were both really interested in why you're interested in short stories. I think you're kind of noting that, like, you're drawn to them over things like a novel. What is it about short stories, specifically, that you're like, This is a place that I want to keep returning to? And I'm not finding the quote, but I've read an interview with you where you said something to the effect of short stories feel closer to life, and memory and how we experience them? Can you kind of expand like, what that what that looks like for you?
Jamel Brinkley 10:39
Yeah. I mean, I guess I would say, as far as first, in terms of my love of the short story, to me, that means I think I'll always be writing short stories, you know, it doesn't mean I'll never write a novel or don't want to write a novel, but I don't feel like I've graduated or will ever graduate from short stories, you know. And as far
Phil 11:02
as what, what appeals
Jamel Brinkley 11:04
to me about them, I think I would say the, like with a novel, like with a traditional novel, we're now talking about experimental novels that can do all kinds of crazy things. With sometimes with the novel, you sort of get a sense of a, of a cohesive life, like you're tracking the long line, you know, of a cohesive life. And, of course, there are episodes that are highlighted and things like that, as always temporal play, things are emphasized, or de emphasized, you kind of get this long line, and there's a coherence to the plot of a traditional novel. And for me, I don't, my life doesn't feel like that, like I don't, I don't feel like I can track things neatly, you know, and the way that things might track a little more neatly in a novel, or a better way of putting it as I think that the kind of contained dance style strange space of a small short story sort of feels more like my life, or like, my life feels like a number of those collected, you know, so there's something appealing about trying to capture those moments in your life that feel like they have the stamp of your entire life.
Phil 12:29
I love that. No, I mean, like, something that I've always appreciated in, in your stories is, you know, you have this attention to how your characters interior lives and desires kind of bring up tensions and their exterior reality with the other people in their lives. And I think, and witness, you kind of continue that. But there's another layer, to me, at least where expectations, restrictions and ideas that characters plays on others. You know, how we see others and formulate ideas around them? That might not always be true. Like, that seems to be another kind of ripple that happens in these stories. And I'm curious if maybe you could talk a little bit about about that, and kind of bearing witness or perceiving that seems to be so central to a lot of these.
Jamel Brinkley 13:24
Yeah, I do feel like this is a deeply interpersonal collection. I think the stories are about friend groups, or families or romantic relationships or situations trips, or whatever you want to call them. I think that's probably I don't know if by design is the right phrase, but it's certainly what I was thinking about. You know, I think, I think as you start to get a little older, you know, you're well out of your teenage years, and you're young adult, you're very young adulthood, if you start to get older, and things just start to happen in your life, or in the lives of people around you. So you just see people getting older themselves, maybe needing more care. You see people falling ill you start to lose people, people, people pass away, you know, oftentimes much too soon. And I think, you know, just even in the last few years, it feels like that's starting to accelerate. You know, that thing that we all eventually go through of losing people in our lives. And so I kind of wanted to focus in on you know, the idea of what, what are our responsibilities to each other, like, what does it mean to show care? What does it mean to act In the interest of other people, what does it mean to withhold that care, you know, to decide not to act? And even prior to that question is the question that what what do you perceive? What do you actually perceive that's happening out there? What do you perceive happening in this other person's life? Do you perceive what you want to perceive? Or do you perceive what you need to perceive are two very different things. And then the third piece I would throw in there, I think, is just the idea of not witnessing necessarily merely what's external to you, but witnessing the self re this idea of your own self image? And is it accurate? And what is your self image enable you and prevent you from doing? You know, these are the kinds of questions that I kind of wanted to explore in these stories?
Ben 16:04
What are the things and maybe riffing on the idea of like, the short story is like truer to life is that to me, a lot of the a lot of the stories feel in their conclusions. Kind of understated, like the big moments for characters are never these massive choices, or like life altering decisions. They're these really subtle shifts in how people see themselves or see a relationship. There's a line in the title story witness about feeling that we have less control over our lives than we think we do that I feel like so many of these stories feel like they're kind of grappling with, because so many of these people are just like, Who Who Am I? And am I really making these choices about who I'm becoming? Or are these things just like, little things that only after the fact can I look back and be like, Oh, that was a decision that I made there? Can you kind of talk about like, where you find those nuances, because they think they're really subtle, but they're all you're, you know, kind of playing with them and pulling them out in each story. And so maybe you can just talk about, like, how you find those, those moments to toy with?
Jamel Brinkley 17:11
Yeah, I think I think a lot of it is finding the right angle, the right angle in. And for me, finding the right angle, and is often a process of moving the most dramatic event, off to the side of the story somewhere putting it into margins. A lot of my stories are aftermath stories, for instance, like the most dramatic thing has already happened, right? was already in the process of happening. So we're looking at is not a character, kind of walking into an explosion, but what happens in the wake of that explosion, and that's where I find a lot of human interest. That's where I think people are, get to be themselves again, and get to be interesting and unpredictable. Because we you know, when you focus, there's this one kind of story where that is all about the most dramatic thing, in the most dramatic thing is interesting, plot wise, event wise, but a character can be subsumed by that thing, you know, a character can become less of themselves, because of that explosive thing. And the worst case scenario, a character can become merely a victim of that dramatic thing, right? And I kind of, because of my interest in character, I kind of want to always find ways to focus on the characters. So whether, you know, the dramatic thing is a traumatic event, whether the dramatic thing is some sort of systemic injustice, right? I kind of want the shadow of that to be in the story. But I want the characters themselves so always be at the center.
Phil 18:59
Yeah, I love that. I mean, just just hearing you talk about those things. I'm like thinking about some of the connections in the stories like something that's just coming to my mind right now is the stories bystander and, and the title, story witness and kind of thinking about the ways you're playing with like the idea of witnessing and different ways like and bystander you have a mother who's kind of anxious about this moment in her daughter's life who's who's struggling with kind of disordered eating. But also the mother kind of has a lot of anxiety about, like a home and like, what home means and kind of the life she expects for herself. And, and, and that story without giving everything away. I feel like one of the key tensions that is so interesting, that you do is that the mother kind of perceives her herself and how she kind of has all these expectations about what life should be and she's kind of uncomfortable in these different moments of like, seeing what seeing what she is doing. And, and witness, you almost have this the reverse where the the narrator is so engrossed in the story that they've constructed for themselves. And then you have this and the memories that they you've constructed. And then you have these great moments where their cousin who they're very close with kind of points out, that's not how it happened. And I love that because you don't, I think there's a lot of restraint in that story, because a lot of other stories might give you the other side, but instead, you just kind of have that tension of like, pointing to the reader, this is a unreliable narrator, and adds so much. There's not really a question there. That's all just HTML. Like, there's so many interesting things that you kind of remix this this theme on, throughout all the stories, and it leaves you really thinking after after each one, I'd say.
Jamel Brinkley 20:56
Yeah, you know, I was a little worried when I realized that this could be a collection or that I was building a collection, because unlike with a lucky man, I kind of knew that this was going to be built around the idea of witness. And my fear is always that okay, is that too limiting? Is that too narrow? Am I gonna just sort of write the same story over and over again, I'm just sort of writing to a topic, which feels? Yeah, I'm a little uncomfortable with that. But what I realized is that there's so many facets to the idea of witness, right? There's so many ways of going at it. So many angles, especially when you bring in the question of acting, right, which is why that James Baldwin epigraph is so dear to me. If it's no, this is a capacious question. So this, this can hold the collection together, but also give it room to breathe. Right? So that question, that story that you're talking about with the unreliable narrator, like, that's central to the idea of witnessing the reliability the witness, right, you hear this and like court cases all the time, like the eyewitnesses might be might be the least reliable person to talk to. So yeah, that question of reliability is something I've definitely wanted to play with in that story, while fixing the story as closely as possible to that narrator's version of things, right. It's sort of a delicate act like these, like just sort of put these little, little tiny cracks in the in the story, while maintaining the integrity of the story. You're talking
Ben 22:38
about, you know, I think like trying to make sure that you're staying as expansive as possible. Well, you know, being close to the theme, I think one of the things that stands out to me about every single one of your stories, and Phil and I have been talking about this is the endings, the endings are so good at, I think, you know, oftentimes I and I fall into this trap all the time endings can feel like, well, here's what we're trying to wrap up as neatly as we can, here's everything that you just read. And here's what you should like, come away feeling. And I think what your endings are so good at doing as wrapping things up in a way that like leave you with so much to chew on, and so much to think about, and the story never feels like it's, and the story is ending, but the story that is being told, always feels like it is going on beyond the page. And maybe you can talk about, like, how you write endings like that?
Jamel Brinkley 23:29
Yeah, that's a good question I that that's the kind of ending that I love. Word, it's one kind of ending I love I should say. And I had, I had a writing teacher who talked about the ending of a story as a gift to the reader that you hand the story over to the reader at that point. And it's out of your hands, you know, and you've given them a thing that's, that's alive a thing that they have to attend to a thing that's going to make demands of them. But it doesn't belong to anymore. Right. And so that kind of selflessness of an ending is something that I that I tried to, to aim for, for sure. And I do love the idea of, of having the feeling that the characters are still living and breathing, what's the story ends, you know, they're, they've sort of walked off of page 19. And theoretically, they could well be on page 20. And we'd see more of their lives, right. But the shape of this particular part of their lives that we've been telling is complete and completed that shape. So I guess to talk about how I think about endings I don't necessarily want them to be the trumpets are blaring, you know, that kind of artificial. The voice changes it becomes you know, a lot more lyrical artificially. So although lyricism can be great at an ending, I kind of want to me it's about the completion of a shape. It really is. An ending is a part of a story. It doesn't exist in isolation, right? You can't talk about an ending without talking about all the other things in the story. So for me, it's about have I pulled all the threads forward, sufficient that I dropped any thread that's crucial to this story. And I pulled it all the way through from page one to page 18. Right? Or another way of putting that is, you know, any story kind of gathers a set of notes at the beginning of the story. And you ask yourself, well, am I sounding all those notes? Is there like a choral feeling at the end of a story? Right, that all the stories important notes have been sounded. So for me, I don't know, I guess we could talk about it with with specific stories. But I always think about it, I never think about an ending in isolation. I think that's the key. I think that's crucial. You can't just, you know, when I'm teaching, for instance, sometimes we're workshopping someone's work, someone will say, Well, we have to talk about the ending. We'll start there. But inevitably, we'll end up going back to page eight, or page 12, or some other place in the story. And actually, the problem with the ending is often not what's on the last page, the problem with the ending is something that wasn't fully developed, or wasn't carried through halfway through the story, you know, so as long as you have this sense that an ending is it's a point of emphasis and a story, but it doesn't sit alone, you can't detach it. Right. It's intimately connected with the rest of it. And I think just remembering that can help a lot with with writing a good ending.
Phil 26:50
No, that's, that's great. You know, something I was thinking about what to witness and comparison to a lucky man. And maybe this speaks to what you're saying about how like, the story isn't a lucky man started kind of, as a lot of like Emma phase stories do where you kind of just write a bunch. And then, you know, I think you have said in an interview, like people told you like, Oh, you have a book here, and you're like, Oh, wait. And witness, I know, you are coming at it with a kind of more clear idea of what you wanted to explore. I feel like it definitely. There's a lot of surprises, I guess I was expecting, you know, I easily could have seen another collection that was very grounded in the same sense that a lucky man is, but I feel like there's so many surprising choices. And this one, like in the story, arrows, which is kind of like a ghost story. And I think, you know, expectations, et cetera. But like I wouldn't have expected there to be like a ghost and a Jamel Brinkley story in this in the way and the way that it appears to the point where I actually kind of reread the first couple pages a couple of times, because I was like, Wait, am I not getting it? And I wonder if maybe you could, if you could just talk about like, maybe talking about arrows like where did that story come from? Because it seems like you're having so much fun, I think kind of exploring way different topics in this in this collection. Yeah, it
Jamel Brinkley 28:17
is. It is fun. Actually, you know, maybe it might interest you to know that. That's that's the oldest story in the collection. The first draft of that was written 10 years ago. Wow. Yeah. It just ended up in a drawer, you know, because I wasn't sure how to address its problems. But one of its problems is that it was coy about whether or not the mother was a ghost. It was you know, it was kind of like a ghost, baby, you know, just just being kind of silly with it. And, you know, what I realized is that, you know, now she's a go, just just claim it, just own it. Only she's a ghost. Because then that frees the story to actually explore the reasons why she's a ghost, right? Why have a ghost in the story as opposed to having readers focus on the question of Is she or isn't she just get that out of the way. And then the story can focus on on its real things. And so the things I was actually interested in that I think a ghost helped me to facilitate, where I'm always interested in time, that think of a ghost is a condensation of time. You know, the past specifically, and I like having a figure for the past. One of my favorite academic books that I read when I was back when I was a PhD, a failed PhD student has this book called ghostly matters by Avery Gordon. And, and he calls a ghost a seething presence, which I love that Post is not something that's gone, it's actually present right or the shape of it is, is present. And it's seething, that sense of something seething. And I kind of wanted that I wanted that kind of see the goodness of time at seething mists of the past. Not only in terms of the mother figure, but in terms of the narrator, the narrator who soon who also will be a ghost, right? Because really just stories about the narrator's resentment. You know, the stories about the narrator's ability or inability, inability to forgive. I think a ghost and a haunted house, that house that house is haunted, particularly for him. Right for the narrator, more than anyone else, more than any prospective buyer of the house more than anyone else, it's haunted for the narrator. So to get to these ideas of of the past as a as being actually present, and seething, these ideas of a place that can be haunted by all your associations with it, oh, you're all the memories you have there. And then the question of when you have been wrong, or you feel you've been wrong, can you forgive? I felt like having a ghost story was a nice way to get to these real things that I wanted the story to explore.
Phil 31:32
Yeah, no, I mean, I think I really loved it. And I mean, that story, again, thinks think thinking of endings. Like before you hopped on, Ben and I were talking about that whole endings thing with your stories and kind of feels to me like, if it's a if it's a film, you know, we're seeing this moment, and then the camera just kind of pans away. And we know there's still stuff happening off screen with the Father and the boy kind of walking along the shoreline, but we don't get to see it. And that tension worked. So well.
Jamel Brinkley 32:03
Yeah. And that actually reminds me that's another thing that I could maybe say about endings and might be interesting or useful. Like, with with fiction, of course, you have the you can manipulate time in interesting ways. And I love I love I think that maybe that one of the first short story writers I saw played with time in this way was Lorrie Moore. She'll do these flash forwards, like near the endings of her stories, and then kind of come back to the story. And that's kind of a thing that I wanted to do with this one, because it could have ended with just, you know, they're getting to their destination when they're in the car, right. But to me, that wasn't the important thing. That's another question you have to ask about an ending, like, are we landing it really the most important thing that just plot point that it does go to their destination? That is something else. So that's why I tell you that they go, we know that they're going to go. And then temporarily, I moved a story back a bit, but on the way they do this. And by focusing on this little scene on the way I think we get to what the story is really about, you know, the story begins with the figure of the mother who could be read as somewhat frightening, you know, you know, a ghost figure. But what we get at the end of the story, I think, or I hope is that the narrator is actually the frightening figure, right, that the narrator is sort of the the terror of the story, the thing that you know, people should be scared of. But you have to do some temporal play in order to have a storyline there, you know.
Ben 33:47
One of the things I want to get to get you to talk about is I feel like, so often your characters feel like they have real presence. And you write bodies, like specifically really well, like people move through the world and impact the world around them. And I think I was noticing it so much, because I was just realizing how often people movement, in a lot of stories can feel like it's just like, blocking a scene out. But it doesn't feel like it has like weight and presence. And that weight feels really like it's here. And yeah, how do you how do you approach that? Or how are you thinking about that?
Jamel Brinkley 34:26
Yeah, I guess I think about that in a couple of ways, when one might have to do with the way that I think of seeing or place or setting. And I absolutely don't think of it as background. It's not like a cardboard cutout on a stage. It sets the whole world of feeling. It's a phrase from Eudora Welty and sets the entire world a feeling of the story, if you really pay enough attention to it. Another thing wealthy says and This essay that I love, he talks about how place as somehow one of the lesser angels of fiction, like we pay less attention to, it doesn't seem like one of the major, you know, the headline features of a story. But actually, in order for a character to seem real, and likely, the place has to be even more likely, because it is placed that sets the characters to scale, you know, and I love that idea that if your place if your sense of place is thin, and the characters can become outsized, or kind of gaseous or you know, right, but if you if you really attend to place, in a firm way, then the characters firm up to. So I think a lot about that. And that's why I try to give a lot of attention to setting in place not as the background part of the story, but as, as, as something that the characters are interacting with or being affected by, you know. The other thing I would say is the proximity between characters. You know, I taught a class on intimacy a couple years ago, and, and one writer, we were looking at defined intimacy as the space in between. Right? And I kind of love that, because it forces you as a writer to think about bodies, bodies and proximity bodies exchanging energy, how close and Forfar they are. I remember there was a guy who visited my MFA program when I was a student, and he said, if you get stuck in a scene, just have to just have two characters touch each other things will start happening again, you know, which is funny and kind of a delight to think about. But or potentially frightening, who knows. But that idea, again, of bodies and proximity of people and characters and proximity, so between always thinking about characters, in terms of their proximity to other characters, there's also this idea of characters in turn in terms of how they're occupying or being affected by space setting, which is also active in a story.
Ben 37:24
Yeah. I just I yeah, it kept coming up, even in moments where characters are thinking about things that have have happened. There's a there's a moment and one of the stories where he's imagining his, I think it's his father and the different kinds of crying that his father sometimes does. And he's thinking about, like, the way that that takes up space, and how it like that sound impacts him. And I was like, wow, even here, I'm like, feeling the presence of the room that we're in?
Jamel Brinkley 37:55
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think you can't forget about it. I mean, especially I think, for a writer like, like me, it's a risk. Because sometimes because I am interested in the interiority of characters, I'm interested in their way of thinking, I'm interested in their feelings. And so there's a way in which the sentence making can start to focus on that, right, this whole internal world, but one of the risks of doing that, if you're not careful, is that the external world kind of disappears, right? And I always try to keep both in mind at the same time. And remember that you don't actually have interiority, unless there's X, unless there's an exterior to you know, that their relational, you know, interiority doesn't exist by itself. It's in relation to something, right? And so that's when stuff becomes interesting when that interior world is being juxtaposed to what's actually going on in the room in the space. So I always try to keep my eye on both.
Phil 39:01
Yeah, I mean, I think I think you're saying especially in relation to setting is really interesting. And, you know, I think if if anybody's read an interview with you, I think everybody asks you the writing about New York question and it's hard it's hard to not ask it and I think um, you know, if I were to maybe remix it and not ask like why you Why do you write about in New York or whatnot? Something that I think so much of this conversation is revolving around as you're saying like time you know how like Christina Sharpe says And in the wake like the past that is not the past always, you know, comes up to rupture the present like that whole idea, I think is so true in your work, and when I was reading witness, I couldn't help it. Think about this other novel I read recently called. Didn't nobody give a shit what happened to Carlotta by James Hannah ham. And you know that novel follows a black trans woman who gets out of prison and kind of is trying to restart her life in New York and you get these, so much tension around returning to a place that you knew really well. And it's different and kind of working through memory and past and how it still exists. And so much of these stories are about that. So that's all to say, if I were to ask you about how you feel about writing about New York now, you know, like, what does it feel like for you writing about this place that obviously holds so much meaning to you, while not living there anymore? And having all these experiences like an Iowa and California etc? Like, how are you viewing it now?
Jamel Brinkley 40:40
Yeah, I think I guess I would respond in a couple of ways.
On a basic level, I feel like New York is still the landscape of my imagination. You know, when I, when I think about a story, or the kinds of elements that communicate to me that a story might be possible there, they're pretty much always rooted in New York. So New York is still a place of fascination for me, I guess. Yeah. Even if the New York that I know best is a New York and doesn't exist anymore. It feels like New York is still it's both a place I know and a place that I wonder about and have questions about. So that's important. The other thing I would say is, I think it's it's kind of like having, it's good to have a project where you know, where, what some of your challenges are. So I think with, because I've read about New York, so often, I know that one of the risks is a kind of nostalgia. Right? And it's kind of a check, I think it helps to keep me honest to know that, you know, because I'm like, Well, you can't Yeah, like, Dude, it's not 2005 anymore. You know, York is a different place. And so I don't want that wash of nostalgia to get in the way of the work or to make the work. Dishonest. You know, it's, it's good for me to know that. Yes, I still want to write about this place. But there are risks here. There are dangers here. Right. It keeps me alert. And I think that's exciting as a writer to be alert. As I'm talking, you know what, what just occurred to me. The first story in the collection, was the deliverance. The starting point for Well, one of the starting points for that story was actually not in New York, it was in Oakland. I was living in Oakland, and downstairs, sort of on the corner of the apartment building where I lived. There opened up this strange, like, rabbit shelter. It was so bizarre, it was fried. And I would kind of peek in there. And the people who work there seems strange to me. And I was brave enough to go in one day. And but if we're to be out BNN there. And so I was like, Man, this is a weird place. And I never really saw anyone in there, like no one was in there. Other than the workers. Maybe I missed them. Maybe there was like a rush hour of patrons that I just never saw. But I was like, Man, this place is in Oakland. And nobody goes in. It's so out of place. I just felt weird. And it fascinates me.
Ben 43:52
And will you say Pat like what are we it's is it like a dog pound but for rabbits?
Jamel Brinkley 43:58
Yeah, it was like a it was like a it wasn't. So it was mostly rabbits. But I think there were also like, chinchillas or other things. And yeah, it was it was Yeah. Yeah. It's like where you could go to adopt rabbits. I guess who was there for? I had no idea. I had no idea. It was very odd. But it kind of, I mean, obviously gentrification is an issue in lots of places, especially in the Bay Area. But it immediately made me think about New York. You know, some of the weird stuff I've seen in Brooklyn. And I was like, Yeah, you know, I know this. This part is from Oakland, technically. But the feelings it conjures up are still New York feelings. I put it in New York.
Phil 44:48
Now that reminds me of Andre Aciman has a essay called Shadow cities, which is about more about an immigrant experience, but essentially about like how we try to find a When he moved to a new place, we often try to find shadows of the place we once were, and kind of recreate that and kind of seeing that reflected back in a new place. I, I feel like it probably does come up in these kinds of unexpected ways that you almost forget, like, you just remember that.
Jamel Brinkley 45:15
Totally. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, cuz that story is such a Brooklyn story to me. But I have to remind myself that actually, I was thinking a lot about this place in Oakland.
Ben 45:29
Can I ask you how? How it is living in Iowa? And how or if Iowa makes its way into your writing, you find it anywhere?
Jamel Brinkley 45:40
No, it hasn't. I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's just that way. Like, it's just not speaking to me in that way. Obviously, there's lots of fiction has been written in Iowa, Iowa City in particular. So it does speak to some writers, and it hasn't spoken to me. And I wonder if it's, if that's true, or if I'm, like, deliberately resisting it, to kind of like, plant my New York flag, like, no, never speak to me. We'll see, maybe there's an Iowa story that will emerge many, many years from now. But how is it living there? You know, it's, it's, it's really conducive to work. It to reading and writing, it's really conducive to those things, which I discovered when I was a graduate student there. I was a little worried going in, I was like, I don't know if I can do this, you know, being away from the rhythms and the flavors that kind of textured my imagination and my prose, but wasn't a problem. And I got a lot done. And I had a good experience. And so being back, I feel like I have a really rich reading and writing life. In my teaching, contributes, contributes to that too. You are always you know, with these really talented writers who were trying things and everyone's so different from each other. And they, they are very challenging in a good sense, meaning, you know, I have to kind of really bend myself to their work. And so I feel like I don't know, I think the combination of teaching there and doing all my most of my reading and writing there has been fruitful. I do still think my life is a little unbalanced. You know, like, my family's in New York. My oldest friend most like the majority, the vast majority of my oldest friends are in New York, because I still feel like I'm tilted in that direction. You know, so I do go back and visit a lot but in terms of reading and writing, it's been really good for me. Yeah.
Ben 47:54
Do you mind talking about you know who you're reading right now and what are the what are the kinds of writing that is drawing you in?
Jamel Brinkley 48:02
Yeah, that's a good question. I let's see, who have I been reading I perpetually reread. Like ever P Jones was mentioned earlier. Especially his story collections. I love lost in the city, especially as a collection although I think my favorite EP J story is and all on Hagar has children. Old Boys, old girls is the story a story I is very dear to me. Um, so I'm constantly rereading that. His his stories I've been reading a lot of Natalia Ginzburg and surely hazard lately just eating up their books, which are which are really interesting. The Transit of Venus Bush really has it as sort of mind boggling as a project. It's just like an incredible novel. sort of scary like how did she do this? And though it took her a long time, but that's that's a that's quite a feat. That book. But also, I've been reading I just picked up this book. Francisco. Have you heard of this by Allison Mills Newman. I think it was recently re issued. So idea Hartman wrote an intro for it. Okay. Super interesting so far. It's a it's a thin book, I would recommend it. I think it's and I might teach it at some point, but New Directions put it out. So I've been reading that which is really good. You see me looking back at stuff. Another book I read recently is angels. by Dennis Johnson, his first novel, which I feel like a lot of people don't talk about, they talk about it later novels and of course about Jesus on. But angels is pretty terrific, although it's brutal, it's like a brutal book, you gotta like, be prepared for everything that can go wrong and an American life kind of kind of goes wrong in this book. But man, the prose is gorgeous, the kind of instinctive poetic movements from chapter to chapter is not like, it's not what I would call a book that has a firm architecture. It's not like, you know, he just he doesn't think about, I don't think he was thinking about the novel in that way, just as he's leaving these poetic leaps and associations that are that are super interesting. Let's see. Yeah, I don't know. Those are just a few that come to come to mind.
Ben 50:54
I feel like you gave us plenty to
Jamel Brinkley 50:55
work with. Okay. Okay.
Phil 50:58
You know, something that I'd love to ask you about is, you know, so when I, when I initially read a lucky man, way back, I was really inspired by the story, everything the malady, it's, it's like a story that I continued to go back to, and was really helpful for me in my master's in my MFA. And partially because I felt like it really, I felt seen and a lot of senses in terms of like, my own relationship to my older brother. And something I appreciate in witness is, you know, an N stories like, like the titular story, witness, and even in the story of that particular Sunday, there's such a attention and care to how you construct these sibling or like, close, almost sibling relationships, and your story is, and I was just curious, like, Do you have siblings? And like, do you? Yeah, I mean, does that? Can you just talk a little bit about that? Or how you think about those kinds of relationships in your work?
Jamel Brinkley 52:10
Yeah, I do have a younger brother. So I do think about sibling relationships. A lot. You know, you can, I don't know it's, it's your sort of cast as you will be bonded, you will be close you are you have a lot in common. So you you sort of a walk this journey of life together, you know, you'll probably have some age proximity. And so it feels like your sibling feels like on some level when one of your given companions in life. And so often, this is not the case. People People are so different. And you know, there can be something about that proximity can cause friction, or conflict, sometimes irreconcilable conflict. I'm just sort of fascinated by that, you know, by that almost kind of forced proximity of sibling relationships, at least for a time in your life, right? And what that can do, like, what, what what issues out of that, you know, even even as you're adults, and maybe you don't live anywhere near each other, but what's the result of having had this close relationship with someone that you may or may not even like, you know, and, you know, are there? Does it condition your relationships seeking such that, you know, like, this is sort of your testing ground for forming friendships, you know, that kind of thing? Or is it or is there in your life, actually, some kind of bitterness or some kind of bad feeling that can kind of shape your relationships too. So I'm just sort of fascinated by different kinds of sibling or sibling like relationships. You mentioned that particular Sunday. I think one thing that always comes up with my brother and me, is this remembering things differently. Yeah, no, we had the same experience in the sense that we were both there at the same time. But it meant something entirely different to us. You know, are we remember what someone said different? That's not what she said. That's not what happened. You know, some of it is the, you know, just the whims of memory and some of it is that no, I, that affects me differently. So what you're saying isn't that recognizable to me, you know, and so I think sibling relationships are also an interesting way to explore the past and to explore time within A family that relationship in particular seems super interesting to me. Yeah. And I continue to ask questions, I have no insights whatsoever. But it just continues to be fascinating to me. And so I write about it.
Ben 55:15
I really love that because I, my siblings and I are getting to be the age where you start to think compare notes. And you're like, Yeah, you remember this. And so often, it will be the case that you want to be like, here's this very impactful moment to me. And I'll be like, I have no memory of that at all. Yeah, I started. Are you sure that happened? And they're like, What are you talking about? Like, this is like foundational to me. Yeah. And so yeah, it is often a lesson and just like, you would expect that we because we have these so many kind of shared moments growing up, that you would you would be close, or you would have the same experiences. But it's like you can have the identical experiences and still come away with very different POVs on them.
Jamel Brinkley 55:58
Totally. Yeah. And that that one that you're talking about, in particular is so mind boggling when someone can be like, This is the most crucial day of my life. sibling is like, Oh, you remember that day at all? Was it a day? Who knows? I think it made me stop. That's so crazy. Yeah.
Ben 56:18
Yeah, I have to drive two younger twin sisters. And that's Oh, wow. Twins was like it'll be it'll be both of, you know, it'll be like one will be the this happened. And then the other two of us will be like, what? And so it's like, it's just such a Yeah, such a crazy lesson. And just like, oh, yeah, there's not. It's not one to one.
Jamel Brinkley 56:33
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Ben 56:39
One of the one of my favorite stories in the collection is the lead out. And I I think it's doing something similar to exactly what we're talking about here, which is like kind of go with plumbing through the depths of memory. It's a great setup, which is a son meets one of his dad's kind of ex lovers, who is in some ways trying to relive her relationship with his father. And like, try to understand, you know, what, where is he now? What's what's happening? There's a little bit of this weird tension, where it's like, is the sun about to make things happen with this lady, you know, and so, but it's also just, I think about memory and trying to come back to these things. And it felt so much like one of these unrequited love stories, but from a different perspective. You know, I think like, so often we get the, you know, like a before sunrise are, you know, I just recently watched like past lives, where it's like, people coming back to these moments and trying to like, pull apart, you know, what was there here, but this coming from this, you know, the sun just felt like really rich? And maybe you can talk to me about that. Yeah. How you came into that?
Jamel Brinkley 57:40
Yeah, you know, I was, so two things went into that story I was, I was trying to talk back to a story that I loved. You know, my teachers likes to say that it's a good way to generate stories to speak back to a story that you love, or that, you know, you're just wondering about all the time, she writes a lot about, or she writes back to a lot of William Trevor stories. So in this case, I was writing back to a story by a writer named Gina berrio. And I believe the name of the story I had in mind is called the mistress. And the setting is completely different. And that story is from the perspective of the mistress. I'm wondering about the sun, figure, and I want it I want it to inhabit the sun. Because I feel like the other side of that. Even if you don't know what's going on as a kid, even if there's no tangible evidence, there's just an atmosphere in the air, you know, things are happening in your household. Right? And you may never find out what that thing was, but sometimes you do. And that can be a really strange feeling to find out what what was casting that shadow over our house, our apartment, whatever. So. So that was one thing. The other thing is I kind of wanted to when I lived in Brooklyn, I would, I would often go especially during the summer to the Brooklyn Museum for what they called for a Saturday. And for me, the magic of first Saturday in Brooklyn was that it was like a fictional magic, anything could happen, like you could encounter anyone. And I often had that experience of sort of bumping into people, you know, 1000s of people would go to this thing from all over New York, not just Brooklyn. And, you know, more than a few times I had the experience of bumping into someone I hadn't seen in years there just because it was there just because it's the sort of place that that draws people, you know, and so I kind of wanted to tap into that magic of encounter, right? Seeing someone you haven't seen and talk into them or not talking to them. You know, seeing someone who's associated with someone that, you know, that happened a lot to like, Oh, that's such and such as friend or whatever settings such as daughter. So I kind of wanted to tap into that magic. But then, you know, once once I kind of had that, as my starting point kind of detached myself from the burial story, I wanted to explore, yes, this boundary between desire and curiosity, right. I also wanted to explore this idea of someone who is not used to being looked at or feels like he's not often looked at, and then is, then what do you do? Like, are you your more authentic self? Are you a performative self, like what happens when all of a sudden you're getting attention that you're not used to having, you know, like, the first paragraph of that story, you don't know, it's a first person story until the last word of that paragraph. Right. So that kind of disguise of I'm not here, oh, I am here, someone's actually looking at me, someone's kind of called me out from the crowd, I wanted to explore that. And then setting it in a museum, I think was important to me, because I kind of wanted to especially like, you know, an event like for a Saturday, because you have this sort of multi art form, setting in which these two characters can kind of circle each other. So the dancing, where the narrator feels comfortable for a while, you know, but then all of a sudden, he's made uncomfortable, because she changes up the whole vibe, then the photography, you know, the art, the visual art, I think, was important as well. And I like the idea in terms of shaping the story, having the entrance and the exit from from the space, Mark, you know, mark the shape of the story as well, that everything that was going to happen is going to happen, you know, as as we start to enter this place about a time we leave. Everything's different. You know, and I liked that idea as well.
Ben 1:02:11
Yeah. And I love the the museum setting because again, he goes from a person who's like, I'm anonymous, in some ways to here's a person who knows way more than they shared about me. And he's very familiar with my family and the family dynamics, and is reciting those back to me in a way that is like, profoundly uncomfortable. But was just like, great. It was just great.
Jamel Brinkley 1:02:36
Yeah, yeah. Cool. Thanks. I'm glad you like that one.
Phil 1:02:41
I have a kind of maybe selfish question to ask. But I was curious, like, you know, you. In the same vein, as a lot of Edward P. Jones stories, I'd say like, you write a bit of a longer story. And I think that you know, both of you are kind of excel at really capitalizing on digression, and how like, the whatever you think the main plotline is, it doesn't have to be that for the entire story. And in fact, if you kind of go off somewhere else, maybe something interesting will happen. And that's something that I'm really interested in, in my own work, but something that I've found, I struggle with, and this isn't about the actual act of writing, but getting the writing out there is just like, it seems like nobody wants a long short story. You know, like, like, how do you grapple with that? Do you think about like, the length that you're writing? Or do you think about those kinds of things? Or do you think more about like, the book and not worry so much about getting it somewhere?
Jamel Brinkley 1:03:45
Um, I've been made to think about it a few times, like, sometimes an opportunity will emerge. And my agent will say, Yeah, but you have to cut 1000 words, a story. And I was like, what? How was that possible? We're talking about, it's crazy. You just massacre the story? And, yes, but usually, I try not to think about it. You know, my colleague at Iowa says that she feels like, most story writers have a length that is more or less natural to them, doesn't mean that you always end up on the exact same page, obviously, but that, you know, you're kind of in this range. You know, some people write long. Some people write really short. Some people write like eight page stories, and that's the thing. I'm not the person. So I think you have to you have to accept that about yourself. I mean, of course, you can, you know, push your limits and try to write different kinds of stories. I would encourage that that's great, you know, flex those muscles, but that's what you naturally gravitate, then that's a beautiful thing and just kind of accept that. As far as placing the stories and length, it is an issue, you know, I mean, it seems My sense, you know, coming out with this collection and trying to play stories from this collection is that it seems like things are more and more online now even more so than when a lucky man came out. So my hope is that that would mean, a long story is less of an issue. But you're right. I mean, some places just, they won't they won't look at it, they won't look at the work. I will say, though, I think if this may not be true, but but my sense is that if you have a collection, you feel if you do focus on the book, you have a collection, and that's making its way into the world. I think just the fact that the story, the individual stories you're trying to place are part of a collection will make them more appealing to editors, you know, and they may be able to kind of give you a pass on on the storylines a little bit more than they they might. But yeah, it's unfortunately, I feel like it shouldn't be an issue. I sort of understand why it's an issue, but I wish I wish I didn't make people who write long stories feel bad, you know?
Phil 1:06:11
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, Ben, do you have things that we have you missed anything? I just feel like Gmail, you've I mean, everything you've told us today is left here to thinking about so much. I'm curious if there's anything maybe that we haven't asked you yet that you feel like damn, Why didn't these two ask me about this? Or there's anything we're missing?
Jamel Brinkley 1:06:38
I don't think so. I mean, I'm always interested to see where any conversation will go. And I'm sort of excited when we're not hitting the same points over and over again. So yeah, I've been I've been happy with this conversation. I don't know if you have any last questions, but there's nothing that I feel like, You're not asking me that's a glaring omission.
Phil 1:06:59
Well, I guess here, here's one this right off right off the press, whenever we get in the gym, Mal fantasy, sci fi short story, when when are we getting the speculative fiction?
Jamel Brinkley 1:07:11
I don't know. It could happen. You know, like, I mean, I'm a fan of that stuff. Especially. I mean, I used to read it a bunch when I was a kid. And I'm a big fan of the films and TV shows, I've totally indulged in sci fi fantasy. To me, I think it's and you know, I read it a lot because of my work, you know, it comes up in workshop and have to think about it. So it's interesting to me, I'm not a meta realism snob at all, although that's mostly my mode realism in its most capacious sense. I think that if it helps to facilitate something that I'm thinking about, probably wouldn't hesitate to do it, you know, in the way that I was talking about the ghost story as a as a way to get to something. Yeah. It opens up, you know, space for a story to explore. It could totally happen. I don't know when, but I wouldn't rule it out.
Phil 1:08:10
Yeah, I mean, I felt like the story, Sahar is it's pretty close to being like a sci fi story in the sense of like, I wouldn't have expected to get this kind of gig work, you know, Uber kind of connection appearing, and one of your stories and that ended up being like one of my favorites, because it's not really one that I've seen something similar to before. And I loved how it kind of became almost this epistolary, adjacent kind of thing that that really, really worked. And, yeah, it was just a really surprising and interesting story.
Jamel Brinkley 1:08:46
Yeah, good. Yeah. Have fun writing that one. It was it was different. It was different for me, but I really enjoyed it. Yeah.
Ben 1:08:53
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Yeah, I don't have any questions left. I thank you.
Jamel Brinkley 1:08:58
Thank you for having me. This has been great, a lot of fun.
Phil 1:09:17
And that was our conversation with Jamal Brinkley about his new short story collection called the witness. Yeah, I feel just like excited to talk about about talking to Jamal because this is somebody that I've really looked up to for so long. And he didn't disappoint. I have to say,
Ben 1:09:37
Yeah, I also I feel bad but also it. It was like great from like, my perspective, that it in so many ways kind of felt like a small seminar. Like I feel like he was he was great about giving. He was like, Oh, here's a little thing that you should be trying and you're writing or like, here's how you should be thinking about like setting up the scene. I was like, Yeah, cool. Just written all this down. Good to go. And
Phil 1:10:00
yeah, he, he was very good at like, breaking down his stories and kind of really wasn't afraid or shy about like talking about the mechanics that went into making them and like his thought process and and making them It didn't feel like he was trying to make it like a magic trick, you know, like he's he's gonna reveal to you a little bit about how he came to creating the work and you know, I think especially for writers that's that was really great to hear and kind of hear a little bit about his thought process.
Ben 1:10:35
Yeah, you know, the thing that has stuck with me, we interviewed him a couple of days ago now is the idea. And he kind of talked about it that like short stories are closer to life, and closer to memory, just in terms of like how we move through the world, that things don't wrap up, and a good short story and a good short story ending, you know, carry through all the themes and the threads and the idea that capture this like moment in a person's life a snapshot, and then you're able to kind of move on. But knowing that like things are kind of not resolved. And I was thinking about this in the in the context of you and I had this conversation a lot, and I can't remember, this might have been you or this might have been me. But banging this drum about, we both read a lot of nonfiction essay collections. And so often, those feel like they fall down because they try to wrap things up and give you a sense of completion by the time you've gotten to the end of an essay collection. And at the end of those, you know, inevitably I'll message you in the chat, or we'll talk and I'll be like, No, it didn't work for me because it feels like it's trying to end and feel like it's a novel. But like, real life just doesn't work that way. Like there's no things, the threads don't all come together. And then like you get a nice conclusion. And then you move on. Like that's just not how things work. And so I think him talking about how short stories in some ways, like are able to capture that feeling where this is a moment we can we can embody the moment, but then you know, things are going to keep going and keep on spooling. I really really resonated with that.
Phil 1:12:13
Yeah, I mean, his point about endings are just a part of the story. You know, like, I think I definitely fall into the trap a lot of times when I'm like in the first couple of drafts of the story where I just want to tie up that tie up the thing with a bow at the end and like here's kind of like the thematic resonant, and he even pokes fun at the lyrical. final paragraph that below is everything open and you you feel amazing afterwards. I think his point about like, in the workshops he teaches he's, he's found that yes, the ending is important and you know, needs to mean something, ultimately, what conversations end up going back to is like something on page eight, I think you see that like, you know, something in the middle of the story that is reflecting back to the ending and I think that's something to really to grab hold of, because yeah, I mean, I think with with nonfiction collections, so often, you know, because a lot of them are pretty personal essay memoir is stick approaches, it kind of feels like every single essay has to be building to the next one, you know, and I think like this was a witness as a good reminder of like taking this kind of pretty broad theme around witness and perceiving and how you can really do so much with it like I mean, I wasn't just gassing him up and I said I was really surprised with this collection to see like a ghost story and to see like a Uber, you know, gig worker, kind of story like it felt like he was really able to spread out a lot more than even an a lucky man.
Ben 1:13:58
Yeah. The endings are just so so good. I almost feel like feel Do you have the book on here? I feel almost feel like we should like grab one of the endings just so people have like a context of the case. These are these are things we're really good.
Phil 1:14:13
Yeah, I have the book here. So you know, just just for readers, you know, this story arrows, follows a narrator who is in his parents home his mother has has passed away and been gone, at least for a little while. He is a single father who has his son for the weekend. And his father still lives in the house. But he's and he's blind. And it's the story is kind of looking at this tension. And this this haunting that exists in this house for the narrator and kind of how he's able to see his mother still as an actual ghost. That is kind of a The, you know, a ominous presence in the house. And I'm pretty sure in the conversation we talked about it. And Jamel does a better job than I could explain the story. But at the very end of the story, his father is going to be transferred, transferred to like a, a retirement home kind of assisted living situation. And they have dropped, they've driven out to that assisted living situation. But the story kind of flashes back to a moment on the drive out, which is a really interesting kind of choice that Brinkley makes. And I'll just read this, this final paragraph, it's a little bit on the longer side, but you know, we'll we'll get through it. The detour had come toward the end of the drive, I took an impromptu right turn, and proceeded in that direction until we reach the parking lot of a train station by the lower Hudson pops into here we're confused as I urge them out of the car. On the other side of the station. After you descend a long staircase to the platform for southbound trains. There is a place I knew where you could have a special experience of the ever changing river. I lead my son and my father down to that place from there, where today the river appeared swollen from the rain, we could taste the faint bracing stench of the lead and water. We could feel on our skin the flexing of this arm of the sea. And here in the spring breezes the heavy added add mon admonition of its rush. This was a place where you had a chance to unburden yourself where your concerns might be shaken off or transfigured. We stood out there for a few moments, and sensory plentitude then Zahir took pops by the hand to guide him down a few more steps and then forward along the edges of the reverse bank and watch them walk parallel to the flow of the bank. For a moment, it roared south toward the harbor in no time at all, much more quickly than you'd expect of a blind old man being tugged along by a fickle little boy, they opened a great deal of distance between us, as if they were frightened of me, as if they were taking flight. And yeah, I mean, it's the ending, we'll have more if you've read the story. But I think it's just an example of this kind of really subdued, it doesn't tell you kind of how to feel at the end, but it definitely kind of leaves you feeling something right. And I think that whatever that something is, it's gonna be different for everybody at the read. So So
Ben 1:17:35
yeah, the other thing, there's that, you know, the ghost of his mother. Yeah, I think the opening beginning of that short story is like, I'm going to haunt this place, because he's talking about like, I'm going to send my dad to a retirement home and I'm going to sell this house, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to try to move us out. And so the the the ghosts of his mother is like, Well, I'm gonna haunt this place, and it's gonna make it harder to sell it. And so I think in some ways, too, you can like read that that ending is like a moment where everyone's like the disrupter. And I think I think Jamel might say this, that it's like, the thing to be frightened of is maybe the main character or not the ghost after all, that the person disrupting their lives is the is the is the protagonist after all that?
Phil 1:18:21
Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, it's a, I think, especially with witness, if you've read his previous collection, it really makes you appreciate this one, so much more. Because, well, I mean, there's definitely some through lines that I think we we can pinpoint and Brinkley's writing, and we talk a lot about, like siblings, tensions between siblings and family members. Time and the friction, that time and memory, you know, puts on to us in the president. I think that's another theme. But I think the situations that he puts his characters in, in this particular collection, compared to the first are a little bit more, you know, obtuse and harder to square in really interesting ways. So I think was one of those things where, you know what, at least for me, but I don't know about you. Because because I really loved his first collection when I was reading the first couple stories and witness is kind of like, I mean, it's good, but I don't know if I like it as much. I think after talking to him, I mean, who knows how I feel about it yet, but I definitely have a way bigger appreciation of kind of what's happening on the page in this one now.
Ben 1:19:38
Yeah, and I loved I think the other thing that really sold me is when he talked about this idea of trying to start the stories after the big thing has already happened. So that your the kinds of shifts in people's lives that you're seeing are not the momentous decision, but are the thing that's like really small and really nuanced. I think that it feels that way. And so as a reader, I think so. Sometimes, and we talked about this, I would be like, like, this is like, you know, what am I what am I reading here? Like, you know, sometimes they think you're waiting for something that you can latch on to that's like the big moment or the big reveal or the big, you know, whatever. But I think I ended up really liking this feeling of really subtle, small moments that are in their own way kind of momentous.
Phil 1:20:25
Yeah, yeah. I think it just gives you a lot a lot to chew on. And I know like, I do kind of want to see like this, this collection, he you can see Brinkley kind of moving even further out of maybe the comfort zone of just writing kind of these very grounded real literary realism stories about New York to kind of like experimenting a little bit of what, in the same setting, but like, I don't know, I feel like there's a sci fi story happening in the next 10 years from brink.
Ben 1:21:01
You know, that's what I want. That's what I I just want all of the authors that we read to move towards speculative fiction. I don't think of asking that much.
Phil 1:21:11
Yeah, I mean, yeah, so this was a really good conversation. I think it was pretty interesting to hear his answer about New York and like writing about New York, and because, you know, I point this out in the interview, but if you read any Connery conversations with him, like transcribed interviews, or even podcasts, you can definitely sense this kind of friction to asking about, like, a you write about in New York. Like, what else though? You know, that's kind of like what a lot of the, the three lines of these questions are kind of jabbing at. And I thought it was kind of interesting that, you know, he talked about how New York is kind of the place of his his imagination, still. But I thought it was also interesting that he isn't really inspired by any other places he's lived yet. Except for the bunnies.
Ben 1:22:08
Rest in peace to Iowa. Iowa may never recover.
Phil 1:22:13
That man said no. So quickly to you asking if I was inspired anything he's like, absolutely,
Ben 1:22:18
absolutely not. Although although he did cop to us, like maybe it's just because I am, like, actively resistant to the idea of Iowa making it into my, into my writing. You know what, that's funny, too.
Phil 1:22:30
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't get a chance to say it. But I think it's he is a special kind of person in Iowa. And that's a writer, and we're talking to him about place. And that being a New Yorker, and like my so everybody in my family, but myself. And my immediate family is from New York, and I'm the weird, Midwestern kid. And what I have grown up with is that New Yorkers always will be like, doesn't matter, like New York is the best place. Like, even if even if we live like literally, I lived in Michigan for like, 20 years. And my parents would be like, Yeah, but we were from New York. And you know, we don't even say that we that we like live in Michigan. So I think there's probably some of that, like, that doesn't.
Ben 1:23:20
I would nobody's claiming, you
Phil 1:23:23
know, that's certainly not. Yeah, I mean, then is there anything that you want to talk about with this conversation that we haven't yet?
Ben 1:23:32
No, I yeah, I just really enjoyed it.
Phil 1:23:35
Yeah, I mean, if anything, the book comes out August 1. In the US, it'll be everywhere. Definitely worth your time. And I don't like like we said at the top of the conversation, it's I don't know it's really nice to just kind of read some stories like I can disclose the book read a little 20 page story or something. And these stories will really give you something to chew on. So it's not like you need to like read it all in one sitting or whatnot. So you know, make sure to check out witness. But with that we will catch you all here on the next episode of origin story. Remember,
Ben 1:24:12
you heard it here first short stories are back. Okay. They back maybe this is not a depression winter. It's a short story winter.
Phil 1:24:22
Short Stories summer. Thanks again for checking out the show. If you would like to follow me on Twitter. It is three D Cisco on Twitter as well as Instagram. And you can follow Ben on Twitter at sad underscore radio underscore lad. We wanted to thank melody Hirsch, who designed all the awesome cover art and design work for the website and the podcast itself. And we wanted to thank Ryan Hopper who does all the intro and outro music, as well as some of the interstitial stuff you hear and dinner in different apps. Suits. If you enjoyed the show, we'd love it if you left a review on iTunes, you know, subscribed on either iTunes or Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts. You know, reviews helped us get the show in front of more people, and only takes a couple minutes. So yeah, if you could do that for us, it'd be greatly appreciated.
Ben 1:25:23
You should also visit our website at WWW dot origin story dot show. It's a great place to look at all of our episodes. There are full transcripts and a link to our Discord channel, where we talk with listeners about everything Oh, s and beyond. There's a lot of posting that goes on in there. So I don't know if you're into that. Come join us. You can also email us at the origin story pod@gmail.com We're always looking for feedback, whether it's ideas for you know, games that we should play books we should read, guests that we should have on the show. Just hit us up with thoughts feelings, we're always looking for feedback, even if it's that Ben has an annoying voice and you don't want to hear it anymore. I mean, that's totally fine. So write us in. You can also follow us on Twitter at at origin story underscore or our Instagram at origin story dot show. As always, thanks for listening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
