(Personal note: Big thanks to the folks at Arkana for publishing my short story, provocatively entitled “Red State Sewer Side.” It’s definitely a commentary of sorts on some of the widening cultural disconnections in our country, circa 2020. But it’s also written from a perspective pretty far outside my personal experience. I appreciate having the opportunity to elaborate on the inspiration behind this piece, and what I was hoping to achieve (and also, discussing the weird creative balance between pursuing an idea and being surprised by where the effort takes you).) More about Arkana here.
Sean Murphy talks about his piece “Red State Sewer Side” from Issue 8 of Arkana.
INTERVIEWED BY LIZ LARSON (FICTION EDITOR FOR ISSUE 8).
Liz Larson: Let’s get right at the title, “Red State Sewer Side.” We’ve had many readers who were curious about its origins. Can you tell us your thoughts behind choosing this title?
Sean Murphy: “Red State Sewer Side” was the title for a poem that never got written, and perhaps because it so obviously does not derive from personal experience, I’ve had several friends ask me where this piece of fiction came from. Often, the origin of a story can be as simple as a title that demands an effort to justify or explore it; other times it’s a single line of dialogue or description that arrives, unprompted, and you work your way forward from there. A lot of times it’s not secretive or sensible; inspiration strikes (or it doesn’t) but the best stuff happens when the writer isn’t entirely sure what is happening or, when it’s finished, how it came to be written.
In terms of why I used this title, I like the way it works as one of the expressions or words the boy misunderstands throughout the story (e.g., “pre-empty strike,” “Apple-Asian tour,” etc.), and forms its own micro-commentary on things lost in figurative translation because of age, education, or context.
LL: How did you come to pair the local characters with the distrusted outsider, who thinks he’s got it all figured out? What is the kernel of this story’s origin? Current events? Politics?
SM: This story sprang to life from a single image via a vivid and disturbing dream. I woke up and it was right there: a young boy, at least ten and no more than fourteen, in a fist fight. He is winning the fight, but he’s afraid. He’s afraid because he’s surrounded by other kids he doesn’t know, and the hostility on their faces suggests they’re all more than willing to jump in and assist their classmate. He understands that even (perhaps especially) if he’s victorious in this scrap, he’s still going to be the target for a type of violence he’s never experienced and can’t understand.
This is not anything I’ve ever experienced, but something I needed to make sense of: the vision of young boys not merely happy and entertained (boys will be boys, and who doesn’t recall the collective glee that greeted a locker room brawl?), but reinforcing, on some instinctive level, that this violence is necessary, a statement, and something they’re accustomed to enforcing—in their own way. Of course, the boy’s father and his attitudes/experiences, illustrates how things have changed—and in some cases, remained the same—for his son’s generation.
The story is also, certainly, informed by politics and our current sociopolitical moment.
“Red State Sewer Side” is one of a handful of recent stories that attempts to interrogate the why behind the how, the who behind the what. The working title of this collection, entitled That’s Why God Made Men, offers an unvarnished look at life in 21st Century America, and some of what that entails, with a particular focus on the causes and effects of toxic masculinity, including the pressures and tensions of so-called adult life, and the ways men grapple with them, often without success. Issues such as alcoholism, violence, competition, family/marital relationships, and the inexorable fear of (and/or confrontation with) death, abound, and many of these stories live in that slow implosion of coping, and often failing, as well as those who refuse to succumb. The stories, while not topical by decision (or calculation), nevertheless address issues oft-discussed, or not discussed enough, in mainstream print: gun violence, the recent history of coal county Appalachia, sports-related concussions, illegal immigration (and the jobs many of those ostensibly unwelcome folks are willing, if obliged to do), and the inability of many men to honestly connect or communicate.
LL: In response to the events of 2020, how has your writing changed? What’s been its progression? Is there a routine to your writing that you follow?
SM: I’ve noted that the batch of short stories I’ve written these last few years feature people and perspectives far outside my scope of lived experience, with characters (older widowed men, mothers, younger boys) I can’t claim to represent with authority. But they are informed by a repeated pattern and habit of reading, writing, and observing. And not just eyewitness appraisals of day-to-day life, but an active and ongoing dive into what’s happening—on the surface and beneath the façade; so that politics and history are inseparable from motivation. And there’s a common thread, which some of us were taught to find and deconstruct during grad school, that might better illustrate how people in different times or places have common (and in some instances, very different) desires or fears or obsessions.
LL: As a writer, how do you research a story? Before you begin? Or do you write first and then research as needed? Talk to us about this process.
SM: I know that certain types of fiction (historical, especially) and non-fiction (memoir or biography) necessitate research and seek to be as accurate as possible, not only for artistic, but legal reasons. Fiction writers are generally more liberated, particularly if one is more interested in feelings than answers. There’s a sort of willful ambiguity involved where, of course, you want to reflect reality (the writer’s reality; a character’s reality) but also take liberties in the service of the story. All of which is to say, I don’t think there are any false or irresponsible notes in “Red State Sewer Side,” but I also didn’t feel obliged to do a great deal of research; despite the themes and setting, there are more universal (yet ambiguous) threads, such as violence, youth, identity, and a breakdown of understanding.
I think a more succinct and perhaps less pretentious way of putting this is that some writers—and here I include myself—start with an idea or question, and then follow the creative process where it leads (including myriad false stops, most of which get abandoned), and often you end up somewhere you never intended or imagined. You have to trust the story is finding its way and the end result is true in a way that transcends verisimilitude. (Okay, that’s pretty pretentious, too, but in order to delight or surprise a reader, the writer too needs to be delighted or surprised and occasionally even troubled by what the creative process turned up.)
A bit more about this story (and other short fiction) here.
