Christopher Cook's new book

 My friend Christopher Cook recently published a new collection of short stories called The Salvage Yard. I asked him about it. 

 

Q. What’s the story behind The Salvage Yard? How did it come about?

A. Good questions, especially given the book title isn’t taken from any story title in the collection, as is usually the case.  I do explain the title in an Author’s Note in the book.  Most of these stories were started and partly written 25-30 years ago.  I set them aside because I didn’t know how to fix or finish them.  They were wrecks.  And I forgot about them.  Then I recently stumbled across the manuscripts in an old trunk and decided they had some merit, were perhaps worth saving — if I could manage to salvage them.  After some months of work, they seemed drivable.  So I published them.  Half the stories are set in Europe, half are set in the American South.

 

 

Q. Your books probably are better known in Europe than in the United States, and I thought it was interesting that “The Pickpocket,” a story that won a literary award in France, was the first in this collection. Do you have any insight into why the European critics have been faster than the Americans to appreciate your work?

A. “The Pickpocket” is the one story that didn’t need any salvaging.  It has enjoyed some success, has been published in several anthologies, is available in English or French.  I wrote it when I lived in Paris in the 1990s and promptly sent it to several journals and magazines in the USA.  No interest whatsoever.  I couldn’t even give it away.  The story was published in France after receiving an award.  Perhaps 10 years later it finally received attention in the USA and was published there.  A similar pattern occurred with my first novel, Robbers.  It was rejected by everyone in the USA, was published first in France, and then in the UK.  And finally in the USA.  The only insight I can offer as to why these events occurred in the way they did is that I had zero literary connections in the USA.  I never studied writing (sciences were my university major), didn’t know any writing professors, agents, or publishers.  Didn’t know any other writers to speak of, either.  And that does make a difference.  At least in the USA.  But it’s still a mystery.  Because I didn’t have any literary connections in France, either.

 

Q. You’re probably better known for your novel Robbers than for your short stories. But it seems to me that your stories about people who grow up under the influence of fundamentalist religion are a helpful way to understanding them. Every time I read and op-ed piece by someone who is baffled by fundamentalist Christians in the South and says they are irrational and incomprehensible, I want to send them a book of your stories. What’s your secret for getting inside their heads?

A. I grew up inside their heads.  I was raised in a charismatic, fundamentalist, bible-thumping, shouting-in-the-spirit, rolling-in-the-aisles, tongue-speaking Pentecostal family and church.  I climbed the wall and escaped when I was about 17.  Actually, I busted through the wall.  I truth, I exploded the wall.  Mostly with psychedelic drugs like LSD, psilocybin, and peyote.  I then spent years constructing a new belief system custom-made by using all sorts of ideas, values, assumptions, and practices from every paradigm I could find.  I suppose that ongoing lifetime project has been a salvage job, too, now that I think about it.  In any case, I get inside the characters you mention mostly by remembering personal experience.  Though imagination is crucial, too, as always in a creative endeavor.

 

Q. My favorite story is “Henry Johnson’s Soul,” which is about a fellow in Texas who is exasperated by the religious climate. What’s yours?

A. That’s the toughest question you’ve asked.  It’s a bit like asking a parent which is their favorite child.  In some ways I’m partial to “Was JKF Gay?” because it’s based in one of the most destructive aspects of USAmerican culture (right-wing media) and the protagonist, Mildred Potts, painfully illustrates what that can do to a person.  But I also like “The Noise We Do Not Hear” because it shows how love and friendship can save us.  I could go on and on.  This story is funny, that one is ironic, and so on.  So it goes.  Kids, ya know.

 

Q. What’s the link to your book?

A. Available in print or as an ebook at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZ6QG8KY?ref_=ast_author_ofdp