The first half of this week has brought renewed heartbreak for the deep, painful fissures and hairline cracks that race across the map of America. Yet somehow, tomorrow, many of us will be more mindful of the abundance in our lives; as we consider gratitude, I hope we’ll at least spare a thought for a family whose son will never sit at their table again. Fast-forward another twenty-four hours. People will figuratively dust the gratitude from their hands and their thoughts—and then they’ll stampede over one another in an appalling display of greed and want and consumerism.
Is it any wonder I’m feeling the need to interact with a writer who embodies intelligence, reason, compassion, and a strong sense of social justice?
Enter AJ Calhoun. A single child of poor yet highly intelligent, autodidact parents, AJ was born and raised in Jim Crow-era DC, surrounded by books, both novels and esoteric material. His mother taught him to read starting at age three. He had a library card at four. The first book he read on his own was Babar the King. The second was Tobacco Road. His mother, a very outspoken woman, inspired, in great part, his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement starting at age 15.
He has been a small businessman, he still is a social and political activist, and he has worked in the medical/paramedical field for about 40 years now—and the whole time, as he says, the writing has always been part of the ritual.
Q: Because everyone always wants to know this: Describe your writing environment and your work habits.
A: My writing environment? Hmm . . . it is really, when I am on, inside my head, so it can physically be pretty much anywhere, but I do prefer to work in my home office, which is kind of quiet, dark, and has all my stuff handy, especially my library, which helps with reference lookups. The patio in summer also works well—and is only steps away from the office.
Q: What are must-haves and must-not-haves in your writing space?
A: My must-haves include a decent reference library. Yes, I know, Google, but much of what falls into my flow is very specific and for some reason organic, and I can go straight to the source, hold it in my hand, get the feel for it as it will fit into the narrative, and . . . okay, that’s kind of nuts, but that’s the main thing. The must-not-have is people wandering through, asking questions about money, the meaning of life, stuff like that. The rest I can totally tune out.
Q: You describe writing as a “lifelong condition.” What compels you to do it?
A: For me writing has truly been a condition—a condition of the head, the heart, and even the soul (wherever that is located). An unavoidable summer school English session exposed me to “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” by Mark Twain, and in that hour I contracted an incurable need to write or die.
Q: Describe your evolution as a writer. What was a turning point for you?
A: Prior to the Twain/Cooper experience I had found myself attempting to compose song lyrics from a fairly young age, soon realized this was a form of poetry, often inane poetry, and began telling stories instead. My childhood friendship with the late [fingerstyle guitarist and composer] John Fahey probably instilled the need to tell stories. In fact I became a repository of local lore. How to write that down came to me a little later.
Q: Writing is an exchange. What do you want your readers to bring to your work, and what do you want to bring to them?
A: My readers must bring with them to my work a wide-open curiosity and concomitant imagination, the ability to think visually. What I try to bring to them is a visual, a dreamlike reliving of the experience written down. My visual brain wants people to know what it looked like, what the air smelled like, how the breeze affected the narrator, how the birds sounded, to be immersed not only in the story but also in the complete experience. I want them to feel the sun on their skin, the excitement or anger, the disorientation, the rage. I want them to remember a place they’ve likely never been.
Q: What feeds your writing?
A: Personal experience is almost exclusively the fodder for my writings, except perhaps for the essays. The stories are virtually all memoirs barely fictionalized. I will defer to the apologia Thomas Wolfe tacked onto the front of his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel. I live and die by his words To The Reader, which include this: But we are the sum of all the moments of our lives—all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape or conceal it.
Q: What is the most valuable advice you ever received as a writer? What other advice would you offer novice writers?
A:“Just write the goddamn thing.” That was, again, John Fahey, near the end of his life, when we were discussing his memoir How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, to which my forthcoming work will serve as a companion piece. Other advice would be: Read John Fahey’s album liner notes (while listening to his music)—and bear in mind John was not insane. Also read Twain’s criticism of Cooper. And read. One who is not a reader will never be a decent writer.
Q: What are you currently reading, and what do you think of it?
A: I am currently reading Call Me Burroughs: A Life by Barry Miles, a doorstop volume on the life of William S. Burroughs, who is probably my greatest literary influence, god help me.
Q: What makes something a good read for you?
A: Something must early on pluck my sense of the absurdity of life, or the brutality of it, or the exquisite beauty, preferably all at once, and the visuality must be called forth by this in short order. A vortex must form and draw me in.
Q: Do you have creative doubts or fears? What are they, and how do you overcome them?
A: My only creative doubt or fear is that I might at some point catch myself doing things by rote, method, or because someone else insisted it would be better than my own innate idea. Then I have to stop, go outside, reconnect with my muse, go back and make sure I haven’t committed the sin of listening to the voices of others.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: The current project, nearing completion, is, or has been, an epic work based on the recovery of a repressed memory that necessarily obliterated my memory of the summer of 1959. It is equal parts a coming-of-age story,
a treatise on hypnogogic phenomena, a retelling of the story of Somnus, Greek god of sleep, and a sociopolitical rant. It is, in short, a horror story.
Q: What didn’t I ask that I should have—and what’s the answer?
A: You should have asked if I endorse use of the Oxford comma. Since this debate precipitated a knife-and-club flight between William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac I consider it almost a holy topic. And the answer is: be the guy with the knife.