Casting a Line with David Joy

INGRID THOFT

It's not unusual these days for publishers to schedule joint events for their writers.  For readers, two for one is a good deal!  But for the writers, it's always a roll of the dice: Will you hit it off?  Will you have good chemistry?  I've been extraordinarily fortunate to be paired with wonderful writers who have become good friends.

One of those writers is Edgar Award nominee David Joy, the critically-acclaimed author of Where All Light Tends To Go, The Weight of This World, and the The Line That Held Us, which will be released on August 14th.  David was born, raised and still lives in Appalachia, the setting of all of his books, and today we're discussing his second novel, The Weight of This World, which is now out in paperback.  His books do not offer escape from the real world, but rather, a poetic appreciation of the struggles that challenge people on a daily basis, be it poverty, addiction, or heartbreak.  I always feel smarter after I read David's work and usually have to go look things up!  He was kind enough to answer my questions (and offer a book to a lucky reader,) and as always, I walked away from our conversation both enriched and educated.

INGRID THOFT:  One of the main threads in The Weight of This World is the main character’s experience fighting in Afghanistan and his catastrophic re-entry into life back home in North Carolina.  What prompted you to feature that and were there challenges writing about war and its effects?

DAVID JOY:  I think a large part of that came from some things I was dealing with personally. That book is dedicated to a dear friend of mine who was a combat Marine and who served multiple deployments in Iraq, but anyhow, one day after he’d come home he walked into his house, shot his brother, shot his father, and killed himself. I don’t know what led him to do that, and I don’t know how his military service may have played into that, but I remember how he was portrayed on the news and just remember feeling like they stripped him of his humanity. So I think a lot of what I was doing in this book, maybe even subconsciously, was trying to make sense of all that.

Writer David Joy

 This novel is very much an examination of trauma and violence. The three main characters’ decision-making processes are driven almost solely by trauma, each uniquely his/her own. For Thad Broom it was things he witnessed at war that led him to do the things that he does. With the violence, I think I became really interested in trying to imagine what can push seemingly normal people to do horrible things.

IPT:  I'm always fascinated by the notion of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

DJ:  I was also really interested in how we, as a society, engage with violence, how for instance, we’re disgusted when someone murders another person but when it comes time for punishment, so many of us answer with blood thirst, with this sort of primal, murderous want for vengeance and justice. So with that book, I think there are moments when readers will turn away from the violence, and moments when they may potentially embrace it. I’m very interested in where that line is drawn. I think it’s important for us to think about.

As far as writing about a veteran and about the impact of war, I spent a lot of time reading books by veterans, watching documentaries, listening to interviews. I think the hard part for me was trying not to let Thad’s story become the sort of stereotypical story of the shattered veteran. I tried to make his time in the service seem like one of the places where he felt valued. I tried to make the damage he came home with something that hadn’t affected everyone he served with in the same way. That was difficult in a lot of ways because none of those other people are in the story aside from anecdotally, small glimpse in flashbacks. This is very much Thad’s story, and his story is one of severe trauma, but it was important to me to at least provide that other side even if it was only in the background, only sort of in passing, in the periphery. Hopefully, I got it halfway right.

The view from David's backyard

IPT:  The mountains of North Carolina are essentially another character in your books.  They've been referred to as “Appalachian Noir,” largely because the sense of place is so paramount to the stories.  In fact, the "Huffington Post" called Weight "Darkly stunning Appalachian noir."  Do you think that category is a fair description of your work?

DJ:  When you come from an area like this, people and place is sort of this inseparable thing. You can’t really separate or discern one from the other. For me, characters just sort of claw their way out of this landscape. So there’s that. But I think this idea of noir is something I hadn’t really thought about early on. I wasn’t coming out of a crime fiction tradition. That’s not the stuff I read. I didn’t grow up reading Elmore Leonard or Jim Thompson. I was coming out of writers like Larry Brown and William Gay and Harry Crews and Ron Rash and Daniel Woodrell.

But looking back, when I think about the traditional sense of noir, the French idea, the idea of the black novel or the black film, just this sort of inescapable mood that takes over a work of art, I think all of those writers that I loved could easily fit into that definition. You think about a novel like Daniel Woodrell’s The Death Of Sweet Mister, the last line of that, one of the most beautiful last lines I’ve ever read, is also just one of the most noir sentences ever constructed. So when I think about it like this, I think my work fits into that idea of noir, at least in the traditional sense. With a novel like The Weight Of This World, that novel has a pall cast over it from the opening sentence to the last broken breath. That’s something I’m very conscious of, and I think it’s indicative of the types of stories I’ve always loved most.

IPT:  I’ve had a number of interesting conversations about the huge bestseller Hillbilly Elegy thanks to the pieces you’ve written about the book and its erroneous characterization of Appalachia.  You clearly think the book has done a disservice to the region and its inhabitants.  Can you tell our readers a bit about that, a perspective that seems to be lacking in the mainstream press?

Appalachia is huge

DJ:  I think the two greatest failures of Hillbilly Elegy are that, one, J.D. Vance offers a pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps solution to systematic poverty, and, two, he uses an individual experience to try and offer a perspective about a region that stretches from the hill country of Mississippi to New York, an area covering 205,000 square miles across 420 counties in 13 states. 

Going back centuries, the history of this place is one of outside interests coming into the region and exploiting the land and its people of its resources and leaving when there was nothing left but ashes. First it was lumber, then it was coal, now its tourism, unrestricted land development, and gentrification. Everyone’s familiar with the Flint, Michigan water crisis, but how many people in America know that there are countless towns in coal country where folks haven’t been able to drink the water for decades? What’s so despicable about Hillbilly Elegy is that Vance’s answer isn’t to point the finger at those who did the robbing, but rather to tell the folks who’ve had their pockets picked to stop complaining and get back to work. He and I fundamentally disagree when it comes to who’s to blame and how we fix it.

So the other issue with the book is painting the entire region under a singular paradigm. I don’t have any issue with the stories Vance tells about his upbringing, the people he describes. That’s his truth. Those people exist. But to define a region as vast as Appalachia under any one truth is an absurdity. We’re talking about a place that’s more than 40,000 square miles larger than the state of California. Think about that. Let that sink in. So what happens is that everyone who reads this walks away with a singular image of what Appalachia is, and it’s false. Time and time and time again, we’re painted as uneducated, poverty-stricken, shoeless, toothless, white trash looking for a handout. Never mind the fact that we’re not all white, the fact that we have large black and latinx populations. Never mind the fact that large industrial cities like Pittsburgh are Appalachian. Never mind the number of incredible universities and community colleges spread throughout the region. Never mind the culture, the strong sense of family, the strength of Appalachian women. Never mind all of it. We’re one thing and one thing alone to outsiders. That stereotype has been made disgustingly clear.

I think the saddest part for me isn’t that Vance’s book is just another horrible misrepresentation, we’re used to that by now, but rather, it’s the fact that his book is the only thing anyone outside this region has read about this place in decades. There’s so so so much beautiful, beautiful art coming out of these mountains, and no one is paying any attention to it.

David, what is this creature?!

IPT:  I’m so excited to be included in the fishing anthology that you’ve pulled together.  Thank you for broadening the category of fishing to include lobstering!  What inspired you to take on this project?

DJ:  The name of the book is Gather At The River, and it will come out some time early next spring from Hub City Press. I think one of the most incredible things about it is the talent I was able to pull together. I’m lucky to have some incredibly talented friends, people like you and Ace Atkins and C.J. Box and Natalie Baszile and Ron Rash. We’ve got 25 authors and a third of them are New York Times Bestsellers. The rest are all award-winning, best-selling writers with multiple books on the shelf. That’s pretty astounding. All the royalties are going to a nonprofit called CAST For Kids, which has a lot of different projects going, but ultimately, is just an organization that tries to get more kids into fishing. The publisher is also a nonprofit, promoting art and literature in the upstate of South Carolina, so technically, all the money is going to charity. 

As far as how I came up with the idea, I’ve just always been obsessed with fishing. Anybody who knows me knows that. I can’t sit by water and not fish it. I think that’s really the one thing I’m best at. It’s what I’m most passionate about. But anyways, I was sitting around one day, and I was thinking about how I wish I could do something for charity. I don’t have any money, so donations were pretty much out of the question. Then I just got to thinking about what my talents are and what I can do with that, and so I came up with the idea of editing an anthology of fishing essays, calling on the help of my friends. After that it all just sort of lined itself up. I got the authors together, and I sold the idea to Hub City. It turned out amazing. I’ve read about every outdoor-related book in print, and I can honestly say it’s one of the best fishing related books ever put together. 

IPT:  Okay, a couple of questions I always like to ask:  First, what has surprised you most about being a published author?

DJ:  I think just the simple fact that people read the work and that they connect with it. It’s strange to go into a bookstore and see your books on the shelves. It’s strange to go into an airport and see a novel you wrote sitting next to the thirty-dollar bag of Fritos. I remember the first time I went to France for a festival in Vincennes, and a woman ran up to me on the street having recognized me and she wanted to tell me how much she loved my first novel. For someone who’d never left North Carolina before the book stuff started, who’d never been on an airplane before he flew to New York City to sign a contract, that’s pretty incredible. There was someone the other day who commented on an Instagram post of mine about reading one of my novels for a book club in China. That type of thing just boggles my mind.

IPT:  Second favorite question:  Is there a wannabe book lurking in the back of your brain, something you would write if you didn’t have to consider agents, editors, and fans?  A romance?  Non-fiction?  Cookbook?

DJ:  The first book I ever wrote was a memoir called Growing Gills. It came out with a really small press and is out of print now, but early on, all I was writing was creative nonfiction, and more specifically, nature writing. I think I wanted to be like John Gierach, maybe Rick Bass or something like that.

Eventually, I just sort of gravitated toward fiction and that’s mostly what I write nowadays, but I think one day, it’s likely I’ll pull together a collection of essays. I’m still writing a lot of essays. I had that essay earlier this year with "New York Times Magazine," and I’ve got another coming out later in the year with "Garden & Gun." So I still do a good bit of that. But as far as something that might be surprising, I’d like to write a children’s book one day. I do a lot of painting in between novels. I use it as a way to sort of pull my brain out of whatever darkness I’ve created in the fiction, a sort of meditation. But anyways, those paintings are always really bright, child-like, almost Seussian pictures of fish and birds and raccoons, whatever. I’d like to try and put a story together with some paintings one day.

IPT:  I didn't know that!  I look forward to seeing some of those paintings!  

David will be joining us today to answer your questions, and one lucky reader who comments will get a copy of The Weight of This World.

The Weight of This World
Critically acclaimed author David Joy, whose debut, Where All Light Tends to Go, was hailed as “a savagely moving novel that will likely become an important addition to the great body of Southern literature” - the "Huffington Post," returns to the mountains of North Carolina with a powerful story about the inescapable weight of the past.

A combat veteran returned from war, Thad Broom can’t leave the hardened world of Afghanistan behind, nor can he forgive himself for what he saw there. His mother, April, is haunted by her own demons, a secret trauma she has carried for years. Between them is Aiden McCall, loyal to both but unable to hold them together. Connected by bonds of circumstance and duty, friendship and love, these three lives are blown apart when Aiden and Thad witness the accidental death of their drug dealer and a riot of dope and cash drops in their laps. On a meth-fueled journey to nowhere, they will either find the grit to overcome the darkness or be consumed by it. The Weight Of This World is available now in paperback from Putnam Books.


David Joy is the author of the Edgar-nominated novel Where All Light Tends to Go (Putnam, 2015), as well as the novels The Weight Of This World (Putnam, 2017) and The Line That Held Us (Putnam, 2018). He is also the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman's Journey (Bright Mountain Books, 2011), which was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award.

Joy is the recipient of an artist fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. His latest short stories and essays have appeared in the "New York Times Magazine", "Garden & Gun," and "The Bitter Southerner."

Joy lives in the North Carolina mountains.