The F**k Dialogues

There are times it’s good to be me.

You may hear me bitch and moan about reviewing on a rather consistent basis. Behind that is the knowledge that every now and again, books that I wouldn’t have the insight or knowledge to pick up on my own fall into my hands.

Manuel Ramos’ Mooney’s Road to Hell was one of those books that balance out all the infuriating ones. And Scott Wolven’s collection of 13 short stories, Controlled Burn, made just as powerful an impression on me.

In my mind, after I read it, I thought, “Every person who has written that short stories are a dying art are proven dead wrong by this book.”

If I were to hear from Scott that he just sits down and writes these stories without re-writes and bam! they’re that good, like Mozart and his one-off compositional masterpieces, I’d be sorely tempted never to write again.

That’s why I’ll never ask Scott that question.

I’ll post here what I wrote after finishing Controlled Burn:

“These are the most raw, brutal, lyrical and hard stories I’ve read in an age.

I meant to read a story a night and ended up consuming the entire book at once. There is a part of every human being capable of creating only grief and ruin, leaving chaos in their wake. Wolven writes of these people.

The stories are intertwined over years, location or happenstance who’s protagonists cross over into oblivion of their own making. It is an oblivion we’ve all at least set a toe into, scuttling away, scared by what we saw and felt. The men in these stories embraced it, breathing it into every cell.”

If you haven’t read Scott and are afeared of laying down your hard-earned money for his collection, read his stories Eight Ball or Barracuda and join his fan club.

Wolven’s work has appeared in the Mississippi Review and three (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) Best American Mysteries collections. He is a master and a must read for any connoisseur of the short story. How’s that for some unadulterated gushing?

What is your favorite use of the word fuck?

As the first letter in the graffiti acronym FTW – fuck the world.

Do you recall the first time you heard the word fuck?

I don’t recall the first time I heard the word fuck, but I do use it now.

In a preponderance of your stories, and there are many, your characters are fucked. But most keep fighting even as the current is pulling them under. It’s almost fatalism with a silver lining. Do you view the world with the grim stoicism of your characters?

It’s a very difficult question to answer – I’m always trying to tell a good story and if characters and situations are hard, I’ll try to tell a good story about that. It’s always about telling a good story as best as I can.

Some of the most jaded, read-that-wrote-about-it reviewers read ‘Controlled Burn’ and hailed your work as, to quote Kevin Burton Smith, “…the arrival of an important new voice, not just in crime fiction, but possibly in American literature itself.” Do you nod your head in agreement or open your eyes wide in surprise?

When somebody reads a story of mine, or Controlled Burn, and writes great stuff, I feel very lucky as a writer. Kevin Burton Smith – yourself – you read a tremendous amount of fiction and I have great respect for that and feel lucky I’ve written something that stands out for you. It’s pretty amazing.

Influences (more lazy one word questions)?

Work influences a lot of what I write (Scott is, as of this writing, in Louisiana helping to re-build). Music of all kinds.

What are you reading?

The Lineman’s and Cableman’s Handbook, Section 36, Distribution Transformer Installation.

What is the disc in your CD player?

Buddy Guy.

Scott is one of the few people I know who might be able to out-nice Sean Doolittle. And that’s saying a lot.

Here is a snippet from Scott’s story St Gabriel,

Nobody asks a man why he drinks. Mixed in there with the private darkness of reasons, nobody wants to know the answer from the man who is already drunk. I was drinking to get a woman to come back to me, which is the worst reason of all. The cost of pain. When you see someone so bright, such a bright fire, a diamond, it stays with you and their image is on the inside of your eyelids when you close your eyes. I can still see her, she lights up the night of life. Who wouldn’t want her back? Her smile alone could cure you of whatever disease had got hold of you. Oceans of booze couldn’t put out that fire.