Henry Wise writes like he’s been around forever, masterfully weaving together a tapestry of flattened forests and sprawling tobacco plantations, along with intimate portraits of the people who populate rural Southern Virginia. Rarely does a first-time novelist come along with such a bold, singular voice. I’ve got a feeling Henry’s here to stay.
—Eli Cranor, author of Don’t Know Tough
FR: Hello, Henry, how are you? How’s the book tour going?
HW: It’s been a great several months, full of surprises and opportunities to do talk with people like you. Thanks for the opportunity to be here.
FR: I read somewhere, maybe listened, that you came up as a poet. How much did reading and writing poetry go into writing HOLY CITY?
HW: Reading and writing poetry taught me to pay attention to every decision, no matter how small—everything from form to what observations to make. As I read over my first draft of HOLY CITY, I found that a kind of bleak lyricism had taken hold and that it was necessary to the world of the book. I realized that language can be more than the vehicle for a story; it can be the lens through which the reader sees the world. For me, the cadence of the language came to mirror the setting of Euphoria County—with its surprising, elusive, and mysterious flora, its snaking roads, and its trapped secrets—and I’m not sure I would have seen the reflection if I hadn’t tried my hand at poetry first.
FR: Often writers of fiction take from their own experiences, like someone they know. Did anyone, maybe yourself, go into the character of Will? What made Will tick when you started creating him, going on the journey with him? How do you approach flawed and complex characters?
HW: I draw from a general body of experience in character and place, but I did not intentionally base any character on someone I’ve known. There are parts me in Will. I did work for an insulation company in Richmond, for example. I’m also an amateur film photographer. My family is deeply rooted in Virginia, as is Will’s. But the writing only starts to become interesting when characters surprise me, when I start to think, ‘oh, that’s who you are.’ That’s when I start to live and breathe the material. Will surprised me, as did every character in the book.
FR: What are your experiences with ““People around here seemed to live in a cloud of defeat, self-wrought and inherited.” I relate to that line. Growing up in Boston we have it ingrained in us to be self-defeatists, and it’s definitely passed down, ultimately turning into a guilt switch of sorts. In the world you grew up in, did you notice that behavior, maybe even been that way yourself? Did feeling and understanding it help take the characters on their journey through their purgatory?
HW: There was definitely some of that in Virginia growing up, and a lot of it had to do with the South losing the Civil War. But if someone doesn’t have the Civil War it’ll be something else, that cross they bear. That’s why the narrator points out, “Whites had the lost cause; Blacks had slavery. It would seem they should be pitted against each other, but they were really dug in behind the same trench, and the rest of the state, the rest of the country, was out there.” I wanted to bring out the everyday reality that the differences that can divide communities can also bind them together.
FR: Let’s switch it up. I’m sure you’re sick of talking about it, but I haven’t seen this kind of excitement for a debut novel since Donald Ray Pollock’s first novel, The Devil All The Time. How’s all the attention treating you? On one hand it must be wonderful living a dream, but also on the same coin it must be unreal, wild, a bit scary? You have wonderful authors who blurbed the book: Megan Abbott, S.A. Cosby, Ace Atkins, Eli Cranor, Polly Stewart, and Chris Offutt. And no pun intended, but that’s a Holy City worth of blubs.
HW: That’s a hell of a lineup, isn’t it? Those authors were so generous with their time, and their blurbs were above and beyond what I expected. Thanks to each of them for their support, and for helping me launch HOLY CITY.
I’m grateful for all the attention the book has received and a bit surprised. I was convinced HOLY CITY would never be published, so to see it as a finalist for awards is both gratifying and surreal. But I’m proud of the book. I held nothing back, and I’m glad the work means something to others.
Ace Atkins told me once that the business of writing can get in the way of writing, and he’s totally right. I think he meant that the self-promotion and attention can be fatal for a writer. So, while it’s nice to be appreciated, I’m also trying to distance myself from that side of things so that I can stay sharp.
FR: I listened to a podcast with you some months back. And you have a young child, a home, the day job, etc. When you are involved in a project what’s the process like? 1-2 Hours when the child is asleep? An hour before the sun comes up? Do you have a writing room, area, or do you write where you can when you can?
HW: My preference is to write first thing in the morning—coffee, no phone, no distractions—but that hasn’t happened in a while. Lately, my writing has been mostly at night.
FR: As I mentioned earlier you started in poetry. I did too, and I still love it. I have met a few authors who started as poets, William Boyle comes to mind. However, who in the crime world, grit-lit world, did you start reading first? I see HOLY CITY as both a crime novel, but also a Grit-Lit novel. Name a few living authors who inspired you to take the leap into novel writing, as well as a few authors who have left this mortal coil? (Maybe 3 living and 3 dead)
HW: A few living influences would be Ace Atkins, Tom Franklin, Chris Offutt, and poet Gary Snyder. Dead writers would be Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, Larry Brown. I could mention so many more, both living and dead.
FR: Okay, back to the book. For me, HOLY CITY, the people, even the sounds that ran through my head when I was reading it were atmospheric. Personally, I find an author can really fuck up their novel if they dive too deep into the atmospheric pond, but you keep pace with story and find a perfect the with it. Did it come naturally? Or was it a really grueling process of revision? Elaborate.
HW: It goes back to being a poet. Atmosphere in HOLY CITY is integral to the story. The reader needs to experience the region, to smell it and feel it. The atmospheric descriptions also illustrate the convoluted and indirect yet very real tethers to the past. I see the language as delivering that, forcing the reader to live in this place for a while and tinting the world appropriately. But spending so much time on atmosphere, setting, and psychology can bog down a book and eclipse the plot. I love to delete bad writing and worked hard to be unsentimental. I believe a writer can do anything if they don’t get too precious about their writing.
FR: How did you approach the tension and distrust between Will and Bennico? And within their tension and distrust was it meant to paint a bigger picture of us as people?
HW: The tension between Will and Bennico evolved organically, but I had a lot of work to do to discover who they were, and that had everything to do with how they interacted with each other. Writing, for me, is not a science. I may be the author, but a lot of what unfolds is not up to me. I heard somewhere that Peter Taylor said a story has to write itself at some point. I think what he was getting at was that the characters should come alive, and you should let them. I try as hard as I can to get myself out of the way of writing a book.
FR: It truly is a wonderful novel. I enjoyed it a great deal, and I look forward to more of your work. Are you currently working on something new? Perhaps putting together an idea? If so, can you give the readers and me a hint of what it deals with? Or are you taking a much-needed break after the whirlwind success of a debut novel?
HW: Thank you. I’m working hard on novel two, Orphans of Paradise. It’s a sequel of sorts with some new characters (and maybe some old) that zooms in on the Snakefoot Swamp, which appears in HOLY CITY. The Snakefoot may not occupy many pages in HOLY CITY, but it has a gravity, and I’ve let it pull me in.
FR: Can we expect other types of writing from you, short fiction, poetry, essays? Or have you found the novel to be a comfort zone for the time being.
HW: I’ll continue to write poetry and take photographs, but I am most earnestly drawn to the book form—especially the novel—because there’s a world that consumes writer and reader. So the novel will be my focus, perhaps with a poetry collection at some point.
FR: BONUS QUESTION: I see you rock the 70’s and 80’s mustache like my father did. If you could have dinner and whiskey with four famous mustaches dead or alive, who would they be?
HW: Mark Twain, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Clark Gable. Does Charlie Chaplin’s mustache count? He’d be a fifth.
