1. You’ve chosen to write a book that takes place neither in your native country nor in your own time period. How much research goes into a period piece like Barking Mad: A Reginald Spiffington Mystery?
Not as much as you may think, simply because I’ve been reading British fiction, particularly British fiction from the 19th and early twentieth centuries, for most of my life. I’m an incurable Anglophile, and I’m very comfortable with those idioms and that cadence of language. Agatha Christie and Gosford Park can teach you a lot about the workings of an English manor house in the 30s, whether you realize you’re learning it or not. Where I did do research was on specifics that arose during the writing. I spent an entire afternoon reading about spats. That’s part of the fun of writing a novel like this—spending time in another era.
2. Reginald Spiffington, or Reggie to his cohorts and confidants, is quite the armchair detective. How did the quick-witted, occasionally bumbly sleuth come into being?
Barking Mad is an homage to three particular traditions: the English manor house murder-mystery, the 1930s Universal horror films, and the comedy novels of P.G. Wodehouse. Reggie began life as my own take on Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster. He’s got that basic structure: idle playboy, living in the moment, not much exertion of brainpower, and of course the unflappable manservant who solves problems. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster novels have become so ingrained in our cultural consciousness that I’d argue they’ve become a minor trope—you see them in Arthur Bach and Hobson in the movie Arthur, for instance. I tried, and hopefully succeeded in, departing from or expanding on that initial model. Reggie is not quite as dim as Bertie Wooster, for instance, especially by the end of the novel. And I also used elements of the protagonists of some of the Universal horror films of the 30s and 40s, particularly Lon Chaney, Jr’s Larry Talbot and the suaveish doctor from Daughter of Dracula. Reggie was tremendous fun to write. Getting to say and do the things he does in the novel was a blast. And as I wrote him, he certainly became his own man—greater than the sum of his literary precedents. Becoming a werewolf changes a man, I guess.
3. You are also known for your expertise on representations of monsters in culture, from Gothic literature to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Where does this interest in the macabre originate? And how do you feel about the rise in popularity of classic monsters in pop culture?
My “interest in the macabre” started with my mom. My parents divorced when I was 11, and during the year between that split and my mother’s remarrying, my mom and I developed a tradition of sitting up late on Friday nights and watching the horror-movie double-feature that started at 11:30. Usually it was one episode of the gloriously awful Night Stalker with Darren McGavin, followed by something with Lugosi or Karloff. My mom loves old horror movies, and stories with dark houses and menacing ghosts. I learned it all from her, and then from my own reading and exploring in the thirty years since. As for the recent rise in the popularity of classic monsters, I don’t think it’s recent. These stories and characters have always been with us. We carry vampires and werewolves with us, we just have a relatively short cultural memory, most
of us, and new generations think they’ve invented it. What I’m waiting for is for someone to do a definitive retake on the werewolf, in the way that Joss Whedon redefined vampires for us in Buffy.
4. A murder mystery with a werewolf protagonist, Barking Mad could be called “genre” fiction. What do you feel the role of “genre” is in the larger conversation about literature? Has academia been wrong in labeling it, to quote your own Pelham, as one of those “less edifying forms”?
Outside of MFA programs, I don’t think the academy looks down on genre literature very much any more. Science fiction, Gothic fiction, graphic novels are all legitimate areas of study, and anyone who thinks about those types of literature knows that they can explore, explain, and comment on our culture in ways that “literary” fiction can’t. The sort of snobbery you’re talking about is largely a marketing construct, and it’s exclusively a 20th century invention. Dickens wrote Gothic fiction, Henry James wrote ghost stories, Shakespeare made an entire career out of genre writing. No one made these distinctions in the past, and they don’t really hold water now. “Literary fiction” is as much a genre with rules and conventions as fantasy or mystery fiction. There are brilliant works and crappy works in both areas, and in equal measures. The fact that Sarah Waters’ astonishing ghost story “The Little Stranger” is on one shelf and China Mieville’s masterful The City and the City is on another has to do with marketing people, with what sort of cover the book has. Michael Chabon has wonderful things to say on this in his essay “Trickster in a Suit of Lights,” and I agree with him almost completely. Being one myself, I love genre fans—there is a loyalty and dedication there that generates a very real energy. I’m proud to count myself among those folks. You know, I’ll be at both AWP and DragonCon this year, and I really love walking between those two worlds. I’ll leave both conventions bursting to write, with a slew of connections with fellow writers and readers that will sustain and inspire me on a fundamental level. But I’ll have a hell of a lot more fun at DragonCon.
5. Aside from careers in teaching, writing and music, you recently released the short film Cornerboys, animated by the fantastic Ali LaRock. What was the experience of filmmaking like?
Remarkably like being in a band, because of the way each of our contributions expanded the original idea in wonderful and unexpected ways. I am inordinately proud of Cornerboys, the moreso because it was such a collaborative effort. I wrote the poem over ten years ago, and to take that piece and see what Ali and Kevin Smith, the composer, did with it was satisfying in so many ways. Kevin and I have known each other for well over thirty years, and I trusted him completely to do the sort of wonderful thing that he did. Ali’s work on the film was crucial, and shaped it I think even more than my words. I can’t think of Cornerboys without thinking of her art—her depictions of Jennie Lynn and the other denizens of that little world are the final truth of them, as if she had opened up my head and pulled it out.
6. Will we be hearing any more of Reggie and company in the future?
Absolutely. I’m working on two novels at the moment, bouncing back and forth like a pinball dipped in ink. One of them is the next Reginald Spiffington novel, tentatively called Wolf Tickets. I’ve really grown to love Reggie, Pelham, Mimsy, and the rest of the crew. I’ll certainly spend a lot more time with them.