Ask The Author: Rhoads Stevens

Rhoads Stevens, author of “Pork Pie” from the August issue, challenges everyone with a writing assignment and discusses nutnfancy’s view on war knives.

1. First, do you know if you really can bring weapons back from war. This seems true, but do people bring their own weapons to war now or are they always supplied? Is it a mix of the two? If they give you a gun, do you have an option to buy it after your tour is over?

A year ago, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about knives. They were knife reviews, and they were posted by someone going by the name “nutnfancy.” So I think this nutnfancy had something to say about people bringing knives to wars, and those knives just didn’t hold up. (I have to trust nutnfancy on that one.) And wasn’t Seymour Glass’ pistol from the war?

2. The man sitting beside me at this coffee shop is talking about politics and using the word “obviously” to begin every sentence. Say something political using the words “obviously,” “freedom,” and “hallmark.”

I am in no way qualified to say anything political, though it’s hard to think of a non-hallucinatory context in which the words “obviously” and “freedom” appear together. Here’s my attempt, but I know it makes me look like a twit: Obviously, bi-partisan politics pervert freedom, but isn’t perversion the hallmark of an almond rubbing against a walnut on the night of a lunar eclipse?

3. Sum up Pork Pie in 3 words or less.

For lonesome readers.

4. How old is the main character and how old the old man? I always picture main characters as myself until told otherwise. Did you have me in mind when you wrote this?

I have never met you, Mr. Brinson, but I would like to. I Googled you and saw some images that might be yours. (Are you bearded, Mr. Barba?) I also read some of your excellent writing. Would you like to go to Fall River with me to get a pork pie? We could go to the water there and plaintively say, “Fall, river.”

But I’m not sure how old they are, exactly, because I observed them. When I see fights on the street, I do not collect ages. (I do, however, try to catch glimpses of teeth.)

5. There’s a real battle of intimacy here. You play on social etiquette and politeness where you’re not supposed to touch the face of or kiss an old person you don’t know. Why does the breaking of those kind of barriers always come off as depression?

This is an excellent question. If you’ll let me invoke Seymour Glass again, then I’ll say that this question makes my stars come out.

As much as I like your question, though, I don’t really understand where it’s coming from–that is, I don’t know why aberrant behavior would always come across as depression. Do you think that that one character in “Pork Pie”–the character who might be you–is depressed? Maybe, for homework, we should all make a scene in a restaurant or in an elevator or at the DMV or at the Greyhound bus station and see what it feels like. It might be the opposite of depression–whatever that is.

6. Write a sentence you read recently and loved. Say where it’s from so you don’t get sued and go to jail forever.

This sentence is from John Williams’s book Stoner:

“It occurred to him that he had never before known the body of another; and it occurred to him further that that was the reason he had always somehow separated the self of another from the body that carried that self around.”