Black Heron Press, 2020

INTERVIEW BY GINA WILLIAMS

Jonathan Starke, a former boxer and bodybuilder, is the editor of Palooka Magazine and author of the forthcoming novel, You’ve Got Something Coming, winner of the Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction (Black Heron Press, April 2020). His poem “Between Them” was featured in the June 2012 issue of [PANK]. Everything I’ve ever read of Starke’s kicks me in the gut with emotion and orbits around in my brain forever—complete with images—like mind-blowing, devastating cinema. His breakthrough novel about an aging boxer and his young daughter is no different. I reached out recently to talk with him about process, plot, and pain.

GINA WILLIAMS: Publishers Weekly recently reviewed You’ve Got Something Coming, saying “Starke’s bruising, brooding book is a real heartbreaker.” Another reviewer, Peter Stenson, author of Fiend and Thirty-Seven, comments, “You will be hard pressed to find a novel that is simultaneously gut-wrenching and brimming with the beauty of inextinguishable hope. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a better novel published this year.”

That’s incredible advance praise. Describe your creative process in the sense of how you went about developing the characters and plot so strongly that readers can’t help but react as if it’s their own fight.

JONATHAN STARKE: The novel is written in a tight window of time and narrative lens. There’s nothing but closeness to the two main characters—Trucks, an aging boxer, and Claudia, his young daughter battling deafness—who live on the fringes of society. I think what moves people about the read is the unusual portrait of a single father raising a daughter while they hitch across the country, Trucks trying to make the most of his limited skill set and impart hope to his little girl in a seemingly hopeless world.

GW: Your deeply emotional style of writing must take a toll. Did the writing process impact you physically and mentally? What did you do to release yourself from that grip or did it happen naturally when you finished the book?

JS: Everything I’ve written has taken something from me. When writing from a place of deep emotional truth or pain, this is bound to happen. I’ve never felt a point of “release” after completing a piece of writing, but there is a slight feeling of relief that it’s done, that it’s been written about, and that hopefully others will connect to it and feel a shared experience or understanding.

GW: Do you have any quirky writing rituals and/or habits?

JS: I’m not someone who writes often. I’ll go months without writing. My mind is always “taking notes,” and whenever the next piece is ready, it flows out of me entirely. It’s always been this way. The novel was no different. To go out and live and do interesting things and pay attention to the world, that’s gathering the material and “mentally writing.” The act of writing comes later, sometimes months or years, in a raging river of typing.

GW: Who was the most difficult character to write? And why do you think that’s the case?

JS: The hardest character to write is the one who’s absent, the one hardly spoken about, the one that may have existed for a time but is forever gone now—through separation, through distance, through time, through death. But this is the character who often has the most effect on the others, their present lives, and it’s this effect I find so haunting and difficult to render.

GW: Your writing is powerful in the sense that it doesn’t just ache, but yanks the reader out of the bar, hauls them into the back alley, and knocks them out. How do you harness that kind of pain and rage without giving up story and language—or hope?

JS: The rage has to be stored and used infrequently—only when it’s necessary to create change or show how utterly desperate life has become. The pain works as a slow drip—a reader can see it throughout, but I find it best when it’s mostly unspoken and instead shown in how the characters behave and move and the choices they do or do not make. Wounded people are practiced at how to step into pain. Without at least a splinter of hope, I’m not sure there’s a point.

GW: How did this novel begin? What was the first seed?

JS: I saw this aging boxer, early forties, with his back to this brick wall outside in the dead of winter. I understood he was in Wisconsin. He looked miserable. He was cold. In a state of desperation. He was clutching used hearing aids, and I thought, What the hell’s he doing with those? Soon I realized he was outside of a children’s home. He was breaking in to get his little girl back.

GW: Where did you draw inspiration for Trucks, Claudia, and your novel’s other characters?

JS: I care about people on the fringes. I’ve known many people who have little or nothing. For a lot of my life, I’ve had little. I used to box. When something’s in your blood, you think about it every day. I can’t remember a day I haven’t thought about boxing. It’s a tough thing to step away from. Once you’ve done it, it’s hard not to want to go back. You try to just pretend it away, but when it’s in you, it’s got hold. That’s what Trucks is facing every day, but he’s also got Claudia to think about. But with someone like him, when it’s in his blood so deep, how does he navigate their life in a way that he can protect her best interests but also pursue this passion that begs for him?

GW: You’re well-known for creative nonfiction and short stories. What inspired you to write a novel? Was it difficult to make the transition?

JS: Once I saw this story in front of me, I knew it was going to be a long project. I can’t write a novel in a typical or conventional sense. I know that’s not in me. This is a linear piece, and it takes place over a few weeks. I knew I needed to limit the time and the chapters. It’s a linear novel in vignettes.

GW: What is your proudest achievement outside of writing?

JS: It’s not an achievement of mine, but I want to say my father. He raised two boys by himself and worked his ass off and sacrificed to get us beyond scraping by and to give us a good life. I admire him so much for carving his own path and getting educated and believing in himself when nobody else did. He’s an inspiring and giving and loving and incredible person. This novel being about a single father, I think it’s important I say this about my own father and to also acknowledge all the other single fathers out there who are working hard and giving love and doing their damnedest.

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JONATHAN STARKE is a former bodybuilder and boxer. He’s harvested seaweed in Ireland, given free hugs in Spain, and flipped pancakes in Denmark. He loves riding trains and wondering about the lives unfolding outside the window. His biggest passions are learning and travel, and he’s ventured to sixty countries via hitching, couch surfing, and working exchanges. He plays piano and thrives on diverse workouts, organic food, artwork, street markets, and anything related to helping others, especially in the arts. He’s the founding editor of Palooka.

GINA WILLIAMS is a journalist, photographer, former firefighter, and gardener. She’s a Pacific Northwest native and can often be found rambling in the Oregon Outback, volunteering at the community garden, or on assignment in a far-flung location. She lives and creates near Portland, Oregon. Her writing and visual art have been featured by River Teeth, Okey-Panky, Moss, Carve, The Sun, and Fugue, among others. She’s the author of An Unwavering Horizon, a full-length collection of poetry published by Finishing Line Press. It’s now available for preorder and will be distributed in May 2020.  GinaMarieWilliams.com