Kelby Losack

An Interview with Troy James Weaver

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(Apocalypse Party, 2020)

INTERVIEW BY KELBY LOSACK

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Troy James Weaver is the author of Witchita Stories, Visions, Temporal, and Marigold. He lives in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and dogs. I’ve been hooked on the kid’s writing since seeing his first reading ever in Norman, Oklahoma, where his words and his voice had a smoky bar full of tweakers using their handlebar mustaches to wipe tears from their faces. Weaver’s writing is refreshingly human, finding the beautiful within the ugly and vice versa. His characters are reflections. Though he writes with the experience and insight of a 700-year-old Buddhist monk, I refer to him as “the kid” because—in spite of the loss and heartache spilling from his pen—Weaver writes with a level of empathy only an unjaded child could muster. And that blend of honesty with compassion is hard to find in an increasingly nihilistic, cynical landscape. I reached out one night to discuss with the kid his most recent book, Selected Stories, and after our conversation, I ascended to the highest plane of enlightenment. 

Blood doesn’t come out of a puncture much more than a dot. You could run a sharpened dowel through somebody and yank it out and you’d barely see a drop or two. I don’t even know why they bother with the cotton swab after a shot. Just roll your sleeve down and move on. That’s how my brother does it. Sometimes there might be a smear of bleed-through, but it’s rare that you’ll see it. Dark-colored shirts, an expert. He doesn’t bother rolling them down for me, though. He knows I know what he does.

~Troy James Weaver, Selected Stories, 2020 [30]

KELBY LOSACK: The common thread through this collection seems to be this clinging to memories of a lost life, a lamenting of literal death, or what could have been, or of a lifestyle being reshaped around sudden changes. How often was death on your mind while penning these stories?

TROY JAMES WEAVER: All the time. I lost my dad and my father-in-law a year apart from each other. Most of these stories were written during that time, with a couple of exceptions. In choosing the stories, too, I wanted the tone to be consistent.

Experiencing death changes you.

I think my characters are working through the same state of confusion I was working through at the time, though I didn’t realize it then.

KL: There is a strange relationship that’s hard to navigate after a close one passes, right? The way you wrote about characters mourning in “Construction” and in “Instructions for Mourning,” for example—like, sometimes you find yourself mourning in very bizarre ways. Or you try to find ways to communicate with the spirit or memory of that person, in a totem such as an unearthed alien plush toy or one of those lifelike sex dolls. In a way, those are no different than an RIP tattoo, right? What are your thoughts on how we commemorate and communicate with our loved ones post-mortem?

TJW: Yes, it’s very strange. I don’t know that grief goes away and that’s why it’s confusing. Objects become sacred to you because the person who owned the object was sacred to you. I think I communicate through art. Sometimes it feels like an exorcism. In a way, it immortalizes not only them, but us, writer and subject, together.

I have a hard time articulating what I mean, because these immense losses still affect me every day. I’m still trying to figure it all out.

KL: I feel you on that, big time, and I think art is a great way to articulate what can’t easily be expressed. The tone of nearly every part of Selected Stories carries that sense of trying to maintain remnants of the past in a rapidly shifting present.

I remember you mentioning somewhere that this would be your last book for a while. Is this still the case and what made you decide that?

TJW: I’m just tired of publishing shit. I’m going to be writing, for sure. I’m just not going to send it anywhere. Just tired of giving a fuck. I don’t like all the shit you have to do. Like all the posting and the trying to sell yourself shit you have to do.

KL: Yeah, fuck being a brand, fuck selling shit. It’s almost like people turn their noses up, too, when you talk about just caring about the art and they’re like, “yeah, but I gotta put food on the table and blah blah blah,” like okay cool, get a job maybe?

I just dig art that comes from a genuine place that isn’t trying to pander to anything. Art that communicates something beyond “I really wanted a book deal so here’s this algorithmic bullshit.”

I’m of the mind artists should probably never live off of their art. There’s something lost in the voice of someone who’s not putting in some kind of daily grind separate from their art. And maybe that separation of monetary pursuit and creative expression is the key to making honest art? Just feels like a lot of shit is materialistic, lacking soul. How do you think having a regular job affects your voice as a writer?

TJW: Exactly. I just want to feel the pureness of it again. And I do. I think I got lost in the idea that anybody gave a shit. And that’s fine. But I realized I don’t care if anybody else gives a shit. I give a shit. Having a regular job makes the stories happen. Living a regular life makes the stories happen. I’ve never understood these Ivy League, Big Five writers, trying to write about shit they clearly don’t understand. And also, I find their books to be suspect in almost every way and just straight up fucking dull half the time. There are a few exceptions, but most of it is dishonest bullshit. If I see Rhodes Scholar on the jacket copy, I’m passing. That’s all I’m saying.

KL: I fuck with everything you said 100%. What is the remedy to the situation, do you think? Self-publishing, zines, keeping it all to yourself? Something else?

TJW: I don’t know. I mean, I’ll publish again, just not soon. And as for the Ivy-leaguers, they’ll always be there. I think small presses and indie lit and whatnot are fighting the good fight, I just think we should be slinging more molotovs at the establishment. Make them notice. Get in some shit. Sling mud. Talk shit. Burn it down. Don’t be nice just because you think it will help your “career.” You won’t have a career, or it’ll be a mediocre one, if you don’t say what the fuck is on your mind and mean it.

KL: You’re speaking my language, man. I love the attitude. You’ve had a good streak of small press relationships, speaking of… Disorder, Broken River, King Shot, Future Tense… what made you link up with Apocalypse Party for this collection, and whose awesome decision was it to start a love story on page 69?

TJW: Apocalypse Party is just a cool new press. I think [Benjamin DeVos] is a great writer and I love working with people who are truly enthusiastic about what you do. He’s like that. So that’s how that worked out. I half-jokingly tweeted about putting out a collection and he and a handful of other presses hit me up and I already liked Ben and knew what he was about, so I immediately sent him what I had.

As for that story on that page, that must’ve been the genius that is Ben. Or pure coincidence. I’m not telling.

KL: Hell yeah, Ben is good people. Dude’s got good taste in music, too. What have you been listening to lately? I remember thinking of your last novel, Temporal, as like a shoegaze album in literary form. Selected Stories feels like the blues. Like raw, deep south, hole-in-your-gut blues.

TJW: Sparklehorse’s first three records, mostly the first one. That song “Spirit Ditch” is my jam. (Sandy) Alex G. Lewis’ L’Amour. Polvo. Slint. JPEGMAFIA. Nick Cave. Rapeman. Elliott Smith. 100 Gecs. Robert Johnson. Blind Willie McTell. Skip James. Boredoms. Hasil Adkins.

KL: So I wasn’t too far off, got some Blind Willie in there. JPEGMAFIA is my favorite artist of the moment. And I’ve been going back and listening to Two Nuns and a Pack Mule since you turned me on to Rapeman a while back. I think noise music is the perfect soundtrack to our current era.

TJW: For sure. The insanity is a mirror.

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KELBY LOSACK is the author of The Way We Came In and Heathenish, both published by Broken River Books. He lives with his wife in Gulf Coast Texas, where he builds custom furniture and hangs out with rappers.

[REVIEW] The Way We Came In by Kelby Losack

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(Broken River Books, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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There are two kinds of crime fiction. One kind is written by authors who think people do bad things because they are bad. The second kind, the kind that matters, is written by writers who understand that there is a plethora of reasons why someone would commit a crime. In the latter group, the authors producing the best, most authentic narratives are those who have been in direct contact with people like that and have experienced those situations. These authors possess a deep, nuanced understanding of the psychogeography of crime. Their work is generally devoid of judgement and representations that border on caricatures. Author Kelby Losack belongs to this group, and his work is a raw, visceral representation of desperation, hustling, and lives where there is no space to even fathom upward social mobility.

In The Way We Came In, Losack’s latest novel, a couple of brothers get together after one of them is released from prison. They have to make money to pay their rent, but regular work won’t give them enough, and they’re running out of time. What they need to do is clear, and it involves drugs and guns. It’s a path followed by many before them, and it’s supposed to happen smoothly, but things go south. They come up with a plan to stay afloat, but that also goes bad. Without the money they needed or the drugs to sell and after a failed attempt at fixing everything at once, the brothers end up in the hands of a man who plans to take their life for what they tried to do to him.

The Way We Came In is a tense, too-real story about coming up with a hustle when every other course of action is impossible. It is a narrative about need and desperation, but also about trying to do the right thing first and brotherly love. Losack explores the special relationship between brothers who love each other and trust each other in a way you can’t trust most people. These men share a gloomy past and the loss of their mother, and that pain brings them together above and beyond their blood. As with his previous novel, Heathenish, there is an unexpected emotional dimension to The Way We Came In that pushes it into an interstitial space between hardcore crime fiction and literary fiction.

There are many elements that work together to make this a required read for crime fiction fans (or fans of the unique type of narratives Losack writes, which I’ve always called hoodrat noir), and tension is at the top of that list. This novel moves forward at breakneck speed, and the action and tension ramp up at the same pace. Short chapters, explosive action sequences, and superb economy of language add to that:

“I jumped at the sound of knuckles rattling the screen door. You grabbed the burner off the table and for a few seconds, we sat motionless, staring at the front door. The rapper said, “Me desperté sintiéndome como si estuviera en la luna.” The second knock came heavier, more tenacious. I jumped again. You whispered, “Hide it,” waving a hand over all the yayo. While you crept to the window to cop a glance behind the bed sheet curtain, I held the unzipped lip of a backpack to the table’s edge and swept up all the contraband with my arm, then I shouldered the bag and spun around, ready to follow if you bolted, but you had tucked the gun in the back of your jeans and were reaching for the door knob, scratching your temple and shaking your head the way you do when you’re trying to suppress a laugh.”

While there is nothing quite like what Losack is doing in contemporary literature, the mix of real life struggles and keen observations are somewhat reminiscent of underground literary legend Peter Plate. Just like Plate did with San Francisco, Losack is a chronicler of the everyday struggles of folks on the verge between the right and the wrong side of the tracks. In The Way We Came In there are guns and drugs and people doing bad things, but they are not cutouts of criminals; they are people forced into illegal hustles. This lack of judgmental writing makes Losack’s work shine. He knows poverty, humanity, and doing whatever it takes while ignoring potential consequences are the holy trinity of crime in real life, and he brings that to the page beautifully. Furthermore, he does so while showing that the streets have many levels, and not everyone is on the same one despite sharing the same spaces:

“A vagrant who’d been begging at the intersection shuffled in on concrete-spattered tennis shoes. The toes of his shoes were split open so it looked like they were yawning when he walked. The old lady humming gospels smiled at him as he passed. The vagrant spent a good long minute in

the restroom and came out with beads of water dripping down his dreadlocked beard. He sat on a stool beneath a small analog television that hung from the ceiling. He watched a sitcom, laughing every time the studio audience laughed, and even when they didn’t. His laugh was a raspy cackle that was often followed by a red-faced coughing spell.”

Three quarters of the way into this books I was thinking: “Watch out, crime writers! Heathenish announced the arrival of an exciting new voice, but The Way We Came In proves Losack isn’t here to play.” Then I kept reading and reached the last two pages of the book. Losack had been holding out, keeping a piece of surreal magic in his pocket, like a desperate man trying to tell a story while holding an ounce in his fist. When I read the ending, my mind changed and my warning morphed into a decree: “Go home folks, the king of hoodrat noir is here and the game is over.”

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. He is the book review editor for Pank Magazine, and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.