The Drevlow Show: On Grit Lit and Larry Brown and the Writing Life with Benjamin Drevlow
By Adam Van Winkle
I first met Benjamin Drevlow at a wedding. A writer friend of mine leaned over and pointed to the guy with the Harry Crews mohawk and a Heineken in each hand and tells me, “That guy’s a good writer.” “I could see that,” I joke, but I trust this writer friend so I ask, “Who is he?”
Turns out, as I met him later that night, Drevlow was just taking over as Editor-in-Chief at one of my favorite all time litmags, Bull Men’s Fiction. I came to Bull because it has featured the likes of some of my favorite authors (see Bonnie Jo Campbell and Donald Ray Pollock). I stuck with Bull because it’s an overall badass rag, every online and print edition worth reading. Color me impressed.
So I read his fiction. And it’s fucking great. Seriously. Fucking. Great. Bend with the Knees (and Other Love Advice from My Father) from New Rivers Press (2008) won the 2006 Many Voices Project and is one of my all time favorite story collections. As the title implies, the stories chronicle an upbringing (like “Rusty, The Jesus Years” herein) where family and love are gauntlets that toughen (sometimes by mangling). You’ll see he writes romance the same way if you read “My Baby Loves Me So Hard” over at one of my other favorite litmags, Split Lip Magazine.
One thing that occurred to me as I read is this dude with the Harry Crews cut must be a Larry Brown fan. So I asked him about that. And some other stuff about his writing and editing and all that.
AV: First things first: this issue was inspired by the opening line of Larry Brown’s “Big Bad Love” because, well, we love Larry Brown. What’s your experience with Brown? How much does he matter to you as a writer?
BD: How’s this: for our honeymoon, my wife and I went to Oxford to see his papers and to hang out in all the spots he used to write about. He was the first writer that I found out of grad school that I was like, I didn’t know you can do this? I spent a good five years trying to write like Brown before if I realized I couldn’t do it. “Rusty, the Jesus Years” is the closest I ever came. It was definitely inspired by “Big Bad Love” and the guy riding around in his truck waiting to bury his dog.
AV: “Rusty, The Jesus Years,” is an odd, like really specific chain of painful events. Any truth to that fiction?
BD: Yeah, most everything I write is maybe 85% true. Basically everything in that story happened but not all that night, the night I got a flat in the middle of a bridge and pissed off the side. I tried to write that scene for at least three years before one day I got an email from my mom, which was basically verbatim from the story. I was like, Christ, that’s a depressingassed email. Then I was like, what if I just throw all this shit at the wall, see what sticks.
AV: Speaking of truth working its way into fiction, “Life Story” seems to be just this: a writer trying to resolve writing the painful truth. There you write “I’d meant it to be both figurative and crude and a cruel joke on the narrator’s entire pitiful existence, which is to say my own entire pitiful existence.” Is this your approach to fiction writing? Or at least, an approach?
BD: A lot of the stories I write, yeah, for better or worse is me making myself the butt of the joke, or at least the villain of the story. It’s all therapy for me. I take a lot of pride in how hard I work at writing, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a writer, per se. I’m a storyteller. I’m a confessor. I’m a guy at a bar who needs professional therapy. I don’t feel like I’m writing worth anything if I’m not opening a vein and letting it bleed. A lot of the time, I’m asking myself, What’s the worst thing that could happen to me? What’s the worst thing I could do in this situation--past, present, or future?
AV: I like to ask authors I dig this question for mostly selfish reasons but our readers who write will want to know too: what’s your process? By that I mean, how do you make sure you get words on paper in story form? Is this easy or hard for you?
BD: My process is a little bit of everything. For years I was a binge writer. I would procrastinate and procrastinate, then write for twenty-four hours. I’d stick with a story and obsess about a story for a week straight. I still do this from time to time, especially during the semester when I’m teaching. I’ll go a week or two without writing, then write straight for two or three days when I get a break. That’s hard on me mentally, though. The ups and downs. For the summers, I’ve gotten pretty good at sitting my ass in the chair for four or five hours a day. I’ve never struggled putting words down. I struggle with going somewhere. I often joke that I can sneeze out 10,000 words without thinking about it. Out of this, I currently have a 700-page novel (which was once a 1200-page novel) that I wrote in two summers, that may never be published because nobody wants to read a book that big. I’m no David Foster Wallace and this ain’t exactly Infinite Jest. What happens? A fuckup janitor named Rusty pisses and moans about wanting to kill himself for 300,000 words.
AV: Speaking of process, you have to balance all this awesome fiction writing with managing Bull Men’s Fiction. One rag editor to another, I know that can be a struggle. But beyond the struggle, how do you think working as Bull’s editor makes you a better writer?
BD: It definitely motivates me to raise my game. We get so many great pieces from great authors that I end up having to reject. I’m constantly like, How have I ever gotten published? I end up thinking of my own stories as an editor and asking, What would make someone want to publish this for others to read? I’ve also started to become better at snuffing out my own posturing. Sometimes I think we want to get published so much and thinking that we have to stand out, what often happens is that we write from this dishonest voice that we think will make us sound more clever or more badassed than we already are. What’s an honest story? What’s an honest voice? I think a lot about that now.
AV: Otherwise, how has been taking the reins of Bull been for you? That’s long been one of my favorites with Donald Ray Pollock and Bonnie Jo Campbell and Sheldon Lee Compton and too many other awesome authors to note…
BD: It’s been really great on so many levels I never really expected. I never really planned to do a magazine. I completely appreciate the great things that lit mags do for writers and readers, even more so now that I’m on the other side. I just wasn’t sure that I had anything to bring to the table, or more more importantly, I wasn’t sure that anybody out there wanted to read what I would bring to the table. It was only through finding writers I appreciated online and then being able to talk to them about my favorite writers and find out their favorite writers that I started to feel like maybe this was something for me. In Bull, more than anything, I’ve found all these connections with a community looking for writing that doesn’t always get published other places. Usually writing with some teeth to it, writing with some ugly truths laid bare without an easy moral at the end. And in so many ways, I’ve found this communal safe space to dig into all the ugliness and pain that often goes with navigating masculinity--for men and for women.
AV: As an editor of a magazine with an awesome reputation among writers looking to submit, who are the authors and what are the books that shaped and continue to shape your literary tastes?
BD: I never really read as a kid, and I didn’t really discover writing until I was drinking way too much and suicidal and an all-around fun person to be around. It’s so cliched to say this, but Thom Jones and Tim O’Brien, those guys saved my life. I didn’t know people like their people existed. I didn’t know you could write about that, or like that. After that, Sherman Alexie and Amy Hempel basically taught me how to write a short story. Like I said, Larry Brown got me through my late twenties. I read every book he had, every interview I could find. When I think about the writing work ethic, I always think about old Larry. Of late, I’ve been consuming everything I can of Scott McClanahan, Bud Smith, and Troy James Weaver. These folks from outside the MFA world kill me. It’s like I didn’t know you were allowed to write those stories. But all these folks, I think of them like my crazy uncles and zany aunts, my fuckup cousins always telling the messed up stories.
AV: Obligatory trivia: What do you watch on TV? What music do you dig?
BD: I’m terrible for TV habits. There are so many options with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. It stresses me out how many good shows there are to choose from every night after work. And then all the shows now seem to have connected plots where you can’t just watch one, which don’t get me wrong, is cool, but addictive. Half the time I just settle for a good old Law & Order with Lennie Brisco that I’ve seen fifty times.
John Moreland writes these killer bluesy country songs. He just came out with Big Bad Luv. I’m not sure if he even knows about Larry Brown, but it’s pretty great just the same. There’s this Americana band American Aquarium that kicks much ass, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. Their album Burn. Flicker. Die. hasn’t left my car’s cd player for close to six years.
AV: Watcha working on now?
BD: The big ugly beast I was talking about earlier is called Mama’s Boy (“Rusty, the Jesus Years” is actually the first chapter). It’s done and I’ve gone through and cut it down a couple times to get closer to something more manageable. It’s basically about a suicidal fuckup who decides to write a book about why he’s so fucked up for his mom, but it doesn’t go so well, because he is, after all, a fuckup.
I’ve also just finished up a collection of connected stories called Ina-Baby (which I kind of stole from Sheena Baby, one of LB’s characters). It’s the story of a dysfunctional relationship from start to finish, but told in reverse order. You asked me earlier about “Life Story” and how I tend to write stories to figure out my own pathetic existence. Both these books are essentially me asking myself, What’d be the worst shit that I could do? What’d be the worst shit that could happen? I’m still not sure this is a healthy coping mechanism, but it’s what I do. Thankfully, I’m blessed with a very understanding wife and family who put up with me writing the way I do.
AV: Writing labels can be both limiting and misleading. Same time, it’s useful to think in general terms of style and parallels. What do you think of the label “grit lit”? Do you think of yourself as this or any “type” of writer consciously?
BD: I know the actual writers of “grit lit” were often conflicted about the term, or for some it didn’t even exist when they were writing. I love it. I have this visceral image that I can feel in the back of my teeth every time I say it--this little bit of grit that I can’t chew or swallow. To me that so epitomizes what I love about LB’s writing, but also William Gay, Harry Crews, Donald Ray Pollock, Daniel Woodrell, Dorothy Allison, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and a hundred others. It’s definitely my favorite genre to read. Gritty, to me, also describes the ethos of writers like Brown, Gay, and Pollock who didn’t travel the typical MFA route, the ones who painted houses and worked at the paper mill, the fire station for years before they got anywhere with their writing.
As for me, I don’t know. I’ve definitely been heavily influenced by those folks, Larry Brown most of all. I definitely try to mine my roots growing up farming and working as a fry cook and summer hand. If I could, I’d always write about the lives of working class people with minimum-wage jobs and manual labor jobs. Those are my favorite people--the humor, the work ethic, the complexities of their often skewed morality, etc. But honestly, I haven’t lived that life for a long time, and I tend to write to cope with the life I’m currently living. I’ll never probably write a book about professors; I would kind of hate myself. I’m not sure I truly fit in with any genre because I steal a little bit from all the different authors I dig, and these days I’m trying harder to be okay with that. I’m trying my best just to write the best stories I can write, wherever they fall in terms of audience and genre. An honest story about shit that bothers me without any posturing.
More on Drevlow
Benjamin Drevlow was the winner of the 2006 Many Voices Project and the author of a collection of short stories, Bend With the Knees and Other Love Advice From My Father (New Rivers Press, 2008). His fiction has also appeared in The Blue Earth Review and Passages North. He is a fiction reader at BULL: Men’s Fiction, teaches writing at Georgia Southern University, and lives both in Georgia and online at www.thedrevlow-olsonshow.com
By Adam Van Winkle
I first met Benjamin Drevlow at a wedding. A writer friend of mine leaned over and pointed to the guy with the Harry Crews mohawk and a Heineken in each hand and tells me, “That guy’s a good writer.” “I could see that,” I joke, but I trust this writer friend so I ask, “Who is he?”
Turns out, as I met him later that night, Drevlow was just taking over as Editor-in-Chief at one of my favorite all time litmags, Bull Men’s Fiction. I came to Bull because it has featured the likes of some of my favorite authors (see Bonnie Jo Campbell and Donald Ray Pollock). I stuck with Bull because it’s an overall badass rag, every online and print edition worth reading. Color me impressed.
So I read his fiction. And it’s fucking great. Seriously. Fucking. Great. Bend with the Knees (and Other Love Advice from My Father) from New Rivers Press (2008) won the 2006 Many Voices Project and is one of my all time favorite story collections. As the title implies, the stories chronicle an upbringing (like “Rusty, The Jesus Years” herein) where family and love are gauntlets that toughen (sometimes by mangling). You’ll see he writes romance the same way if you read “My Baby Loves Me So Hard” over at one of my other favorite litmags, Split Lip Magazine.
One thing that occurred to me as I read is this dude with the Harry Crews cut must be a Larry Brown fan. So I asked him about that. And some other stuff about his writing and editing and all that.
AV: First things first: this issue was inspired by the opening line of Larry Brown’s “Big Bad Love” because, well, we love Larry Brown. What’s your experience with Brown? How much does he matter to you as a writer?
BD: How’s this: for our honeymoon, my wife and I went to Oxford to see his papers and to hang out in all the spots he used to write about. He was the first writer that I found out of grad school that I was like, I didn’t know you can do this? I spent a good five years trying to write like Brown before if I realized I couldn’t do it. “Rusty, the Jesus Years” is the closest I ever came. It was definitely inspired by “Big Bad Love” and the guy riding around in his truck waiting to bury his dog.
AV: “Rusty, The Jesus Years,” is an odd, like really specific chain of painful events. Any truth to that fiction?
BD: Yeah, most everything I write is maybe 85% true. Basically everything in that story happened but not all that night, the night I got a flat in the middle of a bridge and pissed off the side. I tried to write that scene for at least three years before one day I got an email from my mom, which was basically verbatim from the story. I was like, Christ, that’s a depressingassed email. Then I was like, what if I just throw all this shit at the wall, see what sticks.
AV: Speaking of truth working its way into fiction, “Life Story” seems to be just this: a writer trying to resolve writing the painful truth. There you write “I’d meant it to be both figurative and crude and a cruel joke on the narrator’s entire pitiful existence, which is to say my own entire pitiful existence.” Is this your approach to fiction writing? Or at least, an approach?
BD: A lot of the stories I write, yeah, for better or worse is me making myself the butt of the joke, or at least the villain of the story. It’s all therapy for me. I take a lot of pride in how hard I work at writing, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a writer, per se. I’m a storyteller. I’m a confessor. I’m a guy at a bar who needs professional therapy. I don’t feel like I’m writing worth anything if I’m not opening a vein and letting it bleed. A lot of the time, I’m asking myself, What’s the worst thing that could happen to me? What’s the worst thing I could do in this situation--past, present, or future?
AV: I like to ask authors I dig this question for mostly selfish reasons but our readers who write will want to know too: what’s your process? By that I mean, how do you make sure you get words on paper in story form? Is this easy or hard for you?
BD: My process is a little bit of everything. For years I was a binge writer. I would procrastinate and procrastinate, then write for twenty-four hours. I’d stick with a story and obsess about a story for a week straight. I still do this from time to time, especially during the semester when I’m teaching. I’ll go a week or two without writing, then write straight for two or three days when I get a break. That’s hard on me mentally, though. The ups and downs. For the summers, I’ve gotten pretty good at sitting my ass in the chair for four or five hours a day. I’ve never struggled putting words down. I struggle with going somewhere. I often joke that I can sneeze out 10,000 words without thinking about it. Out of this, I currently have a 700-page novel (which was once a 1200-page novel) that I wrote in two summers, that may never be published because nobody wants to read a book that big. I’m no David Foster Wallace and this ain’t exactly Infinite Jest. What happens? A fuckup janitor named Rusty pisses and moans about wanting to kill himself for 300,000 words.
AV: Speaking of process, you have to balance all this awesome fiction writing with managing Bull Men’s Fiction. One rag editor to another, I know that can be a struggle. But beyond the struggle, how do you think working as Bull’s editor makes you a better writer?
BD: It definitely motivates me to raise my game. We get so many great pieces from great authors that I end up having to reject. I’m constantly like, How have I ever gotten published? I end up thinking of my own stories as an editor and asking, What would make someone want to publish this for others to read? I’ve also started to become better at snuffing out my own posturing. Sometimes I think we want to get published so much and thinking that we have to stand out, what often happens is that we write from this dishonest voice that we think will make us sound more clever or more badassed than we already are. What’s an honest story? What’s an honest voice? I think a lot about that now.
AV: Otherwise, how has been taking the reins of Bull been for you? That’s long been one of my favorites with Donald Ray Pollock and Bonnie Jo Campbell and Sheldon Lee Compton and too many other awesome authors to note…
BD: It’s been really great on so many levels I never really expected. I never really planned to do a magazine. I completely appreciate the great things that lit mags do for writers and readers, even more so now that I’m on the other side. I just wasn’t sure that I had anything to bring to the table, or more more importantly, I wasn’t sure that anybody out there wanted to read what I would bring to the table. It was only through finding writers I appreciated online and then being able to talk to them about my favorite writers and find out their favorite writers that I started to feel like maybe this was something for me. In Bull, more than anything, I’ve found all these connections with a community looking for writing that doesn’t always get published other places. Usually writing with some teeth to it, writing with some ugly truths laid bare without an easy moral at the end. And in so many ways, I’ve found this communal safe space to dig into all the ugliness and pain that often goes with navigating masculinity--for men and for women.
AV: As an editor of a magazine with an awesome reputation among writers looking to submit, who are the authors and what are the books that shaped and continue to shape your literary tastes?
BD: I never really read as a kid, and I didn’t really discover writing until I was drinking way too much and suicidal and an all-around fun person to be around. It’s so cliched to say this, but Thom Jones and Tim O’Brien, those guys saved my life. I didn’t know people like their people existed. I didn’t know you could write about that, or like that. After that, Sherman Alexie and Amy Hempel basically taught me how to write a short story. Like I said, Larry Brown got me through my late twenties. I read every book he had, every interview I could find. When I think about the writing work ethic, I always think about old Larry. Of late, I’ve been consuming everything I can of Scott McClanahan, Bud Smith, and Troy James Weaver. These folks from outside the MFA world kill me. It’s like I didn’t know you were allowed to write those stories. But all these folks, I think of them like my crazy uncles and zany aunts, my fuckup cousins always telling the messed up stories.
AV: Obligatory trivia: What do you watch on TV? What music do you dig?
BD: I’m terrible for TV habits. There are so many options with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. It stresses me out how many good shows there are to choose from every night after work. And then all the shows now seem to have connected plots where you can’t just watch one, which don’t get me wrong, is cool, but addictive. Half the time I just settle for a good old Law & Order with Lennie Brisco that I’ve seen fifty times.
John Moreland writes these killer bluesy country songs. He just came out with Big Bad Luv. I’m not sure if he even knows about Larry Brown, but it’s pretty great just the same. There’s this Americana band American Aquarium that kicks much ass, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. Their album Burn. Flicker. Die. hasn’t left my car’s cd player for close to six years.
AV: Watcha working on now?
BD: The big ugly beast I was talking about earlier is called Mama’s Boy (“Rusty, the Jesus Years” is actually the first chapter). It’s done and I’ve gone through and cut it down a couple times to get closer to something more manageable. It’s basically about a suicidal fuckup who decides to write a book about why he’s so fucked up for his mom, but it doesn’t go so well, because he is, after all, a fuckup.
I’ve also just finished up a collection of connected stories called Ina-Baby (which I kind of stole from Sheena Baby, one of LB’s characters). It’s the story of a dysfunctional relationship from start to finish, but told in reverse order. You asked me earlier about “Life Story” and how I tend to write stories to figure out my own pathetic existence. Both these books are essentially me asking myself, What’d be the worst shit that I could do? What’d be the worst shit that could happen? I’m still not sure this is a healthy coping mechanism, but it’s what I do. Thankfully, I’m blessed with a very understanding wife and family who put up with me writing the way I do.
AV: Writing labels can be both limiting and misleading. Same time, it’s useful to think in general terms of style and parallels. What do you think of the label “grit lit”? Do you think of yourself as this or any “type” of writer consciously?
BD: I know the actual writers of “grit lit” were often conflicted about the term, or for some it didn’t even exist when they were writing. I love it. I have this visceral image that I can feel in the back of my teeth every time I say it--this little bit of grit that I can’t chew or swallow. To me that so epitomizes what I love about LB’s writing, but also William Gay, Harry Crews, Donald Ray Pollock, Daniel Woodrell, Dorothy Allison, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and a hundred others. It’s definitely my favorite genre to read. Gritty, to me, also describes the ethos of writers like Brown, Gay, and Pollock who didn’t travel the typical MFA route, the ones who painted houses and worked at the paper mill, the fire station for years before they got anywhere with their writing.
As for me, I don’t know. I’ve definitely been heavily influenced by those folks, Larry Brown most of all. I definitely try to mine my roots growing up farming and working as a fry cook and summer hand. If I could, I’d always write about the lives of working class people with minimum-wage jobs and manual labor jobs. Those are my favorite people--the humor, the work ethic, the complexities of their often skewed morality, etc. But honestly, I haven’t lived that life for a long time, and I tend to write to cope with the life I’m currently living. I’ll never probably write a book about professors; I would kind of hate myself. I’m not sure I truly fit in with any genre because I steal a little bit from all the different authors I dig, and these days I’m trying harder to be okay with that. I’m trying my best just to write the best stories I can write, wherever they fall in terms of audience and genre. An honest story about shit that bothers me without any posturing.
More on Drevlow
Benjamin Drevlow was the winner of the 2006 Many Voices Project and the author of a collection of short stories, Bend With the Knees and Other Love Advice From My Father (New Rivers Press, 2008). His fiction has also appeared in The Blue Earth Review and Passages North. He is a fiction reader at BULL: Men’s Fiction, teaches writing at Georgia Southern University, and lives both in Georgia and online at www.thedrevlow-olsonshow.com