Cowboy Jamboree Press is proud to be the exclusive publisher of Sheldon Lee Compton's fiction and prose.
Sheldon Lee Compton & Breece D'J Pancake
Outside of CJ endeavors, Compton is hard at work on a book about another of CJ's literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake, forthcoming from West Virginia University Press!
on Twitter
Plumb Journal's Pancake Collaborative Story Project, "TO COLLABORATE WITH GREATNESS"
Pictured: Compton at Pancake's gravesite
Outside of CJ endeavors, Compton is hard at work on a book about another of CJ's literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake, forthcoming from West Virginia University Press!
on Twitter
Plumb Journal's Pancake Collaborative Story Project, "TO COLLABORATE WITH GREATNESS"
Pictured: Compton at Pancake's gravesite
A new story collection by Sheldon Lee Compton, the man David Joy has called "the definition of what Faulkner meant when he described the closeness between the short story writer and the poet." With previously published stories and some new unseen gems, these 30 tales slide beautifully into the Appalachian mythopoeia Compton has so masterfully crafted over the years. Part grit, part gothic, all dirty and beautiful.
DYSPHORIA
(more an e-reader? Kindle e-book here!)
A New Novel from the incomparable Sheldon Lee Compton and Cowboy Jamboree Press
What can you save with a Mason jar? Money? A life? When Paul heads back to Red Knife, Kentucky for his father's funeral, his visit turns into an extended stay and a search for the people and places that made his dad so dysphoric about life. What he finds is years of tumult and abuse and shame, all centered on one day, long ago, and an accident at an abandoned mine tipple. The hauntings of the past become all too real for Paul, and, as he comes to grips with his father's death, his own life is endangered... A new Appalachian gothic from Sheldon Lee Compton, the man Donald Ray Pollock has called "a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown.”
MORE ON SHELDON LEE COMPTON & DYSPHORIA:
“Sheldon Lee Compton is one of the new young breed of Kentucky writers–talented, fearless, and strong–bringing us word from the hills." - Chris Offutt, author of My Father the Pornographer
“Dysphoria is ugly and gothic and morally questionable the way the best gothic writing should be, but then there’s this innocence, these moments of tenderness and beauty, this intent to do good almost as much as bad. I think that’s what makes me squirm the most. That these are real people, not headlines or punchlines. Often they are boys and men who can’t fully escape being boys, but they’ve got real good and real bad in their heart, often doing the wrong thing in the name the right thing and vice versa. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, it mostly makes them fester and boil over, the scab never fully crusting over. Time and Sheldon Lee Compton don’t let anyone off easy, and that’s just it, what makes Dysphoria timeless and never more relevant. It’s that deadly mix of Old Testament Vengeance, Original Sin, and Murphy’s Law lurking around the corner of every action and reaction that makes you turn each page with one eye open and the other half-shut with a wince. And yet, with every page there’s Compton, ever the wide-eyed witness to all of it, and not just them. Us too.” -Benjamin Drevlow, author of Bend with the Knees
"When a reader steps into the pages of a Compton story, the reader must maneuver through sharp edges, and wade in the mud of Sheldon's honest and poetic world in order to reach the reality of Sheldon's people, his characters. He's digging deep into the realness of his skin, a place most authors are scared to go to. Dysphoria: An Appalachian Gothic is Sheldon's masterpiece thus far. This book is like putting a revolver in to your mouth and pulling the trigger. Each bullet plugging the brain with honesty, pain, grit, fear, and truth." -Frank Reardon, author of Interstate Chokehold
SCROLL DOWN FOR EXCERPT!
Excerpted from
DYSPHORIA
an Appalachian Gothic novel
by Sheldon Lee Compton
(available from CJ Press here)
DYSPHORIA- (def) a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life.
Paul sat on the river bank with his knees pulled up to just below his chin. His dad squatted beside him, bent over an inflatable raft, inhaling and then exhaling in large bursts. The raft hardly moved, its thick blue and white wrinkles expanding only occasionally and then dying again, flat and collapsed.
The raft was hardly a raft at all. It was more like a balloon. Along the river to the left of Paul and directly in front of his dad larger rafts negotiated the rapids, bought maybe in Wyoming and shipped here. They zipped past, full of laughing people, paddling people moving ahead while together he and his dad watched blue and white wrinkles grow large, disappear.
When the job was complete, Paul stood beside the raft. Roughly six feet in length and about three feet wide, it would seat two people. There were no paddles, just the raft. After a minute to see that it didn't deflate, they pushed it to the edge of the water, scraping rocks and pebbles along the bottom. After the raft hit the water, held back with his dad's large grip, Paul thought then it would have been better if they had just picked the raft up. But he didn't say anything and instead eased carefully through the water and crawled into the raft in front of his dad, who had taken a seat in the back, one leg draped over the edge, anchoring the fifteen pound vessel with toes dug into the rocky riverbed.
No words, no conversation, as the two pushed ahead their combined weight and started across the water. Within seconds, a larger raft swept in from behind them carrying a man and two small boys, all wearing helmets, all wielding paddles, looking at Paul and his dad and the blue and white raft. They were laughing hard and they were laughing at Paul and his dad and the raft. They pushed ahead, and Paul couldn't see his dad behind him, but he knew what was in his eyes, blue determination.
The trip had been planned quickly after Paul returned from vacation with a set of cousins rarely heard from in Florida. His dad had sent Paul with his cousins, saying he couldn't afford a vacation, but if he wanted to go and stay for a couple weeks, it was fine by him. It had been a wonderful two weeks, and, when Paul returned, he spoke often of the things they had done. Fishing and strawberry picking and shooting basketball with the ocean twenty feet away. Two days after he returned, his dad bought this raft, and now here they were floating down the Big Sandy with the trees whipping past and the sky moving slower overhead and his dad tense and determined behind him.
The entire situation made Paul feel as if he couldn’t gather air into his lugs. But, after a time, it was easy to forget with the way the river stretched out ahead of them, starting to turn from the muddy color that collected near the banks to the clear white-capped sections they were beginning to navigate. Paul didn't mention paddles, and saw no real reason to. His dad shifted from side to side, guiding the raft just to the left and right of rocks, hitting just the pocket of stream to keep them far enough away from the bank and moving ahead.
Further ahead, more rafts passed, canoes, families, friends, laughing. Pointing.
His dad bought the raft for ten dollars at a bait shop on the drive up. He was uncomfortable then, going into the shop and buying the raft. Paul could see it on his face. And he seemed uncomfortable now, spearing this way and that way, guiding the raft through the water. And before long, they were passing one of the custom-made rafts. No more laughing and pointing. Just stares. Paul didn't even look in their direction. He was focused on what was ahead, a clearing.
Other families rested in the clearing, backsides in the sand of the riverbank, their arms wrapped lazily around legs, heads hanging down, beaten by the short interval of rapids he and his dad had just cleared without paddles in a ten-dollar plastic raft found hanging above the display of nightcrawlers in a dusty cardboard box at Denver's Bait and Tackle Shop.
As the two swung into the clearing, Paul pulled at the sides, bringing the raft into a spot where the water was calm and tossed out, hanging the crook of his elbow onto the raft while his dad raised slowly and stepped into the water beside him. They walked onto the bank, pulling the raft behind them, and examined the men and boys drenched and banged up all along the bank. It was only then, when they were standing on the bank, Paul's dad stuck out his chest and nearly folded into the sand and rocks underfoot. He bent low, holding himself up with two large hands across his shaking kneecaps. Water dripped slowly from the tip of his nose and his hair hung in thick, black clumps over his eyes. And Paul stood beside him with his hand on his shoulder and then around his waist and then around him, holding him close enough to feel his heartbeat against his own chest.
"Let go of me," his dad said.
Paul stepped back slowly. "We made it," he said and tried a smile. He was still holding to his dad’s elbow.
"Let go of me."
He let his arm drop and watched his father stalk off up the bank, past the fathers and sons without looking up. None of the sons and none of the fathers offered to help him deflate the raft and fold it under his arm. It was nearly dark before he finished, and he walked very slowly back to the car.
DYSPHORIA
an Appalachian Gothic novel
by Sheldon Lee Compton
(available from CJ Press here)
DYSPHORIA- (def) a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life.
Paul sat on the river bank with his knees pulled up to just below his chin. His dad squatted beside him, bent over an inflatable raft, inhaling and then exhaling in large bursts. The raft hardly moved, its thick blue and white wrinkles expanding only occasionally and then dying again, flat and collapsed.
The raft was hardly a raft at all. It was more like a balloon. Along the river to the left of Paul and directly in front of his dad larger rafts negotiated the rapids, bought maybe in Wyoming and shipped here. They zipped past, full of laughing people, paddling people moving ahead while together he and his dad watched blue and white wrinkles grow large, disappear.
When the job was complete, Paul stood beside the raft. Roughly six feet in length and about three feet wide, it would seat two people. There were no paddles, just the raft. After a minute to see that it didn't deflate, they pushed it to the edge of the water, scraping rocks and pebbles along the bottom. After the raft hit the water, held back with his dad's large grip, Paul thought then it would have been better if they had just picked the raft up. But he didn't say anything and instead eased carefully through the water and crawled into the raft in front of his dad, who had taken a seat in the back, one leg draped over the edge, anchoring the fifteen pound vessel with toes dug into the rocky riverbed.
No words, no conversation, as the two pushed ahead their combined weight and started across the water. Within seconds, a larger raft swept in from behind them carrying a man and two small boys, all wearing helmets, all wielding paddles, looking at Paul and his dad and the blue and white raft. They were laughing hard and they were laughing at Paul and his dad and the raft. They pushed ahead, and Paul couldn't see his dad behind him, but he knew what was in his eyes, blue determination.
The trip had been planned quickly after Paul returned from vacation with a set of cousins rarely heard from in Florida. His dad had sent Paul with his cousins, saying he couldn't afford a vacation, but if he wanted to go and stay for a couple weeks, it was fine by him. It had been a wonderful two weeks, and, when Paul returned, he spoke often of the things they had done. Fishing and strawberry picking and shooting basketball with the ocean twenty feet away. Two days after he returned, his dad bought this raft, and now here they were floating down the Big Sandy with the trees whipping past and the sky moving slower overhead and his dad tense and determined behind him.
The entire situation made Paul feel as if he couldn’t gather air into his lugs. But, after a time, it was easy to forget with the way the river stretched out ahead of them, starting to turn from the muddy color that collected near the banks to the clear white-capped sections they were beginning to navigate. Paul didn't mention paddles, and saw no real reason to. His dad shifted from side to side, guiding the raft just to the left and right of rocks, hitting just the pocket of stream to keep them far enough away from the bank and moving ahead.
Further ahead, more rafts passed, canoes, families, friends, laughing. Pointing.
His dad bought the raft for ten dollars at a bait shop on the drive up. He was uncomfortable then, going into the shop and buying the raft. Paul could see it on his face. And he seemed uncomfortable now, spearing this way and that way, guiding the raft through the water. And before long, they were passing one of the custom-made rafts. No more laughing and pointing. Just stares. Paul didn't even look in their direction. He was focused on what was ahead, a clearing.
Other families rested in the clearing, backsides in the sand of the riverbank, their arms wrapped lazily around legs, heads hanging down, beaten by the short interval of rapids he and his dad had just cleared without paddles in a ten-dollar plastic raft found hanging above the display of nightcrawlers in a dusty cardboard box at Denver's Bait and Tackle Shop.
As the two swung into the clearing, Paul pulled at the sides, bringing the raft into a spot where the water was calm and tossed out, hanging the crook of his elbow onto the raft while his dad raised slowly and stepped into the water beside him. They walked onto the bank, pulling the raft behind them, and examined the men and boys drenched and banged up all along the bank. It was only then, when they were standing on the bank, Paul's dad stuck out his chest and nearly folded into the sand and rocks underfoot. He bent low, holding himself up with two large hands across his shaking kneecaps. Water dripped slowly from the tip of his nose and his hair hung in thick, black clumps over his eyes. And Paul stood beside him with his hand on his shoulder and then around his waist and then around him, holding him close enough to feel his heartbeat against his own chest.
"Let go of me," his dad said.
Paul stepped back slowly. "We made it," he said and tried a smile. He was still holding to his dad’s elbow.
"Let go of me."
He let his arm drop and watched his father stalk off up the bank, past the fathers and sons without looking up. None of the sons and none of the fathers offered to help him deflate the raft and fold it under his arm. It was nearly dark before he finished, and he walked very slowly back to the car.
"To Be Perfectly Honest"-An Interview on Influence and Craft with Sheldon Lee Compton
Donald Ray Pollock says of Sheldon Lee Compton that he is "a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown." Fitting then that we featured a story and interview with the fantastic story writer in our Winter-Spring 2018 Larry Brown inspired issue, "My dog died" (available on the archives page!)
Sheldon Lee Compton has been writing some of my favorite stories in the last few years. I don’t know if kinship is the word, but his prose speaks to me. The voices are so real, so authentic. I said recently of Larry Brown to a friend that I can smell the men and truck cabs in Larry Brown stories because I rode around in trucks like those with men like that when I was young. They’re real to me. When an addict swallows a pill in an SLC story, I can taste and feel that because I messed around with that when I was younger. It’s real to me.
I’ve read SLC interviews before and seen him talk about Larry Brown so I know the comparison is apt. I wanted to ask the man himself a little more about Brown though, and about some other things I suspected he might be up on—from Elmore Leonard to Hank Williams to addiction. I hope y’all enjoy the interview as much as I enjoy Sheldon Lee Compton stories. Check out “Remodeling” herein, and then go read all the rest you can. We are witnessing the making of a classic American author the likes of Pollock and Brown and so many other of my favorite grit lit authors.
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. I’ve seen you answer a question about writer influence before where you said something to the effect that discovering Larry Brown showed you it was okay to write about your own home place. I think I get what you mean, but can you elaborate?
SLC: “Big Bad Love” is one of my favorite all time short stories. I think Brown was a fantastic short story writer and a good novelist. I would have loved to have seen more collections from him before he was gone. Reading his work at the beginning did give me a sense that it was okay to write about the people where I come from in a realistic way, that is without sentiment. There’s so much about growing up poor or going hungry or looking for work and things like that that can become really saturated with a kind of preciousness if you’re not careful as a writer from Eastern Kentucky. And though Brown was a southerner, he understood the same point. Or at least that’s what his writing said to me. Also, he was just a real guy, as far as I can tell from listening to second-hand stories from writers I know who knew him. And the fact that a normal but hardworking guy like Larry Brown could write books, well that was also an inspiration. For me, that kind of knowledge effectively wrested the world of literature out of the hands of the people who wrote stories exclusively for The New Yorker or whatever and gave them to a young guy at the end of the world. That was a powerful thing for me, and I love Larry Brown to this day for that gift.
AV: Speaking of cool writers that died too soon, I’ve been a pretty big fan of the FX series Justified based on the Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens fiction universe. I’ve seen you mention some of your favorite TV and films elsewhere and surprised you didn’t mention the Harlan County-set series. Have you read Leonard’s Harlan County depiction? Have you seen the show? How good (or terrible) a job did they do depicting rural Eastern Kentucky?
SLC: Elmore Leonard equals legendary storyteller, and not every writer is a great storyteller. I’ve never read any of the Raylan Givens books, but I have watched the television series made from them. I watched it in its entirety, too. I liked it a lot. But was it an accurate depiction of Eastern Kentucky? Well, I don’t really think they were trying for that, to be honest, and I’m usually okay to take a work of art at whatever value it’s presented. But, if pressed, I’d say the characters are enlarged for dramatic purposes. Some more than others. Raylan certainly, which makes sense within the genre Leonard wrote these books. One aspect that was brought off at just the right pitch was this idea of a single family handling a lot of the crime-related stuff in an Eastern Kentucky town. That is a real thing here. I could rattle off a fairly long list of last names that are exactly those kinds of families. The fact that I won’t name them here, that says a lot right there.
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?
SLC: I’m going to be perfectly honest in saying that I’ve become more uncomfortable with labels in my older age. I’ve identified in the past as an Appalachian writer, then a southern writer, but then, when I realized the label forced this kind of blinders effect on my work, I started to care less and think about it less. I write short stories mostly. I think of myself as a short story writer. Sometimes I write about people in Eastern Kentucky, sometimes I write about ghost dinosaurs; there’s days I write about dead coal mining fathers and others when I write stories that could be called fabulist historical fiction. I love all of it. I write westerns and even the occasional surrealist novel or set of poems with footnotes that have lines like “The last 11 emails in my inbox are from me to me,/but I stay categorically Red Dragon.” I can’t imagine not taking risks and exploring different themes and kinds of stories and ways of telling stories. It’s what makes all of this interesting for me. Grit lit is a good enough label. It’s a type of literature that’s been around for a long, long time, really, but I can appreciate folks wanting to place certain kinds of writing apart from others. I have no problem at all with it; I just don’t really have much input on it.
AV: Speaking of thinking of writing, what’s your process? I mean, how do you make sure you get words on paper in story form? Is this easy or hard for you?
SLC: I’ve tried a lot of different processes. I first tried an output schedule with a target of five-hundred words a day. That didn’t work very well. Then I moved to the time schedule, putting in about three hours a day writing. That didn’t work very well, either. Finally I ditched thinking about process, too. Now I do what I’ve done with most of my stories or books, I generally sit down with my laptop in my recliner and start working on whatever story I have going that draws my interest at that time. I usually have about five stories going at once, and there’s always something about one of them that is catching my eye. I dip in and start exploring around, trusting my instincts to lead me in the right direction. That sense of discovery is one of the biggest things for me as a writer. If I don’t have things to discover for myself while writing a story then there’s nothing there for me. Any time I’ve every plotted a story out and then sat down to write it, I’ve never had a bit of luck with it. The story was already told. Doesn’t matter if it was in outline form. The story has been told and is over. The most difficult time I had writing this way was the six years I worked on my novel Brown Bottle. I never plotted or planned a single thing in that book, and it was grueling. It’s not an approach that works for me when writing a novel, especially a realist novel. I’ve come to believe if it takes you two-hundred and fifty pages to tell a story then you’re probably not making enough choices. I can’t think of any novel I’ve read that wouldn’t have worked better as a ten-page short story, even books by Proust and Pynchon. In fact, you should read Pynchon’s short story collection Slow Learner if you haven’t already. He wrote some tight short stories, man.
AV: How’d you come up with a character like Wade “Brown Bottle” Taylor? It’s clear he’s displaced in the modern world. Several times the narrator seems to have to explain his lack of understanding of Gmail and caller ID and such. Like he never factored these into his existence. Do you know a Wade? Have a little Wade in you? I guess I’m asking, where’s the truth behind that character’s fiction?
SLC: Most of the time a character develops for me as this really organic part of the narrative. This happened with Wade Taylor. He first appeared in a short story of mine called “Purpose” in my short story collection The Same Terrible Storm. That story eventually became the first opening chapter of Brown Bottle. I knew I wanted to write more about the character because I felt him developing beyond the walls of the story. He’s based in part on a former step-uncle of mine, a young guy who sacrificed a lot of his free time to be a kind of father figure to me while his brother was off drinking and so on. The idea that he is awkward with technology is that part of myself I tend to put in my characters from time to time. So there’s a strange kind of patchwork when considering the truth behind that character. The largest part of Wade, that is all the key decisions he made in the book, were these very natural moments within the narrative flow, a part of that discovery process. But, no matter the flow, things were going to go the way they were going to go for him from the second I started writing the book. That was one thing I did plan, I guess. I always knew the end of that book.
AV: There’s a lot of violence, even sudden violence in Brown Bottle. I noticed though that the violence is delivered with almost a whimper and often in ways that subvert violent stereotypes. The narrator does not embellish the acts and is quick to inform the reader that movies don’t get it right and no characters really get “blown away.” I guess I’d suggest the narrator seems very uninterested in violence and wants to reign it in when possible. Was this intentional?
SLC: Ha! There’s so much of what I do in my books and stories that is not intentional. I honestly just cast out into the dark, as Ondaatje so beautifully puts it when talking about his writing process. I cast out then eagerly and carefully reel in whatever my gut and stubbornness brings back. I’ve been asked before about violence in my work, and, of course, it’s understandable. But the thing is, I live in a generally violent place. A lot of guns, a lot of fighting, a lot of crime, a ton of drugs. For instance, when Fay Mullins reflects on his first job as a hired gun, the one where he disposes of the body in the coal mine, every detail of that murder was bonafide truth. That murder took place where I live, back in the early 80s. I grew up hearing that story and a hundred more very much like it. Violence, in one form or another, is part of where I live, part of who I am, even, though I like to deny that sometimes. But to fully answer the question, I never considered how much violence or how little I put on the page. To an extent, I drew on military vets I actually know. These guys want to avoid violence once they get home, it seems to me. They’ve had plenty enough of it in their lives. I had that idea in mind to a certain degree, so maybe more thought went into it than I realize. But, in general, if I write a story set in Eastern Kentucky, it’s going to present violence, because to leave it out would be unbelievable to the narrative. It’s just a huge part of this area. It’s the same reason if I have a large family dinner scene there’s going to be soup beans and fried taters on the table. It might appear stereotypical, but that’s just the way it is.
AV: I’ve been reading your short stories for a while. It seems like each one, at some point, feels shot through with such authenticity, I can’t stand it (in a good way). I’ve written characters who use pills and that’s based in some personal experience. I gotta say, the way Deb regrets her method in “The Same Terrible Storm,” “wishing now she had chewed the pills” instead of dry-swallowing them, feels real as hell. Based in any experience?
SLC: Thanks so much for reading some of my stories. I truly, truly appreciate that. Yeah I’ve dealt with pain pill addiction, nerve pills, and for years and years alcoholism. I’m a recovering addict and alcoholic, full blown. I have two years sober from drinking and about a decade from the pills. I never snorted pills; I always took them regular. Dry-swallow, as Deb said. So some of that specificity comes from first-hand knowledge for sure. Other details come from living here and being around it all the time, being around addicts day in and day out. It might seem hard to imagine, but the majority of people here are addicts, not the other way around. And they come from all walks of life and ages, so pulling for details can happen no matter what kind of character you’re writing. The key really is to write drugs and drinking as if it is as normal to that character as someone else drinking a cup of coffee, because that’s the truth. Talk to a opiate addict from Eastern Kentucky for five minutes and you’ll see what I’m saying. They are second- and third-generation pill heads and alcoholics. It’s their norm, so when I write about it I keep that in mind. I don’t make a big deal out of it when I’m writing a scene where someone’s crushing pills or lying their way through a doctor’s exam to get another script. I write it about the same way I’d describe them taking an afternoon walk.
AV: Little Walter. Hank Williams. Seems like maybe you and Cowboy Jamboree got the same musical tastes... Who are your favorite musicians? Do you play any music?
SLC: I’d bet we surely do. I love the purity of traditional music - blues, folk, gospel, Irish ballads, whatever it may be. And the contemporary artists and bands I like, they bring some of that along with them. Singers like Tom Waits, Shane MacGowan, Nick Cave. I listen to a lot of indie music and absolutely no popular top ten stuff. I couldn’t tell you the name of a single song on the local radio station, unless they’re running an evening 80s hits. Then I’m open to all of it. Bring on Culture Club! I mean with the 80s it’s all good because it’s all nostalgic. But, yeah, Hank Williams Sr., Townes Van Zandt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, bands like The Pogues, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Those Poor Bastards, modern musicians like Sturgill Simpson and William Elliott Whitmore. I could go on and on. I love music. In fact, my interest in music nearly predates my interest in writing. My dad was a really talented guitar player who aspired to be a studio musician. He started teaching me guitar when I was five years old, and I’ve played ever since. So that’s nearly forty years experience on the instrument. I can play a tune or two, that’s a fact.
AV: So less trivia, more big-picture: Why do you write? I read once where you said “reading is prayer.” I totally get that. If reading is prayer, what is writing for you? Confession?
SLC : Yes, reading is prayer. Reading has become more important to me than writing in the past four or five years. I’ve kept a reading log during this time and tried to make an effort to read as far and wide as my tastes will allow. Some surprises along the way include my love for Tolstoy’s work, especially the short stories. Other reading insights have been not so surprising, such as the fact that Proust makes me want to put my head through a wall. In that way, reading is also an act of discovery. Not to say that writing has become less important. I like how you posed the two, though. Writing as confession and reading as prayer. That’s cool. But writing isn’t confession for me. Lately I’ve come to realize it’s just something I do. I write to tell stories, and that’s important enough as is. When we were all gathered around some fire in the middle of the night with the unknown moving in the dark all around us, it was stories that kept us from going crazy.
AV: What’s next from Sheldon Lee Compton? What larger project(s) are you at work on?
SLC: Well, I tell you what, I’m looking forward to this upcoming issue of Cowboy Jamboree, that’s for sure. You guys are putting together some interesting work. Other than that, I’m putting together a collection of short stories set in Eastern Kentucky. It’ll be the first stories of that kind I’ve written since the publication of my first book The Same Terrible Storm in 2012. And I’m always working on a few other projects, too. I have a collection of stories finished in second draft called Sway made up of all the other kinds of short stories I write, which range in topic from towns devoted to amputee worship to dragons that live in small ponds. There’s also a novel I’m about a year into called Evergreen that’s about an immortal serial killer and his three immortal siblings, one of whom played a large role in a previous book of mine called Alice and the Wendigo. So, yeah, I’m fairly busy most of the time. But it keeps things interesting, and, like I mentioned earlier, it keeps me from going crazy. I can only hope it does the same for others.
Donald Ray Pollock says of Sheldon Lee Compton that he is "a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown." Fitting then that we featured a story and interview with the fantastic story writer in our Winter-Spring 2018 Larry Brown inspired issue, "My dog died" (available on the archives page!)
Sheldon Lee Compton has been writing some of my favorite stories in the last few years. I don’t know if kinship is the word, but his prose speaks to me. The voices are so real, so authentic. I said recently of Larry Brown to a friend that I can smell the men and truck cabs in Larry Brown stories because I rode around in trucks like those with men like that when I was young. They’re real to me. When an addict swallows a pill in an SLC story, I can taste and feel that because I messed around with that when I was younger. It’s real to me.
I’ve read SLC interviews before and seen him talk about Larry Brown so I know the comparison is apt. I wanted to ask the man himself a little more about Brown though, and about some other things I suspected he might be up on—from Elmore Leonard to Hank Williams to addiction. I hope y’all enjoy the interview as much as I enjoy Sheldon Lee Compton stories. Check out “Remodeling” herein, and then go read all the rest you can. We are witnessing the making of a classic American author the likes of Pollock and Brown and so many other of my favorite grit lit authors.
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. I’ve seen you answer a question about writer influence before where you said something to the effect that discovering Larry Brown showed you it was okay to write about your own home place. I think I get what you mean, but can you elaborate?
SLC: “Big Bad Love” is one of my favorite all time short stories. I think Brown was a fantastic short story writer and a good novelist. I would have loved to have seen more collections from him before he was gone. Reading his work at the beginning did give me a sense that it was okay to write about the people where I come from in a realistic way, that is without sentiment. There’s so much about growing up poor or going hungry or looking for work and things like that that can become really saturated with a kind of preciousness if you’re not careful as a writer from Eastern Kentucky. And though Brown was a southerner, he understood the same point. Or at least that’s what his writing said to me. Also, he was just a real guy, as far as I can tell from listening to second-hand stories from writers I know who knew him. And the fact that a normal but hardworking guy like Larry Brown could write books, well that was also an inspiration. For me, that kind of knowledge effectively wrested the world of literature out of the hands of the people who wrote stories exclusively for The New Yorker or whatever and gave them to a young guy at the end of the world. That was a powerful thing for me, and I love Larry Brown to this day for that gift.
AV: Speaking of cool writers that died too soon, I’ve been a pretty big fan of the FX series Justified based on the Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens fiction universe. I’ve seen you mention some of your favorite TV and films elsewhere and surprised you didn’t mention the Harlan County-set series. Have you read Leonard’s Harlan County depiction? Have you seen the show? How good (or terrible) a job did they do depicting rural Eastern Kentucky?
SLC: Elmore Leonard equals legendary storyteller, and not every writer is a great storyteller. I’ve never read any of the Raylan Givens books, but I have watched the television series made from them. I watched it in its entirety, too. I liked it a lot. But was it an accurate depiction of Eastern Kentucky? Well, I don’t really think they were trying for that, to be honest, and I’m usually okay to take a work of art at whatever value it’s presented. But, if pressed, I’d say the characters are enlarged for dramatic purposes. Some more than others. Raylan certainly, which makes sense within the genre Leonard wrote these books. One aspect that was brought off at just the right pitch was this idea of a single family handling a lot of the crime-related stuff in an Eastern Kentucky town. That is a real thing here. I could rattle off a fairly long list of last names that are exactly those kinds of families. The fact that I won’t name them here, that says a lot right there.
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?
SLC: I’m going to be perfectly honest in saying that I’ve become more uncomfortable with labels in my older age. I’ve identified in the past as an Appalachian writer, then a southern writer, but then, when I realized the label forced this kind of blinders effect on my work, I started to care less and think about it less. I write short stories mostly. I think of myself as a short story writer. Sometimes I write about people in Eastern Kentucky, sometimes I write about ghost dinosaurs; there’s days I write about dead coal mining fathers and others when I write stories that could be called fabulist historical fiction. I love all of it. I write westerns and even the occasional surrealist novel or set of poems with footnotes that have lines like “The last 11 emails in my inbox are from me to me,/but I stay categorically Red Dragon.” I can’t imagine not taking risks and exploring different themes and kinds of stories and ways of telling stories. It’s what makes all of this interesting for me. Grit lit is a good enough label. It’s a type of literature that’s been around for a long, long time, really, but I can appreciate folks wanting to place certain kinds of writing apart from others. I have no problem at all with it; I just don’t really have much input on it.
AV: Speaking of thinking of writing, what’s your process? I mean, how do you make sure you get words on paper in story form? Is this easy or hard for you?
SLC: I’ve tried a lot of different processes. I first tried an output schedule with a target of five-hundred words a day. That didn’t work very well. Then I moved to the time schedule, putting in about three hours a day writing. That didn’t work very well, either. Finally I ditched thinking about process, too. Now I do what I’ve done with most of my stories or books, I generally sit down with my laptop in my recliner and start working on whatever story I have going that draws my interest at that time. I usually have about five stories going at once, and there’s always something about one of them that is catching my eye. I dip in and start exploring around, trusting my instincts to lead me in the right direction. That sense of discovery is one of the biggest things for me as a writer. If I don’t have things to discover for myself while writing a story then there’s nothing there for me. Any time I’ve every plotted a story out and then sat down to write it, I’ve never had a bit of luck with it. The story was already told. Doesn’t matter if it was in outline form. The story has been told and is over. The most difficult time I had writing this way was the six years I worked on my novel Brown Bottle. I never plotted or planned a single thing in that book, and it was grueling. It’s not an approach that works for me when writing a novel, especially a realist novel. I’ve come to believe if it takes you two-hundred and fifty pages to tell a story then you’re probably not making enough choices. I can’t think of any novel I’ve read that wouldn’t have worked better as a ten-page short story, even books by Proust and Pynchon. In fact, you should read Pynchon’s short story collection Slow Learner if you haven’t already. He wrote some tight short stories, man.
AV: How’d you come up with a character like Wade “Brown Bottle” Taylor? It’s clear he’s displaced in the modern world. Several times the narrator seems to have to explain his lack of understanding of Gmail and caller ID and such. Like he never factored these into his existence. Do you know a Wade? Have a little Wade in you? I guess I’m asking, where’s the truth behind that character’s fiction?
SLC: Most of the time a character develops for me as this really organic part of the narrative. This happened with Wade Taylor. He first appeared in a short story of mine called “Purpose” in my short story collection The Same Terrible Storm. That story eventually became the first opening chapter of Brown Bottle. I knew I wanted to write more about the character because I felt him developing beyond the walls of the story. He’s based in part on a former step-uncle of mine, a young guy who sacrificed a lot of his free time to be a kind of father figure to me while his brother was off drinking and so on. The idea that he is awkward with technology is that part of myself I tend to put in my characters from time to time. So there’s a strange kind of patchwork when considering the truth behind that character. The largest part of Wade, that is all the key decisions he made in the book, were these very natural moments within the narrative flow, a part of that discovery process. But, no matter the flow, things were going to go the way they were going to go for him from the second I started writing the book. That was one thing I did plan, I guess. I always knew the end of that book.
AV: There’s a lot of violence, even sudden violence in Brown Bottle. I noticed though that the violence is delivered with almost a whimper and often in ways that subvert violent stereotypes. The narrator does not embellish the acts and is quick to inform the reader that movies don’t get it right and no characters really get “blown away.” I guess I’d suggest the narrator seems very uninterested in violence and wants to reign it in when possible. Was this intentional?
SLC: Ha! There’s so much of what I do in my books and stories that is not intentional. I honestly just cast out into the dark, as Ondaatje so beautifully puts it when talking about his writing process. I cast out then eagerly and carefully reel in whatever my gut and stubbornness brings back. I’ve been asked before about violence in my work, and, of course, it’s understandable. But the thing is, I live in a generally violent place. A lot of guns, a lot of fighting, a lot of crime, a ton of drugs. For instance, when Fay Mullins reflects on his first job as a hired gun, the one where he disposes of the body in the coal mine, every detail of that murder was bonafide truth. That murder took place where I live, back in the early 80s. I grew up hearing that story and a hundred more very much like it. Violence, in one form or another, is part of where I live, part of who I am, even, though I like to deny that sometimes. But to fully answer the question, I never considered how much violence or how little I put on the page. To an extent, I drew on military vets I actually know. These guys want to avoid violence once they get home, it seems to me. They’ve had plenty enough of it in their lives. I had that idea in mind to a certain degree, so maybe more thought went into it than I realize. But, in general, if I write a story set in Eastern Kentucky, it’s going to present violence, because to leave it out would be unbelievable to the narrative. It’s just a huge part of this area. It’s the same reason if I have a large family dinner scene there’s going to be soup beans and fried taters on the table. It might appear stereotypical, but that’s just the way it is.
AV: I’ve been reading your short stories for a while. It seems like each one, at some point, feels shot through with such authenticity, I can’t stand it (in a good way). I’ve written characters who use pills and that’s based in some personal experience. I gotta say, the way Deb regrets her method in “The Same Terrible Storm,” “wishing now she had chewed the pills” instead of dry-swallowing them, feels real as hell. Based in any experience?
SLC: Thanks so much for reading some of my stories. I truly, truly appreciate that. Yeah I’ve dealt with pain pill addiction, nerve pills, and for years and years alcoholism. I’m a recovering addict and alcoholic, full blown. I have two years sober from drinking and about a decade from the pills. I never snorted pills; I always took them regular. Dry-swallow, as Deb said. So some of that specificity comes from first-hand knowledge for sure. Other details come from living here and being around it all the time, being around addicts day in and day out. It might seem hard to imagine, but the majority of people here are addicts, not the other way around. And they come from all walks of life and ages, so pulling for details can happen no matter what kind of character you’re writing. The key really is to write drugs and drinking as if it is as normal to that character as someone else drinking a cup of coffee, because that’s the truth. Talk to a opiate addict from Eastern Kentucky for five minutes and you’ll see what I’m saying. They are second- and third-generation pill heads and alcoholics. It’s their norm, so when I write about it I keep that in mind. I don’t make a big deal out of it when I’m writing a scene where someone’s crushing pills or lying their way through a doctor’s exam to get another script. I write it about the same way I’d describe them taking an afternoon walk.
AV: Little Walter. Hank Williams. Seems like maybe you and Cowboy Jamboree got the same musical tastes... Who are your favorite musicians? Do you play any music?
SLC: I’d bet we surely do. I love the purity of traditional music - blues, folk, gospel, Irish ballads, whatever it may be. And the contemporary artists and bands I like, they bring some of that along with them. Singers like Tom Waits, Shane MacGowan, Nick Cave. I listen to a lot of indie music and absolutely no popular top ten stuff. I couldn’t tell you the name of a single song on the local radio station, unless they’re running an evening 80s hits. Then I’m open to all of it. Bring on Culture Club! I mean with the 80s it’s all good because it’s all nostalgic. But, yeah, Hank Williams Sr., Townes Van Zandt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, bands like The Pogues, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Those Poor Bastards, modern musicians like Sturgill Simpson and William Elliott Whitmore. I could go on and on. I love music. In fact, my interest in music nearly predates my interest in writing. My dad was a really talented guitar player who aspired to be a studio musician. He started teaching me guitar when I was five years old, and I’ve played ever since. So that’s nearly forty years experience on the instrument. I can play a tune or two, that’s a fact.
AV: So less trivia, more big-picture: Why do you write? I read once where you said “reading is prayer.” I totally get that. If reading is prayer, what is writing for you? Confession?
SLC : Yes, reading is prayer. Reading has become more important to me than writing in the past four or five years. I’ve kept a reading log during this time and tried to make an effort to read as far and wide as my tastes will allow. Some surprises along the way include my love for Tolstoy’s work, especially the short stories. Other reading insights have been not so surprising, such as the fact that Proust makes me want to put my head through a wall. In that way, reading is also an act of discovery. Not to say that writing has become less important. I like how you posed the two, though. Writing as confession and reading as prayer. That’s cool. But writing isn’t confession for me. Lately I’ve come to realize it’s just something I do. I write to tell stories, and that’s important enough as is. When we were all gathered around some fire in the middle of the night with the unknown moving in the dark all around us, it was stories that kept us from going crazy.
AV: What’s next from Sheldon Lee Compton? What larger project(s) are you at work on?
SLC: Well, I tell you what, I’m looking forward to this upcoming issue of Cowboy Jamboree, that’s for sure. You guys are putting together some interesting work. Other than that, I’m putting together a collection of short stories set in Eastern Kentucky. It’ll be the first stories of that kind I’ve written since the publication of my first book The Same Terrible Storm in 2012. And I’m always working on a few other projects, too. I have a collection of stories finished in second draft called Sway made up of all the other kinds of short stories I write, which range in topic from towns devoted to amputee worship to dragons that live in small ponds. There’s also a novel I’m about a year into called Evergreen that’s about an immortal serial killer and his three immortal siblings, one of whom played a large role in a previous book of mine called Alice and the Wendigo. So, yeah, I’m fairly busy most of the time. But it keeps things interesting, and, like I mentioned earlier, it keeps me from going crazy. I can only hope it does the same for others.