Spotlight On…

Sit back and enjoy the words of Rusty Barnes as he talks to us about Diet Pepsi, terza rima, ego, and being unfashionable.

Tell us about the first story or poem you remember writing.

There are two I remember. The first one happened to me when I was oh, ten or so. By way of background, at the time my family was heavily involved in a historical reenactment group called the Ameigh Valley Irregulars (you could wear no clothing or equipment worn or used in camping that existed after 1840; tepees, lean-tos, lean-pees, flintlock firearms, lots of buckskin — those were the order of the day). In any case, my father mused at the time (he’s spent the last 50 years or so researching the Barnes family history) that it would be a great boon to his work if he could just go back in time as a silent observer, and well, observe. Somehow I got it in my head that this was worth a poem, so I wrote one, called The Buckskin Wraith. Dad has the thing somewhere still. I still cringe at the handwriting, in which every line moves closer and closer to the right margin of the page. I guess my hand just trails right, like a left-handed curveball. Even now I have to watch out for it if I’m writing by hand.

And speaking of curveballs, I hit my senior year English teacher with one. We had an assignment, don’t remember what the hell it was, but I ended up writing a five or six page poem in terza rima excoriating my classmates, most of them by name, for having the temerity not to like me, or to treat me badly because of my clothes, or to exhale loudly when grades were announced, because I fucked around and still made decent grades. I had a heavy sense of myself then and I wanted revenge. They might have the advantage, I thought, with their rich parents, the popped collars and parachute pants, those high-top sneakers and decent dental plans, but I would have the last motherfucking word when I wrote my opinion of them down. And that opinion would be what future historians would write about: my opinion. No ego there, kid. None at all. Next question?

How often do you struggle with your writing? Or does it come easily?

I struggle at finding time to write. Once my ass is down, I’m fine, and given a relatively uninterrupted hour, I’ll usually have a thousand cleanish words down, if I’m writing fiction — somewhat less if I’m on a novel or non-fiction — or a clean draft of a poem. Honestly, writing comes so easily most of the time I don’t understand why I ever stop. It is quite literally the only pleasure in my life that has even come close to reading. Outside of various other things, like, oh, my family and our day-to-day life.

Describe your typical writing environment.

We recently bought a house, and my wife, being the woman that she is, turned one room into a kick-ass library and bought me an easy chair to do my work in. Though I love the room to pieces and spend as much time as I can in there — it’s so calming — I do nearly all my writing on the couch in the living room on my laptop, TV on, kids running ’round, my wife within an arm’s length of me. If I’m working on a novel, I always put headphones on, because for some reason novels scare me with their large word counts and their potential to make tuppence — cough — so I need more distance from the day-to-day in order to write it the way it should be written, with careful attention to detail and great clamors of internal distress. I also need a beverage. I drink gallons of Diet Pepsi, and yes I know that aspartame causes cancer in lab rats, and I don’t really care. It’s the only vice I have that can be spoken about in public. I want to keep it.

What’s your favorite piece, story or poem, you’ve written? Why?

I am proud of myself for finally finishing a novel, especially this novel. I didn’t think I would ever muster the intestinal fortitude to write one. Otherwise, that’s a tough question I don’t think I can answer.

What’s the last book that you loved?

I’m sleepless in Revere tonight — tomorrow, now, I guess, 5:17 AM — so I chose four books to read as the dawn approacheth with its nasty sunlight and responsibilities. I finished Mentor, by Tom Grimes, which I really enjoyed. I also re-read The World Made Straight, by Ron Rash, which is a great book I wish I’d written, and I got through Robert Lowell’s first three books, almost, and I’m ready to start on Life Studies again, or maybe Notebook. Next in line are the letters of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. I also dipped into and out of some candy, Appaloosa, by Robert Parker.

Does reading online influence your writing style? How would your work change if you lost access to the Internet for a year?

I think I write shorter pieces now due to the interwebs. I don’t have the patience for stories that go on past about 5K. I’m enough of a minimalist that I believe even that’s too long for a reader. My work wouldn’t change at all, I don’t think. I read wherever I find words, cereal boxes, the Nook, journals, books, chapbooks, anything. I’ll continue to do that until they plant me.

Your work is often brutal. Is this a conscious choice, or do you simply write what you see? As a corollary to that, is the brutality a function of the setting or of the characters? Let’s say the characters in your flash fiction collection, Breaking it Down, were transplanted to wealthy families dwelling in the North. How would those stories change?

It’s a conscious choice. I think that life, as Hobbes said, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. And also, stories need conflict and I don’t want to read another adultery story, or cancer story, or drug use among teens story, though I have written every one of those things I don’t want to read. Death is good to write about, and the threat of death, and hunger, and sex, and relationships. My bullshit threshold is lower and lowering every day. I have reached the point where I want to read exactly what I want to, and nothing else.

I think the brutality comes from my characters. I write about unfashionable people, mostly, people like the ones I grew up among. No one had much money; we mostly ate well and lived, but very often a whole pack of wolves joined in kicking the door down. My dad was unemployed for two years in the late seventies. I went to school then in a sort of agonized and trembling pride that I was wearing Salvation Army clothes — a whole outfit for a buck! — but at the same time marking every look teachers and classmates gave me. I didn’t fit in, and that class and economic conscience has plagued me ever since. Very quickly I learned that I was going to pay a painful price when it came to socializing and moving up in the world, even in that already relatively poor climate.

As for the setting of my book, I mean, I AM from the north. I’m not southern, or Appalachian as the phrase is typically used. I find the most common ground in Appalachian lit and or rural lit, and where I grew up is in Appalachia as the Appalachian Regional Commission defines it, so I’ve claimed that bit as my territory — hell, no one else wanted it. I guess I don’t think the stories would change that much. In everything I write, I try to make the characters exist first, and from their travails a plot or a forward jump will be set into motion, and eventually I have something that other people might want to read.

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Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia, and would like to direct you to two Web sites: www.nighttrainmagazine.com and www.friedchickenandcoffee.com.