{"id":36121,"date":"2005-04-08T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-08T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36121"},"modified":"2025-02-18T11:53:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T19:53:05","slug":"issue-57-a-conversation-with-louis-b-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-57-a-conversation-with-louis-b-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 57: A Conversation with Louis B. Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n\n
\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in Willow Springs <\/em>57<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

\n\n

April 8, 2005<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thomas King and Adam O’Connor Rodriquez<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH LOUIS B. JONES<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\"Louis<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit: San Francisco Magazine<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Amy Tan has said that Louis B. Jones possesses, \u201cone of the best minds of our generation.\u201d This is high praise, but Jones is certainly a writer of uncommon skill and care, for whom the importance of writing lies in the everyday practice of art rather than the relentless pursuit of fame. He states that he wants \u201cto write well, and as a consequence of having a readership, go through the publishing machine\u2014which is not very good for human nature.\u201d As the following conversation makes clear, for Mr. Jones writing \ufb01ction is the best way to discover truth in our lives. Despite his gimlet focus on healthy writing communities, he has published three acclaimed novels:\u00a0<\/em>Ordinary Money\u00a0(1990),\u00a0<\/em>Particles and Luck\u00a0(1995), and the 1997\u00a0Los Angeles Times\u00a0Best Book of the Year,\u00a0<\/em>California\u2019s Over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Jones lives with his wife and family in Nevada City, California, where he serves as co-director of the Writers Workshop at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, during which notable poets and writers from around the country gather to teach and write. He was kind enough to spend an afternoon with us at the Palm Court Grill in downtown Spokane.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ADAM O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you write exclusively in the novel form?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LOUIS B. JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to develop my short story skills. Look at what writers do with just a little tableau of events. What you can make out of circumstances is beautiful. I\u2019m writing short stories right now, but even those go long, Alice Munro-length. I\u2019m disinclined toward such an extremely concentrated artistic form that\u2019s so crystalline. I\u2019m just too used to getting below the surface of things. My narrative point of view is always deep, close, inside the complexity of people\u2019s minds. Once I get into that point of view, it\u2019s hard for me to pull back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about a book like California\u2019s Over<\/em>, which goes into many points of view?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m inside Wendy Farmican\u2019s head, way close, for so much of that book\u2014how she feels fat, what she wants, etc. I love being inside people\u2019s heads; that\u2019s where I\u2019m comfortable. I\u2019m especially fascinated by how we know things we don\u2019t know, that we\u2019re driven by motives; there are layers to our personalities, we actually have awarenesses we\u2019re not aware we have on a conscious level. To be able to portray that in \ufb01ction is really hard. To be able to show \u201cThis is what\u2019s driving the character,\u201d that\u2019s the aspect of psychology I\u2019m interested in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THOMAS KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in California\u2019s Over<\/em>, you do that with a variety of characters\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope I do it with all the work. I remember loving it\u2014as an example\u2014that Holden Caul\ufb01eld was sweeter and more trusting than he thought. He wasn\u2019t as cynical as he\u2019d hoped; there was more forgiveness in the world. And that was a \ufb01rst-person unreliable narrator, so while he would be bragging about his sensibilities, complaining about how malicious the world is\u2014about how there are no authentic human beings out there\u2014behind that you can see that the world is warmer, and he is a warmer person than he realizes, so when he goes back home, the resolution of that con\ufb02ict is that we know him better than he knows himself. I guess that\u2019s a model for me. I use third person, but it\u2019s a third that\u2019s so close, so adaptive to the delusions and quirks of my characters, that it works almost like \ufb01rst person. When you\u2019re inside of Wendy as a child, her misapprehensions about her world are as if she\u2019s a \ufb01rst-person narrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you feel you do a similar thing with the adult Baelthon in California\u2019s Over<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. He\u2019s a \ufb01rst-person narrator. The book starts out in his perspective, then suddenly develops an omniscient narrator. When we reach Wendy in the basement, looking for her father\u2019s ashes, the \ufb01rst-person narrator, Baelthon, is \ufb02oored by how attractive she is to him, then the narration follows her up the corridor and moves into her third-person point of view. It\u2019s a little like walking through the wall or into the \ufb01fth dimension. Most people don\u2019t notice that. The \ufb01rst-person switches to third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a reader, it is hard to notice the shift. How did you achieve that seamlessness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I was fortunate in two ways. One is that I was able to have the main character confess, on the page before, that this was going to be the woman of his life, that this was his obsession. That licenses him to follow her, gives him enough knowledge to almost know what she did in the minutes after she met him. In practical terms, because she might have told him a year later, it becomes part of their myth. I also did it with enough force that it\u2019s like hitting warp speed in your spaceship. If you don\u2019t ask permission, just do it without any fuss, it can work. But it was interesting to me technically, too. I was writing a book, \ufb01shing around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did that come naturally to you, or was it the product of revision?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It came naturally. It just happened, so I let it continue to happen. What I thought was the big experiment in that book was the \ufb02ash-forwards. I thought, Can I have a story where readers will know how things will turn out in thirty years, then \ufb02ash back and forth and back and forth, where some times you\u2019re in 1970 and sometimes you\u2019re in 2000? Will foreknowledge ruin or enhance the narration of a present-time moment or a past-time moment? I hate \ufb02ashbacks; I think you should avoid them at all costs, unless there is an urgent appetite to \ufb01nd out something from the past that will directly a\ufb00ect the present narration. But I used \ufb02ashbacks anyway, devising that every time I went back into a \ufb02ashback the reader would think, \u201cOh, good\u2014we can \ufb01nally see what happened,\u201d and not, \u201cOkay, I guess I\u2019ll keep reading.\u201d I think plot is a huge, important technical aspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To what extent do you structure your plot beforehand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About half and half. I have a general idea of where the arc is going to land. But it\u2019s much better waking up not knowing. That\u2019s what gets me out of bed at 3:00 in the morning\u2014knowing I have to jump up and \ufb01gure out what to say instead of following some outline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any examples of fortunate surprise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My \ufb01rst novel, Ordinary Money<\/em>, is about not just counterfeit money, but a perfect counterfeit that creates a kind of metaphysical and moral dilemma. I have these teenage girls who are my main characters in a suburban mall, and on about page twenty, they go to Shakey\u2019s Pizza and they\u2019re talking about some boy, and giving each other fashion advice, and one says to the other, \u201cYou need new earrings.\u201d And the other girl says, \u201cYeah, but this ear is latex.\u201d She had birth defects. That was a case where I was tired of myself by page twenty, and I wanted to make something bizarre happen. So I thought, I\u2019m going to give her a rubber ear, implanted by cosmetic surgery, because she was missing an ear at birth. It turned out to be really useful and interesting, because it gave her emotional and psychological trouble that pertained to what was going on in the book. It was a big, ninety degree turn that paid o\ufb00. I discovered it on the page and it tied the whole book together in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you feel your work is character driven, even though your plots are so intricate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Characters decide the story. You know those books about how to write, with the chapters on plot, setting, language\u2014all the elements. I think character is the one that drives all the others. You can think it\u2019s about language or think it\u2019s about theme, but each element has to consult character to \ufb01nd out what happens next. Even down to how a sentence is put together. It\u2019s an old-fashioned point of view to believe that; I\u2019m completely saturated with the postmoderns, moderns, with declarations like \u201cThe character is dead\u201d and so on. I take a great deal of interest in such attitudes, but I can\u2019t use them upon my own workbench. I\u2019m kind of a fuddy-duddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have said in other interviews that you don\u2019t care if your work is discovered until after you\u2019re dead\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a nice, cute way to think about it. But the whole business of writing is death-oriented. You put words on the page, and then you\u2019re absent. Your true reader, your soulmate, your true love \ufb01nds you, and you\u2019re absent. They\u2019ll be in some armchair in Florida or Texas or New Jersey, crack your book at some bookstore, and they\u2019re your person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you start writing with that ideal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, I think it\u2019s grown on me. Any time writers are in a situation where they\u2019re talking about their book, they should just say \u201cRead the book.\u201d I hope it doesn\u2019t sound a\ufb00ected to say this\u2014but I truly believe that I don\u2019t need to meet Jane Austen, but, boy did she make my life better. I learned how to live by reading dead authors. I don\u2019t need to meet Marcel Proust, either. He might turn out to disappoint me. But his books are great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know you\u2019re working on a novel right now. What do you hope for the future of your publishing career?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m so hypocritical. Where does my hypocrisy lie? I want to have a great career, but I don\u2019t want a great career. I want to write well, and as a consequence of having a readership, go through the publishing machine\u2014which however is not very good for human nature. Fortunately, unlike actors and musicians, we don\u2019t necessarily have to go through it. Actors and musicians have to su\ufb00er the exultations and degradations of that completely phony world to practice their art, and they have to personally be there. It helps if you\u2019re like Charles Dickens, always going along pumping yourself. That\u2019s probably good for your career. But you can also be like Franz Kafka. Or Jane Austen: she didn\u2019t need a great public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve said part of the allure of writing for you is the ability to join the conversation of literature, to add to the body of life-changing \ufb01ction. At this point in your career, with several acclaimed novels and many years of writing experience, where do you see yourself in that ongoing conversation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think where I got that idea is from Mortimer Adler\u2019s \u201cGreat Books of the Western World\u201d series, published by University of Chicago Press. It\u2019s like the canon of all the great books, with uniform bindings\u2014Plato and Aristotle, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, you know. And the introduction that Adler made to the series was titled \u201cThe Great Conversation.\u201d I grew up with these volumes in my middle-class, middle-western house, with the gold foil letters on their spines. Plato. Dante. The great conversation. That\u2019s where the metaphor comes from. I don\u2019t know if my books have a place in that conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think MFA programs help writers get there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I think so. They provide somewhere for writers to be for a couple years. They shake them up. So I think they\u2019re great. I was thirty-something when I went to one, and I had written three unpublished novels. Because I was always outside the publishing mainstream, always taking terrible risks. Walking straight o\ufb00 the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you want to \ufb01nd a readership for those earlier novels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose so. I sure don\u2019t make judgments as to whether a book is good or bad based on publication. That doesn\u2019t make sense. Some of the greatest books in the world are really bad books. Like Moby-Dick<\/em>. Ulysses<\/em>. Remembrance of Things Past<\/em>. They\u2019re obsessed, peculiar books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, a bunch of really mediocre books are sleek pieces of craft. It\u2019s not even the interesting question to me, whether a book is good or bad. Just whether it\u2019s necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You say there\u2019s a strong presence of the author in your books; what do you think is the role of a writer\u2019s morality in his or her work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morality? I\u2019m so morally decrepit myself, I hope that doesn\u2019t get into my books. [Laughs.] I think I\u2019m very present. You know when you look at a Vincent van Gogh painting, the \ufb01rst thing you\u2019re looking at is some mad guy\u2019s brush strokes, his color choices, but there\u2019s more than that. You look through that, and you see how it feels to be on the Paris street or out in the farmlands on a cloudy day. The brushstrokes are there, so you have to pay attention to them, but I hope that in my writing you can look through them. I\u2019m a little bit of a \u201clay it on heavy\u201d writer, so there are a lot of brush strokes, a lot of language. Sometimes the metaphor, or the long sentence that has a lot of grammatical stu\ufb00 going on, might be hard to follow if your momentum is not there. So that\u2019s the sense in which I\u2019m present in my writing. Customarily you want the writing to be a clear window that the reader can look right through, but when you read one of my books, there\u2019s all of this \u201cwriting.\u201d It is my hope, that like the work of an impressionist painter, you can see through the brush strokes, and you can actually get the feeling for Wendy, and Peter, and Baelthon, and that whole bunch of people. It\u2019s back to the character. Character, character, character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it seems like you tightly edit your lines\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a lot happening in those sentences. Something I\u2019ve been told is that my writing tends to slow the eye. I write assuming people will read each word. To me that\u2019s what the medium is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Particles and Luck<\/em>, the protagonist is a fortunate young physicist\u2014fortunate being a word you use to describe him on the \ufb01rst page\u2014whose early success thrusts him into the vanguard of his \ufb01eld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How comfortable were you entering the \ufb01eld of physics in the novel? How much research did the book require?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember liking a book called Cosmic Code<\/em> by Heinz R. Pagels, but just go to any bookstore and look on the physics shelf. They have all these wonderful, attractive titles, and they explain how bizarre the world we live in is, what it\u2019s made of, these little clouds of thought. Physicists are truly having to become religious\u2014or at least metaphysical\u2014because it\u2019s so bizarre, what they\u2019re getting down to. You know, the question, \u201cWhat are things made of?\u201d is kind of an emergency for some people. So, I just read a lot on that subject. And I had taken a lot of calculus when I was in the university, so I was able to follow certain parts of it. There\u2019s a crucial thing called Bell\u2019s Theorem that depends upon an equation that I was\u2014rather closely\u2014able to follow mathematically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After you \ufb01nish a draft of a novel, do you check it against sources?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess it varies from book to book. Ordinary Money<\/em> had a good amount of research in it, because I had to \ufb01nd out how both counterfeit and real money were made. So I went to the mint in Washington, DC. I also researched the Secret Service, which is the law enforcement branch assigned to protecting the image and value of paper money. And I made up a lot. You can make up research. I simply sketched the world according to a whim, then found something out in the world that corroborated\u2014isn\u2019t that the purpose of research anyway? Particles and Luck<\/em> was incredibly research-oriented; in fact, it\u2019s an interesting book because it tries to be about something other than \ufb01ction. It\u2019s trying to be about what things are made of and I think it\u2019s one of the reasons some critics, whom I agree with, think of it as a failure as a novel; or, not a failure, but it\u2019s trying to do something novels shouldn\u2019t do. The Washington Post<\/em> guy said that, Jonathan Yardley, who has loved everything else I wrote. And he\u2019s right. It\u2019s an odd book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you mean, \u201cWhat a novel shouldn\u2019t do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, in the end, Particles and Luck<\/em> is partly about what things are made of, instead of whether Mark Perdue\u2019s marriage will return to solid ground. I mean, it\u2019s a book about marriage and \ufb01delity, but it\u2019s also a book about atoms and electrons. You have to pay attention to the science if you read it. I think that disagreed with Yardley. And I understand. But as I said, a book\u2019s defects\u2014as with Proust, or Walt Whitman, or name anybody\u2014you have to use your defects. And Particles and Luck<\/em> was a book that was born the way it was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narration of Particles and Luck<\/em> is so di\ufb00erent from the more sprawling California\u2019s Over<\/em> because the action takes place during the course of one twenty-four hour period. What were the bene\ufb01ts and limitations of that structure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think readers enjoy the cozy sense of being inside a set time. It makes the reader feel very much at home. But perhaps the limitation\u2014the danger that it creates for its author\u2014is that I thought I had a plot structure because I had the day. But I really didn\u2019t. What\u2019s at stake is Mark Perdue\u2019s \ufb01delity. He\u2019s been married for three weeks, his secretary kisses him, and he has this kind of longing. You know he\u2019s not going to act on the longing; he\u2019s kind of like Holden Caul\ufb01eld in that way. You know he\u2019s not going to do it, but you can play with the expectation. And also what\u2019s at stake is his relationship with his neighbor, Roger Hoberman. He\u2019s kind of a hapless character. Maybe the book is about two men, two di\ufb00erent approaches. Roger is not as pretentious as Mark Perdue; he\u2019s a more grateful guy. In a way, you\u2019d want Roger for a friend, and not my main character, Mark Perdue. Anyway, so the book does have a plot, in the sense that those problems are resolved, but I might have fallen into the trap of thinking that I had a plot because I had a time structure. A single day. Time structure is not a plot. To have a bunch of things happen in a series is not a plot; there has to be moral cause and resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think California\u2019s Over<\/em> comes to a resolution at the end?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like novels that end in sleep. So, when Wendy is able to roll over and go to sleep, and Steve is pleased with that, it seems to mean that after all these years they have something like a marriage. That after all the betrayal and disloyalty and remorse, she\u2019s come to see him again and she\u2019s gone to sleep. That means that, after thirty years, they\u2019ll still be married. Sleep is a form of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does California\u2019s Over<\/em> mirror how life still is in some of those northern California towns?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s kind of a novel about the bohemian trip, which kind of ends in suicide. In fact, I just started thinking about how I began writing this book right when Kurt Cobain shot himself. There was something about his suicide that really made me mad, got under my skin. I took it personally when Cobain shot himself. And that\u2019s what is really behind California\u2019s Over<\/em>. There\u2019s this old house where Dad was the beatnik, it\u2019s holy to commit suicide, and the novel is about the children who have to continue living after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019CONNOR RODRIGUEZ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some critics suggested you were condemning 1960s culture, but I didn\u2019t read the book that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a lot of narcissism then. But what I thought was wonderful was what they called the Beat movement. Hippies and that other crowd came later, but some of the original impulse behind that counterculture was to overcome pretentiousness. It became interested in Asian philosophy in a way that did not exist before. It embraced paci\ufb01sm. It made friends with African-American culture and Latino culture, making the country a million times more interesting. It de\ufb01ed the social-class barriers that had been set up over time. But I think we are a better country now because of what they achieved. Now we go around with our backpacks and our Birkenstocks. There\u2019s a moment in The Dharma Bums<\/em> where the Gary Snyder character goes into a bar and the Ginsberg character says, You\u2019ve got to meet my friend Ja\ufb00y Ryder, he\u2019s great, he\u2019s a Buddhist, man, and look: he wears sandals and carries a rucksack. Fifty years later, everybody is wearing sandals, carrying a backpack, and studying Buddhism. Snyder walked into a North Beach bar in 1945 or 1947 and met Kerouac, but he was the \ufb01rst, he was like the spore. On the whole, I think those are wonderful changes. The book California\u2019s Over<\/em> is about a later, cracked-up period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your novels take place in a very speci\ufb01c region, in Terra Linda, California\u2014how do you avoid the limitations of regionalism? How do you make sure that the book is about more than Terra Linda?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess it\u2019s a publishing business question, whether the book is going to be of interest to anybody in one region or another. In that little town of Terra Linda that I always write about, I think very few people read. So if I were just going to be The Terra Linda Writer I wouldn\u2019t sell any books. It\u2019s interesting, I\u2019m not as big in California and the West as I am in New York and Chicago and Washington, DC. I am a Midwestern person who went out to California with a Midwesterner\u2019s stubborn skepticism, so I\u2019ll always be a little alien to that place. I think there are ironies in my books that most Californians don\u2019t get. For example, the movie business keeps working on Ordinary Money<\/em>. Ordinary Money<\/em> will always be under option, because everybody thought, \u201cOh, it\u2019s about counterfeit money, we could make a movie out of it.\u201d But Hollywood producers and directors really don\u2019t get the book. I think Californians don\u2019t see the irony of California civilization, whereas in New York they know. A lot of people want their books to be made into movies. That\u2019s a vanity fair, there. But it\u2019s a happy thing to just keep getting option checks every year and never have the movie made. You know who really did well with that? Evan S. Connell wrote Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge<\/em>. There was a movie made of those, I think it was called Mr. & Mrs. Bridge<\/em>, with Paul Newman. The books are masterpieces of what is not said. The books are made up of all these short scenes, and what\u2019s partly great about the books is everything he doesn\u2019t say about the characters\u2019 lives. The author is so angry with the bourgeois civilization of Kansas City, where he grew up, and he knows it so well: the country clubs and the cars packed into garages. They\u2019re among the greatest books of our time. Those books went in and out of option for years. He got checks and checks and checks and \ufb01nally Paul Newman made a not-very-good movie out of them. The movie was forgettable, but then he got a big pot of gold at the end, which is nice. The kind of guy I feel bad for is Thomas Berger, who wrote Little Big Man<\/em>, a wonderful novel. They made a very good movie out of it. So if they\u2019re going to make a movie out of your book, either they\u2019ll make a bad movie, so you\u2019ll have that kind of trouble, or they\u2019ll make a really good movie, and that will be a di\ufb00erent kind of trouble: it somehow covers up what you did. Little Big Man<\/em> was his best book, and it was a medium-sized hit in its time, but the movie was so good that it exploded the old book. I\u2019m ambivalent about the movie business. I want to stay away from it. I\u2019d like to get money from it, you know, but not ever have to work inside. It\u2019s a di\ufb00erent world. It\u2019s all showbiz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KING<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned last night that you\u2019re reading a little less \ufb01ction these days. So I wonder: if you were starting your career today, would you still be drawn to being a novelist, or would you tend toward non-\ufb01ction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was drawn to writing because I wanted to study everything and know everything. I know it sounds na\u00efve, but that\u2019s what I wanted to do. I think my instincts led me to believe that what truth there is, is in \ufb01ction. In psychology and sociology and even physics, which presumes so much objectivity, they run smack into subjectivity. The assumption of objectivity is one of the \ufb01rst things I dispensed with in my life. Somehow \ufb01ction, with its useful versions of reality, is the right risk to take. Whenever you read history you quickly realize that it\u2019s \ufb01ction. If you care, and look closely, it\u2019s all \ufb01ction. There\u2019s something about the world of writing novels that acknowledges subjectivity as an existential fact, and then transforms it into some truth about our lives. So in a way, I think \ufb01ction is the only thing.<\/p>\n\n

<\/svg><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amy Tan has said that Louis B. Jones possesses, \u201cone of the best minds of our generation.\u201d This is high praise, but Jones is certainly a writer of uncommon skill and care, for whom the importance of writing lies in the everyday practice of art rather than the relentless pursuit of fame. He states that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":2516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36121"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36712,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36121\/revisions\/36712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}