Interview with Ben Tanzer

Ben Tanzer, dad, husband, runner and the author of two novels, Lucky Man (Manx Media, 2007) and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine (Orange Alert Press, 2008), recently came out with his first short story collection, Repetition Patterns (CCLAP 2008). He's the real thing. His books feel sincere and hard-earned and, I mean this in the best way, unstudied. It's refreshing to read any young writer who seems to be working outside the MFA/AWP career track. Last week, I had the chance to ask him a few questions.


MF:I loved Lucky Man, your first book. Like RP, it just seems to nail a stretch of years we’ve all gone through. And it’s also really fun, a little like watching Bode Miller ski, just when it seems like it’s going to burst off the tracks, it catches itself and honors the underlying story. You also write drugs like a master. Basically, I just wanted to say that, but do you ever feel out of control when you write? And do you feel like it’s necessary to the process?

BT:That's really generous of you, thanks, I love everything about Bode Miller and I love that description. How's that for self-absorption? Do I feel out of control? Often, on good days its a frenzy, an almost controlled frenzy, like one of the purposeful burns they do in old forests, and on the one hand, that's how I am with most things I'm compulsive about, when I'm in it, I'm nuts. But more than that, I waited a long time to start, and now that I've started I'm dying to write, but just barely have the time. So when I get the time, I'm desperate for it, hungry, and being hungry like that usually means being out of control.

MF: RP paints a specific age and place, specifically upstate NY in the 80’s. The first story sets-up the rest to be told in a sad, and sometimes furious, nostalgia. And characters hop in and out of the different stories. It’s really fun in this way. And I wish I knew why, but I think the best collections have always done this: stories that share common characters and settle in to a place and time. To name a few, Steve Almond’s first collection, MY LIFE IN HEAVY METAL, (As I’m writing I realize they all seem to be author’s first collections as well.) but Juno Diaz’s DROWN, Ryan Harty’s BRING ME YOUR SADDEST ARIZONA, Keith Banner’s THE SMALLEST PEOPLE ALIVE. RP seem to move with this fancy herd. What was the idea here? Did you know you were doing it? Where you inspired by previous collections?

BT:I clearly have a lot more books to read, but first off thanks, and yes definitely influenced by a series of collections I read that seemed to very much invoke time and place - Drown for sure, but The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, When The Messenger is Hot by Elizabeth Crane, What People Talk About When The Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, my favorite with respect to Ms. Crane and The Bridegroom by Ha Jin.

MF: Sort of along the same lines…. do you think that formula (wrong word) works, and why?

BT:I think it can, and clearly does, some of it is why we like serial shows like 24 or Lost, they build on each other and you get sucked into that. But I wonder if part of that is the author finding their voice in some ways by trying to write such stories. I think voice is one reason these collections hit and readers are attracted to voice, which is why not everyone likes every collection. Not that I hope anyone would ever say that about Raymond Carver.

MF: Some say writing a book, especially a first one, is like driving in the dark. You can sort of see the next few sentences, but until it’s a pile of pages adding up to a book, you just never really know what you’re doing. But then one day you go from Writer to Author? Someone reaches down and flips a switch. You were an author with these last two books. Was it a different process?

BT:Yes and no. With Lucky Man I really sort of had the whole thing in mind and feel like I just downloaded it. Most Likely was much more like a few sentences piling up on one another, though I mostly knew where I was going to start and where I was going to end. Most Likely and Repetition Patterns are similar in that they are a string of related/interconnected ideas, the way they differ, is that the latter is visualizing a series of small, whole chunks versus the former which is a series of small, not whole chunks that ultimately aims to complete something whole.


MF: Three books, three different eclectic and interesting publishers. Any comments on them or the difference between online and print publishing?

BT:Three different publishers. All different. All quite cool to work with. All love writers. The differences, for me are not dramatically different, which is probably the misnomer for the public or someone who works with a big publishing house. The sophistication may be different, but online or print, it’s about breadth of opportunities and access to reviewers, bookstores and distribution systems. If you're smaller, it’s all pretty similar, and for me, so far very cool. The guys I've worked with are hungry and collaborative and driven by the craft and the business.

MF: What do you do to pay the bills? Is there crossover in your writing?

BT: I am a communications/messaging/social media guy for the national office of a nonprofit and more and more there is crossover between my worlds, storytelling, words and marketing at a primarily grassroots level.

MF: Especially after “Life As He Had Known It,” I’m curious has kids affected your writing?

BT: Its affected in an obvious sort of dopey way, kids and parenting now endlessly trickle into my work, which I hope makes it richer, more varied, but I've mostly only been writer as long as I've been a parent, so its also very hard to disentangle the two for me.

MF: Along the same line, have you always written?

BT: No, not at all, I took a creative writing course as a senior in high school and really got excited, but didn't exactly do something, then I tried a creative writing course in college, which I didn't enjoy, the other students were older and not so friendly, and I ultimately spent maybe 10 years trying to decide how to start, endlessly thinking about story ideas and how I might start. But I didn't. At 30 I thought enough. Time to start. Now or never. I got an idea for a piece, there was an incident that upset me, it reminded me of a story I had always wanted to write, I used that feeling, wrote it down, and I was off and running.

MF: Do you have a routine?

BT: Not really, I can't. From the start I decided not to be precious about it. Write whenever, wherever I can, try to plot out the week, figure out what's going to work, do 30 minutes minimum per day and stick to that. Could be a plane, hotel room, my bed, a train, an airport, and on and on. The main things are shoot for everyday, harder than ever, 30 minutes, and never edit a first draft. Just write.

MF: You seem to gather inspiration from artifacts and culture. (You’re ode to Pac Man in “Pac-Man Fever” should be required reading for anyone who ever stepped through 1984.) Do you ever feel like there are two gears in writing, one where we lean on memory and then another where we turn to imagination? If so, as you get more comfortable with your toolbox, do you know when your work is asking for you to move into one gear or the other?

BT: I don't think they're necessarily gears though for me, they are modes, the nugget of a story or even a book comes from a memory or association, much of which is artifacts and culture for me, always has been, and then I try to wrap my imagination around that, if anything its a two part process. With Pac Man Fever, there was a rock star Pac Man player where I grew-up. I was always fascinated by him, in part because he killed himself, in part because watching him play was like Reggie Jackson or Sean Penn, but I knew nothing about him. So I asked myself what his life might have been like. Memory and imagination.

MF: Running... the hippie runner seemed spot on. I've heard others say learning to run a marathon was more important than any writing class they took in terms of learning how to write a book. Comments?

BT: Running a marathon which I have done, poorly, and repeatedly, and has always seemed analogous to me to writing a novel in that for me, once I got writing, which was around the time I started running more again, around 30, they seemed like logical extensions of what I was passionate about. If you're going to write, why not write a book, and if you're going to run, why not run a marathon. It’s part compulsion and part going big. I would add that I'm not very good at learning things in an academic sense. I did fine in school, eventually, but I have always done best by doing, jumping in. I still don't know much about running marathons, I just decided it was time to do so. Same with writing and novels, I don't know much about what you're supposed to do. I would add that this isn't a point of pride, I've just always been like this.

MF:How poorly?

BT: Best time? I have finished four marathons, but all kind of sucked physically. Mentally though, it got better and better with each one. Well until the NY marathon. Best time 4:15.

Do you run marathons?

MF: This is my interview.


MF:What's the most undignified thing you've done to promote your books?

BT:I think everything I do is basically undignified. But I still quite enjoy it.

MF: What's the dream? Would you write full-time if you could? (maybe you can?) Would you teach?

BT: I love this question because it’s so confusing for me. I'm not sure what that entails. I need to work. And if I had the chance to stop because I could write I would be conflicted. I do sort of cool stuff.

On the other hand, I do visualize a different life-style, where maybe I wouldn't write a lot more, but I would do it when I wanted to. And I would run when I wanted. And surf. And cook. And sleep some more.

I think teaching could be fun. But I've never done it and have no idea how that works.

MF: Last questions: Chicago looks pretty good from here. Your works (i haven't read the 2nd book yet) seem to be about everything but.. Do you see yourself as a Chicago writer? Are you writing about it in your new work? And do you have anything to say about your Chicago peers or the support organizations?


BT: I have been waiting for someone to ask me this. Thanks. I think I had this series of story ideas that were backlogged in my head and all took place in other places I had lived. The new novel I'm working on though is more current and is set in Chicago. As far as feeling like a Chicago writer, I still aspire to be as good as the Chicago writers I admire past and present, so if they don't mind me being called a Chicago writer, I would be honored.

And Chicago is wonderful.

As far as the local scene, it is vibrant and geeked. There are lots of people writing and supporting writing, and many really, really good writers and readers. Great indy scene. Very cool. And it’s fun to be in the middle of it.