Will Kelsey
asked
Matt Ruff:
I grew up in a small town in central New York. You mentioned a similar town in your book. Was it based on a real place?
Matt Ruff
The town of Simmonsville in the novel isn’t inspired by an actual town, but it does have a connection to reality.
When I was a student at Cornell University in the 1980s, I used to go for long hikes in the countryside. The town of Ithaca, where Cornell was located, was this cosmopolitan island surrounded by farmland – you could pick any direction and start walking, and in no time you’d find yourself out in the boondocks. So I’d do that, go out and get lost, ramble around for ten or fifteen miles, and eventually find my way back to campus.
One evening when I returned from one of these rambles I stopped in to see my friend Joe Scantlebury, who was the Residence Hall Director at Ujamaa, the program house affiliated with the Africana Studies Center. I told him what I’d been up to and suggested that he, too, might enjoy tramping around the countryside. He laughed politely and said, “That sounds great, Matt, but I can’t do that – I’m black.” I said, “What are you talking about? This isn’t the South. We’re in upstate New York.” And he said, “Yeah, I know, but I still can’t go hiking around here.”
So I thought about it some more, and the next time I went out on a ramble, I tried to see it the way Joe would. Generally I didn’t encounter many people on these walks, but the ones I did see were all white, and they tended to be the kind of folks who had gun racks in their pickup trucks. I never had a problem, but if I’d looked like Joe, the reception might have been very different – and this was before cell phones, so if you did get in trouble, there’d be no way to call for help.
And that realization, that Joe and I were in a sense living in different countries, even though we occupied the same geographical space, stayed with me, and I now consider it to be the earliest spark of inspiration for what would eventually become Lovecraft Country. So my decision to put Simmonsville in central New York, not far from Ithaca, was my nod to that. And while the town is fictional, the idea that black travelers in the 1950s would have cause to be wary in rural New York is realistic.
When I was a student at Cornell University in the 1980s, I used to go for long hikes in the countryside. The town of Ithaca, where Cornell was located, was this cosmopolitan island surrounded by farmland – you could pick any direction and start walking, and in no time you’d find yourself out in the boondocks. So I’d do that, go out and get lost, ramble around for ten or fifteen miles, and eventually find my way back to campus.
One evening when I returned from one of these rambles I stopped in to see my friend Joe Scantlebury, who was the Residence Hall Director at Ujamaa, the program house affiliated with the Africana Studies Center. I told him what I’d been up to and suggested that he, too, might enjoy tramping around the countryside. He laughed politely and said, “That sounds great, Matt, but I can’t do that – I’m black.” I said, “What are you talking about? This isn’t the South. We’re in upstate New York.” And he said, “Yeah, I know, but I still can’t go hiking around here.”
So I thought about it some more, and the next time I went out on a ramble, I tried to see it the way Joe would. Generally I didn’t encounter many people on these walks, but the ones I did see were all white, and they tended to be the kind of folks who had gun racks in their pickup trucks. I never had a problem, but if I’d looked like Joe, the reception might have been very different – and this was before cell phones, so if you did get in trouble, there’d be no way to call for help.
And that realization, that Joe and I were in a sense living in different countries, even though we occupied the same geographical space, stayed with me, and I now consider it to be the earliest spark of inspiration for what would eventually become Lovecraft Country. So my decision to put Simmonsville in central New York, not far from Ithaca, was my nod to that. And while the town is fictional, the idea that black travelers in the 1950s would have cause to be wary in rural New York is realistic.
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