INTERVIEW
right and wrong: AN INTERVIEW WITH eugene cross
BY Phil Cole
2013
In his debut short story collection, Fires of Our Choosing, Eugene Cross shows us what humanity exists in the American Northwest. None of his characters are spoon-fed to us. Through Eugene’s masterful storytelling, we’re forced to leave behind our understandings of good guys and bad guys as we watch every-day people do wrong. Eugene Cross was kind enough to answer questions and help a reader dig deeper into the mind of himself and his characters.
Eugene Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an MFA from The University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of “20 Best New Writers” and his story “Harvesters” a “Top Five Story of 2009-2010”), American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Callaloo, among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.
Eugene Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an MFA from The University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of “20 Best New Writers” and his story “Harvesters” a “Top Five Story of 2009-2010”), American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Callaloo, among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.
Phil Cole (PC): For many years, you lived in Northwestern Pennsylvania just as many of your characters do in Fires of Our Choosing. Now that you live and teach in Chicago, are you beginning to find new waves of inspiration to have your future stories take place there? Or do you feel as though that part of your creativity is still bound to your home area?
Eugene Cross (EC): I've found it difficult to move away from the landscape and characters that have shaped my past. Northwestern Pennsylvania was where I learned how a good story was told, long before I ever tried to write one down. Now that I live in Chicago, I feel as though I have a different perspective on where I'm from. Not being as close to home has given me a clearer view in ways. Forest for the trees, I suppose. Lately I've found that some of my work is taking place elsewhere, but I'm still very much drawn back home.
PC: That makes perfect sense in that your characters seem to fit that region. Taking note of Ronny’s passion for the quiet craft of taxidermy in “Only the Strong Will Survive” and Sam’s enjoyment of solitude in “The Brother,” they express an appreciation for simplicity and calmness. Do you think a region like Northwestern Pennsylvania is more accommodating to house such characters over a metropolitan area? Or are your characters’ desires not so much connected to their environment?
EC: I've never thought of it in that way, and I really like that explanation. Yes, I think a rural or even semi-rural setting can provide the type of solitude that a character at odds with themselves might require. Ronny and Sam in particular have pasts they haven't fully come to terms with yet, and I think their respective professions give them some space to work those issues over. I love Chicago, but I do find myself missing those long drives out into the country, or walks in the woods, where you knew, or at least felt you were alone.
Eugene Cross (EC): I've found it difficult to move away from the landscape and characters that have shaped my past. Northwestern Pennsylvania was where I learned how a good story was told, long before I ever tried to write one down. Now that I live in Chicago, I feel as though I have a different perspective on where I'm from. Not being as close to home has given me a clearer view in ways. Forest for the trees, I suppose. Lately I've found that some of my work is taking place elsewhere, but I'm still very much drawn back home.
PC: That makes perfect sense in that your characters seem to fit that region. Taking note of Ronny’s passion for the quiet craft of taxidermy in “Only the Strong Will Survive” and Sam’s enjoyment of solitude in “The Brother,” they express an appreciation for simplicity and calmness. Do you think a region like Northwestern Pennsylvania is more accommodating to house such characters over a metropolitan area? Or are your characters’ desires not so much connected to their environment?
EC: I've never thought of it in that way, and I really like that explanation. Yes, I think a rural or even semi-rural setting can provide the type of solitude that a character at odds with themselves might require. Ronny and Sam in particular have pasts they haven't fully come to terms with yet, and I think their respective professions give them some space to work those issues over. I love Chicago, but I do find myself missing those long drives out into the country, or walks in the woods, where you knew, or at least felt you were alone.
PC: In an interview with The Millions, you said that you intended for all of the stories in Fires of Our Choosing to form a collection. With that, one of its most prevalent themes seems to morality. When composing this collection, what attitude about morality and ethics—if any—did you take into the writing process and do you think it shows as you intended it to?
EC: One of the ideas relating to ethics that was present during the writing process was definitely accountability. I'm intrigued by characters who do something wrong but refuse to own up to it, as well as characters who undergo some misfortune and consistently place the blame elsewhere. This is often the case, but at other times I feel we have a hand in our own fate and choose not to acknowledge that. I'm also interested, as are so many writers, in the idea of redemption. Can we ever really change, or make up for the wrongs we inflict?
EC: One of the ideas relating to ethics that was present during the writing process was definitely accountability. I'm intrigued by characters who do something wrong but refuse to own up to it, as well as characters who undergo some misfortune and consistently place the blame elsewhere. This is often the case, but at other times I feel we have a hand in our own fate and choose not to acknowledge that. I'm also interested, as are so many writers, in the idea of redemption. Can we ever really change, or make up for the wrongs we inflict?
PC: Perhaps we can—or at least hold onto our humanity as your characters do. Though they commit some violent and repulsive acts, they never actually lose the reader’s sympathy. Do you write with the intention of making the reader form forgiveness for characters like Marty, who physically assaults another young boy at school in “Rosaleen if You Know What I Mean,” and Megan, whose dozing off results in the drowning of her younger sister and her playmate in “Come August”?
EC: In "Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean" I began only with Marty's violent attack, not knowing in the slightest why he would do such a thing. As the story progressed it explained the circumstances of Marty's life to me. I formed my own forgiveness for Marty along with the reader, sympathized with him as the story surprised me, which, I find, is the best way to work. In "Come August," which is based in part on a case that happened in my father's hometown, I was more intrigued by how an everyday member of society can so quickly and completely become a villain in the public eye. I wanted to look at the other side of this, to see how a seemingly "normal" person with no malicious intent can so irrevocably ruin her own life and the lives of so many around her. All this while not forgetting that character's humanity.
PC: In that story and others, you convey feelings of panic, guilt and hopeless love very convincingly. Do any of these other stories also take inspiration from real-life experiences of yours or others around you?
EC: Most of the stories, including "The Brother," "Fires of Our Choosing," and "Hunters," have some root in autobiography, portions of them based on both myself and others. One of the themes I found recurring in the book was that of absent or deceased fathers. I was writing the book during a time when my own father was succumbing to cancer and I think these stories helped me deal with that.
PC: Much of your writing displays an acute view of the troubles of trying to do the right thing in life. Is that drive—along with the many vulnerabilities of people trying to do so—something that drives your writing?
EC: I do like characters who try to hold on to their principles in a world that's not conducive to that. However, I also like characters who are "Good people" yet do bad or hurtful things for no reasonable explanation. Charles Baxter has a wonderful essay on this in relation to plot wherein he discusses putting characters through doors they cannot pass back through.
PC: In “Hunters,” you write a rather disheartening take on the relationships of male goers of a dive bar and their wives. One sentence reads, “Their faces were aged with the stoic acceptance of their lots, and they would wait until their husbands finished the drinks they had in front of them, unseated themselves clumsily from their stools, and collected their change and cigarettes from the bar.” Does this come from any cynical view you have on the potential dangers of love? And are certain people bound to end up in similarly bleak places in life?
EC: I think everyone who lives and breathes has been hurt by love, or the lack thereof, at one time or another. Flannery O' Connor said “Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.” Hopefully this doesn't make me a cynic, but "the potential dangers of love" often make for good fiction. My thought in writing that sentence and those that surround it concerned the lengths we'll go to for those that we love or loved at one time, what we're willing to tolerate. Oftentimes it seems too much from the outside in, but just the opposite for those involved.
PC: Do you think that some people are prone to ethical failure where others are bound for success? And if so, are your characters, as you intend them to be understood, victims of circumstance? Or are they all answerable players in life’s grid of right and wrong?
EC: That's a wonderful question. I do think some of my characters, based on their circumstances, are more readily exposed to ethical dilemmas, or rather face higher stakes when those situations present themselves. And I think, forgive me for the cliché, that raising those stakes has something to do with successful fiction. And yes, that these characters are indeed "answerable players," that despite their efforts to convince themselves of the contrary they are responsible for the choices they make. The best conflict is internal, when a character knows the right thing to do but resists, or knows they're bound to hurt someone they love and does so anyway, or makes some kind of stand and reaps the consequences (see Updike's marvelous A & P). Those are the stories I'm most interested in.
EC: In "Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean" I began only with Marty's violent attack, not knowing in the slightest why he would do such a thing. As the story progressed it explained the circumstances of Marty's life to me. I formed my own forgiveness for Marty along with the reader, sympathized with him as the story surprised me, which, I find, is the best way to work. In "Come August," which is based in part on a case that happened in my father's hometown, I was more intrigued by how an everyday member of society can so quickly and completely become a villain in the public eye. I wanted to look at the other side of this, to see how a seemingly "normal" person with no malicious intent can so irrevocably ruin her own life and the lives of so many around her. All this while not forgetting that character's humanity.
PC: In that story and others, you convey feelings of panic, guilt and hopeless love very convincingly. Do any of these other stories also take inspiration from real-life experiences of yours or others around you?
EC: Most of the stories, including "The Brother," "Fires of Our Choosing," and "Hunters," have some root in autobiography, portions of them based on both myself and others. One of the themes I found recurring in the book was that of absent or deceased fathers. I was writing the book during a time when my own father was succumbing to cancer and I think these stories helped me deal with that.
PC: Much of your writing displays an acute view of the troubles of trying to do the right thing in life. Is that drive—along with the many vulnerabilities of people trying to do so—something that drives your writing?
EC: I do like characters who try to hold on to their principles in a world that's not conducive to that. However, I also like characters who are "Good people" yet do bad or hurtful things for no reasonable explanation. Charles Baxter has a wonderful essay on this in relation to plot wherein he discusses putting characters through doors they cannot pass back through.
PC: In “Hunters,” you write a rather disheartening take on the relationships of male goers of a dive bar and their wives. One sentence reads, “Their faces were aged with the stoic acceptance of their lots, and they would wait until their husbands finished the drinks they had in front of them, unseated themselves clumsily from their stools, and collected their change and cigarettes from the bar.” Does this come from any cynical view you have on the potential dangers of love? And are certain people bound to end up in similarly bleak places in life?
EC: I think everyone who lives and breathes has been hurt by love, or the lack thereof, at one time or another. Flannery O' Connor said “Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.” Hopefully this doesn't make me a cynic, but "the potential dangers of love" often make for good fiction. My thought in writing that sentence and those that surround it concerned the lengths we'll go to for those that we love or loved at one time, what we're willing to tolerate. Oftentimes it seems too much from the outside in, but just the opposite for those involved.
PC: Do you think that some people are prone to ethical failure where others are bound for success? And if so, are your characters, as you intend them to be understood, victims of circumstance? Or are they all answerable players in life’s grid of right and wrong?
EC: That's a wonderful question. I do think some of my characters, based on their circumstances, are more readily exposed to ethical dilemmas, or rather face higher stakes when those situations present themselves. And I think, forgive me for the cliché, that raising those stakes has something to do with successful fiction. And yes, that these characters are indeed "answerable players," that despite their efforts to convince themselves of the contrary they are responsible for the choices they make. The best conflict is internal, when a character knows the right thing to do but resists, or knows they're bound to hurt someone they love and does so anyway, or makes some kind of stand and reaps the consequences (see Updike's marvelous A & P). Those are the stories I'm most interested in.
Find out more about Eugene Cross on his website: http://eugenecross.com/about-the-author/
