“The Rest of Us” by James Braun appeared in Issue 33 and can be read here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
How The Rest of Us began was as a desire to write in the collective, that is, in the voice of the many, which in this case consists of these several left-behind children that form the narrative “we.” In all technicalities there is but one speaker, yet that “I” gets buried by the way the “I” sees the “I”––as a “we.” In a way, the “I” becomes the “we,” becomes the many, and maybe in that becoming, the self becomes more than the self. Becomes more-than, one might say. In the words of Walt Whitman: “I am large. I contain multitudes.”
And what else about this piece. I guess you might say The Rest of Us is a piece written in deference to Peter Christopher, an author now dead once taught under Gordon Lish. Christopher coined this concept of “hiding the I” (or was it Lish?), the idea being that a story possesses more authority and authenticity because someone takes responsibility for it, the story. There’s a human-being voice behind the telling, rather than some faraway third-person narrator we never see, never know.
What was the most difficult part of writing this story?
I find maintaining, and sustaining, the voice particularly challenging. This I find difficult in any piece I write. What I try most of all to do is to focus on specific words––tangible nouns, things seeable, touchable––those words in this case being “Letters, stationary, mail truck,” to name a few, and to use those words in a recursive and repetitive fashion, to provide incantation, a music in the acoustics. It’s all music, to me. And it being all music, sometimes the song fails to sing in places, a wrong note sounded. The best I can, I try to keep an attentive ear. I try to listen even when all is quiet.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds by Peter Markus, which was published this past September. What a heart with which these poems were written. What honesty in these pages. It’s a book that doesn’t turn away from what one might rather look away from. Maybe I’m biased. Markus was and to this day continues to be my teacher. But you yourself, you reader reading this, may judge for yourself the merit of these pages. Check it out. You won’t be disappointed.
I had the opportunity to interview Markus this past summer. Here is that interview: https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2021/09/01/markus/
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
More editor than writer, but I would say Gordon Lish, while he’s still alive. He’s up there and getting more up there by the day, up there already at 87 years old and still going strong (his new book published by Dzanc Books, Death and So Forth, a more-than-worthwhile read and another book I’d recommend, came out last April).
But the why, the why––because I love this man I have never met and will likely never meet. Because his editorial genius and ideas about what makes great fiction great, what makes a strong sentence strong, has made and shaped me as a writer. Too, there are all the writers Lish has produced, these writers including Mark Richard, Tom Spanbauer, Barry Hannah, Noy Holland, Amy Hempel, Victoria Redel, to name a few. A few among many.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
Currently I’m working on a novel titled “Only When I’m Singing.” This may take some time. I hope it takes some time. I’m still listening.
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James Braun’s work has appeared and is forthcoming in Fiction International, Laurel Review, the minnesota review, Camas, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Herbert L. Hughes Short Story Award. Summers, James resides in Port Huron, Michigan.