{"id":38098,"date":"2017-06-27T22:10:26","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T04:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38098"},"modified":"2018-09-21T22:11:51","modified_gmt":"2018-09-22T04:11:51","slug":"in-the-gloaming-the-grit-lit-of-larry-menlove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/in-the-gloaming-the-grit-lit-of-larry-menlove\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Gloaming: The Grit Lit of Larry Menlove"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Somewhere between Chuck\u00a0Palahniuk of\u00a0Fight Club<\/em>\u00a0fame and the late\u00a0Harry Crews\u00a0<\/a>lies the unsettling genre of Grit Lit. Or maybe the genre spawns and seethes between the two poles of Cormac McCarthy and the firefighter-turned-novelist Larry Brown, the latter deceased at a too-tender age. At any rate, it\u2019s one of those terms that is attempting the impossible: nailing down under no uncertain terms the uncertainty of the ineffable appeal of storytelling that is likely to feel like it\u00a0has\u00a0just kicked you in the teeth.So what\u2019s a nice post-Mormon Utah boy doing writing this stuff? Well, truthfully, he\u2019s not in bad company if you consider that he\u2019s in the same boat as, arguably, Mo-writers of the ur-text of Grit Lit, fiction writer Brian Evenson\u00a0and playwright\/screenwriter Neil LaBute, whose debut (or close-to-debut) works were\u00a0Altmann\u2019s Tongue<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0In the Company of Men,\u00a0<\/em>respectively. Depending on how you view the genre, LaBute\u2019s vaultingly obscene junior executives who set out to destroy the self-esteem of the same deaf female secretary is far from the working class, white, meth-addicted rural folk emblematic of the genre today. There are resonances nonetheless.<\/p>\n

15 Bytes\u2019 literary editor David Pace caught up with Menlove via email in preparation for the writer\u2019s appearance at the next\u00a015 Bytes\u00a0<\/strong>Read Local Reading Series at Finch Lane Gallery<\/strong>, 54 Finch Lane, Salt Lake City,\u00a0this Thursday, June 29, at 7 p.m., where he will be in conversation with memoirist and nonfiction writer Jennifer Sinor, author of, most recently,\u00a0Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O\u2019Keeffe. (<\/em>You can listen to an interview of Sinor on Utah Public Radio\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Both will be reading from their works and talking together about the content and craft in another genre, that of\u00a0creative nonfiction<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Menlove\u2019s award-winning essay \u201cOf the Coming River,\u201d from which he\u2019ll read, is dark and horror-filled in a way that presages his most recent works of \u201ctransgressive fiction,\u201d another name for Grit Lit, including a novel still seeking a publisher. He offered to talk about this manuscript in the following exchange.<\/p>\n

The READ LOCAL Reading Series is designed to pair an established author with an emerging, award-winning writer in concert. Sponsored by 15 Bytes, in partnership with the Salt Lake City Arts Council and Utah Humanities, the event is free and open to the public. A Q&A and reception will follow.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

15B:<\/strong>\u00a0You won first place last year in the\u00a0Utah Original Writing Competition<\/a>\u2018s\u00a0 essay category for \u201cOf the Coming River\u201d which you\u2019ll be reading this Thursday at The READ LOCAL Reading Series. The judge, Stephan Eirik Clark, wrote of it: \u201cIn this braided essay, a father is haunted by his memory of witnessing a mother lose her child to the pull of a rushing river. The incident forces the man to reconsider his own lost children, those two boys he left in pursuit of a woman he believed would be his \u2018One True Love.\u2019 As honest and perceptive as it is moving, it reveals the human heart to be as expansive as a wild river \u2014 and no less dangerous.\u201d That\u2019s certainly high praise. Congratulations! The essay is of course based on a\u00a0real incident<\/a>\u00a0in Provo Canyon that inspired its writing. Can you tell us a little bit of background about it?<\/p>\n

LM:<\/strong>\u00a0Thanks! This essay was my first real concerted effort to write a piece of nonfiction. I had read a work somewhere that inspired me. The author had witnessed a suicidal person on a bridge and talked them out of jumping. The writing played back and forth with this incident and a seemingly unrelated part of the author\u2019s life. The two threads wove along tightening in on each other, strengthening both into a stronger whole. I thought: \u201cI can do that.\u201d It wasn\u2019t too hard to come up with that horrible afternoon by the river as one thread I could work with. The other unrelated part of my life wasn\u2019t really all that hard to find either. I worry I\u2019ve bundled up the two most highly charged emotional events of my life in one essay. Might be a one-hit wonder, I\u2019m afraid.<\/p>\n

15B:<\/strong>\u00a0We met at the Utah Original Writing Competition awards ceremony back in 2013. You had taken first place for your short story \u201cPetey Immigrates North, Then Moves West,\u201d about, among many other things, an armadillo of the title. Can you tell us how you expanded that short into a full-blown novel?<\/p>\n

LM:<\/strong>\u00a0You said it yourself, David. The short story was about an armadillo named Petey and \u201cmany other things.\u201d For years I\u2019ve been casting about for novel ideas while I wrote shorts, and honestly, it was the first place finish of my Petey story at the Original Writing Competition that gave me the confidence to expand on the situation, characters, and plot and see if I could eke out a novel. I wrote \u201cRush.\u201d I also love the genre, if you can call it that. It\u2019s been called grit-lit, crime-noir, Southern gothic. I don\u2019t know what you call it, but I like to read it. And I like to write it. A lot of my short stories tend to push out there to the edges where people are doing some sketchy things with people they shouldn\u2019t be doing them with.<\/p>\n

15B:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve had the privilege of reading a draft of \u201cRush,\u201d which I really enjoyed. It\u2019s very dark and the characters don\u2019t seem to change much in it. It\u2019s of a certain genre that doesn\u2019t really demand that characters, even the main character, change per se, but puts an emphasis on atmospherics and the harsh playing out of cause and effect, almost like clockwork. Is that a fair assessment of \u201cRush,\u201d and can you talk about other writers of this genre who inspired you?<\/p>\n

LM:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019d say that\u2019s a pretty fair assessment, yeah. Since you\u2019ve read it, though, I\u2019ve added a little more backstory that reveals and adds some depth to many of the characters and provides some sense of how these folks ended up where they are and why they\u2019re doing what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

There are a number of contemporary writers who are working in this space today, generating some of the best books I\u2019ve read. Smith Henderson, Patrick deWitt, Benjamin Whitmer, David Joy, Steve Weddle, Frank Bill, Brian Panowich, Donald Ray Pollock, I better stop. This list could get long. And of course there are some of the old-timers, Daniel Woodrell, Dorothy Allison. Ron Rash, Cormac McCarthy. But for me, above all, Larry Brown is\/was the most inspiring writer. He worked as a firefighter by day and knocked out stories at night, or vice-a-versa if he were working the night shift. He put a name to something I\u2019d always known but didn\u2019t understand: the gloaming. That time after sunset and before dark, the time when spirits rise up out of the warm soil and whisper ideas into your ear. Brown died in 2004 at around the same age I am now. Broke my heart. I know he had another dozen novels in him.<\/p>\n

15B:<\/strong>\u00a0Your stuff is deeply rooted in Utah, not only the settings, but the characters and the culture. I know you\u2019ve had material published in both\u00a0Dialogue<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Sunstone<\/em>, both Mormon-content magazines. You and I have talked about the tension between wanting to be a regional writer\u2014to write what you know\u2013but as, post-Mormons, having to negotiate what in powerful ways is the civilizing force of the place. How are you negotiating that as you move forward in terms of both your work and the marketing of your writing?<\/p>\n

LM:<\/strong>\u00a0When I was young and stupid, not that I\u2019m any less stupid now, I wrote all these stories set in places outside of Utah. I must have thought then no one wants to read a story set in Utah. We\u2019re boring, right? And maybe that is true. We\u2019re boring. We hold fast to the rod, and all that, Church on Sunday, Wednesday night, Saturday morning, and white shirt and ties all in between. No drinking, smoking, sex before marriage, off-color jokes are a no-no, and there\u2019s a church or stake house or temple on every block to remind us. But, as you say, I\u2019ve lived under that wave-less surface of this place long enough now to know there\u2019s a whole \u2018nother depth to Utah and its people. I often wonder if that\u2019s why I\u2019ve had success in the Mormon fiction market. I\u2019m not afraid to write what I know. Most of those writers I mention above come from a Southern mountain tradition of writing where it seems hardships are all too common up in the hollers behind the stills and meth kitchens. We have mountains here. And county roads, deep canyons, and plenty of closed doors where people don\u2019t come out until Sunday shined up and smiling like they got nothing to hide. I\u2019m shaking the state I know, knocking some stories out of it. And yeah, I want to break out to a wider audience with these stories about this place and its peculiar people. I\u2019m doing my best on that score. My stories may not always have a bunch of Mormons in them, but they will always have a church parking lot. Lots of fun and sorrow can happen in a parking lot during the gloaming, and after the sun goes down.<\/p>\n

Even in Utah.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Larry Menlove<\/strong>\u00a0lives in Spring Lake, Utah, and is published widely in such venues as\u00a0Weber, Drunken Boat, Sunstone, Corrium, Dialogue,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0saltfront<\/em>. He won first place in essay and short story in the Utah Original Writing Competition. He is nearing completion of his first novel, which is set in Rush Valley, Utah, and features love and violence, beauty, betrayal, murder and an armadillo.\u00a0You can read other work by Menlove\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>and\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jennifer Sinor<\/em><\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is the author of three books, including\u00a0Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O\u2019Keeffe<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir<\/em>. She is a recipient of the Stipend in American Modernism, as well as the winner of the Donald Murray Prize and the Utah Original Writing Competition for both the novel and book-length nonfiction. Jennifer\u2019s work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as a National Magazine Award. Her essays have appeared in\u00a0The American Scholar<\/em>,\u00a0Creative Nonfiction<\/em>,\u00a0Gulf Coast<\/em>,\u00a0Ecotone<\/em>,\u00a0Fourth Genre<\/em>,\u00a0Utne<\/em>, and elsewhere. Her essay, \u201cConfluences,\u201d can be found in the 13th\u00a0edition of\u00a0The Norton Reader<\/em>. She teaches creative writing at Utah State University, where she is a professor of English. She lives with her husband, the poet Michael Sowder, and their two young boys at the foot of the Bear River Range in northern Utah.<\/p>\n

Event Information:
\nRead Local Reading Series
\n<\/strong>with Jennifer Sinor and Larry Menlove on the topic of creative nonfiction<\/em>
\nThursday, June 29, at 7:00 pm
\nFinch Lane Gallery, 54 Finch Lane, Salt Lake City
\nFree and Open to the Public<\/p>\n

In partnership with<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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