Patrick Dewitt Interview

Jason Rice: As far as debut novels go, things can be hit or miss, sometimes you make your mark, other times it’s the signal of something larger yet to come. When I first heard about your book I had no idea it would be such a powerful experience, I guess it was the remoteness of the second person voice you used that really affected me. What was it about that voice that got your engines going? And how did this book come to life, how long did it take you to write?

Patrick deWitt: The second person narration, the ‘discuss’ device, and also the subtitle of the book, ‘Notes for a Novel,’ stems from my taking notes at work. If something interesting happened at the bar I’d dash off a sentence or two, reminding myself to ‘discuss’ it, that is, write about it later on. At first I brought the notes home and tried to rework them in the first person, but it read as overly confessional and claustrophobic. So I tried out the third person, but it felt like reportage or something – corny, dramatic. I might have given the project up if it weren’t for the notes themselves, which I found myself returning to and re-reading and enjoying – a drawer full of stuck together Post-its. Then it occurred to me: if I’m losing something in the translation, why bother translating at all? Why not continue on in the second person, notation style? Once I established the model, things went more smoothly. I wrote a rough draft in eight or nine months; thinking it was finished I tried to push it around, had a couple close calls with agencies and smaller publishers, but these came to nothing and I put the book away. Then about two years later, after I’d left L.A. for Washington state, I found an agent in Peter McGuigan, who was supportive of the writing but encouraged elaboration. I didn’t much want to revisit the book or the feelings attached to the book but after mulling it over I could see he was right. I rewrote it and added on the ending scenes – everything in the fourth chapter, after the protagonist returns to the bar post-horse punch/pants shitting. Altogether it took about a year to complete a clean first draft.

JR: Writing about the life of a drunk, or life in a bar has been done over and over, successfully, and sometimes anything new can come across as derivative. This is a really original way to tell this story. Was there an effort on your part to show life as it is? Because I get the feeling that this is really a warts and all story, you never hold back.

PD: I don’t think I started out with any chip on my shoulder, like I was going to set the record straight or whatever; and there are loads of books out there far more graphic or vulgar than mine. But the thing is, by the time I started writing Ablutions I’d been working in bars for four or five years, and without a high school diploma or any practical skills I felt completely trapped in that life – reliant on the wage I mean, with no chance for anything comparable. My drinking was getting the better of me several times a week and my home life was going poorly and I was just very frustrated and hostile about how things had worked out, so it’s only natural those feelings would come across in the writing. It’s important to remember, too, that I’d barely had anything published when I wrote the book and wasn’t thinking about it as something that would see the light of day. There was no motivation to spare the rod because the reader didn’t exist at that point, and there wasn’t any reason to believe he’d turn up, either.

JR: There are countless observations about the people in the bar, which is a culture all of its own. As someone who has spent many hours in a bar, I can see and feel the people in this book. Merlin for sure, and his predictions are right on. I really liked Simon, I was scared of him, but I liked him and the former child actor as well. The barroom drunk speak that goes on. How did you hone those characters, where did they come from, how did you shape this narrative that is so disconnected emotionally, you know, it just is, but at the same time all consuming and richly rendered.

PD: Well, I should point out that the regulars in Ablutions and the regulars I’ve known aren’t explicitly similar. But like the protagonist, I was curious about the motivation of a person who seeks out that kind of redundancy. There’s the Cheers theme song argument, but what if everybody doesn’t know your name? What if they’re not always glad you came? Of course, some of the regulars were amazing people, great personalities, great storytellers – true characters. But so many others were these toxic, repellent freak shows. And they knew that we, the employees, didn’t like them, and they in turn didn’t like us, and it was this terribly dysfunctional, unhealthy relationship which they clung to as though their lives depended on it. And it was the saddest thing in the world to me. I could never understand it, and I still don’t understand it. This was one of the mysteries that impelled me to write the book.

JR: You and I have talked about the emotionally disconnected feeling you get when you’re drunk, and especially in this book, your narrator spends a lot of time in his own head, either running scared from his bad thoughts (or rationalizing them to death) and at one point even being visited by a ghost. It seems like he’s really emotionally withdrawn from whatever happens. Does that seem accurate?

PD: I think so, absolutely. People that drink or take drugs to excess have a tendency to disconnect because if they were engaged emotionally with what was happening or not happening to their lives they’d have to deal with it, which would be time consuming, and thus distracting from his or her daily purpose: joyous-zombie status. The drinking life’s a cluttered, clumsy one; you’ve got to streamline things as much as you can if you want to stay in business for any length of time.

JR: There is a relationship in this book, the narrator’s wife, and the narrator can’t be honest with her, so she leaves him, but he can’t access the emotions necessary to care. How did you decide what to leave in and take out in regards to this relationship? How was it formed in your head?

PD: A few people have expressed the opinion that the wife should have had a more prominent role, but to me she’s just as prominent in the book as she might be to someone like the protagonist in real life, a man who as you said lives largely in his head and is essentially like a dog in that he doesn’t possess sufficient empathy to think of someone who isn’t in the same room with him; and whenever his wife is in the room she’s expressing her disgust and unhappiness related to his drinking, which he finds to be an impediment, naturally. And you know, believe it or not it’s hard work being a piece of shit, only that much harder when there’s someone there reminding you you’re a piece of shit all the livelong day. So when the wife goes he’s not exactly relieved, because he loves her after a fashion, but he knows it’s the proper thing. It hurts, but it frees him up to disintegrate in peace. The role of th
e mate of a drunk or addict is a slight, thankless one. This explains the wife’s scarcity in the book.

JR: Why did you call this book Ablutions? Does the title mean something to you, its dictionary meaning is: “A washing or cleansing of the body, especially as part of a religious rite”. The narrator gets clean of the whole place by doing something criminal. Are you trying to show how in life you sometimes have to do something bad to get something good to happen?

PD: I didn’t necessarily mean for it to, no. With my writing, I tend to simply sit down and hope something shows up. If and when it does I try to cultivate and sustain it. But I don’t think I’ve ever had a premeditated plan to illuminate anything for anyone, because I don’t feel I’m in a moral position to do that. As far as the title goes, I’ll just say that as a dishwasher I repeated the act of bowing before a sink so many thousands of times that it became something more than a simple physical action for me. I won’t call it religious, exactly, but I was doing more than just cleaning lipstick from the rims of martini glasses. Sometimes I felt like I was forever re-enacting my own failure to assimilate into adulthood. The bar became somewhere I dreaded going to the degree that it eclipsed the role of simple employment and became the center of my life.

JR: Patrick, I was really blown away by this book. It’s a powerful piece of writing, and affected me deeply. It reminded me of life in the bar, and why I used to drink. It’s also a cautionary tale of sorts. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Any last words?

PD: Only to say thanks to you, Jason, for providing a forum for new authors. If the recent headlines about the world of publishing are correct, we’re up against it more than ever, so I appreciate the interest, really. Thanks.