2021 Lambda Literary Award Nominated
Philip Gambone, a gay man, never told his father the reason why he was rejected from the draft during the Vietnam War. In turn, his father never talked about his participation in World War II. Father and son were enigmas to each other. Gambone, an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer, spent seven years uncovering who the man his quiet, taciturn father had been, by retracing his father's journey through WWII. As Far As I Can Tell not only reconstructs what Gambone’s father endured, it also chronicles his own emotional odyssey as he followed his father’s route from Liverpool to the Elbe River. A journey that challenged the author’s thinking about war, about European history, and about “civilization."
Buy Links
(Note – The Rattling Good Yarns online store only ships within the US)
Q: Tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know.
I was a mediocre writer all through college. In fact, it wasn’t until I graduated and had to start teaching high school students how to write that I began to get better at it myself. Keeping a journal has helped me clarify my thoughts and sharpen my prose style. I’ve kept a journal for over fifty years. It now runs to over 125 volumes.
Q: What’s your favorite scene in your latest book and what makes it a fave?
I have several: the Sunday my father’s family sits down to dinner and hears on the radio that Pearl Harbor has been attacked; my visit to Utah Beach and the nearby city of Bayeux, where I visited the Bayeux Tapestry, finding parallels with the Allied invasion of Normandy; stumbling across a German war cemetery and the conflicting emotions I felt; and the day my father landed back in the States after almost two years overseas.
Q: If you could spend some real-life time with one of the characters in the book, who would you choose and why?
Obviously, my father. I wrote the book because he had been so silent about his wartime experience, and because I had paid so little attention to him. He was a tank gunner with the Fifth Armored Division. They were the first American division to enter Germany and the one closest to Berlin at the end of the War. Many of my father’s buddies did not survive; he did, and he lived the rest of his life with that sad, haunting knowledge.
My father wrapped his wartime story in a tight cocoon of silence. In truth, he and I rarely spoke about anything. From early on in my life as gay man, I learned to wrap myself in a cocoon of my own, choosing to lock my father out of my emerging life. While he and I were not estranged, we conducted a polite, hesitant do-si-do around each other’s silence. Did he know I was gay? Perhaps. Did I fathom the depth of the trauma he had suffered in the War? Not at all.
I did a lot of research to try to piece together the story Dad never told me. But, oh, would I love to have him still around so that we could talk about all that.
Q: On the flipside, which character would you probably least get along with? Why?
Any drill sergeant in any of the basic training camps my father went to!
Q: Let’s take off your author cap and put on your reader cap for a moment: what do you look for in a book, what sort of protagonists do you love, and do you have a favorite genre?
I read widely in a host of genres: fiction, biography, history, poetry, Chinese studies. I even love good literary criticism. I’m not much of a fan of science fiction. What I look for in a book depends, I suppose, on the genre. In fiction I look for compelling characters and delicious writing. I don’t care that much about plot, but I hope the author makes the characters come alive. In history and biography, I look was impeccable research, a story that moves along, and psychological penetration. Currently, I’m reading Jan Swafford’s magnificent biography of Brahms. It’s got all of that and an elegant prose style. In poetry, I look for surprises—poems that make me see everyday things in new ways, poems that exhibit the author’s love of language, and intelligibility.
Q: What books and authors would you say influenced you to become a writer?
When I was first trying my hand at writing fiction, I read a lot of Henry James, and his prose style got into my very first stories: turgid, long-winded, recondite. Awful stuff! It was only after I started reading contemporary American short stories, especially John Updike’s, that I began to develop a voice that was true. I fancy myself a prose stylist—I can spend hours crafting a sentence. I always read my drafts aloud, even final drafts. I am not afraid of long sentences or, as one of my editors put it “fifty-cent words.” But my aim is always for clarity, beauty and courtesy to the reader.
Q: What are your least and most favorite things about being an author?
How hard it always is, how lonely it can be, and the fact that writers don’t get to play with a lot of neat stuff the way painters and sculptors do.
Q: What’s the best piece of writing/author advice you’ve ever received that you’d pass on to someone just getting started in the business?
Something truly mundane, but which has proved to be very helpful: “Keep a writing log.” Record how much (either time-wise or by word count) you log in every day. I log in the number of minutes I write, which seems to me to put less pressure on me than adhering to a minimum number of words. Keeping a log keeps me honest about whether I’m sticking to my resolve to write every day, and it lets me leave off writing after I’ve done my daily quota.
Q: Have you ever written a line, paragraph, or passage, and thought, “Darn, that’s pretty amazing, even if I do say so myself”? What was it?
I think every writer has. I had several of those moments when I was writing my latest book. I will say that I’ve also had the experience of coming back to a supposedly wonderful line the next day and discovering how awful it was. But here’s a short paragraph from my latest book that I’m especially pleased with:
“In rolling out the journey my father made, I was also producing—is it fair to say weaving and embroidering?—a meaning for the events, a meaning for me as well as for him. There was no chance that the meaning Dad eventually gave to his service in the War, whatever that meaning came to be, would ever be accessible to me. His silence had taken care of that. The only meaning that would finally make sense would be the one I could produce. We were in this together now, Dad and I—he silent, and I trying like hell to hear him.”
Q: What’s the one genre/sub-genre you haven’t written yet, but would love to? What’s kept you from it so far?
Well, I’ve now written short stories, novels, personal essays, travel pieces, poems, profiles, book reviews. What’s left? I guess I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at a biography. As Far As I Can Tell comes close to biography, but I’d like to try writing a full-fledged one. What’s kept me from doing it so far? Finding the right subject.
Q: If you could choose one of your books to be adapted for the silver screen, which would you choose? Why do you think it would translate well to film?
My novel Beijing. It’s set in a fascinating country, it’s a gay love story, it’s got some memorable characters (if I do say so myself), and some interesting and humorous subplots.
Q: What’s the one book you’ve read in your lifetime that you wish you’d written? Why did this particular book leave such a lasting impact on you?
Anything by Jane Austen because of the wit, the elegance of the prose, the psychological acuity.
Anything by Charles Dickens because of his genius for creating characters and intricate plots.
Anything by John Updike or Philip Roth because of their mastery of American prose.
Anything by Andrew Holleran because he’s got his finger on that elusive phenomenon called “gay sensibility.”
Anything by Virginia Woolf because of her mastery in handling point of view and shifts in point of view.
And the Odyssey by Homer because it so masterfully portrays an entire world.
I know this is, by and large, a very traditional list. I have learned a lot from my literary forebearers.
Fun questions
Q: If you could sit down to dinner with any author, past or present, who would you choose, and why? What are some things you’d want to chat about?
The Tang dynasty poet Li Po. I love his poetry, his sensibility, his drunken exuberance for life. My guess is that he’d drink me under the table and still be more lucid, profound, and witty than I could ever hope to be.
Q: If you were stranded on a desert island, what are three things you’d absolutely have to have?
Three things: (1) unlimited access to great classical music; (2) a blank journal and a gel pen; (3) the complete works of Charles Dickens
Q: If you had to choose between becoming a superhero or supervillain, which would you choose and why? What would your superpower be?
Oh dear, I hate to come across sounding square, but, without question, a superhero. I can’t imagine taking any joy in being a supervillain. And after four years of Mr. Trump, I know the horrible damage that can be done by supervillains, demagogues, egomaniacs. As a superhero, I’d want the power to give everyone education, insight, clarity, humility, and a compassionate heart. See, I told you. Super square, right?
Q: If you could travel back in time, with all your years of experience and wisdom intact, what advice would you give to your teenage self?
Read more, write more, believe in yourself more. And don’t be afraid of being gay.
Q: If you were to sit down and write your autobiography today, what would the title be?
Ha! Well, since As Far As I Can Tell is not only a book about tracing my father’s wartime life, but also about many aspects of my own life, I guess that wouldn’t be such a bad title for my autobiography either.
Q: Star Trek or Star Wars - both or neither? Explain.
Well, I’m actually not a huge science fiction fan, but I once had the pleasure of interviewing George Takei for my book Travels in a Gay Nation, so I guess it would be Star Trek. I also once knew a commune of lesbians who faithfully watched Star Trek every week
Q: If you could be any fictional character who would you like to be and why?
Pip in Great Expectations. Actually, I am Pip in Great Expectations!
Blog/Website | Facebook | Newsletter Sign-up
Follow the tour and check out the other blog posts and interviews here
0 comments:
Post a Comment