Mark Lewandowski writes stories, essays, and
screenplays. In addition to sliming fish in Alaska, he has
served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland, and taught
American Studies and Creative Writing as a Fulbright Scholar
in Lithuania. He completed his MFA in Creative Writing at
Wichita State University. Currently, he lives in Terre
Haute, where he teaches at Indiana State University.
"Where
Steinbeck's Cannery Row meets 'The Deadliest Catch,'
this debut proves that humanity endures even at the
farthest reaches of civilization." Peter Charles Melman,
author of Landsman
PageOneLit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part
of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?
Mark Lewandowski:
I was born in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York, but as my father climbed
the corporate ladder we moved, first to Albany, then to Pittsburgh, back
to Buffalo, and finally, when I was 14, to Overland Park, Kansas. All I
knew of Kansas came from The Wizard of Oz. I was genuinely
surprised to find paved roads there. I really didn’t start reading
compulsively until college, though before then I was obsessed with J.R.R.
Tolkien and Frank Herbert. My very first publication was a poem called
“Isildor’s Bane,” a retelling of Aragorn’s ancestor finding, and then
becoming corrupted by the One Ring. It appeared in a cheap fanzine
called The Rivendell Review. I think I was 16. I still remember
the thrill of the editor calling me to offer some editing suggestions.
For some reason, though, I didn’t become a poet, never even tried to
publish another one. I suppose I just prefer to tell stories. The
writer that probably influenced me most as a young writer was Harlan
Ellison. He has such a singular voice, both as a short story writer and
an essayist. He won scads of Hugo and Nebula awards, but since he
wasn’t really a novelist he was bit off the radar. He was the one who
really got me interested in the short form.
PageOneLit.com: Why do you write?
Mark Lewandowski:
I once complained to poet Rick Mulkey about how much work writing could
be, that you spend days, months, years writing something that no one
else will ever likely want to read. Just sitting down to do it can be
incredibly painful and heartbreaking. At the same time, I have no real
choice. If I don’t write I just feel off kilter; I get cranky and can’t
sleep. I have these voices in my head, you see, and the only way to get
rid of them is to put them on paper. My mind races, I endlessly
speculate about my own life, as well as the lives of imaginary people.
All that gunk in my brain has to go somewhere. Rick suggested, only
half-kiddingly, that if it’s too much work I should get drunk and forget
about it. I guess I write because it’s cheaper and healthier than
drinking. It’s no surprise to me that alcoholism and writing often go
hand-in-hand.
PageoneLit.com: Your new novel IS HALIBUT
RODEO which is a collection of short stories about
the Alaskan fishing industry. Why the Alaskan fishing industry?
Mark Lewandowski:
I spent a summer working at a fish processing plant in Homer, Alaska. I
was between undergraduate and graduate school, and found myself
disassembling fish alongside the kinds of people I never would have met
in suburbia: Eskimos, Old Believers, migrant workers, Japanese
immigrants, etc. along with a hodgepodge of others who just never fit
into mainstream America. The whole experience was totally alien to me.
And Homer, too, with its glaciated mountains seemingly rising right out
of the sea, its moose, bears, bald eagles, was as different from the
plains of Kansas that I could possibly imagine. I never had interest in
writing about where I had come from. Suburban American was, perhaps,
too familiar to me to engage my creative interests. So before I went to
Homer most of my stories were science fiction tales. Alaska changed all
that. I found I could write about my own experiences, that I could be
influenced not just by the books I read, but by real life.
PageOneLit.com: HALIBUT
RODEO has been said to be a "collection
of stories about lonely people trying to find each other and hold on."
Explain.
Mark Lewandowski:
I never really noticed that until I started editing the book for
publication. It’s true, though; every protagonist in the book is
lonely, and looks to alleviate that loneliness. It’s kind of eerie.
Most of the stories were conceived when I was still in my 20s. I’m now
45 and I’m still unmarried. Some part of me knew something about how I
would live my life long before I was consciously aware of it.
PageOneLit.com: Explain your title HALIBUT
RODEO as it relates to the collection.
Mark
Lewandowski:
One of the jobs I endured before salmon season started was Glacier
Crew. The details of this job are illustrated in “Breaking the
Halibut,” the second story in the collection. We basically built
“halibut glaciers” by alternating layers of halibut and ice in order to
temporarily preserve the fish. Once the slime-line was caught up and
ready to clean the fish, we tore down the glacier. John, one of the
guys I worked with, pulled out a fish and ended up sliding down the
glacier with it. When he got to the bottom he jumped and “yeehawed” in
a silly pseudo western twang. I took that kernel and imagined a more
elaborate “rodeo” for the short story. Alaska has been referred to as
America’s “last frontier.” When many people hear “frontier,” they think
of the “wild west,” with rodeo riders and such. The modern day rodeo is
one of the last remnants of a very much romanticized time in our
history. My Alaskan-style rodeo seems to me a vivid image that
encapsulates the whole book, and kind of symbolizes the frontier spirit
that lives on in Homer.
PageOneLit.com: What is about the short story you like compared to
writing a novel?
Mark Lewandowski:
I greatly admire Edgar Allen Poe, not just his stories and poems, but
also his theories of composition. He is certainly the father of
Practical Criticism, the idea that all the elements of the narrative
(character, plot, setting, etc) work in tandem to create a “unity of
effect.” This he believed is best achieved in a short work. Reading a
short story is a totally different experience than reading a novel.
It’s often easier for me to see the artistry at work in a story. At the
same time, though, I like to see how individual stories work alongside
others by the same author, especially when the stories are conceived as
part of a book, like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, or more
recently, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen
Butler. Once I had written the initial draft of the second story in
Halibut Rodeo, I knew I was writing a book, not just individual
stories that might be collected in a book. There is a difference.
Before The Moody Blues released “Days of Future Passed” in 1965, rock
albums were nothing more than collections of singles. The Moody Blues
changed that. Like the songs on their “Days” album, the stories in
Halibut Rodeo bleed into one another. Each story resonates in
different ways because of the stories around it.
PageOneLit.com: What do you hope to achieve with HALIBUT
RODEO?
Mark Lewandowski:
To reach a wider audience would be nice. Short stories are a hard
sell. Short story collections? Even harder. Seven of the nine stories
in this collection were published in literary journals, but who knows
how many people actually read them. At one time writers like Poe and
London and Hawthorne reached big audiences by publishing in journals.
Those days are gone. Even The Atlantic has given up on the short story,
and with funding drying up at universities, literary print journals are
falling to the wayside. This is a shame, since the short story is the
most American of the literary genres. Many would say that Washington
Irving essentially invented the form. Big publishing houses won’t touch
collections unless you have a pop novel to go with it. Thankfully,
small businesses like All Things That Matter Press are helping to keep
the form alive.
PageOneLit.com: What was the last book you read?
Mark Lewandowski:
I just finished In Search of Conrad by Gavin Young. It’s a
travelogue about Young’s attempt to find the real life origins of some
of Joseph Conrad’s major characters, most notably Lord Jim, the antihero
of my favorite novel from my favorite Dead White Male writer. There’s
no writer I respect more than Conrad. He wrote some of the most
beautiful prose in English, despite the fact it was his fourth language
and he learned it on ships and not until he was already in his 20s.
PageOneLit.com: What's next?
Mark Lewandowski:
I have the habit of working on multiple projects at one time. I’ve been
told that’s a bad thing for writers, but there you go. Right now I’m
trying to sell a screenplay called How to Seduce Your Neighbor
that I co-wrote with Hans Montelius, a Swedish filmmaker and a long time
friend. He directed a short of mine called “Positioning,” which
premiered at the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.
I’m also finishing a second collection of stories called Red, Under
the Trees. This collection is inspired by my two years as a Peace
Corps Volunteer in Poland. I also write creative nonfiction, and will
someday finish a collection called Home and Abroad.
PageOneLit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they
enhance your writing?
Mark Lewandowski:
I travel. Most of my stories and essays are informed by traveling and
living elsewhere. That’s one of the benefits of being an English
Professor. I’ve taught as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland, as a
Fulbright Scholar in Lithuania, and did some summer teaching gigs in
France and England. Having some time off in the summer also allows me
to travel for pleasure. Many of the experiences end up in essays. A
strong sense of place has always been important to my writing. It’s
something that I often struggle to impart upon my writing students.
Young writers often disregard the importance of place, despite the fact
that so many writers are inexorably tied to particular settings. Joyce
has his Dublin, Faulkner has Yoknapatawpha County, Anderson has
Winesburg…Even Stephanie Meyer has the small, dreary town of Forks,
Washington. I think leaving familiar confines gives you a far better
sense of where you live. You’ll cast a more critical eye on
surroundings, allowing you to more easily see the particular details so
important to good writing.
