Bobby Mathews
Magic City Blues
DOSSIER: What has winning a Derringer Award, a “Best Novel” award from the Alabama Media Professionals, and a best short story award in Reckon Review done for your ego around the house lately?
MATHEWS: An ego? Me??? Who do you think I am, Hector Acosta? (That joke will make sense to like 10 people on Twitter.) In all seriousness, I’m really proud of the work I’ve done, and the awards are some validation of that. But as thirsty as I am for recognition — aren’t we all? — I try to keep in mind that the work is really all that matters. Because you can’t control sales, you can’t control awards. Sometimes awards are popularity contests, and sometimes they’re signifiers that you’re doing the work and getting noticed. I’m hopeful that mine are because of the latter. (And if it’s because of the former, nobody tell me.) The problem with the Derringer Award, naturally, is now everyone knows I have a small gun. I wasn’t going to broadcast that, damn it.
But honestly: To have your work validated by your peers is a phenomenal feeling, and I’m incredibly grateful.
DOSSIER: When you didn’t want to read Cormac McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN because McCarthy was labeled as a literary genius (The Dossier understands that you are stubborn about people/things labeled “genius”) what led to you having such a jaded eye (your words) about such things? Where’s the love, man?
MATHEWS: I want to start by saying this isn’t just BLOOD MERIDIAN. I’m about 70 pages into the book now and wow, what a staggering achievement. But I often find myself at odds with the canon. I never really had an organized approach to literature, so blame that on the perils of a south Alabama education. I hated almost everything I read in high school and college, notable exceptions being Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” and T. Coraghessen Boyle’s “Greasy Lake.” I loathe Moby-Dick, for instance, and I think Holden Caulfield needed someone to punch him in the mouth — an opinion I formed as a teenager and reinforced when I re-read CATCHER IN THE RYE as an adult — so make of that what you will. By the same token, I hated THE GREAT GATSBY as a teenager, but once I was post-30 and lost a great love, Gatsby became a touchstone for me. When you’re young and full of illusions, Gatsby is less impactful. Once you’ve suffered an irretrievable loss, you understand the book more fully.
I try to read everything, but it’s just not possible. For BLOOD MERIDIAN (see how I brought that around?), I wasn’t really interested in Westerns for a long time. I grew up reading Louis L’Amour and Elmer Kelton and Max Brand and Don Coldsmith, so I was sort of Westerned out. Even though you can’t really compare McCarthy to those guys — L’Amour, for whom I still have a soft spot, essentially wrote the same five novels over and over again — because it’s like comparing a bulldozer to a Tonka truck. I generally follow the Elmore Leonard dictum that good writing doesn’t sound like writing, but then I start in on a book like BLOOD MERIDIAN and get that idea blown out of my skull.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music/silence/Forrest Gump playing in the background?)
MATHEWS: My most productive writing happens early in the morning, about half-awake at my home office. I usually aim for 1,000 words in an hour and most often hit it. From 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., the house is quiet. My two sons are still asleep and there’s nothing to break the dream that I’m trying to put down into words. I know a lot of people like to have music playing when they write, but I can’t do that. I need peace and quiet to get the words down. Of course, music does play a part in my writing. When I was drafting MAGIC CITY BLUES, I was listening to a lot of Drive-By Truckers and Jason Isbell while I was driving or doing chores around the house, because I wanted all of that modern Deep South flavor to sort of seep into my head and drift into the book. I think it succeeded.
DOSSIER: Which influenced your current writing style more—your short, crisp method from doing sports reporting or having read so much Robert B. Parker growing up?
MATHEWS: Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. But I also think that my style is evolving to something different, and it’s because I’m challenging myself. The current work in progress is the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried to write, and my style has gone from short and punchy to much more complex, maybe even a little rococo. TRUE BELIEVERS is about a community torn apart by pastors preaching hate from the pulpit, and in order to get my arms around the whole thing, I’ve had to change my approach. It’s been rewarding, but weird. I wrote a sentence in this thing that’s 129 words long, and that’s just not me. I blame Faulkner.
DOSSIER: In your books about pro wrestling (LIVING THE GIMMICK), a failed rock star (PRODIGAL) and a thug enforcer (MAGIC CITY BLUES), what in the Sam Hill is your real-world research like dude?
MATHEWS: In a word: scattered.
LIVING THE GIMMICK was easy to research. I grew up a wrestling fan in the South and eventually got involved in the business on a small-time level. I used bits and pieces of true stories, legends, and ephemera to pepper the book and make it feel real. The premise was pretty easy: The most famous wrestler in the world is murdered and his best friend must navigate the world of sports entertainment to find the killer. For MAGIC CITY BLUES, I wanted to write something that was homage to Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, and I wanted to use Birmingham, where I live now, as the backdrop for that in the same way Parker used Boston. I used to drive the streets of Birmingham at night to do investigative work, and I got to know the city fairly well, and it all seemed to come together in an organic way.
PRODIGAL is my failure. I don’t mind talking about it, but I wish I’d been more patient with it in order to give the book everything it needed to survive and (hopefully) thrive. There are flashes of good stuff in the book, for sure, but I can look back at it now and say “that guy didn’t know what he was doing.” I still love it, but I wish I had another whack at it. But it came down to the idea that this rock star guitar player loses the use of his left arm and returns to his hometown to reignite an affair with his first love … who just happens to be married to his brother.
I think I may specialize in tough guys — or guys who think they’re tough — with a heart, guys who are trying to navigate a world that isn’t quite what they expected it to be when they were kids. Hell, that might be too much on the nose, because that makes it sound like I’m writing about myself.
Website: bamawriter.com
Jeff Circle 