Since the 2008 release of his fiction debut Legends of a Suicide, Alaskan David Vann has quickly ascended in global literary circles. His internationally-bestselling books have been published in 20 languages while appearing on 75 Best Books of the Year lists. Now based in New Zealand where he recently built his dream home that overlooks the ocean, Vann has released four books in four years. Although prolific and popular, Vann admits his career is still full of barriers and started on a technicality.
“I worked on Legends of a Suicide for ten years and it took another 12 years for it to be published,” the 47-year-old says. “When it first came out, I expected nothing. I had so many years of nothing.”
Inspired by the suicide of his father, the semi-autobiographical Legends of a Suicide comprises a novella and five short stories. Rejected by literary agents for its subject matter and Chaucer inspired structure, the book won the 2008 Grace Paley Prize and automatic publishing.
Released by a small company, the book initially garnered four reviews. Fortunately, one was a full-page feature by the New York Times. The book was quickly picked up by Penguin and charmed the world, winning prestigious literary prizes in Spain and France as best foreign novel.
The book’s success validated Vann’s process. Every morning, he spends up to two hours working and completes a novel within six months.
“I’ve always been told writing was about revision but I find it’s a process of discovery,” he explains. “I start writing about a character and place, from beginning to end. There are so many more patterns in my unconscious mind and I don’t know what the book will be about until the last 50 pages. I write what comes and in the end, they get published in almost the same way they were written. There’s no attempt to control or change it; it’s just finding out what’s there.”
With a keen eye for rural landscapes, Vann is often compared to Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemmingway. Although they share a penchant for sentence fragments, Vann says he’s more of a dramatist, citing Flannery O’Connor, Marilynne Robinson and Annie Proulx as favorites.
Although his early work is based on true stories, Vann has completed two novels that are a departure. His upcoming novel Acquarium follows a 12-year-old “fish head” that views Seattle and her family through the prism of aquatic life.Brighter Black reexamines the ancient Greek story about Medea that is currently being held back by his publishers for being “too literary.”
Despite the hold up, this year will be full of Vann releases. He chronicles his early sailing misadventures in Crocide: Memoirs from a Mexican Drug-Running Port.
“It was like a Jean-Paul Genet movie in terms of a strange cast of characters,” he says. “There were these beggar kids following me around who ended up saving me from the Mexican navy. I was rammed by pirates, prostitutes were beaten in front of me as warning and I had a pistol shoved in my face. I went back a decade later to do a story and found almost everyone I knew had been killed within a year I left because of the drug trade.”
It’s a colorful story that recalls his first published work, A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career. The 2005 book recounts the calamity of Vann’s attempts to run a creative writing program from his sailboat.
Although that book gave him his first notoriety and paved the eventual way for Legends of a Suicide’s release, Crocodile will only be released as a Spanish translation.
“The funny thing about publishing in the US is that you’re really only allowed to do either fiction or non-fiction,” he sighs. “My agents won’t even send out this memoir. The US is a strange and limited market. It’s just ridiculous.”
It’s an experience that Vann knows too well. Last year’s Last Day on Earth profiled Steve Kzmierczak, a straight A student that killed five people during a 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University. Set for a Taiwan release, the book was ignored in his home country.
“I want Americans to understand that the shooters are us,” he says. “A lot of our theories are excuses but the truth is America is a culture that makes mass murderers and school shooters. They’re mostly depressed young men with not a lot of money, access to guns, conservative right-wing views and military training to kill without any emotional or psychological response. There are millions of Americans who are at risk of going off with a gun and the shootings are going to keep going on forever.”
// March 16, 4pm, RMB75. Glamour Bar
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