Verbal Magazine

Apocalypse Now

The lengths writers will go in chasing inspiration and authenticity has become a central part of literary mythology. 

The lengths writers will go in chasing inspiration and authenticity has become a central part of literary mythology. George Orwell famously plunged himself into destitution on the streets and within the dosshouses of Paris and London and was later shot through the throat for his troubles, having volunteered to fight against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. The Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson barely escaped with his life during episodes hanging out with Hell’s Angels and hallucinating his way through the desert and the Las Vegas Strip. For The Fighter, Canadian novelist Craig Davidson bulked up on steroids and took up the fine art of boxing. Yet despite writing his critically-acclaimed new novel Lowboy on the subway routes where the book unfolds, John Wray is reluctant to claim any method-writer mystique.
‘There’s something a little silly to me now about the fact that I wrote my first draft on the subway, like some kind of 70’s method actor living on dried fish and hardtack to study the role of a pirate. It did have some unexpected advantages, though: no cellphone reception, no internet, and no office rent to pay. And of course I got a chance to observe a wide variety of interactions between people on the trains, although most of the time I had my headphones on and tried my best to ignore them. A good iTunes playlist was essential. Is there such a thing as product placement in interviews?’
Hailed by Granta Magazine as one of the finest young American novelists and celebrated by the likes of The New York Times, John Wray seems poised on the brink of mainstream breakthrough whilst still possessing the kind of edge, momentum and imagination more common to the literary underground.  His latest novel follows Will Heller or Lowboy as he is known, a gifted teenager with a dark history who has escaped from a psychiatric institution and into the subterranean world beneath the streets of New York. Pursued by the authorities and convinced the world will imminently end without his intervention, Will’s story is a fascinating fusion of chase thriller, psychological drama, coming of age tale and urban travelogue. Being such a multi-layered work, it was a surprise that its origins were relatively simple as Wray revealed, “An Australian friend of mine showed me a clipping, years ago, about a man who’d escaped from a mental institution in Sydney - a well-liked man, but with a history of violence - who’d gone off his meds not long before. The manhunt had a particular urgency, because it was estimated that the medication would be out of his system entirely within 48 hours. At the risk of seeming exploitative, the situation struck me immediately as ideal material for a novel. I had two friends growing up who developed schizophrenia in their teenage years, but I wasn’t thinking of them when I began the book. They worked their way into it later, almost without my noticing.”
Given the troubled subject matter, one of the unique achievements of Lowboy (aside from its storytelling strengths) is that it deals with mental illness not only sympathetically but with great honesty and complexity. I asked Wray was this a difficult balancing act? And once he’d put himself inside a tormented mind, was there ever a fear that he’d stay there a bit too long?
‘What saved me from a lot of the pitfalls of writing about mental illness, I think, was less any particular agenda or approach to the issue itself than a general aversion to cliché,’ the novelist revealed. ‘If you avoid all the short-cuts and laziness rampant in most depictions of schizophrenia (and in most fiction, in general, as far as that goes) you’ll spare yourself no end of grief. To answer your second question: I actually felt quite at home in Lowboy’s consciousness and not in any hurry to leave. Schizophrenia is hands-down the most fascinating subject I’ve ever delved into, and I still feel that I’ve only scratched the surface.’
One of the major themes of Lowboy is the power of secrets - histories, intentions even names are all concealed by the main protagonists. They are so prevalent that it suggests that maybe it is secrets, rather than fraternity or love, that accidentally binds society together. Like that old Lenny Bruce saying, “If white America told the truth for one day, its world would fall apart.” It’s an assessment which Wray agrees with, ‘Lenny Bruce was right. The unspoken has always been society’s binding agent. That holds true for all social units, from the most complex to the most basic. If I told my girlfriend every last thing I desired or thought, she’d in all probability have me locked away in some sort of hospice. And I consider myself a fairly normal guy.’
Alongside the exploration of the human mind and the blind-spots of truth and morality, the book touches on this whole inverted city beneath New York, hidden away with its own secret rivers, chambers and inhabitants. There’s been a recent revival of interest in urban exploration with many venturing down where only graffiti artist and homeless used to go. It’s a place that Wray has experienced first-hand, ‘I saw quite a few interesting things there; the gigantic, empty reservoir under Manhattan’s Bryant Park, for instance, or the off-limits Old City Hall subway station that I describe in the book - but for the most part my underground explorations were dark, dank, smelly and decidedly underwhelming. The best subterranean bits in Lowboy, for better or for worse, came straight out my addled brain.’
In keeping with his desire to go off the beaten track, for his previous novel Canaan’s Tongue (Knopf - 2005), Wray admirably avoided the traditional book launch. Instead, he travelled down the Mississippi on a home-made raft, stopping for readings on his way. It seems like either an act of lunacy or genius, or a mix of the two as Wray suggests, ‘I had the ridiculous notion that if I did something outlandish enough, people might pay attention to my novel. I’m not altogether sure whether it worked or not, but we sure had a great time on that little raft. It was like floating unhurriedly out to the ocean on a beer cooler. The name of the raft was ‘Donuts’, after my favourite Brooklyn diner. I think I’d like to have ‘Donuts’ engraved on my tombstone. That trip was one of the few really good ideas I’ve ever had.’
The book itself suggests that characters such as slave traders and half-mad preachers were as much pioneers and the architects of modern America as say Lincoln or Whitman. It’s a pretty scary thought and reflects some of Wray’s political feelings regarding the Bush-era. ‘I wrote Canaan’s Tongue during a time of absolute disgust with the state of my country and there was no way to keep my state of mind out of the novel. From the beginning, I conceived of the book as an outlet for my anger, and it served its purpose surprisingly well. Obama’s election didn’t hurt, either.’
Whether by choice or design, Wray has continually avoided the conventional means of novel-writing, none more so than in his earliest novel The Right Hand of Sleep (Vintage – 2002) which he wrote whilst living in a tent in a rundown Brooklyn basement, an experience which the author has mixed feelings about. ‘It was very difficult, at times - the space I was living in (a rehearsal space for some musicians I was friends with; the band Animal Collective now practices there) had no windows, no heat, no telephone, no shower - but whenever things got too bleak for me down there, I’d remind myself that I was living rent-free in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and I’d usually cheer up right away. That bunker of mine enabled me to work almost full-time on my first book, which might never have gotten written otherwise.’
Returning to his latest work, I asked Wray about his thoughts on the future. Considering Lowboy’s apocalyptic leanings (global warming, for one, haunts the book), was he hopeful about the fate of the world or are we all just fiddling while Rome burns?
‘In much the same way that Canaan’s Tongue was an exorcism of my anger at the American military-industrial apparatus, Lowboy was begun in the hope of channeling my anxiety about climate change into something outside of myself, and thereby loosening its grip on me somewhat. I was having recurring nightmares about it at the time that I began the book, and they did, in fact, grow steadily less frequent as I worked. During daylight hours, I’m still shitting my pants however.’
Lowboy is published by Canongate and available in all good bookstores.

back to top