"SOMETIMES THERE'S MORE POWER IN IN THE SILENCE IN BETWEEN THE WORDS THAN THEN WORDS THEMSELVES.": THE MEMORY WARD'S JON BASOFF

Jon Basoff uses a Rod Serling starting point for his latest novel, The Memory Ward, where mailman Hank Davies learns that his typical American town is far from typical. It becomes an interesting look at the pact of lies we have with society for a collective comfort and the black roads they can take us down. Jon took some questions about the book and writing in general.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: How did you come up with Hank Davies, the local mailman, to be the center of this tale of paranoia?

JON BASOFF: I wanted my protagonist to be an everyman, one who was connected to the fabric of the town, but also somewhat isolated. Davies job is mundane, but he’s able to interact with the townspeople, to study them. And spending all this time among his neighbors gives him the opportunity to recognize that things are not as they appear to be.

S.M.: You once again use a nesting story concept In The Memory War with a diary Hank gets his hands on.  As a writer, what attracts you to that practice?

J.B.: The nesting story allows me to change the tone and momentum of the novel. While I love writing in first person—there’s so much you can do with reliability and perspective—I also recognize the POV can be limited. Being able to shift away from that allows some freedom. Additionally, the shift causes some disorientation, which is important in a novel about such uneasiness.

S.M.: As in all your books, The Memory Ward contains a great sense of overhanging dread. Is there an approach in creating that?

J.B.: My novels tend to be somewhat opaque—the sense that something is happening that we can’t quite see. Sometimes there’s more power in the silence in between the words than the words themselves. When things are close to normal, but not quite normal, it lends a sense of anxiety. That’s what I was going for here. I wanted this to feel like an old episode of The Twilight Zone, with that sense of underlying paranoia. The smiles are too big, the roses too red, the grass too green.

S.M.: You give the reader a clear picture of Bethlam. How did you go about constructing it?

J.B.: I’ve only been to Nevada once, when I was a child, but I remember the landscape vividly. I studied a lot of pictures of these desert towns, especially ones that were created as company towns. But mostly, Bethlam came from the depths of my imagination. I wanted the uneasiness of the town to parallel with the uneasiness in our protagonists’ brains. There is some of that idyllic small-town mythos, but beneath the surface something very dark.

S.M.: In a recent interview you mentioned your respect for Jim Thompson. Is there anything from his work you try to apply to your own?

J.B.: He’s the guy who got me to become a novelist. Before I read Thompson, I didn’t know that crime fiction could be written from the point-of-view of the criminal, much less a complete psychopath. That opened some stuff up for me. I discovered that I was pretty good at taking on the voice of madmen and women. And I enjoyed writing from that voice. Heroes have always been boring to me. Antiheroes, intriguing.

S.M.: If you couldn't write, what would be your artistic pursuit?

J.B.: Music. Although I’m not much of a musician because music has always been an issue for me. But I sound really good in the shower. Plus, I’m listening to music almost all day. I’m obsessed with the great singer-songwriters like Springsteen, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen. I also listen to a ton of classical and jazz. I love Coltrane. Lester Young. Monk.