TRIPP READE

Not only does he have one of the coolest names for a writer ever – Tripp Reade, don't you just love that -- Tripp is an incredibly talented writer who lives in Durham, NC. I first ran across his work on the Zoetrope Virtual Studio when I read his story, "Memoirs of an Atomic Insect." I was instantly hooked by his sublime fusion of humanity and the surreal. After that, I began to actively seek out more of Tripp's fiction, and I was delighted to find a diversified approach to the stories themselves, but a steady and generous spirit as the connecting tissue.

If you're looking for street cred, he's got plenty. A chapter from his novel-in-progress won a 2002 North Carolina Writer's Network Blumenthal Award, and he subsequently read that chapter at the NC Literary Festival. He was also part of a successful panel at the 2004 South Carolina Book Festival. His work can be found in magazines such as Sandhills Review, Timber Creek Review, and Spout.

You can check out some of his fiction online at these links:
Before the Plunge at Slow Trains
She Was at Write This
One Coat at Dead Mule

He is currently working on a collection of related short stories that showcase and celebrate his beloved Durham, NC. What pulls the stories together, other than the setting, is a seemingly small and common twist in one of the character's life. This event ricochets around, and we see its ripple effect upon other characters – some of them seemingly unrelated to the initial progenitor of the karma, and sometimes decades after the initial event. But what keeps the reader fascinated is not just the common thread, but Reade's uncanny ability to make all the characters visceral, vital, and vivid on an emotional level.

Q & A With Tripp Reade

1) Who are some of your favorite writers, and do you think they've influenced you?

First there were comic books. Hundreds and thousands of comic books. Next big discovery: mythology, particularly those old stand-bys, the wanton Greeks and the gloomy Norse. Once upon a time, I could tell you the name of every least godling, troll, and dryad. Up to this point, though, no single writers of note, just a great avalanche of stories. The first writer I encountered who had an impact on me was Tolkien. Man, I read and re-read those books, a whole world I could fall into again and again. Then, in chronological order, and appearing with the regularity of signposts, Mark Twain, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harlan Ellison, Alice Hoffman, Charles Dickens, Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, and Thomas Pynchon.

While I absolutely believe these, and other writers to a lesser extent, have influenced me--really, how could they not, unless I managed to forget about them as soon as I read them, internalizing nothing--I see no obvious resemblance between my writing and theirs, though perhaps resemblance is easier to detect where the pure storytellers are concerned, more so than with the post-moderns: I'm fond of irony, but rarely, if ever, use it in my own stories.


2) What do you think is your greatest strength or asset in your writing? Your biggest weakness or flaw?

Let's see. I've a pretty good grasp of viewpoint and pacing, and can turn a clever phrase. Though I don't use a great deal of description, I think what I do use is quite satisfactory. Oh, and I can do funny. However, you asked for greatest asset or strength, so let me anticipate the next question and say I can slip my feet into near about anyone's shoes. The flip side of this empathy is that it remains to be seen if I can write a truly despicable or just plain old snake-mean character.

Ah, but weaknesses, where shall I begin? I write long, and can take forever to get where I'm going. As a result, I too easily contract a bad case of narrative impatience, which is the tendency to hurry through a story and which results in a simplistic structure. I under-utilize narrative summary, which often results in a story neatly penned by the Aristotelian unities. Prior to 2003 I almost never fully engaged with emotion in my writing, preferring to get by with cleverness and humor, such as they were, but that weakness seems to have been adequately addressed.

3) You seem to be able to climb inside a character's skin to really let the reader connect to them emotionally. Is this something that comes natural, or do you work at it to cull this sympathy/empathy? Also, do you ever feel that you should pull back so you don't overplay your hand?

<>I alluded to this somewhat in my answer to the previous question. I've always been extremely sensitive to what other people must be feeling, to their difficulties and sorrows, and when I was growing up felt that, for a boy who loved to play sports and hurl himself through the woods in all sorts of dangerous games and adventures, I was ridiculously prone to tears. However, and for reasons that would take far too much time and webpage real estate to fully explore right now, I didn't feel this inclination was sufficiently masculine, so I very effectively suppressed it. And then in 2003 I changed--more precisely, 2003 hastened a transformation that had been taking place in fits and starts over a number of years--and this change radically affected my fiction. The stories written on either slope of that dividing year can only with some effort be attributed to the same person.

So yes, it comes to me naturally, and yes, I had to work at it. I'm pleased with the stories that have resulted. They don't seem overly sentimental, which might easily have happened. I've always been wary of writing in such a way that everything is obvious, the sum total of a story's meaning right there on the page and therefore lacking complexity. Though this approach, too, has its pitfalls--it can result in a subtlety that verges on opacity and confusion--in this case it has served me well by keeping the stories from becoming maudlin.

4) You're good at capturing very evocative details without losing the forward momentum of the story. Is it a balancing act to get those details on the page without wandering off on tangents?

Again, I alluded to this in my answer to the second question. At the drop of a hat, I'll wander off on a tangent! You should see what happens when I try to write a novel; they turn into these marathon journeys of tangent-chasing. Short stories are how I hope to become a more disciplined writer, and this is why my descriptions may seem spare: I've become ruthless in the way I limit them. With such Draconian measures in place, I search hard for the best details possible.

5) Your stories are mostly set in the Carolinas and you seem to have a genuine love for the area. What are some of the best things about that area that are unique to it?

I've been hung up on the word unique in this question. There are lots of friendly people here in Durham and in North Carolina, but that's true everywhere. The barbeque is delicious, but I've had just as good in other places. There are tree-shaded streets in my city that are perfect cathedrals of lovely green light, but, again, that's not unique to Durham. We're basketball crazy, but so are Indiana, Kentucky, and Kansas. Downtown architecture is wonderful 1920s-era Art Nouveau, but so is the architecture of many other downtowns, I'm sure. The smell of tobacco still lingers in the heart of the city, even though the leaf is no longer traded and processed here, and that may be unique: it's such a toasty, golden aroma.

In the end, maybe it's all in how the ingredients are mixed, so that all of the above, and a thousand other everyday wonders, combine to make this place, my city, unique. No two places will use the same recipe, thank goodness. For this reason, just about every town and city I visit feels like a place I could fall for, but Durham is where I grew up, and so it's the place I love best.

6) Stock question: Dinner with anyone, dead or alive. Who is it?

Please don't make me do it. I'm terrible with this sort of question, terrible, as a rule, with any attempt to pick my favorite anything, if that hasn't become groaningly obvious by now. See, I might say something underwhelming like, my paternal grandmother. In fact, I am going to say exactly that. I'm fascinated by hidden histories, the kind we lose when people who aren't famous and who never wrote a memoir, die, and everything they knew or felt or dreamed dies with them. I've thought of a million things I wish I had asked her ever since she died in 1996, so, absolutely, a long, twenty course dinner with her would be perfect.

7) What's the best smell of summer?

Again with the "best of" questions! Okay, when I was a kid, if I wanted to smell summer, meaning the beach, I simply had to twist the top on a bottle of suntan lotion and breathe deeply. I still do that, too. That's right--Coppertone functions as my Proustian madeleine. But maybe that's the most evocative smell of summer, rather than the best. Okay, here it is: magnolia blossoms or honeysuckle. Don't force me to choose.

8) Other than fiction writing, what's the biggest lie you ever told?

And they just keep coming, these questions, don't they? The biggest, and longest running lie, I ever told, was when I convinced myself I wasn't flunking out of college my first semester. A three and a half month performance that called on all my powers of invention, rationalization, and self-delusion. I even went and took exams for classes I hadn't attended since the first week of school! I was almost genuinely shocked when the dean called me into her office to tell me I was an academic failure. Yeah, that was a humdinger.

9) You read at the NC literary festival. What did you read? Were you nervous before you started and did that subside? Do you have a southern accent when you speak?

A chapter from what I call, with equal parts fondness and exasperation, my perpetually in-progress novel, won an award. In addition to some money, I was asked to read this chapter at the 2002 North Carolina Literary Festival. Here's the cool part: I used to be very shy, but as the years passed decided not to be shy any longer. So perhaps I was a tiny bit nervous--Will they laugh in all the right places? and that sort of thing--but more than that I was excited. I still like to have some water handy, though, in case cotton mouth should strike.

Not much of a Southern accent, no, at least not much of one according to non-Southerners. They may be expecting something more dramatic and twangy, though, because when I hear my voice on a tape recorder or answering machine, I think I sound very Southern. Anyway, certain words out of my mouth can tend to have luxurious vowels, and if I'm around more pronounced accents for any length of time, my own will thicken.