Meet NUNUM's Winter 2019 Contributor: JR Walsh

JR Walsh's Interview with NUNUM

NUNUM

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

'Your Favorite Actor' by 

JR Walsh brought a touch of the on point, tangental ramble to NUNUM's Winter 2019 and made us instantly feel like we'd gone classic Hollywood in the process.

We were lucky enough to get a chance to Q & A with JR recently, and for those of you who've been here before you already know how it started. 

JR, thank you for this, and for enduring my stock opening but I have to ask: what was the first book you remembering reading by yourself?

Chebyshev Spectral Overcast by Ryota Matsumoto

Is the Bible the right answer? If I lie about that, that's only a

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venial sin, right? I grew up Catholic, hence the long-windedness. 

In my first grade classroom, there were several novelizations of Benji movies. I ate these up in spite of a horrendous dog allergy and parents who knew dogs were an expense we could in no way cover. I remember reading all the sports-themed young adult books by Matt Christopher in my school library. These books had strict formulas and a high moral code. All this morality was a direct gateway to books about mortal sins, of course.​

In my maternal grandparents' house, there were always mystery books lying around.The sticker on the spine was a jagged red skull. This seemed very adult. Walking a block from their house, you could find endless shelves of red devil skull books in the branch library. Agatha Christie novels were probably the first fully adult books that I read voraciously. I played the board game Clue, watched Murder, She Wrote and Father Dowling Mysteries on TV, and won an award as Sherlock Holmes at Halloween. The hat was okay, but my grandfather's tobacco pipe was the clincher. At church, when they talked about the different mysteries of the Holy Rosary, I always thought of those red skull books first.

Nothing wrong with a good mystery.

Let's get more recent, what was the last book you read that had you thinking, damn that's a good book?

Natalia Ginzburg's The Dry Heart. If you want to read a work where you know how it will end, and it has already ended right off the rip, and the jacket copy tells you that it's already over, and then it all completely doesn't matter that you know any of this, then this is that book. It gets away with murder! It's back in print in an English translation from Italian by Frances Frenaye (New Directions), which is a good thing

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(New Directions), which is a good thing because I had no idea about its existence until now. It's so modern and it was written in 1947. Ginzburg is a revelation of simple moments that simmer and combust. She leads us from harrowing moment to moment with a surprising depth of emotion, and sometimes cheek, and it's all done through minutiae and oblique interiority. Ooh. Yes. Right now I'm reading her book, Happiness, as Such and I'm equally, aggressively charmed. ​

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Who are your go-to writers 

when you need something to read when on a holiday?

My friend and Idaho/Bosnian writer Edvin Subašić turned me onto Janet Frame, the New Zealand writer. I want to read every beautiful sentence she ever wrote. This will take several vacations. And then I'm going to watch the Jane Campion movie about her, An Angel at my Table, on The Criterion Channel. This will take about two hours, so maybe I'll be through with that a bit sooner. I also love bringing poetry on vacation. I want 

the poems to the see the sea. I always try to take some lit mags with me. You know, the ones that you've piled up but haven't filed and might be a year old, but your friend is in one, and your teacher is in another, and you know you'll get sucked into the whole thing.

And that's the reason I love those questions, selfish I know, but it's the best way for me to learn about learn writers. Thank you for that, now, let's flip to your own writing: What writers or what books influenced you to become a writer?

Reading St. Augustine's Confessions probably influenced these 

​responses. But...I'm going to say that I've had some superbly talented teachers. Back when I thought I wanted to be a journalist, I was lucky enough to take some poetry and fiction classes. At SUNY Oswego I studied with Leigh Allison Wilson, a brilliant teacher of fiction, who happens to also be a brilliant writer. She wrote two short story collections, like a one-two punch that continues to light up my synapses and ring my bell. "Up from the Bottom" and "Wind" can teach you everything you need to know about short story structures without ever creaking under the limitations of these old MFA story arcs that we're told work best. She's folksy and 

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poetic and simple and unexpected and she has an example in the American Heritage Dictionary: She wrote, "The best part of a good car... is its guts." She precisely defined guts! In a dictionary! People write fiction and it can influence culture! I still want to do that.

So that is influence, what about writers you admire?

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Oh...ah! This changes from day 

​to day. List includes poets, fictionists, songwriters, screenwriters, dramatists, and those continuously evading description: Alice Munro, Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, Danez Smith, Carmen Maria Machado, Lorrie Moore, Lydia Millet, M. Soledad Caballero, Helen DeWitt, David Lynch, Ryan Ridge, Brian Evenson, Joe Henry, Yasmina Reza, Amber Nelson, Sarah Manguso, Angela M. Brommel, Jenny Zhang, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Samuel D. Hunter, Thalia Zedek, Chen Chen, Ilya Kaminsky, April Wolfe, Haruki Murakami. 

Started with a Canadian and ended with one of my own favourites, a list I can appreciate. But for most of us, a little help a long the way is needed, what about craft books, any favourites?

Dear poets: You should play

with Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. Ain't no shame in learning the forms before you break them. It's a challenge that will stretch your mind, your sense of rhythm, your abilities. Everyone should try to write sestinas at some point in their lives. We can't mimic Future's flow forever. Try on some new/old poetry shoes before you realize the beauty of barefoot beach walking. Weirdly, I like wearing shoes on the beach. I have once-a-year old shoes for this specific purpose. Breaking out The Book of Forms can be a regenerative exercise for your atrophying 

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poetic skills too. You start to see the connections between different writers, you get interested in context of historical trends, you might even try writing in archaic methods that time travel into flarf or asemic texts once your add your own style.

That's your beach walking style, what about your writing style, any significant influences?

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Woody Guthrie wrote, "Ain't nobody that can sing like me."

​Also, I own a blender.

That's one kind my kitchen is lacking. But speaking of tools, pen, pencil or phone which one do you reach for when you need to write something down?

A phone is for reluctantly griping at robocalls. I don't have a mobile. Pencils get dull too fast. Though this may allow one to be succinct in their messaging, it's often frustrating. I write with a pen on any available piece of paper. Then I tape that paper into my notebook later. ​

Did that answer sound prickly? I'll make a note. Hang on.

What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals?



Have a thick skin. It's a numbers game. Read the journal before sending. Don't get your hopes up, just make it part of your routine. Acceptance is always a surprise. You're likely to send out some pieces before they're ready, but you also can't hold onto things forever. Who are you – Fernando Pessoa? Will people even look in your trunk? And in this modern example, is your trunk your computer? People are even less 

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likely to look there, especially if it's an HP or Dell or if you made your password something really challenging like StinkbugZZZ or fuhfuhfurtZZZ, so you might as well send out those poems and stories. Maybe you'll find an audience while you're alive. Maybe you'll meet some nice people doing the same. Submission and acceptance cannot become a competition, but rather a challenge between supportive artists. Persevere!

A lot of writers comment on how their environment influences them, how does place influence your own writing?

My favorite place to write is at the ocean. The swell and retreat. The tides. The people who become different. The loss and gain. The sheer constancy of change. The ocean and sky is a different color every day. They might be the same color at any given time and the horizon might disappear. You might get itchy or bit by sand fleas. Are those bubbles or jellyfish? Is this normal? Nothing is normal here. I'm inspired to inhabit the dreams and nightmares of past, present, and future while I'm humbled by this overwhelming natural wonder. I also write in coffee shops. Same reasons, basically. 

What about politices, does it has an influence on your writing?
​
Not this question. Who told you to ask this? What a terrible question. Save this one for parties. What's next? I suppose you'll want to know about religion. Politics and religion influence me and my characters in ways that I can't always anticipate. But this is precisely what writers should always be exploring. 

For example, the influence of politics will determine just how polluted the place where I write will be tomorrow. If I don't have the money and power to ignore it, that is. I've found that socioeconomic challenges are often at the heart of all my characters' choices. Probably because we couldn't afford a dog. 

As a child, I thought President Reagan was a friendly old man who had jellybeans for everyone. Little did I know he was precisely the stranger that we shouldn't take candy from. If you poo-poo symbolism or decry metaphor, you miss an entire means of rebellion for those who don't have financial means. A political struggle is always at the heart of the story – whether it is identity, financial, existential, there's always a hierarchy of power at odds. I will now include a quote that I would frustratingly misquote if this interview were in person. 
“Life is not so idiotically mathematical that only the big eat the small; it is just as common for a bee to kill a lion or at least to drive it mad.” August Strindberg, Miss Julie. So... yes, I suppose politics influence my writing.​

So then yes, okay last one, if you could design a library sticker for your work, what would it look like?

​ A brain inside a heart on fire.

JR Walsh was born in Syracuse, NY 

and lives in Boise, Idaho. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Boise State University, where he now teaches English as a Second Language. He is the Online/Fiction Editor at The Citron Review. His writing is found in many fine publications, such as Juked, Rougarou, Timber, Grey Sparrow Journal, Alice Blue, Blink-Ink, The Ekphrastic Review, Esquire, and B O D Y. And since his work appeared in NUNUM, JR's been busy, with Take a deep breath out at 50-word Stories and He agreed to love her up over at Litro.

JR Walsh

NUNUM

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