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Interview: Thomas Glave, author of The Torturer’s Wife
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A few weeks ago, I was privileged to read and review a collection of short stories by noted author, Thomas Glave, called The Torturer’s Wife. I was so enthralled by the depth and poetry of these remarkable, dark, stories that I tracked down the author and asked him to do an interview with me. He graciously agreed. The following is that interview from a truly remarkable writer:
Q: When did you start writing and how many books have you published?
I began writing when I was very young, around 4 or 5 years old. I began writing more seriously when I was in high school. As of this interview, I’ve published 4 books.
Q: Was there someone in your family, a teacher, or perhaps a favorite book, that inspired you to begin writing?
I think I was really fortunate, in that I had encouragement from particular family members, along with some very good teachers early on and later (in primary school, high school, and college), and was also exposed to some wonderful books as a child that enhanced my developing love of language and stories. I think that I was also really privileged to grow up in a time when books were much more at the center of people’s lives than they are now. But I also grew up in a culture – in Jamaican culture – that has long valued language and storytelling, and put both of those things very much at the center of its cultural space. It seems to me on reflection that just about everyone in my family at one point or another was a pretty dramatic storyteller. Whether the stories were factual or not was a different matter.
Q: Who are the authors who most influence you?
Many, many authors, I think. I try to read as widely as possible, all the time. I’d like to think that I continue to learn a great deal from a vast array of people.
You asked about writers, but one of the people whom I can honestly say has been an enormous influence in my life, but who was never a writer, was (and still is) the choreographer George Balanchine. I used to be a dancer, and always loved Balanchine ballets – I still do. Balanchine’s work ethic always really appealed to me. He worked very hard, and always seemed straightforward and unromantic in his approach. He was always highly disciplined and consistent. He gave an interview once in which the interviewer asked him how he managed to choreograph so many ballets over what was a highly productive career, and he very typically responded, with his bent for understatement, “Well, dear, the people come, and they pay, so I have to make a ballet for them.” I love that let’s-keep-it-simple, just-do-the-work-and-continue approach – no nonsense, no dramatics. It served him and the New York City Ballet really well.
Q: Your writing has won numerous awards, including an O. Henry Prize, 2 Lambda Literary Awards, and a nomination for the Publishing Triangle Award. Of all the awards, which means the most to you, and why that one?
I appreciate all of them for different reasons. But I think that the Lambda Award for my anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, given in May of this year (2009), was particularly special. I felt, and I still feel, that that award wasn’t just for me, but for Caribbean LGBT writing in general. And that book was a difficult, difficult book to complete, both in terms of logistics and also conceptualization. It was an exhausting project, literally, that required an enormous amount of energy and concentration – stamina, in fact – and took five and a half years to complete. At the same time, it was also a book that wasn’t really welcomed or thought much of by anyone I approached in the publishing world, except the publisher that finally published it. They were immensely supportive, and still are. For all those reasons and more, the Lambda recognition for that book especially felt like a kind of triumph, and a gesture of respect for the work of all those amazing writers in that collection.
Q: Your new book, The Torturer’s Wife has garnered several excellent reviews. Can you tell us a little about some of the stories? And which is your favorite?
If I did have a favorite story in that book, I wouldn’t say which one it is! But I will say that I’m really glad that one of the stories in the book, “Out There,” that closes the collection, is set in contemporary Jamaica, and deals with some interests I’ve wanted to look at for a long time. I can already see that that story anticipates things that I will work on in the future, but I wouldn’t want to say more than that right now. But I honestly can’t say that I have a favorite story in The Torturer’s Wife. All of them, when I was writing them, meant different things to me for different reasons, and they still do.
Q: Name a book or movie written by someone else that you wish you had written, and why that one?
Oh, I can think of several! But I don’t think in this way as much as I used to – I think because, as I have written and published more, I’ve come to see very clearly that what I do is what I do, and what other writers do is what they do – and that is fine for me. To answer this question as you’ve asked it would be sort of like saying that I wish I could be this person or that one, as opposed to myself, when I’m actually very content being myself. Nonetheless, I do understand the desire, that I think is a deeply human one, to possess, as it were, a beautiful work of art – something that moves us deeply. It might be a musical work, a song, a film, a book, etc. It might be a person. But the reality, of course, is that we can’t really possess any of those things, even if we own them – the beautiful thing, the desired thing, always remains itself. You can never truly own it. But you can let it run through you, as it were. For this reason, partly in response to your question, I would say that there are books and films that I wish very much to always have near me – but I won’t say which ones, because the selections change over time.
Q: If you could offer one tidbit of advice for new writers, what would it be?
I would say read as much as possible, as widely as possible -- and read books, not only periodicals. It is in fact ridiculous, and even arrogant, to expect to become a writer of any real merit if you don’t read. And if you don’t read, why would you expect people to read your work?
I really do believe that this practice – reading books, and perhaps reading, with increased ease and familiarity, what we sometimes call “difficult” books – is a cornerstone practice for all who wish to become really skilled writers. But I’ve been wondering in recent years if this practice is becoming not only more uncommon, especially in the United States, but also much more difficult for younger people. I encounter a great many younger people, when I teach, who really have disturbingly weak reading skills – and these are university students in a so-called “First World” country, supposedly the most “First World” of them all! I think it’s important to keep this problem in mind when people talk about “new writers,” because I do believe that reading as a discipline, perhaps like playing certain musical instruments, is best begun when someone is very young, and the brain is still developing.
Q: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
I really love reading, as I’ve said, and watching films, and films of Balanchine ballets, more than anything else when I’m not reading. Watching ballets is also very calming for me because there’s no textual language – the language is all visual, and often metaphorical/allegorical; this visuality offers me a little distance, for a little while, from written language, which helps when I return to writing, I think. And it’s wonderful to hear some of the beautiful music to which the ballets are danced. I’ve been traveling with The Torturer’s Wife a good deal since it was published in December 2008, so that has taken up a good bit of time.
Q: Had you not become an accomplished writer, what other occupation would you have most liked to tackle?
I think it might have been interesting to have become an architect. I think that architecture involves an entirely different kind of “intelligence” and imagination, and certainly a more mathematically inclined imagination, than mine. But I remain fascinated by how buildings are designed, and what they represent in terms of how we see, and wish to see and represent, ourselves, in terms of identity, existence, and power.
Q: While living in Jamaica, you helped found the Jamaica Forum for Lesbian, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG). What was it like living and starting J-FLAG in that homophobic environment?
It was difficult, of course. It was extremely challenging, and exhausting at times. But Jamaica is not alone in being a homophobic place. The U.S. is still a very homophobic country. So is England, where I also spend a lot of time every year. Anyplace where those of us who are not heterosexual cannot feel comfortable becomes a challenge to our spirit – to our LGBT human spirit. As daunting as that work was in Jamaica, and even as unnerving, scary, as it could be at times, I would do it again if I had to – and I’m very, very glad that I can look back on that time and know that I participated in that work with all the other J-FLAG founding members. It remains among the things I’ve done in my life of which I’m the most proud, and about which I feel the most satisfied, even though I know that the reality in Jamaica, both for J-FLAG and for all Jamaicans irrespective of sexual orientation, is far from perfect. But in spite of all its terrible problems – and Jamaica really has some grave problems -- I really do love the country, and feel that, in that time, I was giving everything I had, everything in my soul, body, and mind, to make my country, Jamaica, a better one. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Q: What was the craziest thing you’ve ever done in your life?
I can barely remember – there have been so many things. The only thing I know for certain, though, is that the one truly sane and utterly correct thing I’ve ever done was decide that I was going to write.
Q: What, more than anything else, fills you with rage?
Oh, well. . .there’s a great deal, in this world, isn’t there, to make one furious? I’d say, though, on serious reflection, that stupidity, ignorance, indifference to other people’s suffering, and injustice really infuriate me. The problem, of course, is that so often all of these are linked.
Q: Can you tell us something about the place you call home?
The place that I call home. . .I just don’t know where that is anymore, quite. It could be New York – the Bronx and Manhattan; or it could be Kingston, Jamaica, most definitely; or Finsbury Park, London. I think more and more that the place we’re inclined to call “home” is a place where we feel loved and can give love – and all three of those places are such places for me.
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