Max Talley is the author of the new story collection Destroy Me Gently, Please. His other books include the forthcoming novel Peace, Love, & Haight. He lives in Southern California.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?
A: I wrote these stories between 2016 and 2024. After I finished a novel in 2014, a friend mentioned Ray Bradbury's advice to write a short story every week and that your skills would improve. I couldn't do that. Instead, I wrote a short story a month until I amassed a hundred stories.
Each one took a week to write and another week to hone, then I rested or scribbled new ideas. Even discounting 25 percent of the stories, I was left with enough material for roughly five story collections. Destroy Me Gently, Please is my third.
Q: How was the book’s title--also the title of one of the stories--chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I've always liked the titles of Raymond Carver's story collections. He has one called Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? Another is No Heroics, Please. So I borrowed the "Please."
The characters in my stories all encounter or have encountered accidents where their lives have swerved off the road and into a ditch. Sometimes it's a bad relationship, an unexpected divorce, being fired from a brutal job, or a struggle with alcohol or drugs.
The stories involve them escaping the disasters in their lives, trying to reset their course and start new lives. Perhaps the title is sort of a plea: If life must destroy us, please make it gentle.
Most of the characters show definite signs of renewal or resurrection by the end of their stories, though a couple (men for some reason) stubbornly continue in the careless manner that got them into trouble before.
Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear?
A: Hmmm... Some of that is instinct, where you mess around until it feels right. When you submit your book to potential publishers, you usually have months and months of waiting to fret over (and change) story order. The first three stories are more recent.
I like to balance and space the third of stories told from a female point of view with the two thirds told from a male point of view. I also separate the few stories told in first person or second person from the bulk which are third person. And last, I have a couple humorous pieces that I place after the dark, heavy stories.
Q: As someone who writes short stories and novels, do you have a preference?
A: In general, no. In writing, though, short stories are easier to start and finish, then slowly compile, step by step. Much more closure. Short stories are brief dives into the swimming pools of other people's lives, while novels can seem vast as the ocean.
Novels have taken me anywhere from three months to three years to finish. They are easy to start, but one can get bogged down in the middle, and how do you tie it all together in the end?
For me, writing a novel is a bit like wandering lost in the desert with a horse with no name. Time expands and contracts. I lose track of weeks and months, head buried in another world. Did I eat lunch? Why is it dark outside?
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm immersed in a novel set in 1972 about an atheist priest involved with a go-go dancer, and a comedian following in the footsteps of Lenny Bruce. My best writing months are from Thanksgiving through end of April. I got 65,000 words done in my book then hit a wall recently. See my above answer.
For whatever reason, I cannot write novels in summery months, late May through end of September. So I'll attempt short stories instead.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I have a novel called Peace, Love, & Haight being published in October, about the last six months of 1969, including art, music, politics, sex, cults, drugs, and crime.
My books are available at Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, & that other place, or can be ordered from your local bookstore. More info on my writing and paintings can be seen at www.maxtalley.com
Thank you for your great questions, Deborah!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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