Charles Hood is the author of the new book Double Hyenas and Lazarus Birds: A Sideways Look at the Pacific Ocean and Everything in It. His other books include Nocturnalia. He lives in the Mohave Desert.
Q: Over how long a period did you write Double Hyenas and Lazarus Birds?
A: The old standby about how long a painter needed to create work x is the answer, “All my life.” In my case, since we start with a preschool drowning on page one, that is nearly true. But in terms of the manuscript as it was published by Heyday, I work quickly, so that was only about two years total, maybe a touch less. If I am red hot on a project, I will gladly work 20 hours a day.
Once written, most books take a long time in the production stage. Your readers may not know the full process, but assuming a publisher has accepted your work, it still goes through editing for content and structure, copyediting for punctuation and style, then it goes to layout and design teams, then it has to be turned over for proofreading and indexing. Blurbs need to be solicited and cover art finalized. All of that often takes a full year.
Meanwhile, the production folks have located paper stock and a printer and have signed a contract for those services, and if a book is being printed abroad, space on a container ship has been scheduled and paid for.
A book that will be aimed at the Christmas market needs to be in the warehouses by mid-summer. That means it was probably at the printer’s six months before that. A book that is not on its way to the printer by February probably is going to miss that year’s Christmas rush.
For me, as a reader, books are magical gifts. I treasure them and think of them a sacred objects. For the publishers, they may be that too, but books are also commodities, and books intersect with the supply chain at multiple points. A book new on the bookstore’s shelf today probably left the writer’s desk two years ago.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Thank goodness for editors! Excuse the pun, but I was “at sea” with naming this project. My working files had titles like “the ocean book” or “the seabird book.” For a long time the overall title was “Hard Water.” The current title—which includes the subtitle, “A Sideways Look at the Pacific Ocean and Everything In It”—come from the press itself. I think it was generated by top boss Steve Wasserman?
A “double hyena” is a kind of flying fish and “Lazarus birds” refers to seabirds such as the Bermuda Petrel which were thought to be extinct and now are back from the dead. And the idea of “sideways” is a nod to Emily Dickinson: “Tell the truth but tell it slant.”
An alternate title for the manuscript was “Ghost Ship,” which is the title of the long, meditative final chapter. I had spent a month studying seabirds in the Central Pacific, and also revisiting sites important to my father, who served in World War II. Yet the ship became a plague ship due to COVID and was banned from ports. We were trapped at sea, unable to land. No country would accept us.
“Ghosts” in that chapter title also references the memories of the veterans I grew up with. In the end, there is (or I hope there is) a grand reconciliation of current voyage and emotional voyage, of the war then and the echoes of modern wars now.
This book is a follow-up to another well-titled Heyday book, A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: The Joys of Ugly Nature.
Q: Has your relationship with the Pacific Ocean changed over the years?
A: I had not initially understood the ocean as a cultural object, and that our perceptions shift as society shifts. When my father enlisted in the Navy before World War II, he was entering an ocean that no longer exists.
To quote from the book, “Not so many years ago all oceans were dangerous and unknown, at least to the people of Europe (being ignorant of the civilizations of Oceania), but even so, at the same time oceans were sexy and full of possibility.”
And these days? “The sea now is a danger zone of nanoplastic and drone attacks, and the conveyor belt for the shame and promise of world commerce.” I back up those assertions with examples, but even in this abbreviated version here, I do think it is true.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: Readers like the variety of topics, I have heard that—we have everything here from a repudiation of the idea of “sea level” to an exploration of the physical mechanisms that allow sea turtles and whales to live in such hypersaline ecologies.
Herman Melville, Winslow Homer, Bob Dylan, the origins of kamikaze warfare: there is a lot here, for better or worse, and I hope readers will feel encouraged by this book to follow their own passions and detours, their own wormholes and nerd-fests.
There is hope here, too—not just for the planet’s environmental state, but the hope that humans can choose to act wisely and kindly, and that we can be generous and loving with people even when think they do not deserve it.
The final page aims for a sincere reconciliation of all these themes, from war to alcoholism to the revival of lost species. We start with a drowning on page one, and when we come back to that scene on the last page, the interpretation has shifted and hope has arrived.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have an essay on mink coats due to be published soon, and a book on acorns that is in production. I am working on a book about fire insurance maps and another book about birds of Los Angeles. There’s a science fiction essay about art set in 2050. I am about to submit two proposals to curate photography shows at a college campus.
But the main project that is kicking my butt is the American West—I know a lot about it, both as an ecological space and a cultural space, and yet all of my 20-odd attempts to enter into the subject have been dead ends and dud rounds. I struggle not just with content but with structure, voice, pace, all of it. I can’t get this book to get going. Writing is hard work. I would not wish a writing career on my worst enemy.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: There is an audiobook version of Double Hyenas performed by L.J. Ganser that many people like, myself included. And if anybody wants a signed version of the hardcopy book, I will be at Clio’s Bar and Bookstore in Oakland on 17 July of this year and Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, on 19 July.
For readers of this blog, there’s an added bonus—meet me in person and say that you follow the blog, and I will add a drawing or some other personal flourish to the title page, perhaps even in multiple colors of ink. The book will be worth a dollar more on eBay, afterwards.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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