Q&A with Steve Putnam

 

 

 

Steve Putnam is the author of the new novel The Academy of Reality.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Academy of Reality?

 

A: Living in the ancestral shadows of farmers, builders, and icemen, I worked as a mechanic and carpenter. I have a couple of college degrees; I sometimes thought of myself as a writer.

 

As a copier tech, I ended up guest-starring in the corporate florescence of a large life insurance company. The small independently owned company I worked for landed a million-dollar-plus deal with the insurance people. I took the assignment as an onsite tech.

 

My employer warned me to control my strange sense of humor; I thought it best not to tell him that his strange ways of doing business were inspiring my offbeat sense of humor.

 

The insurance company’s office services director, manager, and supervisor met with my people from our small regional outfit to explain their rules.

 

Having fired one of their employees for sexual harassment made embarrassing news headlines; they were careful to explain that the behavior was unacceptable, not that that was much of a surprise. They didn’t include any other behaviors that I should avoid.

 

They did mention that the Office Services and IT workers might be out to get me. My job description as a tech was too obvious to mention. I walked out with the same belief I had walked in with. I was the fixer of machines.

 

Working in a large corporate setting, a factory farm of four thousand humans, you might not expect to feel lonely. In time, the office services people welcomed me at the tech table in the dining commons. The tech that I displaced, and I became friends. I did my job.

 

When the printer fleet was up and running, I hid out in my basement shop and drafted The Academy of Reality. Corporate people never suspected they were funding a novel about the curious ways of big business.

 

I only attended routine tech meetings at our home office. At my first meeting, the service department withheld coffee from the techs, as punishment for spending too much on service parts.

 

Our company president liked to showboat himself on Presidents Day, the national holiday that supposedly celebrates, Lincoln, Washington, and others. He once drove into a hotel dining room on an amusement park sit-on train. Somehow the act was supposed to promote the idea that there would be lots of training in the coming year.  

 

At another meeting, he destroyed vintage vinyl records to emphasize company sales records recently broken. A few salespeople loved the excitement. The techs, not so much. Afterward, I remember one of the techs releasing the latest and greatest sales propaganda on Route 91, one loose-leaf page at a time.

 

How could I not write Academy of Reality?

Q: How did you create your characters Sid and Mia?

 

A: In ways, Sid is somewhat autobiographical. I’m somewhat cynical; I share his distrust of the corporate system. To his credit, he hides his attitude better than I do. He’s a good employee; he does his job. He distrusts his superiors who use empty promises as motivators.

 

I was working in a brick-and-mortar wonderland full of strangers, getting politically inspired directives that had nothing to do with my job description.

 

I was single when writing the first Academy of Reality draft. Maybe the fictitious Mia was somehow filling a void in my life. She’s a funky lady; I like her carefree, spontaneous performance art. Maybe she was my imaginary friend, the kind of friend a lonely kid might have.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Sid and Mia?

 

A: Sid and Mia play off each other. Sid is fascinated with Mia’s performance art. As narrator and machine tech, Sid does his work, most of it routine. They live together in a capsule that Sid suspended from his condo’s ceiling.

 

Mia needs a solar-powered jump rope for the pigeon, Penguin Four; Sid builds it. Mia needs a turntable for the Academy’s Thanksgiving pigeon sacrifice, Sid makes one using army surplus parts

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Academy of Reality: The lofty word Academy makes the setting sound respectable. The word Reality is more honest but doesn’t divulge what it is that makes the Academy real. The truth, it provides electronic therapy for clients afraid of living and life insurance for those afraid of dying.

 

Q: The writer Roger King said of the book, “Immediately distinctive writing with a deadpan, linguistically inventive voice that has a dark view of the world.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I take Roger’s words as a compliment. Sid Sidney is blunt: Obviously, he’s the one with a dark point of view when he asks, “What kind of financial asylum did the founders think they were founding? Casino or insurance business?” In a deadpan voice, he describes absurd events as if they are commonplace.

 

I think that my “linguistically inventive” voice may come from an education mixed with a blue-collar background. My dark view also allows Academy characters to speak with inventive, deceptive voices, speaking with self-serving positivity.

 

My dark view of the world? I tried to make the dark bright. In their respective blurbs, Roger King described my humor as “deadpan”; Jay Neugeboren called it a “pointed, poignant screwball comedy”; Jacob Appel wrote, “A madcap novel that skewers the Orwellian technocracy…”

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m between things. I have a few short stories submitted that might deserve another look before I resubmit them. I have a small collection of published shorts to put together for an anthology. I might also look at Loose Horse Lost, a novel that’s been out looking for a home.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb