Q&A with Greg Fields

 

 

 

Greg Fields is the author of the new novel The Bright Freight of Memory. His other books include the novel Through the Waters and the Wild. He lives in Manassas, Virginia.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Bright Freight of Memory, and how did you create your characters Matthew Cooney and Donal Mannion?

 

A: I’ve always focused my writing on what I think are the most essential questions that face us as individuals with hearts, minds and souls – Where shall I go now? What shall I do? 

 

The characters in my first two novels faced these questions from relatively comfortable and privileged places. But these are questions that we all need to address, the questions that keep us alive. What of those who are born in the sad and forgotten places? How do they face the challenges that define us? 

 

I wanted to pose these themes through a different lens. Cooney and Mannion gave me the chance to do so.

 

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

 

A: I claimed the title from a line in Pat Conroy’s brilliant classic, The Prince of Tides: “There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.”

 

Both Matthew Cooney and Donal Mannion were born and raised in a shoddy neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Neither had any sense of stability. Both of their fathers were gone, and their mothers worked to keep things together, often with the help of a bottle. 

 

Their young years were punctuated with restlessness, no direction and a bit of violence. That defined them, and it set their separate courses through adulthoods that were little different. Both lived with the scars of their younger years and tried as best they could to incorporate the lessons of those years into who they became as men.

 

Q: The writer Alfredo Botello said of the book, “This is a searing ode to the flawed….Fields’ elegant prose shows us there is beauty and nobility to be found in unlikely places.” What do you think of that description?

 

I love Alfredo Botello’s writing, whose first novel 180 Days has won a number of major awards and who also tries to shine a light on his characters’ complexities, including their failures. We’re all flawed in our own ways, and, despite our efforts to cover those flaws, they help define us. 

 

I’ve never been terribly fascinated by heroes. It’s always been common characters that are more compelling, the ones that embody our shared humanity, both its glories and its failings.

 

And within those failings are the elements that create our essential character – resilience, perseverance, and the incredibly precious commodity of hope. I think these are common to all of us, but it’s in the things we don’t accomplish that they become most apparent.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the novel?

 

A: As with everything I write, I want readers to come away asking themselves the same questions that these characters confront, the questions of identity and purpose and place. 

 

I want what I write to be quietly provocative, with that provocation wrapped in a narrative with which readers might identify and carried forward by characters that readers might come to know, and in the knowing, recognize parts of themselves.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Each Saturday I Zoom into a writers group at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin. We banter for a bit, usually where they make fun of the token Yank, and then we write to a prompt provided by the leader. After an hour or so, we can read what we write for critique and comment.

 

I created the two main characters in The Bright Freight of Memory in part through these prompts. Each week I would place one of them in response to whatever prompt was given, and in so doing, I fleshed them out. I put them in different situations, in different places and reacting to the circumstances of these prompts. 

 

After a time I was able to build them into fully-formed characters, then devised a narrative that reflected who they were and what they were about.

 

The sessions continue, and each Saturday I find myself doing the same thing with a new set of characters. These weekly creative jolts provide the spikes that I can build around. They give my writing a focus, and I take it from there. 

 

I expect all this will coalesce into another novel, which seems to be gravitating toward a theme that addresses how we as individuals respond to the social evils we see around us.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I can’t begin to express both my wonder and my gratitude for where I am now. I never intended to write for publication. I was writing to explain my own life to myself, and offered that writing to those closest to me. 

 

I returned from my last trip to Ireland to learn that The Bright Freight of Memory has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, along with a National Book Award. And while I know I have no chance of winning, or even being shortlisted, I’ll cherish those nominations as long as I draw breath. 

 

All this is unforeseen, unanticipated, and probably undeserved. But through it all I’ve developed even more of a passion for the power of good writing, the way language can soar like birds in fight and, in the soaring, bring readers to new places, new thoughts, and new realizations.

 

Writers are a strange lot – neurotic, vulnerable, but ultimately courageous in putting forth the most unvarnished, honest versions of themselves. I’ve come to love being around writers and being around readers. And, in the end, I hope I’m even a little bit worthy of being in their company.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Greg Fields.