Doug Underwood is the author of the new novel Always, Tessie. He also has written the book Chronicling Trauma. He teaches at the University of Washington.
Q: What inspired you to write Always, Tessie, and how did you create your characters Tessie and Derek?
A: An earlier book I wrote about trauma (Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss, 2011) raised my awareness of the issue in life, and it got me thinking about trauma’s role in my own growing up years.
Allusions to and pieces of stories I learned about in my high school years among friends and other young people kept coming back to me. My now-better understanding of the 1960s allowed me to recognize how the era of “peace and love” contained darker, hidden currents.
Tessie and Derek were modeled on young people of that period in my life, and there is a strong autobiographical flavor to many of the stories, relationships, and events.
I call the book historical fiction – but it easily could be called semi- or creative nonfiction in today’s literary terminology. That means if you went to my high school, you might think you recognized people from my past.
But my disclaimer seeks to make it clear that readers should not presume the story line involves real people or springs from real events or actions.
Q: How would you describe the relationship between your novel and Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles?
A: I first read Tess of the d’Urbervilles in my 20s. But it was only after I had finished this novel that it was pointed out to me by my publisher how much my plot and characters mirrored the experiences of Tess and other characters in Hardy’s book.
After I re-read Tess, I was amazed at the parallels I found there. I also read the full version and not an abridged one as I had earlier. I was impressed with how Hardy’s exploration of the themes of sexual trauma was much like my own.
I believe I had little conscious memory of his plot or characterizations. But what we did share was a recognition of the patterns of sexual exploitation that have been so similar and persistent throughout history.
I have often thought of myself as “A Victorian in the Modern World” (the name of an 1860s book by Hutchins Hapgood) or maybe more specifically to me (“A Quaker in the Modern World.”) This has contributed to my development of a countercultural sensitivity to the way mainstream culture has mistreated traumatized women and other victims of traumatic abuse.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Tessie and Derek?
A: Complicated but caring and loving. One could call the book a “romance” or a “coming of age” novel. But I have intended it to be more than that.
The spiritual and emotional depth of their attraction despite their class differences – and Tessie’s past traumatic wounding – leads Derek to imagine her “deep pools of lived experience” which required her to “grow up kind of young.”
Derek – in his view of himself as a Quaker outsider and skeptic of the values of his drinking club friends – comes to recognize the oppressive circumstances of both Tessie’s family and her present-day social life.
Q: The author Brenda Peterson said of the book, “Underwood’s insightful, compassionate novel, set in the iconic sixties, traces the root causes and gender prisons of adolescent culture that bred many of our current political figures, as well as a possible path to healing.” What do you think of that assessment?
A: I much appreciate Brenda Peterson’s assessment of – and her contributions to -- the structure and message of the novel. She pushed me to add Tessie’s woman’s voice and her prose expressions to the story line.
At the same time, Brenda caught the spirit of the crude and “bro” (but hopefully redeemable) Cheshire guys, and appreciated how I was using them to critique 1960s adolescent males’ attitudes shaped by the patriarchal forces around them.
Perhaps because of her own Southern upbringing in a conservative family that she loves, Brenda recognized the value of a novel that seeks to offer stories of “healing” and “reconciliation” in addressing the harsh polarization of our culture wars world.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am writing a sequel that takes Derek and a few of Always, Tessie’s characters to 1960s Southern California to explore the “peace, love, and protest” college environment with its many ironies.
The mystery at the heart of this book is centered around a never-solved bombing on the campus of Paloma College and Derek’s (and eventually Tessie’s) involvement with a young woman who suffers brain damage from the explosion.
As another semi-nonfictional work, the novel (tentatively called The Boomer Academy) explores the changing patterns of youth culture during the era of the Vietnam War and civil rights and women’s rights protests.
An important feature is the telling of the history of the establishment in Southern California of reactionary, far-right institutions (mainly the Claremont Institute, but others such as the California Policy Center and the Pacifica Institute as well) that have contributed to the hostilities and deep divisions within our contemporary political culture.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My University of Washington website address is Doug Underwood - Department of Communication or com.uw.edu/person/doug-underwood/
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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