Grant Faulkner is the author of the new book something out there in the distance. His other books include The Art of Brevity. He cohosts the Write-minded podcast, is the cofounder of the journal 100 Word Story, and is an executive producer for the show America's Next Great Author.
Q: What inspired you to write something out there in the distance?
A: I’ve been writing flash fiction—little snapshots of life—for the last 15 years or so. I’m also a photographer. I’ve been interested in the interaction between text and image for years, which is one reason we couple all of the stories we publish on 100wordstory.org with an image and also offer a monthly photo prompt.
When I think of my life, I think of it as a collage of snapshots. This book allowed me to portray these small, fleeting, but arresting moments of life through the characters of Dawn and Jonny through my good friend Gail Butensky’s photos.
It’s a love story. It’s a death story. It’s a road trip story. I love writing about tragic love. So much of love is tragic in the end.
Q: How did you and Gail Butensky collaborate on the project, and what do you think her photographs add to the book?
A: Oh, Gail’s photos are at the center of the book. They’re the genesis of the book. We waited tables together back in the early ‘90s, and I’ve always admired her photos and her overall aesthetic.
She gave me 30 or so photos to write tiny stories to, and I found each photo to be so full of stories, so full of possibilities.
Even though the stories are short, the stories coupled with the photos make the book expansive, so it can feel like a novel or a film. Gail and I share an obsession with the Southwest and road trips through the desert.
I call it a “flash novel.” I just love the way her photos and the stories weave in and out of each other. It’s a unique reading experience.
Q: How did you create your characters Dawn and Jonny, and how would you describe their relationship?
A: I like writing about love. I like writing about desperate characters. I like writing about lost characters. I like writing about characters who are smart but might not be school smart. I like writing about characters who are most comfortable when they’re unanchored from life, when they’re drifting. That’s when I’m most comfortable.
Jonny is devoted to Dawn. Dawn is devoted to Jonny in her way, but she’s also got a will and a drive that makes her naturally elusive. She’s strong and she doesn’t want to be weak, even though her cancer is making her weak. She’s always been able to run away from her problems, so that’s her natural inclination.
Jonny wants her to be happy. He wants to care for her. Even though he knows he can’t really make her happy and can’t really care for her. That’s the definition of tragedy.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title comes from the first photo in the book. A woman is walking up a hill in the distance. She’s barely visible, somewhat similar to an Andrew Wyeth painting.
And that relates to Jonny's loss of Dawn, the way she recedes into the distance despite his efforts to keep her present, the way the landscape makes them smaller and less significant, the way death itself is out there in the distance. So much of life is something out there in the distance.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on two things: a final revision of my novel, The Letters, which delves into the nature of being haunted by love, tracing the paradoxes of loss and obsession that Roland Barthes explored so poetically in A Lover’s Discourse.
I’m also working on a memoir related to some heart problems that I have. I’m excavating my general tendency toward excess and being a maniac in a variety of ways, and how different health problems have spoken to me at different points in my life, and how I listened or didn’t listen to them.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Sign up for my weekly newsletter on Substack, Intimations: A Writer’s Discourse—it’s free!
Also, submit stories to 100 Word Story and sign up for classes at the Flash Fiction Institute, my new venture.
But … I’ll add that I want to write more books like this. This is my favorite book of all that I’ve written. I love writing to photographs, thinking of the world as a series of photographs.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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