Q&A with Josh Weil

  

Photo by Claire Potin

 

 

Josh Weil is the author of the new novel What Came West. His other books include The Great Glass Sea. He lives in the Sierra Nevada of Northern California.

 

Q: What inspired you to write What Came West, and how did you create your character Silas Hall?

 

A: I was first drawn to the story not by a character, but by the landscape of the Sierra Nevada—and, specifically, by the history of its destruction by the overwhelming tide of humanity that swept it in the first year of the California Gold Rush.

 

The sheer rapidity of change—the land (a handful of river canyons) went from a place where no more than a few white people had passed through (settling farther down in the valley instead) to a place overrun by 80,000 miners.

 

The devastation to the natural world and the indigenous population was terrible. And terribly dramatic. And I was interested in that. What it was to lose a world so utterly, so quickly.

 

But the story came to life for me once that loss was made real in a character. And that character was Silas, a hermit trapper who flees his own society (the 1800s America of Manifest Destiny) and finds a corner of the world where he can live in peace, more aligned with wild animals than other humans (even the nearby tribes)—only to have that ripped away when the Gold Rush strikes.

 

He came to me in action and in voice. First, in action, because he responds violently to the violence wreaked upon his world, and that violence was my first glimpse of him. But it was complex enough I knew I wanted to understand him.

 

And it was his voice that led me to his interior, his heart. It came to me in a line—one that was the first he spoke to me and that is still his first line in the book: You will want to know why. There was a desperation, a need, a defensiveness, a fragility and strength all wrapped up in that, and I knew that was the character who would drive the book.

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: A ton of research went into this book, both book research and experiential research. It had to. I was very cognizant of the responsibility I had to the native communities who are present in the story—whose history gave rise to the very foundations of the story I was telling—and the first part of my getting their story right was doing the work to really understand it.

 

So I read book after book, dug up anthropologists’ notes, spent hours in the local historical  libraries, and, most importantly, spoke with linguists and historians and tribal representatives.

 

I did as much around the history of the land itself. Though that was also largely a process of personal experience—just hiking the river canyons, swimming the pools, climbing the higher peaks, spending time in all seasons and all weather in the environment and taking note.

 

That’s one of the great joys of writing: that being in the world, noticing the world, is part of the work.

 

And in that work so much surprised me. Small things, like the brilliance of the hidden head-feathers that would appear and disappear on the Ruby-Crowned Kinglets in the willow bush beside my writing trailer. And overarching discoveries—like just how massive the change to the world of the Sierras was in 1849, and how quickly it rushed upon it—that changed the course of the book.

 

Q: The writer Janet Fitch said of the book, “The rawness and intensity of What Came West recall Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree—the harshness, the urgency, the sudden violence, elevated by Weil's soaring language.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: I mean, I’m flattered and touched by it—and hope that it’s true. It’s an honor just to be thought of in the same sentence with Cormac McCarthy, who I think of as one of the greatest American writers and certainly was a huge influence on me.

 

I would say that all those things Janet Fitch pointed to, those are things I was striving for. So to whatever extent I reached them, I’m tremendously gratified.

 

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

 

A: It was chosen by my (brilliant) editor, Thomas Gebremedhin! Because my titles were awful. It’s the first time I struggled to find a title. I think because I’d lived with the book under another title for many years, one that Thomas, quite correctly, thought too flat.

 

When he hit on What Came West it felt right because it contains much of the complexities of the book: there’s the fact that Silas came west fleeing the world he leaves behind and the fact that he brings that world after him as a kind of spearhead that drives the destruction of the thing he most wants to protect.

 

I hope that the title feels both reminiscent of some of the romance of the mythology of the American West and carries a lurking darkness, a threat—that is part of the reality.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A couple things: a short novel that I’m revisiting (set even farther back in history) and a short novel that has been on my mind for some time, that’s set right now.

 

The key to both is that I see them as short! What Came West was a huge undertaking, an all-enveloping one for many years, and I’m ready now for a different mode.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Nope, these questions have been great. Thanks!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Josh Weil.