{"id":3792,"date":"2016-07-21T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/?p=3792"},"modified":"2020-10-09T23:14:03","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T23:14:03","slug":"interview-with-james-edward-obrien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/21\/interview-with-james-edward-obrien\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with James Edward O’Brien"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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James Edward O’Brien<\/a> discusses “The Hellion<\/a>,” the intersectionality between science and faith, and aspiring to Beckett or Basho\u2019s economy of language.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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James Edward O’Brien<\/a> lives in Far Rockaway, NY with his wife and three rescue dogs. Jim’s fiction and poetry appears in\u00a0Cyclopean<\/em>, Nerve Cowboy<\/em>, Bathtub Gin<\/em>, and Black Bear Review<\/em>, with a story forthcoming in\u00a0Hybrid Moments: A Literary Tribute to The Misfits<\/em>. You can find him on Twitter @UnagiYojimbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was the inspiration for \u201cThe Hellion\u201d? How did the story develop\/change from conception to completion?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story sprung from an idea I had of turtles paddling through a sea of stars. Unhurried, ancient, impossible creatures that predate\u2013\u2013and presumably may out-survive\u2013\u2013humanity as we know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of the speculative fiction I\u2019ve read relies upon larger-than-life characters and world-shattering catastrophes. Fun, but grandiose. I\u2019m more interested in the types of characters who populate Hopper and Bruegel paintings\u2013\u2013ordinary characters who populate extraordinary worlds. What\u2019s life like for them? Can their small acts of resistance have resounding impact? In turn, can ours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did the main character, Cradock, first form in your imagination? Was there a pivotal moment, in the course of writing the story, where you discovered something unexpected about him? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cradock could just as easily be the intrusive barfly who shoulders up to you at your local watering hole as he is a hesitant space explorer at galaxy\u2019s end. In many ways, he\u2019s a nine-to-fiver clocking in and going through the motions, except he\u2019s got this voice in his head gnawing away at him. The space opera setting is, in many ways, inconsequential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joan of Arc as persecuted warrior-saint has always been an historic figure who fascinates me. Transpose modern psychology over the religious interpretation of Joan and we find ourselves treading that blurry line between sainthood and possible madness\/mental illness. Is it the voice of a higher power speaking to us\u2013\u2013or just voices in our heads? Cradock is in the grand tradition of Joan, but farm league.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideas of science and faith orbit each another in a thought-provoking dance throughout the story. What interested you in exploring this theme\/concept? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m happy you picked up on this. Science and faith are all too often treated as mutually exclusive\u2013\u2013when in reality there\u2019s a lot of intersectionality between the two. I try to illuminate this when I can in my work. If we look beyond fundamentalism on both sides, science and spirituality at their best are about asking questions, removing the blinders we wear as we go about our day-to-day lives, and expanding our horizons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my mind, either science or<\/em> spirituality can serve as the Buddhists\u2019 proverbial \u201cdiamond that cuts through illusion.\u201d There\u2019s a lot of congruity between ancient Buddhist teachings and modern physics and psychology, for example. Problems begin when people try to replace<\/em> or substitute<\/em> science with faith, or vice versa\u2013\u2013or when people stop seeing science and religion as tools, and wield those potential tools as dogmatic weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How would you describe your writing and revision process? What have you found to be most helpful for you when dealing with writer\u2019s block?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll start with a seed\u2013\u2013a scene, a concept, a character, a line of dialogue\u2013\u2013and start weaving a story around that. Once I finish, I\u2019ll step away from the story for a day or two, and then start revising. Ideally, I\u2019ll cut a story in half. I aspire to Beckett or Basho\u2019s economy of language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer\u2019s block is tricky. I can only offer your readers the textbook, eternally frustrating answer of \u201cwrite through it.\u201d Treat writing like physical exercise\u2013\u2013something that nine-times-out-of-ten we can come up with a million-and-one excuses not<\/em> to do, but it\u2019s good for us\u2013\u2013good for the soul\u2013\u2013and we feel better having done it. It\u2019s not easy. For every minor victory I\u2019ve had writing-wise, there\u2019s twenty-plus rejection slips or an unpublishable, unreadable novel squirreled away in the trash bin of my computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s the one piece of advice you\u2019ve received as a writer that has helped you the most \/ What one piece of advice would you give new writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love the grind. Don\u2019t wait around for the muse. Think Sam Beckett\u2019s quote from Worstward Ho<\/em>, \u201cTry again. Fail again. Fail better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are you currently reading? What book has been most influential on your life or on you as a writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m currently reading Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History<\/em> by Dan Flores. It\u2019s about the tumultuous, shared cultural and biological history of coyotes and humans in North America. It\u2019s passionately written, and I can\u2019t say enough good things about it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A countless number of books have influenced me throughout my life\u2013\u2013I\u2019d be doing so many great ones a disservice if I honed in on one! That said, I find a good indicator of the power a work has is its continued relevance when revisited at different phases of life. For me, such works include T.S. Eliot\u2019s Four Quartets<\/em>; Patrick Kavanagh\u2019s Collected Poems<\/em>; Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>; most of Bukowski\u2019s poetic output; To the Lighthouse<\/em> by Virginia Woolf; The Wisdom of Insecurity<\/em> by Alan Watts; the short stories of Raymond Carver, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft; the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugene O\u2019Neill; and Hubert Selby, Jr.\u2019s Last Exit to Brooklyn<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll be kicking myself later for the legion of other great talents I\u2019ve left off the list!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anything else you\u2019d like to share?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can keep tabs on me via my Goodreads Author page<\/a>, my Amazon Author page<\/a>, or on Twitter @UnagiYojimbo<\/a>. Thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Edward O’Brien discusses “The Hellion,” the intersectionality between science and faith, and aspiring to Beckett or Basho’s economy of language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3792"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5211,"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions\/5211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/87bedford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}