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San Franciscans who spend any time around 6th or 7th and Market are no strangers to schizophrenia. Lowboy is a new novel that centers on a young man living with the disease who rides the New York City subway believing he holds the key to saving the earth from overheating, and it has something to do with meeting a girl. John Wray, the author of Lowboy -- his third and much buzzed-about novel -- is giving three Bay Area readings this week, including one tonight at Book Passage at the Ferry Building, and one tomorrow night at Diesel Bookstore in Oakland. He sat down with SFist for a few questions (via email).
SFist: What inspired you to write about a schizophrenic, and what research, if any, went into your portrayal of Will Heller/Lowboy?
John Wray: It's hard to say what inspires a given book. I had a friend, growing up, who developed symptoms similar to Lowboy's, but I don't think that's why I wrote the novel. I just saw some kind of possibility there.
As far as research goes, I go about it in the standard painfully boring way, and then, at some point, cut the cord and actually start having some fun. I developed the following M.O. while writing my first book, The Right Hand of Sleep: gather information assiduously until the magical moment when you find that you feel comfortable making stuff up. Then you can really begin.
I gather you spent some time writing on subway trains? I'd think that could get distracting? How do you think it affected the structure or style of the book?
Actually, working at home was distracting, because the phone was always ringing, and the internet was always beckoning, and a million other ways to waste my time were all around me. I began writing the book on the subway as kind of a lark, but soon found that I was more productive there, free of all those distractions, than I would have been in my apartment. That said, going to the bathroom was sometimes a challenge.
In general, I'd say my working conditions didn't profoundly alter the book that resulted, except to encourage delivering the action in short, compressed doses, the sort that could often be written in a single ride. And, of course, to make the descriptions of the subway itself more vivid.
Who are your biggest influences?
I had all sorts of influences while writing Lowboy, including (but by no means limited to) Raymond Chandler, Amos Tutuola, Shirley Hazzard, Haruki Murakami -- especially Underground, his nonfiction book about the Tokyo subway attacks -- and Steve Martin (as a comedian, though. Not -- repeat, not -- as a novelist).
What are you working on now, if anything?
I'm about six months into my next project, and it's turning out to be a different animal altogether, as usual. Bigger and rowdier and more anarchic and playful. It's a bit hard to summarize at this point, but it's going to span about a hundred years in the life of a family, beginning in the Czech Republic and Austria, and ending up in Spanish Harlem in Manhattan. Also, physics -- specifically, the study of time -- will be involved. That sounds dry and brainy, I know, but it's actually going to be a comedy. Wish me luck.
John Wray reads at Book Passage at 6PM tonight, at Diesel on College Ave. in Oakland at 7PM on Thursday, and at Booksmith on Haight in San Francisco at 7:30PM on Friday.
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