A Perfect Summer Ghost Story

From the moment William "Dead" Kennedy's ability to see ghosts causes him to almost become one, writer Sean Stewart ambushes the reader's attention in Perfect Circle (Small Beer Press). Stewart's novel could be described as a "Meaning of Life Thriller," a term Stewart coined to describe a book that "tackles the profound questions of human existence, but doesn't skimp on the sword fights." Perfect Circle is a July Book Sense "We Also Recommend" selection.

The novel, Stewart's eighth, reads like a slightly tenderized Chuck Palahniuk-esque (Choke, Fight Club) jaunt, as DK, as in "Dead" Kennedy, is haunted and helped by various family members -- both living and dead. He suffers through a Houston summer as he grows philosophical over pop songs, loses his job at Petco for eating cat food, and pines for his ex-wife, who married a dangerously jealous ex-marine. As an emotionally stunted DK struggles with outer and inner demons to pull himself together for the sake of his 12-year-old daughter, Meghan, Perfect Circle develops into a darkly funny ghost story with pathos.

Stewart helped create the innovative interactive Web game known as The Beast (inspired by the film A.I.,), which became a cult hit. He is the winner of the Arthur Ellis, Aurora, and World Fantasy awards, and the author of The New York Times Notable Books Mockingbird (Ace Books) and Resurrection Man (Ace Books).

In nominating the book for the Picks, Carol Schneck of Schuler Books & Music in Okemos, said, "This quirky, engaging novel tells the story of [DK], a thirty-something former punk rocker and down-on-his-luck divorced dad -- who sees ghosts. After a visit to his haunted cousin goes horribly wrong, Kennedy finds himself getting lots of attention -- mostly the wrong kind -- from both the living and the dead. Funny and thought-provoking."

Recently BTW interviewed Stewart via e-mail.

BTW: What drew you to write about ghosts?

Sean Stewart: Well, I'm a writer who likes just a little more Sense of Wonder (tm) than you might find in a late-career Saul Bellow book, say -- but who wants more emotional depth and intensity than, you know, an Isaac Asimov novel. Ghosts are almost by their definition intensely personal; they are a character's inner life made spookily real, and that hits a nice place for me. (Another way of putting this is to ask yourself which makes a better scene: Hamlet lying on his therapist's couch saying, "I feel conflicted about my mother's new relationship" -- or Hamlet on the battlements, unstrung at the feet of a father fresh-breathed up from the cracks of Hell?)

BTW: This is your eighth novel. How would you say your writing is evolving?

SS: I'm getting a whole lot better at it. (And, actually, this is my eighth "published" novel. I think it's the fifteenth I've written. I'm kind of a slow learner....)

From my current vantage point, I would say that there have been two overarching goals I have been pushing for over the whole 20 years I've been writing seriously. The first has to do with sheer technical skills, building a toolset that allows me to do what I want to do. I have worked particularly hard on trying to develop the "page-turner" quality, because it was absolutely not a natural part of my game. I could always turn a pretty phrase, but making a reader hungry to get to the next page has been a Grail quest of mine for the last two decades.

The second thing is a little harder to describe. To switch metaphors, a writer's writing (or a painter's painting, or a musician's playing) can be considered as a conduit for truth, or a lightning rod for life. Most of us start with a fairly narrow-gauge pipe, which allows us to communicate copies of other stories. Much of the practice of an artist's life is the fitful attempt to widen the diameter of the pipe and to try to encourage what comes through that pipe to be more and more true.

So, in my case, I wrote some books that were moderately good versions of SF/F. Then around the time I was writing the novel Clouds End (Berkley), I dedicated myself to making the books as intensely and personally felt as possible. In The Night Watch (Ace Books) I started to discover the value a sense of real place could add to my work, and extended that enormously in Mockingbird, the first of the Texas books. Perfect Circle is a book in which I have managed to expand the diameter of my pipe to include the broadest, truest range of real (if sometimes impossible) things about the people and places I have known.

BTW: Regarding the Web-based game The Beast: What are some of the similarities between creating a computer game and a novel?

SS: Well, The Beast was not like any other computer game. It was what we call a Search Opera -- a series of braided stories told over the Web in which the characters lives were revealed in essays, stories, video-clips, telephone messages, e-mail, diary entries. The "writing" part was a lot like writing a Dickensian serial novel, with the additional requirement that the story was to be delivered over as many different communication platforms as possible. So "my" part of the project wasn't so very different from writing, oh, some mutant hybrid of War and Peace and Dos Passos U.S.A., only with more killer geisha robots. My partners were responsible for implementing the "computer" parts -- although the nature of the medium did give me the opportunity to do some things ordinary novels can't. For instance, in The Night Watch, very much an SF novel, I had an artificial personality who communicated only through pictures. In The Beast, I took that same idea and "built" it, instead of just describing it. So I could write a dialogue in which one person spoke in words, the other in pictures, and make that just a part of the overall narrative.

BTW: Often bits of pop songs, the eponymous REM song "Perfect Circle," ABBA's "Dancing Queen," and others, are woven into the narrator's thoughts. Was this a writer's way of incorporating a soundtrack to a novel?

SS: Accidentally, sure. It's also very characteristic of the guys of (roughly) my generation that pop music is important to them -- in part, I think, because it becomes the carrier wave for a lot of emotions that otherwise they have a hard time expressing, or even recognizing in themselves. (Think of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, or Iain Banks' fabulous Espedair Street.)

BTW: Perfect Circle is dedicated to your family. And family -- both living and dead -- serves to drive much of the plot. Is the novel something of an homage to your clan?

SS: Absolutely. Growing up spending the summers in Texas, and the rest of the year in Canada, left me with a kind of insider/outsider perspective on Texas, I think. And if, sometimes, that outsider's eye acknowledges that parts of Texas, or even my family, can look pretty strange to the rest of the world -- I'm thinking for instance of the Commandos For Christ, a travelling troupe of military evangelists who break cinder blocks with their heads for the greater glory of Jesus -- I hope I have also communicated some of the genuine love and affection I feel for the kin that took such good care of me every summer as I was growing up.... But if you are really asking, which of these characters are really taken from your family members? the answer is a) all; b) none; and c) I'm not telling.

That bit in the book about the grandparents all being on e-mail to exchange family gossip is true, and, like my Daddy said, I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid....

BTW: Houston figures prominently and seems to function as an oppressive force. You're familiar with that city, I take it?

SS: As a child I spent all my summers in Texas (Dallas and San Antonio). To my surprise, my wife got a job in Houston, so I returned to Texas as a grown-up and lived for three years in the Parkwood Apartments across the hall from Will. (Everything in the book about them is true, including the mosquitoes they found in the backyard carrying viral encephalitis and malaria...) Will's Houston is oppressive in part because Will's not in the best shape. Read Mockingbird for a more benign version of the city. <smile>

BTW: What are you working on now?

SS: Another search opera -- which, alas, I am not allowed to talk about at present. <smile>

--Interviewed by Karen Schechner