Interviews

A Conversation with Kenneth Calhoun, Author of Black Moon

Black Moon describes a not-too-distant future in which the world is gripped by an insomnia epidemic. Only a handful of people retain the ability to sleep. Their friends and family, decimated by exhaustion and increasingly maddened, become their greatest threat. Why insomnia, and what inspired you to build this world around it?

Insomnia is everywhere. Do a little anecdotal survey of the people around you and you'll find that a surprisingly large percentage is lying awake at night. The numbers seem to be increasing and one has to wonder where this is headed. While I have never had sleep challenges (except maybe sleeping too much), a person who is very dear to me has battled insomnia for years. I witnessed her struggles with it and, also, noted her annoyance—however vague and restrained—at my ability to drop off at a moment's notice. This set in motion an extrapolation: What if everyone stopped sleeping except for a handful people? And what if that subtle resentment towards sleepers was amplified into a violent rage; what if the sleepless attacked those caught in the act? With those combustible notions fueling the story engine, I wrote a short piece called "Placebo." It is essentially the first chapter of Black Moon, though it went through a number of changes during the writing process. Other characters, and their predicaments, soon followed.

In Black Moon, dreams become a valuable commodity. Have your dreams ever inspired your writing? What's the strangest dream you've ever had?

I've had several dreams that were so striking and odd that I wrote them down upon waking and attempted to use them in stories. A few were successful transpositions, but most of my dreams fail as stories. Like Biggs in Black Moon, I also have trouble relating the dreams in their pure state when writing them down. I tend to bully them into plots and force causal relationships. This undermines the dreaminess of dreams—the wavering strangeness, the native logic they impose. One of the oddest dreams I recall having was one in which I found myself commanding a group of contemporary American civilian soldiers in an assault on a Roman garrison. The Romans, wielding flat swords and round shields, had invaded and were threatening to lay claim on the local mall. The resulting story, "An Account of the Advance on Northgate," was published in Fence magazine. What does it all mean? It probably means I shouldn't eat fish tacos in bed.

At the heart of Black Moon is the haunting love story between Biggs, one of the remaining sleepers, and his wife, Carolyn, who goes missing early in the book. What made their relationship real for you? Who are your favorite literary couples?

What makes Biggs and Carolyn real for me is the complexity of their relationship. When the epidemic finds them, they aren't necessarily in the strongest place as a couple. They've been together long enough to have accrued certain disappointments—some as grand as failing to produce a child, others as subtle as conflicting sleep schedules. The differences in their wiring has proven, over time, to be significant. This is amplified by Biggs's ongoing ability to sleep, while Carolyn—who always struggled with sleep—quickly succumbs to sleeplessness when the epidemic hits. As the chaos mounts and reality takes on the consistency of dreams and hallucinations, Biggs realizes his connection to Carolyn is the only real thing—the only locked-down, solid thing—he knows in the weirdly shifting landscape.

One of my favorite literary couples is Paul and Elaine Weiss in A. M. Homes's novel Music for Torching (and the short story "Adults Alone"). Theirs is a totally messed up and wholly dysfunctional marriage, so my appreciation for them might seem a bit unsound. But I really like the elasticity of their bond, and there's something darkly sweet about how they enable each other's demise. At least it's personal.

The sleep epidemic tests loyalties between the closest of friends, husband and wives, parents and children. In what way is devotion a theme in this novel?

Devotion in this case is more like clinging to the things that will keep you afloat during a raging flood. What do we grab onto when we are caught in the lashing current? Some might observe that there is very little mention of faith or religious sentiment in this book. I was surprised by this myself, but that's how things developed. In this country, during catastrophe or when winning entertainment awards, people are very vocal about their devotion to God. However, in Black Moon, the characters are devoted to other people—to finding them, to saving them. It seems to me that, in a world-ending crisis, the many things we are devoted to would get quickly whittled down to all that really matters: preventing loved ones from suffering. Some might enlist their god in this effort, but not these particular characters.

Biggs works in advertising—an industry where you've spent some time. How much of yourself do you see in Biggs and your other characters?

Yes, that aspect of Biggs's past overlaps with mine, as do other details: being in a long-term relationship with a visual artist, living in a loft, sleeping whenever and wherever I want like a kung-fu master of the slumbering dragon style. Of course, I see some aspects of myself in all the characters I write about. I think this is true for every writer. Sometimes, though, it's useful to model a character after someone else you know, though they might never speak to you again. You have to know—or imaginatively own—that person dimensionally, so you can portray their responses to a variety of situations, like an artist must know the human figure so she can render it in any position without a model. I must say, however, that I will not hesitate to bend, warp, exaggerate, extrapolate, distort, and outright lie, completely abandoning the true nature, inclinations or features of my models, for the sake of serving the story. The truth will only get you so far.

The Paris Review was an early supporter of yours. Did your background in short fiction influence Black Moon?

I love the short story. Learning how to write a good one has been a lifelong mission. Turns out, it's really hard to do. Sometimes it works out and I think I've mastered it, but then I learn that I haven't the next time I try. It's a confining workspace, and there isn't a lot of room for wild swings. This is what I both love and hate about it. In some ways, a novel offers relief. The expanse allows you a longer runway for launching ideas or achieving certain effects that take time on the page to arrive as earned events. One thing I love about short stories is that you have more permission for ambiguity. Not everything has to be fully explained or resolved. The reader can take what you've given them and run with it. I wanted to keep a certain degree of ambiguity in Black Moon. I hope it's in there in such a way that the reader is compelled to do some filling in of the blanks. It depends on the reader. Some embrace the unanswered question. Some try to wring the answers out of you at seemingly friendly book club gatherings that you agreed to attend because they promised snacks.

What's next for you? We've heard talk of a TV series.

There is some TV interest. There are apparently many obstacles between having a book optioned and seeing some version of it up on the screen, so I'm being cautiously optimistic. The people involved are extremely talented professionals, and I believe that they will use their formidable dream machine to cook up a powerful adaption for the small screen, which is so much more compelling these days than the big screen, right?

Meanwhile, my attention has turned to my next novel and some story projects that have been on hold for a while. The novel is set in the Inland Empire (southern California) of the 1980s, when the region underwent a dramatic transformation from windblown vineyards and citrus groves to an endless sprawl of tract homes and strip malls. It features a culture-jamming punk band, coyotes, a Marxist trucker/philosopher, and a lost Spanish treasure. I'm having fun writing it.

Who have you discovered lately?

There are a few new writers on my proverbial nightstand these days. One is Peter Heller, whose apocalyptic masterpiece The Dog Stars was recommended to me by about twenty people. Turns out their gushing endorsements were true. I also recently enjoyed Laura van den Berg's finely crafted Isle of Youth while flying to China and back. It's one of those books that deserves the heaps of praise it has garnered.

A couple months ago, I was contacted by the writer Lysley Tenorio, who sent me a kind note about one of my stories. I immediately sought out his collection Monstress, and it's all kinds of great—funny, but also sad and somewhat twisted, stories about Filipino characters getting their hearts broken in whimsical ways. [Monstress was a Spring 2012 Discover pick. -Ed].

Finally, I somehow stumbled upon a novel by Keenan Norris called Brother and the Dancer. It offers insights into the African American experience in the San Bernardino Valley of Southern California, which is where I'm from. The writing is lyrical, at times fevered, and profoundly knowing. I can't recall how I learned about it, but I'm glad I did. Those accidental discoveries are often the best.