Facing Down Old Ghosts: An Interview with William Boyle
Interviews
By Gabino Iglesias
With his New York–centric narratives, knack for dialogue, and ability to subvert genre tropes and turn them into exciting elements in his novels, William Boyle has positioned himself as one of the best, most authentic voices in contemporary noir. He has earned readers, accolades, and a flourishing career in France, but it seems he’s only getting started. His most recent novel, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, is his best outing so far. In my review for NPR, I called it, among other things, a gem of idiomatic dialogue. The narrative, which follows three women living on the periphery of New York’s mafia world who are forced to run away together, is at once a celebration of the city and a master class in the multiplicity of rhythms found in conversations among natives of the five boroughs. It’s also a novel that bridges the gap between New York’s past and present and engages with its culture as well as classic movies like Goodfellas. Most importantly, the writing in its pages is some of Boyle’s best. With the novel now in the hands of readers, I thought it’d be a perfect time to ask Boyle about his writing process, influences, and New York as a backdrop that becomes a character. Here’s what he had to say.
Gabino Iglesias: Your work is tied to the atmosphere, accents, and psychogeography of New York City. Do you rely on memories and knowledge acquired by living there or do you research everything you write about?
William Boyle: Mostly memories and knowledge, which is why I tend to stick to the places where I’ve lived and spent the most time. This book is set in the part of Southern Brooklyn where I grew up and where my family still lives (as all of my books are), but it also moves to the Bronx neighborhood where my wife’s family is from and then outside the city to a Hudson Valley town where her family now lives. I’m back home often, so occasionally I’ll do something that resembles research to make sure I’m getting a place right or to map things out or even just pick up details, but mostly I’m digging up things I remember or relying on things that have been burned into my memory. The voices are always there.
GI: A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself subverts the mob narrative by focusing on the women who live on its periphery. That said, you have a series of narratives about Cosa Nostra members in the book, including their deaths. Why did you decide to make the three main characters women trapped in and, in some ways, shaped by this context?
WB: The book was always going to be about Rena, a mob widow, and Wolfstein, who was a Golden Age adult film star who came of age in Times Square in the early ’70s. I didn’t know, at first, that it’d be about the mob as much as it wound up being, but I sort of arrived there naturally just through having Rena face down old ghosts. I originally planned for Lucia to be much younger, so it was interesting to see how the consequences of her family’s actions, particularly her grandfather’s and mother’s, had impacted her as an angst-ridden fifteen-year-old. Richie and Crea became bigger characters than I first imagined them to be. I grew up fascinated by the mob, by the stories I was hearing and the stories in the papers—the ’80s and ’90s were still a good time for that. So, a lot of what’s here is rooted in the mythology of my neighborhood. I did like the idea of having that stuff be peripheral and having the real story be told from the perspectives of older women who had found their own ways to survive. Gena Rowlands and Anna Magnani are two of my all-time favorite actors—I wanted to write the kinds of characters they would’ve wanted to play.
GI: Your prose has always been sharp, but this novel is on a new level. Sometimes your descriptions are at once poetic and telegrammatic, which is not easy to accomplish. Are you constantly striving for shorter, punchier sentences, or was this an organic result of writing this novel?
WB: Thanks so much. I really appreciate that. I’ve been trying to strip things down to what’s essential, so I guess I’m constantly striving to achieve that. I also do feel like some of what’s here arrived organically thanks to the characters, who gave me so much to work with. There’s a lot of dialogue and action, but the book is as much about these characters facing down their pasts and reflecting on their regrets, and those are the stretches where I hope the prose is at its most striking.
GI: The landscape has been saturated for decades with novels about NYC’s underbelly. What’s the trick to keeping it fresh and offering a new angle?
WB: As much writing as there is about New York City, there are a million places and stories that go unexplored. So writing about a part of Brooklyn that isn’t so well covered helps me keep it fresh. The city’s a million miles away to my characters. I like getting to write about end-of-the-line neighborhoods; they’re as foreign to people in Manhattan or Park Slope or Williamsburg as Mississippi is. I also think having a wide range of influences helps. One of my earliest aims—with Gravesend, in particular—was to write about my neighborhood the way Larry Brown was writing about Oxford. And I’m just not gunning to write tired, overdone mob stories—my world is way more influenced by directors like Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch. I remember seeing Amateur for the first time and thinking I wanted to write something like that, I wanted to see like that. Same goes for Ghost Dog.
GI: Crime fiction tends to stay within the confines of the genre. In this novel, however, you break away from that and bring together a story about friendship, a comedy where many people die, a madcap road-trip adventure, and an ode to New York. Did you set out to bridge gaps between these different types of narratives and genres, or was it something that just happened?
WB: Again, I think it comes down to influences. I’m a fan first. What I dislike most and am truly bored by is formula. I take no comfort in it. I like stories to go unexpected places. I like when writers make weird choices. I really love Hollywood’s Pre-Code era, those wild early-’30s movies, and one of the things I love most is that they’re so economical and yet packed full of action, riddled with oddball choices, just all over the map in terms of genre. They’re also full of great roles for women. Take Mervyn LeRoy’s Three on a Match from 1932. It’s sixty-three minutes and goes places you’d never expect. It’s part coming-of-age story, part melodrama, part gangster movie. William A. Wellman’s Safe in Hell is another one—unpredictable and dangerous-seeming. I definitely wanted to write something like that, something that wasn’t tied to one way of being.
GI: There is an underlying theme in A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself: reinvention. Everyone is trying to do something new or move away from the past. Wolfie, however, seems to miss her past. Furthermore, there are passages reminiscing about places that no longer exist. With so much going on, why go the extra mile to bring in change and the past to enrich the narrative?
WB: That’s what I was really interested in. The violence and action and comedic set pieces really allowed me to dig deep with those reflective moments. I liked exploring the city through Rena and Wolfstein’s stories, all the traumas and regrets they’ve faced down, the way things have changed, all the things they’ve lied to themselves about, what they hold on to for hope. Lucia’s younger, but she’s got her own way of reflecting. With her, there’s regret and guilt, but it’s more about her future desires. Enzio and Richie were also fun to write. Seeing things through the eyes of these fragile bad men. It became clear where things went off course for them. You can (hopefully) feel the way guilt overcomes them when it comes down to it.
GI: How has New York morphed in your head since you left? How does that affect your writing?
WB: I think I see it in interesting ways from a distance. The New York of my imagination is a mix of reality and mythology. It’s highly stylized but also a real world of cracked sidewalks and crumbling houses. I know those streets inside out, but they’re a movie to me too, or I want them to be a movie. When I sit down to write, I always go to my neighborhood and my block first. I could write about it forever, all the stories I did and didn’t know growing up, all the stories I didn’t know I wanted to know.
GI: I think noir is in a great place right now. There are a plethora of voices pulling it in exciting new directions and others doing classic noir exceptionally well. You seem to stand in the interstitial space between those two camps. You write about the mafia in one of the most written-about cities in the world, but you make women your protagonists, offer outstanding dialogue that captures the essence of the place, and point to the way things have changed. As you look at both sides, which authors stand out to you and why?
WB: Oh man, that’s a great question. I do think it’s in a great place. I don’t really have a fixed idea of what noir can or can’t be. I love the stuff I love and am inspired as hell by it. I’m thankful for the new voices, but I’m also always drawn back to writers like David Goodis, Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Patricia Highsmith. There are a lot of writers out there that I really love. I don’t know if I’d do a great job of distinguishing between what’s more in the classic mode and what’s pushing the genre in new directions. Some writers I really like are Fuminori Nakamura, Joe Lansdale, Barry Gifford, Megan Abbott, Sara Gran, Willy Vlautin, Richard Lange, Tom Franklin, Ace Atkins, James Sallis, Walter Mosley, Laura Lippman, Attica Locke, Benjamin Whitmer, Jake Hinkson, and David Joy. I think many of them probably exist in that same middle ground. Jake’s new book, Dry County, is a classic noir in the best ways, I’d say. I’m always paying attention to what J. David Osborne’s doing with Broken River—that’s how I found your books. Coyote Songs definitely feels like it’s messing with the phony borders that sometimes get imposed on noir. I like what Michael Kazepis is doing with King Shot Press—I’m excited as hell to pick up Violet LeVoit’s Scarstruck.
GI: Music and films play a big role in A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself. If you had to pick actors for the three main roles, who would they be? Also, which songs would you pick for the soundtrack?
WB: I’ve thought about this a lot because this book is a love song to actors I’ve long admired. I think I was setting out to write parts for them. For Rena, I’ve thought about Edie Falco or Michelle Pfieffer. For Wolfstein, Susan Sarandon comes to mind, but I think it could also be Rene Russo, Geena Davis, Lily Tomlin, or Helen Mirren. She’s not one of the major characters, but I definitely saw Jessica Lange as Mo. Lucia is fifteen, and I can’t say I know the names of many young actors, but whoever it is would have to be something like Natalie Portman as a kid in Heat.
I love making playlists for my books, but this one’s a little more all-over-the-place given the wide range of what the characters are into: Stevie Nicks, Guns N’ Roses, Mary J. Blige, Jimi Hendrix, Royal Trux, Warren Zevon, Cyndi Lauper, Dead Moon, and more.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. You can find him on Twitter @Gabino_Iglesias.
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