Follow the Fun | An Interview with Tyler Parker
Interviews
By Tadhg Hoey
A couple of weeks ago, I met a few friends at a bar and read some of my favorite lines from Tyler Parker’s wildly funny debut novel, A Little Blood and Dancing, in my most exaggerated Southern drawl. I butchered the accent and did no real comedic justice to Table, the novel’s heartless and indolent antagonist whose antics and one-liners provide much of the novel’s humor. But everyone laughed, and I knew immediately that they recognized in the writing what I had.
If you’re not already familiar with Tyler Parker and his supremely weird and funny writing on basketball for The Ringer, I would say there’s no better place to start than with his new novel. I could quote the list of formidable novelists to whom Tyler has already been compared in his blurbs, not only for the vitality and the humor baked into the prose but also for his uncanny ability to pin down and render the bizarre, gaudy, and not entirely unbeautiful realities of everyday America. But why bother? Like his novel, Tyler Parker is in a class of his own, and soon you’ll all know why.
A Little Blood and Dancing follows Priscilla Blackwood and Sylvia Table, two strangers who have their fates sealed and intertwined by a senseless act committed one summer night in 1985. For Priscilla, it irreparably alters the course of her life, setting her on the rocky path toward a lifelong search for meaning amidst senselessness. For Table, it pushes him deeper into his own obliviousness. A Little Blood and Dancing is a heartbreaking look at faith and doubt and how we learn to eke out a little meaning for ourselves in the vanishingly thin space between the two. Tyler and I chatted recently over Zoom.
Tadhg Hoey: Not being American, I’ve always wondered how the films and TV matched up with the reality of the country. I remember asking a friend from Charlotte if North Carolina was really like it’s portrayed in Eastbound and Down. He said people from New York watch Friends and don’t think: “That’s where I live!” But, when he watches Eastbound and Down, he thinks: “Yep, that’s home.” Does A Little Blood and Dancing represent your Oklahoma? Could this feel like home to someone from Oklahoma?
Tyler Parker: I’d like to think so. It’s a stylized idea of an Oklahoma. The people from Oklahoma that have read it have been very excited by all of the Oklahoma in it. I’d like to think those that have would see references to some of the local spots, like Braum’s and Sonic, and some of the nods to notable Oklahomans. Not just athletes. Maria Tallchief was considered America’s first prima ballerina and she was an Osage woman from Fairfax, Oklahoma. And the shout outs to Woody Guthrie, Clara Luper, Ed Ruscha, T.C. Cannon, Reba. I think anybody from Oklahoma that reads it will think: “This is a person that pays attention to Oklahoma, that has a lot of pride in being from there, and is trying to shed some light on some aspects of the state that maybe haven’t gotten their due.”
TH: Oklahoma was where Natives were forced to settle, and it’s home to a lot of the Nations—Cherokee, Choctaw, Osage, Seminole, Comanche, Chickasaw, Kiowa, just to name a few. On one level, this is a book about a young Cherokee girl, Priscilla, who has her life ruined by a dumb, white American guy who acts without thinking.
TP: I was very intentional that it was this thoughtless, white piece of shit coming in and enacting this violence and, in the moments after it, not thinking about his surroundings either. I grew up in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, which is this tiny little town between Muskogee and Tahlequah, which is the capital of the Cherokee Nation. Oklahoma is a fascinating spot. It was one of the last states that voted to join the Union, smack dab in the middle of the country, and there’s still a very strong, vibrant Native population.
TH: There’s a really interesting line at the beginning of the novel. Priscilla’s dad, Solomon, says to her: “A Cherokee girl like you should always be informed on the country in which she lives, because hear me, they will fuck you over in a hurry. It’s one of their favorite pastimes, right up there with killing people.” What led you to focus the novel on Priscilla’s story?
TP: I wanted to write a modern Western. A comic Western tragedy was what I started calling it. I always wished there were more Native people at the center of those stories. At the beginning, Table’s known Solomon for six months—and this is a guy who’s blown into town and just ruins this girl’s world with this one act.
Growing up, Westerns just felt dominated by white people. I’m white as snow, but just being a kid and looking around, the Westerns didn’t feel true to the experience of living right there. I wanted to examine some of the dynamics you see in those stories. White guy comes to town and helps make everything better. There’s a villain, and they’re hurting the town, and then ol’ boy rides in, Protagonist Pete, like, no, I’m gonna set things right and help out everybody, blah, blah, blah.
TH: I personally haven’t seen many movies or read many books that center on Native characters’ subjectivity.
TP: I’d like to be smart enough to be more eloquent about this, but it just seems like if you’re a white person and you’re going to try to write a story involving any character that isn’t, then you have a responsibility for it to be fucking good and to do the work. I’m also aware of the fact that all that matters is if Native readers feel I did a good job as it pertains to those aspects of the book.
TH: There’s a lot of sadness in this book, too—it’s a tragedy, or, tragicomedy, to be more accurate. But it’s also packed with jokes, which I appreciated. Were you using humor intentionally here or do you just write funny?
TP: That’s a good question. When I was in Chicago in my early twenties and first starting to realize that I might like writing fiction a little bit more than doing improv stuff, I had this idea that, oh, fiction is serious, you have to be hardcore and dour and, you know, just gross about it. And all my stuff sucked. I’d fuss over an idea that would have to turn into a novella because it had no legs, then I’d read it afterward and think: “This is the most self-serious garbage I’ve ever read.” You know what I mean? There was nothing fun in it. It didn’t have any good energy in it. It was just all this overwrought shit. A brooding dude stares out of a window and wonders if someone actually likes him.
I think in my head, I was like, “I’m going to flex another muscle here. I’m doing this improv, so let me try something else here.” Only when I wed the two did my stuff start getting any good. I really started feeling like, oh, this is how it’s supposed to feel. In a way, it was also probably just to keep myself entertained, but—to use a shitty golf metaphor—I felt like I wasn’t using all the clubs in my bag. I was married to this idea of being looked at as some serious writer. Forget about if it’s actually good. At a certain point, I realized, no, you need to start having fun on the page a little bit.
TH: And did improv influence your writing?
TP: Hugely. I probably don’t even understand the ways that it did yet. They tell you to follow the fun when you’re improvising. On some level, that’s a good thing to do with writing sometimes, too. Whatever is in here that has energy, if the vibe feels right, keep going in search of that.
Also, Chicago is a mecca for long-form improv. And I think there’s something to seeing really good long-form improvisers take their time—to do a scene in front of you and not be rushed. You get to watch them suss through everything and figure it all out. It made me realize these are the kinds of things I like seeing, dramatically or comedically. A good writing workshop kind of does the same thing. It’s not only because you’re learning all these different points of view about your writing. It’s also good because you’re reading a bunch of other people’s writing, and you’re like: “Oh, I hate that; I’m not doing that.” It helped me focus on the type of work that I like and was helpful in that way.
TH: You also write a very strange and funny column on basketball for The Ringer. How did you wind up doing that?
TP: While I was doing improv, I was also doing the basketball writing, too. My buddy Jason Gallagher, he was the guy that brought me into The Ringer in the first place. He and I had gone to college together. We were both in Chicago, trying to do comedy, but we both loved basketball, so we started writing about it on our own site. It was like, okay, this is a way we can scratch both itches.
I’m a big Oklahoma City Thunder fan. Around 2013, some of my early writing caught a little attention from a Thunder writer named Royce Young, who now works for the team. At the time, ESPN had this collection of sites called the TrueHoop network. Each team in the NBA had a site, and Royce had started Oklahoma City’s. I wrote a weekly column for them for a few years but was still pursuing the improv stuff harder. That was still the thing I was throwing more of my energy behind. I was writing probably like three, four pieces a week. Nothing crazy long or anything. They were more like comedic pieces, but I was trying to get as many cuts in the cage as possible. I wasn’t thinking of it at the time, but it was just a lot of exercise and practice.
TH: And how did you find juggling writing for them versus the novel?
TP: Hard. I have a hard time splitting my brain to work on fiction and then work on nonfiction in the same day. If I’m thinking about this, I’m just thinking about this. I’m so jealous of people who can work on multiple projects at the same time. I wish so badly I could do that. For a large percentage of the time I was generating the initial manuscript, I wasn’t doing as much of the basketball writing. It was easier to do in concert—to jump in and out—when I started fine-tuning the manuscript.
TH: To bring it back to the novel, but also still keep it about basketball, I want to talk about the cultural references in the book. I’ll get to the epigraphs in a minute, but Hakeem Olajuwon appears in here a lot. On a t-shirt, as a figurine.
TP: Yeah, Priscilla’s dad gives her a little figure of Hakeem Olajuwon that she plays with. Later, she puts it on the dash of her car. In the beginning, he’s wearing a t-shirt with Hakeem’s face on it, and that’s the shirt she wears at the end. That’s a way I’ve connected with my dad: through sports. I know so many people who connect that way. You hear some people say that that’s the thing we talk about in lieu of feelings.
I’ve also just always liked Hakeem. There’s something about his game that was very beautiful and very unique. It was unique then, and it’s still unique. He’s only gotten more impressive over time and as more players have come and gone. I had an uncle who lived in Houston, and I remember going down to see a Rockets game once and wearing an Olajuwon jersey. Part of it was that.
TH: So, the epigraphs you chose. It’s an eclectic mix. Hakeem Olajuwon, Nina Simone, Havoc (of Mobb Deep), Edna Ferber (a Pulitzer-prize winning American novelist), Rich Boy (of Throw Some D’s fame), a line from Putney Swope (a Robert Downey Sr. movie), Robert Robinson (an eighteenth-century English Methodist and erstwhile Baptist), Wes Studi (a Native actor and producer), and several others. Did these quotes function as a mood board for you? Were these cultural touchstones you wanted the book to hit on?
TP: A little bit of all the above. There was a part of me that was like, “Dude, this is too many. You can’t have ten of them, you dumbass. What are you doing? Pick two and move on.”
But, honestly, I just kept thinking: “Well, why not? Who cares? You don’t got to read them.” They were all things that I would think about at different points during the writing, and they all resonated with me. I wanted to make sure that all the vibes were represented. I didn’t want it to be some situation where I just put “anything can have happened in Oklahoma, practically everything has” (Edna Ferber), and the line from the hymn, and then we get to dick jokes. And everybody’s like, “Well, wait a second, what’s going on here?”
I wanted people to see that the book wasn’t going to be serious the whole time—that it wasn’t only going to be a contemplation on faith. I wanted there to be more personality there. Also, I wanted it to be like, “Hey, if you like Jason Isbell, me too! Come read this.”
TH: The book contains a lot of really interesting cultural references. Some of the movies and TV shows mentioned are fictional, but it can be hard to tell. Cattlemen of the Great American Plains, Ox News Sentinel, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Darlene Scarataza’s Pape, Money Train, Arcadian Man, Sports Illustrated, Black Rodeo, Erykah Badu. The book feels really steeped in a culture if not the culture. Americana isn’t the right word, but it’s a unique take on an America I’ve seen before—there’s still verisimilitude.
TP: That makes me so happy. Sometimes I’d wonder, “Are there too many references in this?” Or I’d pull a lot out, trying to keep only the ones that make sense and add to the story or the environment. And also, with all the movies and TV shows and things like that . . . honestly, I just thought about the way that I spent time growing up in a tiny town, and it was a lot of sitting on the couch or a recliner, watching television and watching movies. The conversations happened there. The entertainer in me wants to put readers on a roller coaster, but people talk in their houses.
People sit in chairs and talk, and they usually do it with the television on. Sometimes, they’re watching, and sometimes they’re thinking about what’s happening onscreen while they’re talking to the other person. Table using the Cheetos bag as a maraca and dancing to William Hurt saying, “The Libyan government has disavowed any prior knowledge of the attacks”—that was just an image I liked. It lets you be surreal in a way. If not in actuality, then on the page a little bit. It lets you do that using some recognizable things that people can grab onto in a way that’s different.
TH: Religion features prominently here. You quote quite a bit of scripture in some of Priscilla’s sections. Was religion a big part of life in Oklahoma for you? Or was religiousness, specifically, a dimension you wanted to add to her character? To be part of her story toward finding meaning in her life?
TP: It’s very much what I grew up with. I was a church-three-times-a-week kind of kid. Very steeped in that culture. That’s some of the most personal stuff in the book. I get frustrated whenever I see these terrible Jesusy movies and, like, the entire thing is based on a conversion or something. Know what I mean? It’s either the person is a super-corrupt religious figure, or it’s hyper-right-wing people trying to make some version of a Hollywood movie, and the movie sucks. I wanted to try and show another type of character who identifies as a Christian but is having a really hard time. Priscilla wants to admit certain things but doesn’t want to admit other things. She’s clearly trying hard to figure out what’s going on inside her. She just doesn’t have the tools to be able to get that done or confront certain realities. I wanted to see if I could show a more complex depiction of somebody like that.
TH: There’s a interesting discussion she has with her church friend, Jed, about redemption. They’re talking about this black-and-white idea that if you’re a non-believer who has sinned for most of your life but repent at the end, you get saved. Whereas, if you’re a believer for most of your life and then lose your faith, you don’t get saved. You sense Priscilla’s ambivalence about what she’s experienced and what she’s contemplating doing, as well as the confusion she feels as she tries to work out a solution to her problem on her own.
TP: I think she’s dealing with undiagnosed depression and has isolated herself. You can isolate yourself, but if you don’t get some help and figure it out, it’s going to get worse and worse. I wanted there to be this longing in her for a certain feeling that she hasn’t felt before. She often says she wants to feel warm. When you’re growing up in the church and those kinds of evangelical environments—and I wouldn’t even describe the church I grew up in as one of these fire-and-brimstone places—they make you so scared of hell. They make you fear this place you could go, where you’re going to burn, because you didn’t do the right things. When you’re a kid with an imagination, it grabs hold of you. Like the conversation that Priscilla has with Jed, where he asks her if her dad accepted Christ as his savior or not. He didn’t? Well, then, he’s going to hell. That’s how it’s taught. It made sense to me that, especially if it’s a young kid who’s hearing all this, who doesn’t have the context of life, hell becomes the whole world.
TH: Finally, there’s a brand of beer in the novel—Gaucho—that I thought was real and so was disappointed to learn that it was in fact fictional. I have to ask: what would a Gaucho taste like?
TP: To me, put a High Life, a Shiner, and a Pacifico together.
TH: Beautiful.
Tadhg Hoey’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Stinging Fly, The Millions, Dublin Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, and elsewhere.
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