Joy Williams is an odd writer. He likes the adjective ‘Twisted’ more. His books are certainly very rare. Stories set in rural America, very close to nature, told in a powerful, undulating language that reflects characters walking in the dark in an unreal world. Williams (78) isn’t science fiction, but uses the narrative weapons of the genre to surprise the reader in a unique way. Looks like Raymond Carver is on a trip. A very respected author who deserves more reading.
Closing an interview with Williams isn’t easy, because he’s one of the few beings—perhaps happy—who can enjoy the pleasure of forgetting that we are in the 21st century, that computers, social networks, zoom or e-mail exist. It doesn’t affect him. So the cell phone he’s answering this interview with is not his, he borrowed it. In Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts, the city from which Essex departed, the white whale is on board the ship that collided with Moby Dick. And the data turns out to be important. There is much sacred in the writings of Herman Melville and Williams.
No matter, Williams took his two shepherd dogs there in the van He travels across the country, far from Tucson, where he resides with his daughter for several months a year, and is the closest thing to what the rest of us call home. “My delivery vehicle has already traveled nearly 300,000 miles, my dogs and I have traveled all over the country, so I have to admit that I am a nomad,” she explains, in a very gentle voice, although it might come off. that this interview job is a procedure that she accepts gracefully and cheerfully.
Williams’ uniqueness can be measured by the fact that even the passage of time is not the same for him as other people. This is how he solves the problem of 20 years since Alpha Decay’s last and very catchy novel, ‘The Living and the Dead’, published in Spanish a few years ago. An American, finalist for Pulitzer and ‘La dragra’ (Seix Barral), his new work and current contribution to post-apocalyptic literature.
“Time passes and I don’t exactly consider myself a novelist. [muchos críticos están de acuerdo en que lo mejor de Williams se encuentra en sus relatos] so I wasn’t too worried. Most novelists release a novel every two or three years, but for me it doesn’t come out that fast. In the meantime, I haven’t stopped writing a volume of essays and 99 micro-stories,” he explains.
warn with a trial
A title from a tool used to plow the land, ‘La Rastra’ seems like a sensible book in the orbit of an author, a big animal lover and very committed to nature conservation. In fact, he had already written ‘III Nature’ in 2001, a warning about how we act and act in the face of the climate emergency. This anxiety is transferred into the novel without humor. But where others talk about the fear of the end of the world as we know it, Williams draws a horizon. Humanity has settled for a miserable life. “Historically man has adapted to all things, so why not do that in the face of a destroyed nature? We saw it with Covid, everyone said it would change us, nothing would be the same, and here we are, now we’re talking more about those signals that nature is sending us and we’re getting electric cars, but deep down. We haven’t changed that much either.”
The daughter of a Congregational pastor, Williams places great value on this spiritual legacy in her upbringing. She still often goes to religious ceremonies, perhaps because it brought her back to a childhood where she lived between hymns and sermons. “I think the Bible and my father’s sermons feed a lot of my work. Faith is a mystery and I think it is central to my literature.”
nothing intellectual
Religion is also a secret key to building bridges between the world of the living and the world of the dead.Because Williams is not perceived as an intellectual, he is an intuitive way to stretch reality, so the situations in his novels oscillate between tragedy and ridiculousness. And here is the protagonist, young Khristen, who died shortly in infancy, or whose mother certainly believed it. It is very likely that he is still dead, and the whole atmosphere of the story is explained by the fact that in reality that world is a kind of hell, or rather, an intermediate world between the hereafter and reality. “I think that’s what we do with our precious Earth in a kind of uncertainty,” Williams says.
He doesn’t want to hear from computers, so the mechanical and portable Corona typewriter from the 1950s is enough for him. I’ve never used”.
this is how it is Williams is the weirdest in American literature. A writer who was his friend was surprised to find someone as warm and funny as he was waiting for someone much stranger than him. Not at all the farewell voice on the other end of the line in Nantucket.
Source: Informacion
