News
Miami graduate Evan Kuhlman discusses his new hybrid novel, Wolf Boy
6/2006
Genre Meld
Evan Kuhlman discusses his hybrid debut novel, Wolf Boy.
Interview by Steven Paul Lansky
This article first appeared in CityBeat. Reprinted courtesy of CityBeat.
Wolf Boy is Evan Kuhlman's first novel. A blend of fiction and comics, the work explores the death by car crash of Francis Harrelson, a college student who is on his way to a symposium about mushrooms.
The main characters include Stephen, the adolescent brother; Crispy, a younger sister; Nicole, Stephen's girlfriend; and Jasmine, Francis' fiancée. Francis' father, Gene Harrelson, owns a small-town furniture store, and Helen is a housewife.
The story has numerous quirky, sad and funny responses to the shock that this kind of death imposes upon a family. Readers will recognize patterns, yet Kuhlman's empathy reveals them progressively in a tone somehow lighter than air.
Gene pulls away from the family into alcohol and desultory sex. Helen loses her center and literally floats to new self-understanding. Stephen grieves actively by generating a comic book, which Nicole illustrates. Crispy's grief intensifies her obsession with a teen idol Pop group. Jasmine and Stephen both see the dead Francis swimming buoyantly, trying to tell each of them something important from beyond.
Wolf Boy is refreshing because it's organic -- inventing its methods, genre and attitudes about reality. There is a sustained commitment and clarity, while the reader is engaged with his or her own sympathies and understandings about death.
The author and Ohio resident recently spoke to CityBeat about Wolf Boy.
CityBeat: CityBeat readers might be curious about your time spent as a graduate student at Miami University. I understand you began sharing early work on Wolf Boy in the workshop in 2000? How did your later studies at Notre Dame affect the process?
Evan Kuhlman: Yes, Wolf Boy did start out as a short story with the odd title "A Postmodern Car Crash." It was the first story I submitted to a fiction workshop at Miami, and it was, admittedly, pretty raw. Besides providing helpful line editing, some of the workshop writers suggested that I keep the focus exclusively on Stephen, a kid who creates a superhero comic book as a way of dealing with the sudden loss of his hero brother. When it came time to develop the story into a novel, I had the space to look beyond Stephen, to his family members, girlfriend, et cetera, and to actually present some of Stephen's comic book stories instead of just saying they exist. I wrote the first draft of the novel while I was at Notre Dame pursuing an MFA.
CB: The novel's graphic element has been much talked about. How far along was the process of creating the "comic book" within when you first sought out an agent and an editor?
EK: By the time I started querying agents, the novel included eight written comic book stories but no illustrations. Illustrated novels are rare beasts, and I didn't want my novel rejected before it was even read. When my agent first submitted the novel to publishers, he did so without any art. However, several of the editors who read the manuscript thought it would be enhanced by art, so in the next round of submissions we included an illustrated comic book story, and the novel ended up being sold to Random House/ Shaye Areheart Books as a hybrid novel (85 percent) and graphic novel (15 percent).
CB: I'm curious about Helen's buoyancy as a "motor" response. What was behind or beneath Helen's difficulty walking across parking lots?
EK: The key to understanding Helen's buoyancy is her remembrance of what a friend who had also lost a child told her, that she often felt halfway out of her body, like she couldn't decide whether to stay or go. The same is true with Helen: Her beloved son Francis has disembodied, and part of her would like to join him. It's a daily battle. But fortunately the dominant voice is telling Helen to stick around, so she seeks help.
CB: Flowers, trees, seasons, odors and the incredible engagement of the senses carry through the book with remarkable facility. Can you give young writers any ideas on how to develop writing to this level of verisimilitude?
EK: Most of the sensory and seasonal observations take place when the reader follows 13-year-old Stephen around or is sitting with him on the stoop. This was intentional. He's a kid, so he's still aware of the design of snowflakes, the odor of trees and so on. So here's my advice to young writers seeking to add some observant detail to their writing: Step back and become a kid again, try to see the world as you saw it when you were 6 or 10 or 13.
For more information on Evan Kuhlman, go to www.wolfboynovel.com.