By Sahar Mustafah
Jim Gavin’s short story collection debut Middle Men offers a tragic, yet often humorous array of characters trying to find success in Southern California. When they ultimately concede failure, they still emerge triumphant by the end of each story as they have somehow transformed in a way that transcends what they had been originally seeking: an optioned film script, a comedian’s big break, or the salesman of the year award.
With a straightforward and engaging style, Gavin reveals loss without sentimentality or an utter sense of hopelessness. He treats his characters with a kind of stoic humor that leaves an audience laughing instead of weeping over their lot in life. His prose is sparse while still vividly constructing the SoCal setting for those of us only vaguely familiar with a region of the country that has long been alluring. Those who already know it will appreciate Gavin’s unadorned, yet affectionate portrait of his native home.
Middle Men was published in February 2013 by Simon & Schuster. Gavin’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Zoetrope, ZYZZYVA, and Slice magazine. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
SM: Your collection is comprised of only eight stories. How long did it take to arrange this collection? What binding agent did you seek — or perhaps discover — in the process?
JG: I didn’t have a plan before I began writing any of these stories, but at some point I started thinking of them in terms of the old guild system, the movement from apprentice to journeyman to master. I think if I had started with a plan – “I’ll write seven stories structured along the lines of the guild system” – I would’ve never finished the book. I would’ve gotten bored, or felt obliged to hit certain notes. I feel like the stories determine the structure and theme of the book, not the other way around. It has to happen organically. The first story in the collection is actually the last one I wrote. I wanted the story to work on its own, but I was also aware that this story would set the tone for the rest of the book. I had a few other stories, but I took them out. I think that’s a sign that you’re done with a collection – when you start taking stories out because they don’t fit the overall feeling of the book.
SM: I gather you’ve always lived in California and your stories are set in the SoCal region. Can you talk about how much this location drives these stories?
JG: I was born and raised in Southern California, and I’ve lived here most of my life, with two stints in Northern California, and one year in Boston (my first and last winter). The geography and spirit of Southern California are hugely important to the book, but kind of incidentally. Once I started writing about my own life, I kind of had no choice, and I decided to write about it in such a way that people who grew up here would say, “That’s it. He got it right.” When I read someone like Joyce, I don’t know the street he’s talking about, but I know how much it means to the character, and I love the texture of Dublin, seen through Bloom or Stephen’s eyes. I feel lucky to live where I do and generally I write about it with a sense of love and gratitude, even if it is often ugly and hellish.
SM: Speaking of ugly and hellish… I would describe your stories as heartbreaking while sparing us tears. Writing humor can be a very challenging thing in terms of timing and landing. Do you naturally write with a streak of stoic-funny or were you strategic in certain places?
JG: It’s the only way I know how to write. In college my dream was to write for The Simpsons or Saturday Night Live, but I had no idea how to make that happen. When I started writing fiction, I felt some obligation to be solemn and “literary,” but thankfully that all fell away. All my favorite writers – Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, J.P. Donleavy, Muriel Spark – they are all, first and foremost, comic writers, but that doesn’t make their work or vision of life any less serious. In fact, I can’t really take a writer seriously unless he or she makes me laugh.
SM: Your longest piece and the title story Middle Men is told in two parts, from the points of view of a son of a plumbing salesman and the salesman himself. Costello first appeared in The New Yorker a few years ago. Had you already written the first part The Luau? How did they emerge?
JG: I wrote The Luau first, and then Costello a couple years later. Basically, I just felt like I wasn’t done with that world and those characters. I wrote Costello in a mad rush, a 45 page first draft in a week. That NEVER happens for me. Then I put it in a drawer for almost a year. I finally went back to it, cut seventeen pages, but otherwise it was pretty much the same as that first draft. Now and then you get a gift like that. I haven’t had one since!
SM: Though all of your stories contain complex and dynamic female characters, only one of your stories, Bewildered Decisions in Times of Mercantile Terror, has a driving female protagonist whose narrative alternates with a male protagonist. Is it more natural for you to write the live of males?
JG: I’m definitely more comfortable writing male protagonists – the book shines a light on the whole pathetic charade of masculinity but my hope is that all the other characters they encounter, whether male or female, feel fully realized and unique as individuals. Bewildered Decisions got me out of my comfort zone a little, in a good way. I was stuck on that story, and it didn’t start moving until I started writing about Nora on the plane. The whole story came into focus then.
SM: Yes — women tend to bring things into focus.
JG: I hold it as an article of faith that women are stronger and tougher than men, and I hope the female characters in the book embody that.
SM: So, what’s up with Del Taco? I might be overanalyzing, but it seems keenly symbolic when I consider the challenges and struggles of your characters. There seems to be something wonderfully simple and soothing about eating Del Taco. Can you briefly explain this motif?
JG: I ate it a ton as a kid. It represents home, comfort, all that. I’m sure everybody has their version. Again, I didn’t intend for Del Taco to be a motif, but friends started pointing it out and I suppose it’s a running joke now, which I’m totally fine with.
SM: Any menu recommendations?
JG: I recommend the No. 2, which comes with a burrito AND fries. Heaven.
SM: Unlike chapters in a novel, beginnings and endings of short stories are paramount to unleashing their narrative power then (not so) gently letting the reader go. I especially liked the endings of Bermuda and Elephant Doors in which two young men experience some loss and have grown because of it. Yet, I didn’t feel the heavy hand of redemption. How do you determine the endings of your stories?
JG: I usually spend a lot of time on the first couple pages of a story, writing it over and over, getting the language just right. And in the midst of this, I usually find my ending, or get some sense of it. By the time I get there I’m looking for a sense of completeness. I sort of like stories where the characters end up right where they started, and yet everything is different. In the collection, most of the characters are chasing after something, or dreaming of something. They never get it, but I think they find something more important and meaningful than what they were chasing.
SM: You mentioned James Joyce and Flannery O’Connor as influences. What are some of your go-to short story collections for inspiration? What have been some of your favorites?
JG: Some of my favorite collections of the last couple years are Death is Not an Option by Suzanne Rivecca; Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins; Fires of Our Choosing by Eugene Cross; and Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain. I’m always re-reading John Cheever, Jean Stafford, J.F. Powers, and Evan S. Connell.
SM: What is your writing process like? Do you set daily/weekly writing goals? Have you established rituals to getting things done concerning new work?
JG: I’ve never had a schedule, which is good and bad. I try and work a little every day. More and more I’m realizing the benefits of low expectations. Commit to writing two sentences, and you’ll probably write a whole paragraph. Then go watch some TV.
Sahar Mustafah is a writer, editor, and teacher from Chicago. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, Hair Trigger 35, Mizna, New Scriptor, Chicago Literati, Ploughshares, Prime Number, and Dinarzad’s Children: an Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Literature. She is the 2012 recipient of the Guild Literary Complex Fiction Award and a 2013 Pushcart Prize nomination, and most recently won 3rd Place in the 2013 Gold Circle Awards from Columbia University Scholastic Press Association for collegiate magazines. A Follett Graduate Scholar at Columbia College Chicago, Sahar is at work on her MFA thesis collection of short stories. She the co-founder and fiction editor of Bird’s Thumb, an online literary journal.