Faraway Places

Copyright © 2007 Tom Spanbauer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage-and-retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spanbauer, Tom. Faraway places : a novel / Tom Spanbauer. – 1st Hawthorne ed.

p. cm. (Hawthorne rediscovery)

ISBN
0-9766311-7-2

1. Nineteen fifties—Fiction.

2. Idaho—Fiction.

I. Title.

[
PS
3569.
P
339
F
37 2007]

813′.54–DC22

2006100634

Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts

1221
SW
10th Avenue

Suite 408

Portland,
OR
97205

hawthornebooks.com

Form
:

Pinch, Portland,
OR

Set
in Paperback

First Hawthorne

Edition, Winter 2007

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Clyde Hall:
Un son baisch

MY THANKS
to J.D. Dolan, Stacy Creamer, and Eric Ashworth; also, to Ellie Covan and the Dixon Placemats.

ALSO BY TOM SPANBAUER
:

Now is the Hour

In the City of Shy Hunters

The Man Who Fell In Love With the Moon

Contents

Introduction

Preface

FARAWAY PLACES

      
Introduction

A.M. Homes

THE THING ABOUT TOM SPANBAUER IS—HE'S THE REAL
deal. There are others who think they are—but they're not. Tom is, but he's not going to be the one to tell you about it. Unlike those who announce themselves—all too prematurely—as genius and saviors, Tom says nothing; he has the warrior's way of waiting, the proud patience. He sees the posing and fakery and it doesn't make him pissed, it doesn't make him think all the world's a fool; it confirms what he already knows about the irony of our time in this world. He doesn't begrudge others their ego or their insanity; he's kind and generous and he is the real deal because he simply is—he lives and he writes and he survives.

I saw Tom before I knew him—it was 1985 in New York City. We were in Gordon Lish's class at Columbia University. Tom was sexy and sagacious and different from 99 percent of the other students. First off, he had a job. Secondly, it was a real job, not a trust fund-subsidized publishing gig. Tom was the superintendent of a building downtown. He was a grown-up while most of the rest of us were still kids. He had already had many lives—as a married man with a wife, as a Peace Corps worker in Kenya, as someone embracing and exploring Native American influences, and as a gay man living in New York. By his example— his impressive physical presence, his profundity—he prompted everyone around him to work hard, to work harder. He had a cowboy's roughness and an old-fashioned kind of decency—you could tell he was a good man, a just man, a man who would do
the right thing, even if it cost him. And then—just as I was on the cusp of getting to know him—he was moving, heading to Portland, Oregon, and taking some of the class with him. He was putting together his own workshops, outside the borders of Lish's template, encouraging risk taking, danger—but in a more compassionate, more openhearted setting. Dangerous Writing is not writing without fear—but writing facing fear, feeling it, writing from within ambivalence. It is writing that acknowledges the complexity and range of human emotion—writing that embraces what was, what is, what might be, and where one goes from there.

Tom Spanbauer is a very rare, very unusual human being—almost like a holy man. He is a kind of knowing wizard, an old soul that has done and seen it all, and lives with a smile, knowing but not judging. A big-hearted soul, there is also something childlike about him—a perpetual innocence, an optimism in the face of all that we comprehend. His writing talent comes from a kind of truth telling, an ancient way of spinning stories. He has a deft, elegant, light touch with words. His language is lyrical, like the best of poetry; it is clear, chosen—not happenstance—and entirely his own. He writes about being on the outside—about the position from which he experiences life, always “other”—racially, sexually, familially, emotionally. He writes and thinks like no one else.

Faraway Places
, Tom's first novel, is not enormously long, but it is a big book. And it is masterly—a near-perfect story. Built upon keen observations of human behavior—ranging from God, to farming, the scent of one's father, the magic of sex, and the exact number of steps from here to there—there is enormous originality, drama, and spirit to this tale. It is a family drama with a pitch-perfect crescendo. The story is hypnotic, mesmerizing, delicately brilliant—and so well made. While you are lulled by the language and the characters, the story line builds and then like a well-timed firework explodes—surprising, enthralling, captivating.

After I finished reading the book I went back and counted the pages, wondering how he did it. All of Tom's writing is about nature, man's nature, Mother Nature—even God's nature if you believe in such a thing. Tom is spirited and spiritual, like a wild horse and like an ancient who holds within the secrets of hundreds—those who came before and those who will follow. He has a tremendous gift to make magic the elements of life and love and war. And he is a man who understands and accepts himself—and us.

When I asked Tom a few questions about what
Faraway Places
means to him he sent me the following letter—I thought anyone reading this book should have a chance to read it:

      
Preface

Tom Spanbauer, in correspondence with A.M. Homes

…
FARAWAY PLACES
MEANS A LOT TO ME. IT WAS THE
first time that I gathered myself up to complete a large work. I know it is only one hundred and four pages, but at the time, it seemed a real stretch. I don't know how I can talk about it without talking about Gordon Lish. I was straight out of his class and Gordon was still over my shoulder. With each new sentence I trembled with fear, thinking that Captain Fiction would not approve.

I don't know if you know the story of how
Faraway Places
was published. It ain't pretty but it's the truth.

Gordon read it and called me up while he was in the bathtub, making a big fuss that he was in the bathtub while he was talking to me. He told me he was going to publish “this fucker.” I don't think I've ever been so happy. A couple days later, Gordon asked me to come to his office. What a trip, going to midtown and into those halls of power. I put on my best duds, which for me at that time was a vintage suit and a pair of black high-topped grandpa shoes. Gordon and I talked about some changes on the book, and then he proposed that I take his private class. This was impossible for me because I had just graduated from Columbia and I owed Citibank $25,000. At that time, I was working as a super. I got my apartment free and $400 a month. There was no way I could afford Gordon's private class. Then after our meeting, he sent me a note. In the note he asked me where I had bought the shoes I had been wearing. He wanted to know where
he could get a pair in brown instead of black. I didn't think much about the note, and then a couple days later, I got another note that read:
Tom, don't forget about those shoes
. I'd bought my shoes at a secondhand store on Second Avenue. I didn't know what else to do so I set out to find Gordon some brown shoes, never thinking there was anything unusual about his request. I finally found a pair of shoes at a saddlery store on Twenty-third. Then I bought a postcard—a cute postcard with shoes on the card—and sent the postcard to Gordon with all the information on where to buy the shoes, their price, etc. That same week I received my manuscript back. In it was a note from Gordon saying that I was copying the rhetoric and style of his novel
Peru
, and if I was any kind of moral human being—which he was sure I was—I would shelve the book or rewrite it.

That fucked me up good. I went in the bathroom and stood under the shower until the water got cold. And that's saying something because I was the super of that building. Finally I decided that I needed to get out and do something. Which in those days meant get drunk. I checked my funds and I had fifteen dollars. I was headed across Third Avenue and I was at Astor Liquors when I ran into a guy selling his wares on the sidewalk. I looked down and there for all the world to see was a pair of brown shoes like Gordon wanted. I thought, “Oh, there's Gordon's shoes!” Then after a moment, I thought, “No, there are my shoes.” The guy was asking fifteen dollars for them. I didn't even haggle with him. Right there I put the shoes on. They were a little big, but I figured I'd grow into them.

That next week, I gave
Faraway Places
to JD Dolan to read, just to see if for some weird reason I had unconsciously copied Gordon. JD told me the only thing similar between the two books was that the fathers both drove Buicks. So I changed the Buick into an Oldsmobile. Then Stacey Creamer got wind of what had happened between me and Gordon and she thought she'd give me a sympathy read. On my fortieth birthday Stacey called and offered me a contract.

Now that was a happy day.

Then the stars were in the right place, or whatever has to happen to get reviewed in the
New York Times
. And it was a good review. Then Gallimard in France bought it. I think that was the day I began to believe that maybe I really was a writer.

So I'd say that
Faraway Places
was my coming out, not as a queer man yet but, even more important, as a writer.

I've reread it recently and it's an amazingly dark little piece of my heart. The combination of the innocence of the narrator with Idaho's underbelly really is quite shocking to me. Shocking in a way that a child can be shocking. Saying the obvious at an inappropriate time. But what's appropriate? I thought it was fitting that the
Los Angeles Times
review said something like Spanbauer is trying to write a southern novel.

I guess the way I'd like the book talked about is that it was my first step into one of the themes that goes through all my work: racism. Then, too, there's the dark, unrepentant father and the wacky Catholic mother. When you read on through my next novels, these two characters always pop up in some form or another. Then there's the Catholic Church. As Rose, a character in
In the City of Shy Hunters
, says, “With Catholicism, you don't recover—you reupholster.” From Catholicism, the theme branches out to all dogmas. The Mormons take it pretty hard in
The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon
.