An enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation, Eric Gansworth was born and raised at the Tuscarora Reservation in Niagara County in upstate New York. His short stories, poetry, and nonfiction have been printed and reprinted in many literary magazines and anthologies, and his dramatic work has appeared at the Public Theater in New York City.
If I Ever Get Out of Here Synopsis:
“Lewis “Shoe” Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he’s not used to is white people being nice to him — people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family’s poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan’s side, how can he be defeated?
YOUNG ADULT: What is your earliest memory involving writing?
Eric Gansworth: At the reservation elementary school I attended, I periodically read too far ahead in our materials and was pulled out of class to work unsupervised on individual projects of my own design, sometimes for a couple weeks at a stretch. I suspect now I was probably disruptive because class seemed so repetitious to me. In one third-grade trip into my “artist’s retreat,” I wrote a very short graphic novel about Superman and the actor who’d played him on television. It was heavily influenced by the landmark Amazing Spider-Man storyline, “The Night Gwen Stacey Died,” published the summer before, which seems to have been a touchstone narrative for a lot of folks my age.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about If I Ever Get Out of Here?
EG: It’s about the complications of your first meaningful friendship, that first person you let your guard down with. Before it happens, we tend to idealize the possibilities of friends, but real people, well, they’re more challenging. These two characters each come from insular subcultures. As such, they’re juggling nuances that are daunting even for adults. Middle school’s tough enough, with the tensions in that pressure cooker: peers, puberty, class issues, teachers, and the world beyond the family structures. So, these guys have a lot to navigate. For me, what’s different is that my novels for adults tend to be very meditative, heavily concerned with the ways cultural and personal memory inform our daily lives. This novel doesn’t allow its characters that luxury of interior distance. They’re young, still forming their opinions, and their personal histories are just beginning to get complicated. They have fewer resources to draw on for perspective.
YA: The Native American does not have a prominent place on the YA literary landscape. Do you hope to change that with this book?
EG: That’s a pretty lofty goal. It’s nice to believe that kind of change is possible, but I think the best you can do as a writer is offer a rich book that might find a lasting place in readers’ hearts. I hope, foremost, that Indian kids find it and see their own kinds of stories are out there, and in some variety. I also hope, as other readers discover it, they’ll come to know that, as in all cultures, there are more than one set of experiences, more than one voice. An openness on readers’ parts to the idea of multiple, different American Indian voices and experiences is the only thing that’s going to change that landscape. I hope the book is up to the task of at least that consideration.
YA: How did the idea for this book arise?
EG: An unusual set of circumstances. I’d been introduced to my editor at Arthur A. Levine, Cheryl Klein, by the tireless advocate for American Indians in children’s literature, Debbie Reese. Discussing a different manuscript about young life from an adult’s point of view, Cheryl helped me to understand the immediacy of YA novels. I’d worked off and on for maybe a decade, on a different novel about the reconnection of two middle-aged men who’d been friends as adolescents, but I could never quite get it to sing. I realized, in light of Cheryl’s comments, that I wasn’t really interested in the reunion. It was an excuse to reflect on that intense young friendship. For some reason, I’d always been inhibited in writing about youth with immediacy. As soon as I let that go and just locked on to the story of this young, first meaningful friendship, the novel came very fast.
What were your major influences?
EG: Probably Stephen King’s The Body was the biggest influence, but also S. E. Hinton’s YA novel, The Outsiders, Joan Ackerman’s play (and film) Off The Map, and Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel, Ghost World. Each is about the fragility of friendship and the malleability of our ideas of family.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
EG: I’m a marathoner. I don’t write every day. Often, I don’t write for periods of time, getting immersed in what I want to write about, making myself available to that world. Sometimes that means driving to specific places, reading similarly themed novels, watching films, talking with friends who remind me of places and times. I have a couple of generous people who are willing to talk about whatever I’m exploring. Then I’m ready for the marathon. For days straight, I’ll start with a giant cup of coffee and a long music Playlist to sustain the mood I want. I’ll stay for six hours, break with food, a DVD, take a nap and then work again for another seven hours. It’s a way to get two work days as a fresh writer out of one calendar day. The next day, I start all over, maybe with a different Playlist.
YA: Besides the classic ‘never give up’, what advice would you give to aspiring young writers today?
EG: The advice I’d have for aspiring writers is to embrace the apprentice stage as an essential part of the process. They should reread novels they love, for the stories and the mechanics, and understand that those novels published by established presses have gone through drafts, have had professional editorial feedback, and have been polished. I had great teachers who discouraged self-publishing (it might have been easier then, when that choice was called “vanity publishing”). My first novel was terrible. It was structurally legitimate, with a narrative arc, character development, pacing, a resolution, etc. but it was atrocious. I am thankful that I possess the only four manuscript copies in existence. I fear young writers who might be terrific once they’ve worked at their craft with appropriate mentors will have the ghosts of poorly executed early attempts following them around, because they were so eager to be “published novelists.”
YA: What’s next for you?
EG: Kind of a tough one. I’m usually working on multiple projects and whichever one hijacks me is the one I settle down with. I guess I’m a writer who has a Stockholm Syndrome relationship with his books. One of them is a follow up to If I Ever Get Out of Here, picking up three years later, as Lewis is a senior in high school. Another is a novel for adults, the continuing lives of my Extra Indians characters. I don’t write series, but all of my characters do live in the same fictional universe, so the act of writing fiction is sort of like visiting different friends (and sometimes enemies) in the same neighborhood. Some folks, you visit more often and at greater length.
YA: What other authors, YA or otherwise, do you idolize?
EG: When I was young, I served as a primitive Cliff’s Notes for older cousins who didn’t want to read Paul Zindel’s The Pigman. It was simultaneously hip, fun, and heartbreaking. In high school, a tough girl I hung out with stole a copy of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders from school and I read it at her house on our decidedly Greaser reservation. I found Laurie Halse Andersons’s Speak as an adult, by way of the film, excited to see how the YA field had developed. Lastly, as I committed to the idea of writing a YA novel, I randomly discovered John Green’s Paper Towns, attracted by the bold cover design of the pushpin, and the jacket copy. I loved it for all its rich qualities. When I asked some young people in my life if they’d heard of him, they looked very askance at my obliviousness of the Nerdfighter King.