Below is a transcript of our conversation with CMU English Professor Dr. Darrin Doyle: David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many pictures come to mind from the words, “Let Gravity Seize the Dead”? It’s the title of a new novella from CMU English professor Darren Doyle. He came to our studio to tell me the story…
Darrin Doyle:
Never thought of myself as a writer, but I began writing my own stories in high school. I started reading more literary fiction, I guess, reading Franz Kafka and (and) Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allan Poe, and (and) writers of that nature. And so, I just wrote for fun. I wrote with my friend. We would pass stories to each other in the hallway that we were, you know, we would kind of collaborate on stories. And you know from there it (it) was just a kind of lifelong hobby, I would say.
DN:
Is there a particular style or a few styles that you are drawn, the most to feel, the most comfortable, to the most inspiration from? I guess I would say
DD:
I think I my problem is sort of the opposite is that I (I) read a lot and have read a lot and I gravitate toward many different kinds. I love straight realism. Writers like Raymond Carver, Sherwood Anderson, people like that, right that, but I also gravitate toward a little more of the grotesque Flannery O'Connor Franz Kafka, a little bit of the surreal and then horror as well. I guess I just want it to be good and entertaining, and so I take all of these influences and somehow filter them through myself. I'm an impatient writer, insofar as I don't want to write the same thing twice.
DN:
“Let Gravity Seize the Dead.” It is your first novella, so when you talk about, this title could probably conjure up a million questions, but I'll let you sum it up as to, not to give it all away, but in terms of how the formulation of the setting or the events or the characters came to be for this work.
DD:
So, this came to be from a lot of time spent in the woods, and I I've been going up to Wilderness State Park and a rustic cabin up there for a number of years now just on it, you know, three or four day getaways to try to write. It's nice, there's no Wi-Fi, and I write in a notebook. So, I think I wanted to set a story deep in the woods, and so anyway, this image of a long, narrow driveway through the forest started the whole story. You know, it's (it's) a pretty standard trope to have a family and a cabin in the woods. I'm aware of that. So, I wanted to make it familiar, but also fresh.
DN:
Are there some words from a page that you would share with us?
DD:
The wind blew smoke into Betty's face. She shielded herself, and when the air cleared, she looked up to see tears on her father's cheeks. He had never cried in front of her. No such thing as gentle land, he whispered. She strained to hear him. Everyone else was talking, laughing, dancing. Her brother Robert played the fiddle. No pleasure knowing we're all to die, he continued, surveying his family. But sometimes death isn't death, and life isn't life. The two get mixed and turned. He wasn't drunk, although Loren was, and Betty could see her husband across the fire, tilted and fading against a pile of lumber. Cigarette lazy in his lips. Long past useful. You just have to recognize when one is the other, her father said, and plan accordingly. He was giving a warning. Or a command, or both. But Betty's mind was too fogged by exhaustion and drink to know. She touched her father's hand. His skin was warm and dry. She hadn't spoken to him in five years. The week passed with campfires, friendship, and merriment. In her previous life at home, they had never gotten along so well. The windblown misery, bonded them against the dark, or so it seemed. It felt like a good omen. When the week expired, her family mounted their buckboard, proceeded slow and precarious along the narrow way into the forest, and never returned.
DN:
“Let Gravity Seize the Dead.” It is a Gothic novella, the latest work of Dr. Darren Doyle, Professor of English here at Central Michigan University. It's available through Regal House Publishing. Dr. Doyle, thank you very much for sharing that, your experience, your background as a writer and some of the words from this latest book of yours. Congratulations on that and thank you for your time.
DD:
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
