Below is a transcript of our conversation with CMU English Professor 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. Getting your work published is a challenge. Receiving word that a publisher wants to reissue your work 10 years later, well, that's really cool. CMU English professor Darren Doyle's collection of Midwestern Gothic stories, “The Dark Will End the Dark,” is now in its second edition. Of course, he believes in his art, but in 2014, he was, (quote), “trying to find a publisher for my rather uncommercial and dark story collection.” So, of course, our conversation had to start there…
Define for me what you then saw as art that you believed in, heart and soul believed in, but you said it's uncommercial.
Darrin Doyle:
Yeah, it's I had published two books before this one and learned a little bit about the publishing industry along the way. And this one had come over years of trying to write new material and see how it fit together. And I finally had this one that was a lot of different kind of body horror stories, kind of gothic, kind of dark. fairly grim in spots, dark humor in spots, and short story collections in general are considered less marketable for publishers, which is very unfortunate. It's one of my favorite forms, but that's where we are. And so, I had tried a number of even small presses. I knew not to bother trying to find a literary agent for this. I had a literary agent for my novels that worked half the time. And so long story short, I was here with this, I was agentless and I had this collection that I believed in, but I was having a hard time placing it. And I understand why, like you said, I knew that it wasn't commercially viable, but I also felt strongly that it was good and worthy of being out in the world.
DN:
How do you view the book, ten years on? You say you're happy with the enthusiasm and the road to get it published in the 1st place, but now a very strong reception that you've had. Why do you think that is?
DD:
I don't know. I do. I am happy with it still, which is a good test. Of course, we always, maybe people who make things look back on stuff that we've made and cringe a little bit sometimes, but rereading it for this process, (I was) I was pleased and that I thought it held up pretty well. I don't know if it's because these are kind of almost like little Midwest fables in a way. They're a little bit out of time. Each story I feel like is kind of its own little universe that follows its own set of rules and logic and its reality, but as one person said, and I won't drop any profanities on air, but he said, it's like real life. It was if it was slightly F-bombed. So, you know, something like that. Like I do think there's a, it's like a distorted version of reality. And so, I think that helps it not feel like it's losing relevance or anything like that. That's my hope anyway, that the themes and stuff are still strong.
DN:
I guess it kind of ends as how do you think the collection would land? Do you think your writing would have been about the same if it was landing brand new today?
DD:
Yeah, that's a great question. Has my style changed? Has my interests changed? Somewhat, I think. But if anything, I think I've leaned even more into the realm of kind of horror or horror adjacent. The editor didn't ask me to, but I was I had an idea and I thought it'd be kind of cool to not just put out the exact same book. So, I wrote a story called “Arms.” Like I said, there was a lot of body horror sort of theme in the book. There's a lot of stories that are just named for body parts. There's “Head” and there's “Neck” and there's “Mouth” and there's “Foot.” And so, I wrote a story called “Arms.” And the people who have read the book and hadn't read it before couldn't tell which story was the new one. So, I take that to mean that they're kind of all stitched of the same cloth, hopefully. Yeah.
DN:
So yeah, there's more to the story. So, we will do that next week!
