Love, Word Games, The Danger

of the Flame: An Interview with Seth Borgen

by Karin Cecile Davidson

 

The stories of Seth Borgen’s debut collection “If I Die in Ohio” (New American Press, 2019), winner of the 2017 New American Press Fiction Prize, are stretched with strands of humor and sadness that surprise, that leap about, leaving the reader laughing, sighing, nearly crying, and then laughing all over again. One moment J.D. Salinger—humor edged with something quirky, unsettling, even tragic—and the next moment Eudora Welty—precision and sleight of hand balanced with a situation of unease, all lakeside on a summer’s day—the writing calls out and creates compassion and understanding. It becomes clear that no one else but this author could’ve written these characters, assigned their different measures of vulnerability and daring and kindness and confusion, as well as their circumstances. There are stylistic notes here that might recall previous writers, but in the writing they have shifted into a new narrative approach, one that is distinctive and bold. Endings become beginnings; men who have nothing in common have everything in common; borders crossed lead to a love that was there all along; the realization that what is feared lost was lost long ago. With this collection come stories that beckon and tease, that persuade and enlighten. To read them is to be astonished.

A native of northeastern Ohio, Borgen received an MFA in Fiction from the University of Mississippi. His fiction has appeared in Harvard Review, Water~Stone Review, Brink Magazine and the Green Mountains Review.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“Dead things are scary,” he said, squinting, craning forward his neck to get a better look at the thing that was scary.
“Not this guy,” I said. “He died a hero. He died reaching for the cosmos.”

—Seth Borgen, “Astro Pig”

KARIN CECILE DAVIDSON: Your story “Astro Pig” brought to mind J.D. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” from his collection “Nine Stories,” mostly by its quirkiness and sly humor, along with the beach setting. To me, Salinger’s tale was purposefully much more cynical and disconnected; whereas, your piece is about connection and caring. The sweet moments between six-year-old Claude and his stepfather Dan press into something meaningful, despite and because of the creature they’ve discovered.

How did you decide on Dan as the narrator? And how did you realize the story’s origin?

SETH BORGEN: Dan is the narrator, but I always viewed “Astro Pig” as Claude’s story. It’s an ode to the last day of Claude’s youth. Of course, this is information Claude has no access to at the time. He will most likely come to this realization in hindsight, but it’s something Dan understands in the moment. So it’s Claude’s story, and only Dan can tell it. I was drawn to that idea more than anything—becoming aware of someone else’s tragedy before it happens. Even knowing that you will be complicit in that tragedy no matter what you do.

It really is weird that the person we are for the first five, six, whatever years of our lives just disappears one day. The world starts out a wondrous place. Anything is possible. We believe in magic and the infallibility of adults. We believe they are happy and that we are happy. And then this day comes along and it’s all gone. We don’t even know it happened. No one else noticed it either. But everything’s different after that. It’s a death that’s never properly mourned. The story’s narrator tries to, though. That’s more than most people get.

“As I got closer, I wanted childish things. To cry. To be held. To come around the arc of Lake Anna, see my blanket, my girl, her fingers wrung with worry, her big, soft blue eyes pulling me in.”

—Seth Borgen, “Bathing Suit Parts”

DAVIDSON: In the story “Bathing Suit Parts,” within the small space of several pages, a world of innocence is upset by tragedy. The simplicity and complexity of this story are at once beautiful and overwhelming. Its slowly drawn characters and languorous momentum are released into a tailspin by story’s end.

Was there a specific time in your life, an event perhaps, that called you to write this?

BORGEN: Barberton, Ohio is a real place. And Lake Anna is a real place. And the swimming there really was segregated once upon a time. It wasn’t segregated when I swam there as a child, and no one is allowed to swim there now. And like any body of water, people truly died there. My brother once told me about meeting a guy—this was in Minnesota, I think—who also was from Barberton. Apparently this guy once took part in a human chain trying to find a dead body in Lake Anna. But this doesn’t answer your question because virtually none of this has anything to do with me.

Probably the closet thing to something I experienced that eventually led me to this story was the first time I saw a man eating alone in a restaurant. It was at the time and remains one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. But what’s also true is I have no idea if there was anything even remotely sad about what I saw that night. In my lifetime, I’ve eaten many, many, many, many meals alone in restaurants. It’s great, and I’m really good at it. Only now that I’m thinking about it does it occur to me that I might have been bumming out everyone around me all this time.

Wielding pity like a cudgel isn’t kindness. But a life without pity makes you a dangerous psychopath. I don’t know. Sometimes trying to do the right thing leaves you standing next to a segregated lake in 1958 holding a dead girl’s bikini top. As if life isn’t hard enough.

“Standing there, her face unclear, she was nothing but soft curves floating in the blackness and couldn’t remember ever being naked like this before.”

—Seth Borgen, “Provo for Good”

DAVIDSON: As Pin Christianson of “Provo for Good” ponders “a new life waiting out there,” she realizes that “missing what she might leave behind was not something she’d considered.” A newly divorced Mormon, she prays, undresses from and redresses in her temple garments, and tries to find direction. The elements of sensuality and Joseph Smith’s version of Christianity thread through this piece, creating a sense of confusion and misdirection for poor Pin.

What led you to Provo to find this young woman and her devoted, yet playful group of friends?

BORGEN: I spent some time in Provo once. It’s a wonderful town. People who talk about Provo don’t talk about that enough. I went there to see one of my oldest, dearest friends and his amazing wife. I hope mentioning that I have friends doesn’t sound like I’m bragging. Other than the stranger-comes-to-town setup, virtually nothing in the story is based on anything that actually happened other than sushi and lots of talk about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. During that visit, my friend mentioned that someone we went to grade school with showed up in Provo one day and refused to leave. He then spent several months crashing on couches and lying to girls. Again, that’s not the story either. But, you know, the intersection of faith and sex. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These are not original ideas, but the pieces of something were there.

The farther removed from my own life experiences a character gets, the easier they are to write. And I don’t think I’ve ever attempted a character more removed from myself than Pin. Sometimes filling in a character’s blank spaces with things that are true about ourselves can’t be helped—like the frog DNA in “Jurassic Park.” But when a character starts out as basically you, before you know it, the whole dinosaur is a frog. Nothing is found. Nothing is excavated. For the story’s sake, Pin’s almost all dinosaur.

“Dick’s eyes adjusted until he was staring at his own reflection in the window. He had never before seen himself excited by whatever was going to happen next.”

—Seth Borgen, “I Really Can’t Stay”

DAVIDSON: In Dick Bettencourt we meet a man searching for the next place, never settling, always on the verge of discovery. In Oxford, Mississippi, of all places, he meets the ice sculptor, his neighbor, a woman named Turvy who works in her refrigerated studio, transforming life-size ice blocks into sculptures, and when she needs room for yet another, pitches them into the yard between their two houses. Night after night, in uncommonly cold temperatures for Mississippi, Dick communes with a slowly melting version of Rodin’s “The Thinker” and stares into Turvy’s windowed studio. He watches as she creates a pair of dancers that he mistakenly identifies as Fred and Ginger. Revealed here, along with shattered and dissolving ice sculptures, are broken hearts, relationships that end or go nowhere, living in the moment, and forever searching for yet another place to live from moment to moment.

Tell us about place, living in the moment, Mississippi in relation to Ohio, Sherwood Anderson in relation to William Faulkner, Dick in relation to Turvy.

BORGEN: There’s no story in the collection called “If I Die in Ohio.” Many of them neither take place nor even mention Ohio. This story, for example. But this story, more than the others, might be responsible for the book’s title. Ohio has a little of everything and an abundance of nothing. We have cities, but not too much city. We have farms, but not too much farm. We have some rocks that are kind of like mountains and some grass that’s kind of like plains. We don’t have beaches—we have lakes. There’s nothing close to a singular identity. Because of that, I think Ohio’s a terrific metaphor for anywhere. Or nowhere. Which is where we all end up.

A lot of people spend years of their lives thinking what’s wrong with them is the people they’re with and the place where they are and what will fix them is someone or someplace else. Moving is easy. Giving up is even easier. But if nothing changes, nothing changes, and eventually you run out of time. There are some nice antique stores in the town that calls itself Winesburg, Ohio. And Oxford is dreamy. They’re great places to die if that’s where you want to die. But something important and internal needs to happen to you first before figuring that out. Hell, even Faulkner went to Hollywood. That should be a t-shirt.

Faulkner and Anderson tell people’s stories through place and place’s stories through its people. “I Really Can’t Stay” does neither. Dick Bettencourt’s journey is a perpetual rediscovery of his own solitude. He is an island. Well, he’s a sociopath. But it works for him. Turvy, on the other hand, is a fully formed human being. So, you know, she still has some work ahead of her.
 

DAVIDSON: “The Old Man, the Man, and the Young Man” is a sad tale that professes to be sad. Almost like a fable, the story looks inward and reveals a kind of telling that, sweetened with dialogue and circumstance, loaded with drink and history, relies on camaraderie.

With this next question, I’m thinking especially of this issue’s theme, The Fool’s Journey: the young man representing stage one of the journey, a time when self-identity and relationships with others are at the forefront; the man, on the crossing’s middle ground, confronting the moral realm, coming to understand how interactions influence others; and the old man, of the passage’s third and more existential final stage, opening out to cosmic and spiritual understanding.

In this way, describe further these characters, so carefully drawn, and yet, set at a distance.

BORGEN: I don’t write stories about writers. I go out of my way not to. But when I finally do, every character is a writer. Maybe that makes it OK.

Of course, writing is a fool’s journey. Growing up, my idols were all wunderkinds. People who achieved substantial things at a young age and then spent the rest of their lives crushed under the weight of their own success. I read all about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and was like, “Yup, that’s for me.” The starting point is imbuing your personal life with clichés derived from the constructed personas of dead authors. I still wear wool sweaters and drink bourbon. During your work hours—and they are all work hours—you follow around and write down the bad decisions of people who exist only in your mind. It’s preposterous. It’s lonely. We make permanent decisions that guarantee our loneliness before we can drive. We romanticize things we shouldn’t. We grow up and adults don’t recognize us as adults. And when we grow old, well, Thomas Wolfe would probably say something like, “O, loss.” Then again, he never had to drag around being Thomas Wolfe into his golden years, so who knows what he’d say about it? But it would probably be, “O, loss.”

“‘There are a lot of houses like this.’ Eugene nudged with his foot a broken tricycle half-buried in the snow. ‘With histories that don’t mean a damn thing to the people inside because life moves forward.’”

—Seth Borgen, “Peter in Chains”

DAVIDSON: “Peter in Chains” is a beautiful, bittersweet story about men who have nothing and yet everything in common, the structures and rooms in which we live our lives, literature, art, love, and legacy.

How did you come to understand Eugene Meridian—architect, widower, WWII veteran—and his sense of the world, his empty rooms, his regret?

BORGEN: The house in the story is based on a real house. Both houses, actually—Eugene’s house and the dilapidated Frank Lloyd Wright house. The first time I visited Austin, Texas, a friend took me to her parent’s house. Her architect father designed and built it. She had recently taken her boyfriend to see the house and sensed that something had changed in him that day. He panicked, she thought, because how was he ever going to give her something like that? That stuck with me. But in writing about it years later, I was less interested in the dilemma of how to give someone the happily ever after they deserve than I was in what happens after the happy ever after happens. There is no happily ever after unless everyone involved immediately and painlessly keels over and dies right after something good happens. The best-case scenario is they lived happily ever after for a long time but then one of them probably dies first and then the other has to learn how to cook for one but probably never gets very good at it and then eventually they die too. Which is basically where Eugene finds himself at the beginning of the story.

A possible reading of “Peter in Chains” is that it’s about a guy who marries the love of his life and then spends the rest of his life being successful and accomplished. Whether or not it’s even possible to feel for a character like that is totally a legitimate question. But for the story to work—if it works at all—I don’t think it is necessary to feel for him. When the story begins, Eugene’s story is already over. And it’s anyone’s story who lives too long and is alone at the end. What’s stopping us from assuming the worst about ourselves? On top of that, most people spend the majority of their lives being wrong about stuff. Why at the end would their regret be the one thing they got right?

“The sun oppressive, the air like a fever, he sat on a bench between his car and the Hotel Nelson, staring at Tijuana in the light of day. It was like watching a marionette show when the light hits the stage just so, and you can see all of the strings. Everything is fake, hollow, and nothing, nothing is possible.”

—Seth Borgen, “God Bless Your Crooked Little Heart”

DAVIDSON: “God Bless Your Crooked Little Heart”—a sweet little story, a pocket charm—tips and tilts and catches one off guard. Brandon and Emmavail’s travels across the border into Tijuana and the discoveries made along the way lead them to the place they’d been all along. And their story—complete with “Tijuana, burritos the size of human heads, Tecate rivers, and the Mexican techno trio Tres, Tres Jugadores, just beyond the vanishing point of Highway 5”—is a gift.

Tell us about love, word games, and the danger of the flame.

BORGEN: “God Bless Your Crooked Little Heart” is my first attempt to write a love story that ends happy. So, of course, it features a mother trying to set her daughter on fire, an emaciated Sarah McLachlan dog covered in lighter fluid, and a protagonist who beats up a group of children with his fists.

But I think that tracks. Like any ending, a happy ending has to be earned. And for a love story to work, the problem can’t be that the characters don’t love each other and then this problem is resolved when they suddenly do love each other. It’s really difficult for that not to read like inauthentic horseshit.

When the story begins, Brandon and Emmavail already love each other. The distance between them in a basic misunderstanding related to how they communicate. And it takes getting on the other side of some weird stuff to figure that out. I think that’s the trick to writing a good love story. You have to decide early on whether or not it’s supposed to be inauthentic horseshit and then really stick to it.

The Ritz towered in its orange hue above the blackened and jagged canyon of two-story storefronts. She swore she could see their suite, her and Jack’s. Could see Jack himself staring out the window and into the light-dotted cityscape for his beautiful little girl.

—Seth Borgen, “The Glitter and the Roar”

DAVIDSON: “Olive Thomas”—“twenty-five years old,” “famous showgirl and silent film star and winner of the 1914 Most Beautiful Girl in New York City contest”—appears in “The Glitter and the Roar,” a story with a curious structure.

What made you decide on this structure, wherein the ending is the beginning, and the beginning comes at the end?

BORGEN: I’ve always been drawn to history’s garbage cans. Things and people that were discarded and forgotten for no real reason or that are remembered so narrowly that forgotten might be better. The books of E. Phillips Oppenheim. Christine Chubbuck. Michael Paré’s tenure as a Hollywood leading man. And Olive Thomas, obviously.

This is perhaps the only story I’ve written that makes any attempt to chronicle something that actually happened. Olive Thomas was a silent film star. She most definitely died from drinking her husband’s syphilis medication. Very little is known about her other than how she died. Her husband was Jack Pickford, brother of Mary Pickford, one of the most famous women in the world in 1920. Rather than suss out the sordid details of her death—murder, suicide, accidental overdose—powerful forces stepped in and made Olive Thomas’s entire life disappear. There was no serious investigation. Her films are almost totally lost. She was the original flapper. We all know what flappers are. She should be to flappers what Henry Ford is to Fords. Other than her ghost supposedly haunting the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City, Olive Thomas has been reduced to lurid footnotes in lurid Hollywood histories.

All that’s even remotely known about her story is how it ended. The closer you get to that, the further you get from actually discovering anything. Ending her story with her death felt completely meaningless. I did my best piecing together what is known about that night, but the fact that I was never going to figure anything out definitively was baked into it from the start. But by working backwards from the mercury bichloride overdose rather than towards it, I was trying to discover, I don’t know what. Something. It just felt like something that was owed to her.
 

DAVIDSON: In a 1956 Paris Review interview, William Faulkner said: “A writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which—at times any one of which—can supply the lack of the others. With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explore why it happened or what caused it to follow. A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.”

Would you agree? What would you say to Faulkner if you could sit down and share a dram of whiskey with him?

BORGEN: Well, I feel like disagreeing with William Faulkner over whiskey would be a good way to cause some trouble. Besides, yeah, I basically agree with that. I have no reason to doubt that was true for him and something a lot like that is true for me. I’m not so sure about being able to get away with just one of the three. Is it a stretch to say that you can observe something so hard that writing that story would require zero experience or imagination? I mean, if you don’t use your imagination, can it even be qualified as fiction? Like, legally? But his point is well taken. These zygotes of ideas, they hitch a ride with us and we carry them around for years. Sometimes the rest of our lives. Sometimes stories take shape around them and sometime they don’t. And sometimes we’re just weird to talk to at cocktail parties.

If Faulkner and I were drinking together today, I’d probably find myself talking about Netflix. How it killed video stores and then became the equivalent of a shitty cable channel that only plays its own shit and now it’s impossible to watch actual movies. Then he’d probably say, “What’s a video store?” And, oh boy, would I have a lot to say about that.

 

Karin Cecile Davidson, Interviews Editor