Two Bit Interview: John McNally

Novelist and short story writer John McNally will read from his new collection Ghosts of Chicago at the inaugural Freight Stories fiction reading on Thursday, October 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the Irvington Branch of the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library (5625 East Washington Street, Indianapolis). The reading will be followed by a reception (yes!) with cash bar (someone buy me a drink!) at The Legend Classic Irvington Café, sponsor of the event.

McNally is the author of two novels, The Book of Ralph and America’s Report Card, and two short story collections, Ghosts of Chicago (forthcoming this October) and Troublemakers, among other work.



Recently, Victoria of Freight Stories asked McNally a couple of questions to pique your interest for the reading. That’s right: this is a BOOKCHOY EXCLUSIVE. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Oprah.



Victoria: Ghosts of Chicago imagines moments in the lives of many well-known characters from the city's folklore. How did you choose the characters in Ghosts? Which ones still fascinate you after the book's publication?


McNally: In some instances, the real life characters I chose to write about were ones who have had some impact on me, in some small (or large) way, since childhood and adolescence, such as Frazier Thomas, an unlikely host of a popular children's morning show in Chicago, or John Belushi, whose obituary I wrote for my high school newspaper. I grew up watching Gene Siskel on the local news interviewing celebrities. In other instances, the characters' lives intrigued me, like Nelson Algren, who was having an affair with Simone de Beauvoir, or George Pullman, who went from being championed for his accomplishments to being reviled by the citizens of Pullman, Illinois, the town that housed his workers.



I'd made a long list of people I would have liked to have written about, but in the end, there were only so many stories I could fit into the book. My hope is that the ones I did choose give an impressionistic sense of the city's folklore.


Victoria: As a successful short story writer and novelist, how do you know when you sit down to write about a character whether you're writing a story or a novel? Did any of the characters in Ghosts tempt you into considering a longer work about them?


McNally: If I were tempted to write a novel about any of the characters in Ghosts, it would be Miss Betsy of "I See Johnny," whose story continually surprised me as I was writing it. But I suspect she'll live only in that short story. The short answer to your question is that I often let short story ideas percolate until I have a sense of their entirety in my head before I sit down to write them. I don't necessarily know what's going to happen in a story, but I have a general idea of what the story's arc is going to be. A novel, on the other hand, has to be bigger than I can hold in my head; the novel needs (for me, at least) to present a whole host of questions, large ones, before I dive into it. That said, I feel more comfortable writing short stories. They're safe; they're containable. A novel is like building a skyscraper by yourself. How am I going to lift this I-beam by myself? How am I going to put in these forty-foot windows without breaking them? It's a daunting task.



(thanks, Victoria)