He’s written about a distraught mother searching for the truth about her
son’s disappearance and an epileptic rock musician raising the 14-year-old
son he’s met for the first time, but for his third — as yet unpublished —
novel, Seattle author Garth Stein took a dog’s point of view.
“This dog is great,” Stein said about the narrator of The Art of Racing in
the Rain. “His name is Enzo,” as in automobile company founder Enzo Ferrari.
Stein says he always liked the name and thought it would be a great one for
a child. His wife, pregnant with their third son, suggested he use the name for his
dog narrator.
So Stein did, writing the novel in four months.
In the book, Enzo, whose owner is a race-car driver, watches a lot of
television. One day he sees a documentary about Mongolia, where the dog is
one step below man on the spiritual ladder. In this belief structure, Enzo
would reincarnate next as a human, so he starts acting like one, believing
opposable thumbs constitute the only difference between people and himself.
Stein just sent the completed novel to his agent and says he will probably
read some excerpts from the book this Sunday, when he comes to Lincoln City
for the second week of the Oregon Legacy Literary Series at the Driftwood
Public Library.
Stein, the author of Raven Stole the Moon, How Evan Broke His Head and Other
Secrets and the play Brother Jones, says he enjoys meeting the public and
getting feedback about his books.
“I really get a big charge out of it,” Stein said in a phone interview from
his home in Seattle. “The bigger the audience, the bigger I get.”
He’ll read some of his favorite passages from Evan and speak on other
topics, depending on where the audience lets him go. Given all the places
his books have taken him, that could range pretty wide.
While researching his latest novel, Stein learned race-car drivers can’t
think too much about what they’re doing, because they travel at such high
speeds.
In this way, Stein says writing is similar to race-car driving — you can’t
think too much about it.
Ideally: “Write a lot. Read a lot,” Stein said.
He also recommends studying acting to help with character development.
During production of his play Brother Jones, Stein said actors would ask him
questions like, “What did my character have for breakfast?”
That might seem a trivial detail, but Stein points out that if you skipped
breakfast you would feel different than if you ate a huge meal of bacon and
eggs.
“An actor has to know everything about his character,” Stein said. “As a
writer of fiction, you have to know every single thing for every single
character in every scene of your book.”
If you’re faking it, Stein says, readers can tell, and that’s when they put
down the book.
“I love writing,” Stein said. “I love the process of writing.”
Stein grew up writing. His mother wrote children’s stories and, until he
went to college, Stein planned to be a writer.
“I still wanted to be a writer,” Stein said, “but I somehow convinced myself
to go to film school.”
At Columbia University in New York, he struggled to write screenplays and
switched to making documentary films.
“I was taking what I could see and what was there and making a story out of
it,” Stein said.
In graduate school at Columbia, he directed the award-winning documentary
What’s Wrong With This Building? about the proposed addition to the Whitney
Museum of American Art and co-produced The Lunch Date, which won an Academy
Award for Live Action Short in 1991.
After graduate school, Stein made When Your Head’s Not a Head, It’s a Nut
about his sister undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy.
Stein also co-produced The Last Party starring Robert Downey Jr., directed
Philadelphia, Mississippi and produced two music videos directed by Johnny
Depp.
Stein learned about storytelling by making documentaries, but says he tired
of it after nine years.
He tried writing a screenplay again but still struggled, so he decided to
write it as a story first and then “muscle it into a screenplay.”
As he was writing, the story kept getting longer and eventually it turned
into his first novel, Raven Stole the Moon. Stein drew on his Tlingit
heritage to write the story of a grieving mother who travels to Alaska to
search for the truth about her young son’s disappearance and finds his death
cloaked in legend.
“I never thought I’d have the attention span to write a novel,” Stein said.
His second book, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, took longer to
write.
“Evan is a very personal book for me,” said Stein, whose sister, like the
novel’s protagonist, grew up with epilepsy. “It took me a while to do it
right.”
Evan, which won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, tells the story of a
31-year-old ex-lead-guitarist for a band with one hit single to his credit
who suddenly finds himself raising the 14-year-old son he’s never met.
Now working on a sequel to Raven Stole the Moon, Stein also teaches writing
and has been a writer-in-residence at Seattle elementary schools for the
last few years.
“It’s a real fun process,” Stein said about teaching elementary students.
“They’re not cynical yet. They’re willing to try something without putting
their feet down.”
This term he’ll switch gears, teaching creative writing at the Tacoma School
of the Arts. Stein said he’s excited about working with high school students.
“These kids are just getting their hands on some really great writing,” he
said.
Stein says he has no regrets in life and, as far as work goes, he’s proud of
all his accomplishments.
“The last thing I’ve done is always what I’m most proud of,” Stein said. “If
I don’t feel that way, then I need to go back and rewrite.”