| Home |
Interview with
C.D. PayneCompiled from recent
on-line interviews
Q. What can you tell us about your background?
A. Virtually anything you wish to know, within reason. For example, I was born in 1949 in Akron, Ohio--an industrial city in northeast Ohio. My father was a construction worker and my mother a housewife; I have three sisters. I remember shoveling a lot of snow in winter and drinking my weight in iced tea every summer. I went to North High School and then to Harvard, where I majored in European history and participated in the annual spring riot. Since college I've worked at about 25 jobs, including newspaper editor, photographer, antique camera show promoter, graphic artist, typesetter, trailer park handyman, house renovator, catalogue copywriter, etc.
Q. Can't keep a job, huh?
A. I've only been fired once that I can remember. It brightened his day and mine too. I suppose one would have to conclude I enjoy variety in my work life.
Q. Why did you decide to move from Ohio to California?
A. Akron is a pleasant city with many large factories, rigorous winters, and an all-pervasive cloud cover from its proximity toLake Erie. The San Francisco bay area, by contrast, has much better coffee.
Earliest known photo of C.D. Payne in a trailer. (He's second from the right.)
.
Q. When did you decide to become a writer?
A. I've always thought of myself as a writer. As a toddler I used to fill page after page with nonsense scribbles. Then I learned to read and began to write actual words. The tricky part, I'vefound, is getting people to pay you for it. So I cultivated other skills to carry me through the lean periods.
C.D. Payne wonders why Santy has liquor on his breath. Still, the guy did bring him an electric train that year.
.
Q. How long did it take you to write "Youth in Revolt?"
A. Three years: from 1990 through 1992. The original manuscript was 1,100 pages, which I decided was pretty weighty for a comic novel. Through judicious editing, I pared it down to a brisk 870 typed pages.
Q. Were you a rebel like Nick Twisp when you were a youth?
A. Quite the contrary, I was shockingly well behaved. My parents spent many a peaceful night not worrying that I wasgoing to flunk out of school, get my girlfriend in trouble, or be arrested joy-riding in a stolen car.
The mostly non-rebellious
C.D. Payne, about Nick's age--
just before Ohio repealed its
compulsory ugly sweater law.
.
Q. Then "Youth in Revolt" is not autobiographical?
A. Alas no. Though I enjoy the music of Frank Sinatra, and did spend four years in my twenties living in a small (17-foot) trailer.
Q. You don't reside in a trailer now?
A. No, but I have one parked in my yard: a 23-foot Airstream. I like to sit in it, read my mail, and ruminate on the meaning of life. I also collect toy travel trailers, old trailer magazines, and original "trailer" art.
Q. Is the character of Sheeni, Nick's girlfriend, modeled on a real person?
A. Sheeni is an amalgamation of many endearing feminine qualities, including moderate self-absorption. She is an ideal carried to anextreme and filtered through the imagination of Nick, an American male teenager. I have encountered only her faint shadow in real life.
Joy Stocksdale
contemplated life
as a gypsy, but
decided to marry
C.D. Payne instead.
.
Q. What writers have influenced your work?
A. I was a big reader as a kid, which is the kind of thing you do in Akron if you're not interested in baseball or rubber vulcanization. My favorite section in the library was "biography."I liked those books because they had a reliably sad ending (the hero dies). After college I went through a long period of reading comic fiction by authors such as S.J. Perelman, James Thurber, Ring Lardner, Robert Benchley, E.B. White, Frank Sullivan, etc. I enjoy Mark Twain and the almost forgotten humorists such as Harry Leon Wilson ("Ruggles of Red Gap") and Booth Tarkington ("Seventeen," "Penrod"). The early novels of Evelyn Waugh are also favorites, as are the collected essays of Gore Vidal and John Waters ("Shock Value," "Crackpot").
C.D. Payne experiments
with new ways to have
a hot time in college.
.
Q: By what authors are you most inspired?
A. The writer I admire the most is, not surprisingly, Vladimir Nabokov. The fellow worked at such a level of genius, though, that I'd have to say for lowly scribblers such as me he inspires mostly a sense of futility and despair. The astute reader may notice several allusions to "Lolita" in "Youth in Revolt." I say "may" because so far no one has. So much for literary pretensions. I'm also inspired by Mary Higgins Clark, who recently signed a book contract for $75 million.
Q. Your humor is very broad. Isn't that style out of date?
A. I certainly hope so. I must confess I am uninterested in writing fashionable novels. I expect I'll always be something of a fringewriter, although I'm unaccountably semi-popular in the Czech
Republic, an enlightened country I hope to visit in December, 2000.
Q. Do you find it hard to write from a point of view different from your own?
A. Well, that is generally what fiction writing entails, unless you're Jack Kerouac. My latest novels are written from the standpoint of teenage twin sisters and alcoholic pigeons--both fairly far outside my realm of experience.
Q. How many more Nick Twisp novels are you planning?
A. One reader suggested I "carry Nick Twisp up to adulthood," a grim thought since I required 870 typed pages to advance him to age 14-1/2. The first installment of what could be several more Nick Twisp novels will be published on October 15 of this year. Its title is Revolting Youth. The one after that may be called Young and Revolting. Eventually I may work my way up to Middle Aged and Really Revolting.
C.D. Payne at the zenith of his academic career. He's seated between Karen and Phyllis in the second row.
Copyright 2000 Aivia Press, P.O. Box 1922, Sebastopol, CA 95473
