Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

I’m on my couch and the TV has been on for two hours but I still don’t know what I’m watching. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a man look cooked. I really should get a cover for this sofa. And maybe a painting or something for the living room. And a good plant, no a fake plant, any living thing would die under me. The phone has been in my lap for minutes now. Just as the credits start to roll it rings.

— Hello?

— Putting you through now, ma’am.

— Thank you, thanks.

My hands are shaking, making the phone rattle against my earring.

— Hello? Hello? Hello, who’s speaking?

My hands are shaking and I know if I don’t say something now, I’m going to slam down the phone before she speaks again.

— Kimmy?

Even before I knew I had a novel, Colin Williams was doing research for it. Some of that hard work appears in this book, but more of it will appear in the next. By the time Benjamin Voigt took over as researcher I had a narrative, even a few pages, but still not quite a novel. The problem was that I couldn’t tell whose story it was. Draft after draft, page after page, character after character, and still no through line, no narrative spine, nothing. Until one Sunday, at W.A. Frost in St. Paul, when I was having dinner with Rachel Perlmeter, she said what if it’s not one person’s story? Also, when last did I read Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying ? Well maybe not in those exact words, but we also talked about Marguerite Duras, so I went and read The North China Lover as well. I had a novel, and it was right in front of me all that time. Half-formed and fully formed characters, scenes out of place, hundreds of pages that needed sequence and purpose. A novel that would be driven only by voice. At the very least I knew what to tell my other researchers, Kenneth Barrett and Jeeson Choi, to look for. In the meantime, thanks to a travel and research grant from Macalester College, where I teach, I was able to do quite a bit of research on my own. Without brilliant and creative students to challenge me all the time, and a strong and supportive English Department, the four years spent on this novel wouldn’t have been quite as successful or rewarding. That one-year sabbatical didn’t hurt either. Quite of bit of that sabbatical was spent writing at a French café in South Beach, Miami, thanks to awesome support and free room and board from Tom Borrup and Harry Waters Jr., who (knock wood) have yet to charge me rent though I invent reasons to use their place all the time. In fact, the draft that I eventually showed to my wonderful agent, Ellen Levine, and fine editor, Jake Morrissey, was written not far from the actual beach. Before them of course was Robert Mclean, my first-draft reader, and still the only person I trust to read a manuscript even as I am in the process of writing it (though he is still mystified as to why). Jeffrey Bennett, my brilliant last-draft reader, line-edited the whole thing before it went off to the publisher and corrected, among other things, my wildly erroneous depiction of the drive from JFK airport to the Bronx. And thanks to Martha Dickson, who translated my loose English into Cuban Spanish when I made the mistake of thinking Mexican Spanish would do. A writer can go through days of distraction and self-doubt, so thanks to Ingrid Riley and Casey Jarrin for unwavering friendship, support and an occasional kick in the ass. Thanks to my family and friends, and this time around maybe my mother should stay away from part four of the book.