Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

What are a few of your personal favorites from the collection?

I love them all for different reasons. Writing each was an adventure for me, a journey, and I learned something from each one about myself as a writer and as a person and about the world around me. Writing is how I process life, the way I bring order to chaos.

What is your writing process for short fiction as opposed to full-length novels? Is it easier for you to write short stories, or more difficult (or neither)?

Writing anything is hard for me because I’m always pushing myself and I’m a harsh critic of my own work. That said, writing stories is hard in a different way from writing novels. With stories, the difficulty is stringing together a series of moments that sometimes don’t want to be strung together into a cohesive emotional experience for the reader. With novels, I’m working a lot more with plot, with moving the story along. That’s still a challenge for me. I tend to want to dawdle.

What do you like to see in a good short story?

I want an experience. I want to be entertained or moved or dazzled or taught something or impressed. I like it when writers aim high, when they go for it, whether that’s through plot, character, structure, language, or rhythm.

What are a few of your favorite suspense short story collections (or single stories)?

Off the top of my head, Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers,” and anything from Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son.

Have you read any good books lately? Is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to this year?

Here is where I promote a few friends’ books. I loved Jerry Stahl’s Happy Mutant Baby Pills and T. C. Boyle’s The Harder They Come, and Tom Cooper’s Marauders was a great ride. I’m looking forward to reading Tod Goldberg’s Gangsterland, William Boyle’s Death Don’t Have No Mercy, and Chris Offutt’s new memoir.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on a new novel and doing some screenplay work.

This interview was conducted by Kristin Centorcelli and originally appeared on her blog, My Bookish Ways (mybookishways.com). Reprinted with permission.

Sweet Nothing

Putting together a playlist is a fun exercise. It gives me the chance to revisit some great songs and maybe turn people on to music they haven’t heard before. None of the songs listed below directly inspired any of the stories they’re paired with, but they do touch on the themes of the stories or re-create musically or lyrically the mood I was striving for as I wrote the pieces. Most of the songs are sad songs because most of the stories in Sweet Nothing are sad stories. That’s just the way I’m built, I guess. Enjoy.

Must Come Down

“The Dark Don’t Hide It” by Magnolia Electric Co.

Jason Molina, the broken heart and tortured soul of Magnolia Electric Co., was a gifted musician who stepped offstage too soon when, after years of struggle, booze finally got the best of him in 2013. He left behind a bunch of gorgeous songs, including this one about those moments when the illusions we cloak ourselves in are suddenly torn away.

Baby Killer

“Sin Ti” by Los Panchos

KXLU is the radio station at Loyola Marymount University. During the week it’s your typical college radio outlet, with music you won’t hear anywhere else played by endearingly amateurish DJs who tend to ramble a bit. On weekends the station switches to Latin music of all stripes. The show that’s on every Sunday evening plays románticos, which are love songs played and sung by guitar trios. Most of them are from the fifties and sixties and seem as if they’re being beamed in from a kinder, gentler world. They’re the kinds of songs Blanca, the heroine of “Baby Killer,” would have heard on the radio when she was a child, the kinds of songs that might stick in a young girl’s mind.

The Wolf of Bordeaux

“River Guard” by Smog

Smog (Bill Callahan) is the only repeat artist here from a playlist I did for my first collection, Dead Boys. This song hints at some of the internal conflicts torturing the prison guard in this story. I’ve always thought the song had a Springsteen-y quality to it, like the best song that Bruce never wrote.

The 100-to-1 Club

“Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” by Danny O’Keefe

I had a shitty stepdad at the time this song was popular, and my mom used to refer to him derisively as “Good Time Charlie.” I owned the forty-five of this song back then and listened to it over and over, in retrospect perhaps trying to find a way into my stepdad’s head. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as self-aware as the guy in the song (or in the story, for that matter). He was just another dumb drunk, just another abusive asshole.

Gather Darkness

“Ambulance” by Manhattan Murder Mystery

Manhattan Murder Mystery is my favorite L.A. band right now. Their gutter poetry and rough-hewn sound warm the cockles of this old gritster’s heart, and the self-loathing on display in this song meshes perfectly with the self-loathing that powers this story.

Instinctive Drowning Response

“The Rotting Strip” by Crooked Fingers

This song brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it, and I choked up recently while reading this story aloud during a bookstore appearance. So, a match made in heaven. Note: If you ever get a chance to see this band live, do not miss it.

Apocrypha

“This World (Is Going Up in Flames)” by Charles Bradley

I loved this the first time I heard it, and I love it still. This guy knows how to sell a song, and the apocalyptic tilt of the lyrics fits perfectly with that of the story.

After All

“Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down” by Merle Haggard

This story is set in post-some-sort-of-holocaust Bakersfield, and I’m certain that in post-some-sort-of-holocaust Bakersfield they’ll still be listening to Merle.

Sweet Nothing

“I’m a Stranger Here” by Lambchop

Nashville’s finest does a killer version of this standard. It’s got kind of a Hank Williams vibe to it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a song about feeling lost in a world you once knew your way around in, and that’s what the story’s about too.

To Ashes

“Somewhere” by Tom Waits

This song brings together two of my favorite things: classic Broadway musicals and Tom Waits. My wife cried for two days after reading this story, and this version of the classic song from West Side Story never fails to put a lump in my throat, so it seemed like a good match.

This playlist originally appeared online at largeheartedboy.com. Reprinted with permission.

Sweet Nothing opens with Shakespeare (the epigraph) and closes with Shakespeare (Brewer’s collection in “To Ashes”). What other Shakespearean themes and allusions did you notice throughout the collection?

In “Must Come Down,” we see the dark side of a father supporting his family. How is fatherhood portrayed in Sweet Nothing ? Are children a burden, a saving grace, or something else altogether? Does fatherhood bring out the best or the worst in these men?

How are women depicted in this collection? Do the mostly male narrators influence how these women come across to the reader? How does the portrayal of women in “Baby Killer” contrast with the stories in Sweet Nothing ?