An conversation with Matthew F. Jones
A Single Shot is in many ways a different breed of noir than other, less daring works of crime fiction—particularly in regard to the way the novel ends. Was choosing a fate for Moon difficult for you? Or did it simply seem like the natural conclusion all the way through your writing process? (Did you have this beginning in mind right from the start?)
I had no idea how the novel would end when I began it or, in fact, until the moment it unfolded while I was writing it. Once I have the characters I’m writing about in mind—i.e., once I feel that I know them—I try to think as little as possible while writing. And I never outline or plan out in advance what will happen in a novel or to the people in it. Once I’ve created the characters, the story as I see it comes more from them than from me. I do my best to follow wherever they lead me and, through my own filter, accurately record their accounts. I’ve never had much luck in trying to manipulate anything to come out a certain way in my own life, and doubt I’d be any better at it in the lives of fictional characters. Plus I can’t imagine the monotony of writing from an outline. I sit down to write each day with only a vague idea of where I’m headed—and never knowing where I might end up—which for me makes writing more of an adventure than a task.
What are some of your personal favorite novels, and do you see any of their influence in A Single Shot, looking back on it now?
I’m an eclectic reader and a lover of many novels, though two unifying elements are found in the ones I admire most: indelible characters whose stories are compelling because of who they are; and a rich evocation of the particular world they live in. In that vein, some that, in no particular order, come readily to mind are Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Collector, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Sheltering Sky, Augie Marsh, A Flag for Sunrise, The Quiet American, The Stars at Noon, Suttree, The Killer Inside Me, The Risk Pool, The Cement Garden, Paris Trout, The Professional, Mystic River, Affliction, Fat City, etc.
I don’t in truth see the influence of anyone else’s work in A Single Shot (or, for that matter, in any of my work except possibly in my novel Deepwater, the opening scene of which, in retrospect, may have its inspiration in a favorite novel of mine) any more than I think the way in which I speak is influenced by the voices of other people I admire or care about.
More objective readers of the work might see something I don’t, I’m not sure. It would be interesting for me to know.
Were you struck at any point by parallels in your writing to your own experiences, or was A Single Shot created, out of necessity, from deep research?
A Single Shot came directly out of my own experiences and/or knowledge, though obviously the actual events (anyway, most of them) are fictional. I grew up in that world and with the people who inhabit it. The mountain, the quarry, the farm were all based on the actual mountainside I grew up on. Daggard Pitt’s law office above Newberry’s was modeled on the office I practiced law out of for three years. The only research I ever do in my writing is for technical purposes (the caliber of a particular gun, the model of a car or tractor, for example).
Have you known anyone like Moon in the course of your life? How did you go about creating the character—and the situation in which he finds himself?
John was formed partially out of a composite of a few people I knew growing up. I knew, for example, several people who hunted deer all year long. They did it to feed their families and to live on. Jobs were—and are—scarce in that part of the country and deer nearly as plentiful as squirrels.
I went about creating John the same way I do every character I write about. Before starting the book I put him in a number of imagined situations and wrote pages of him conversing with various people in those situations. When I felt I knew him well enough to have an idea, without having to think about it, of how he would react in any type of circumstance, I wrote the opening scene to the book and, from there—from John walking up the mountainside with his twelve gauge at the crack of dawn—I trusted my knowledge of him enough to follow him into whatever he led me to.
Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone, was kind enough to contribute a foreword for A Single Shot. What are your thoughts on how he’s prefaced the new edition? Would you say you’re as much a fan of Woodrell’s work as he is of yours?
Well, I’m not sure what to make of him calling me “a twisted motherfucker,” though in context of the rest of what he wrote I’m pretty sure he meant it as a compliment! In all honesty, when I heard Daniel had offered to write a foreword to A Single Shot I was thrilled, largely because—as I told him when I thanked him after I’d read it—I didn’t have to pretend I was a huge fan of his work, I actually am one and have been for a good long time. A review he wrote in the Washington Post of A Single Shot when it came out in 1996 first alerted me to his work. Not long after that I purchased a copy of The Ones You Do, and from there I was hooked and have gone on to read all of his novels. He is one of a very few authors whose release of a new book is an event I eagerly anticipate. In my mind he is “the voice” for that part of the world he writes about. If I hadn’t been such a recluse I would have contacted him to thank him after he wrote that first review of A Single Shot—I’m glad he didn’t hold it against me! And I’m honored that he feels about my work the way I do about his.
Your novel Deepwater was made into the 2006 film of the same name, and A Single Shot is currently in development as well. Were you consulted as part of the filmmaking process for these two projects? Did you adapt them for the screen yourself? What are your thoughts on book-to-film adaptations—of your own work, and in general?
I had nothing to do with the screenplay for Deepwater, which had a lot to do with why I accepted an offer to write the screenplay for A Single Shot when it came along and, after that, the screenplay for my novel Boot Tracks, which is also in production. Not that I believe Deepwater is a terrible film (for what it is, it’s fine); it just isn’t close to an accurate representation of the novel or, in truth—and, more important—anywhere near as good a film as it could have been. In fact, the main producer of that film, after reading the screenplay I’d written for A Single Shot, told me he wished he’d hired me to write the script for Deepwater. I told him I wished he had too! So when the A Single Shot job was offered to me I felt I had to accept despite a few novelist friends warning me off of it based on their unpleasant experiences in trying to cross over into the film world. The truth is, though, I love movies nearly as much as I love books and, as a novelist, have always considered writing dialogue one of my strengths, which is a lot of what a good script is. The two forms, though, are very different. Novel writing in my view is an art in which the writer touches every one of a reader’s five (or, I guess, six) senses, whereas script writing is more of a craft in which my self-imposed rule is “if you can’t see it or hear it, don’t write it.” One quickly learns too that movie making, in direct contrast to novel writing, is very much a collaborative endeavor. Everyone—from the director, to the producers, to the actors, even sometimes the DP—gives their input on a script. Then there’s the money people who worry, is it too dark? Is it too graphic? Is it too anything that might negatively affect their investment? So, the writer, while making compromises, has to work hard to keep in the script the true core and essence of his story. The only way I believe that a novelist can do a good adaptation of his own novel is to always bear in mind that the movie will not be the novel. And it shouldn’t be. It should be the novel seen through a different prism and experienced in a different medium.
You’ve written six novels to date—1992’s The Cooter Farm, 1994’s The Elements of Hitting, 1997’s Blind Pursuit, 1999’s Deepwater, 2006’s Boot Tracks, and, of course, A Single Shot. Is there a particular novel of the bunch of which you have the fondest memories—either of the writing process; how it was received by friends, family, or more generally; or because of its association with a particular period in your life?
Each one is special to me for a different reason. I’m sure this sounds strange to people, but I feel in many ways as if a different person wrote each novel. I suppose that’s because I was at a different point in my life during the time I was intimate with each one. By that I mean while working on a novel I’m fully consumed with the particular world and people I’m writing about. It’s as if you’re spending a very intense period of time with a group of
