APRIL 21. 2006
But then there’s also the story of how you were con
nected to it. And often what I’m writing about is, how
this impacted me. So, my brother died, but 1 was the one
who couldn’t sleep at night. That personal view is the
window into the event, but we’re looking at it through
this specific awareness. 1 love that about fiction.
Because, in particular, this book is about these things
that happened. But even more, it’s about meeting Rigby
John.
GSW: How much of the process is writing, and
how much is editing? How do you know when the
book is done?
TS: Each book is different. This book pretty much
stayed exactly like it came out, except for the first two
chapters. My editor, who edited The Man Who Fell in
Love with the Moon, came back for this one. What 1 did
was 1 wrote that first 40 pages and then 1 just started writ
ing anecdotes of things that happened to me. So I had
150 pages of anecdotes and 1 thought: “Oh, 1 don’t think
he’ll want these. But 1’11 just send them to him and tell
him it’s the back story.” And what happened was he
loved all of them. So we took out probably half of those
stories, and we put a very specific arc into them. It was
labor-intensive for six months, eight months.
At a certain point, it’s like you look over and your
book is a teen-ager. It’s not right. It’s not perfect. It’s
really acting stupid, but there he is. Send him forth. Get
him out of here. He’s got to go now. If you sit on it too
long or beat on it too long or think about it too much or
obsess about it, it’s disrespectful to that work.
GSW: So what’s next? Are you starting another
project?
TS: 1 have a bunch of new projects right now.
A how-to-write book. I’m thinking about that.
I’m helping to write a screenplay for The Man Who
Fell in Love with the Moon. I’m also involved with
writing an opera for The Man Who Fell in Love with the
Moon. And also there’s a performance of Shy Hunters
that a children’s theater is going to put on—an eight
voiced reading.
Mostly what I’m excited about is I’ve gathered all my
African stuff all around my computer there, and that’s
the one I really want to get to—a book on Africa, since
I spent two years there.
GSW: Now Is the Hour is dedicated to your moth
er. Was your mother a lot like Rigby John’s in the book?
TS: Yeah. There’s a lot of sad stuff. Like one time I
was visiting from New York and it was time to go and 1
was hugging everybody and the car was waiting and she
said, “Come here.” And she tixik me in the bathroom
and locked the door and she said: “Tom, you have to take
me with you. These men that I’m with, all I do is cook
and clean for them. They never thank me. They never
even look at me. So, you got to take me with you.”
GSW: How old were you?
TS: Forty-five. 1 ended up holding my weeping
mother while I sat on the toilet.
And then when she died, we were sitting around the
table and my father said, “You know, someone’s got to
carry the ashes from the church to the internment place,
and they got to lead rhe procession out of the church.”
And my brother Jerry said, “Oh, my hands shake.” And
my father said, “I can’t with a cane.”
And so 1 just went, “OK, 1’11 do it.” And so when it
came time, the priest nodded and said, “Tom?”
So 1 just went up there and grabbed the urn and
turned around to start walking out. And it came to me,
clear as day, “Take me out of here, Tom." It was so fuck
ing real. So 1 was like, “OK, Mom, I’m going to take you
out of here.” But she was, “All right, let’s go!” This is
really true. 1 hadn’t cried in the whole funeral, but then
1 just fell apart. Just the time when you don’t want to
cry, when you turn to the whole congregation.
GSW: So you had to close the hole in your heart
literally and figuratively. Do you think the book will
do it?
TS: 1 do. I think it has. And it was all respect to her.
GSW: There is a certain respect in telling the
truth, even when it’s the ugly truth.
TS: Yeah, yeah.
GSW: Do we owe our ancestors?
TS: 1 think so. God bless them, it seems like the
ultimate respect to tell their story. Because we’re all
human. We’re all set down here on this earth bewildered,
and we all just kind of bumble through it. And what’s
important is how 1 did it and this is what’s carried me.
This is where I fucked up. Because we’ve all fucked up.
We’ve all got this story. ©
T om SPANBAUER reads from Now Is the Hour noon
April 23 during the Wordstock Book Fair at the Oregon
Convention Center, 111 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr.
Blvd., and 6 p.m. May 21 at Powell's on Hawthorne,
3723 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.
JUStOUt 23
Review
t is the 1960s and Rigby John Klusener is an intelligent, sensitive kid
stranded in his own overworked, overbullied, sexually curious skin. On a
farm wedged between an Indian reservation, the Idaho plains and the
social wasteland of Pocatello, he struggles with a family silently implod-
flfil ing under the dread weight of German Catholicism and with the bullies
who menace him at school.
As his high school years unfold, however, Rigby John meets other locals with
a similar sense of “being the outsider”—a nerdy underdog named “Puke” Price;
a chesty, cigarette-chugging girlfriend
named Billie Cody; two manly but big-
hearted Mexican day-workers named
Acho and Flaco; and George Serano,
an alcoholic, outwardly queer reserva
tion Indian. In the course of these
encounters, Rigby John begins to open
up to his own inner defender and to
the possibilities of a positive identity.
Blatantly unsentimental, yet quick
with humor and pathos, Tom
Spanbauer’s Now Is the Hour
(Houghton Mifflin, 2006; $26 hard
cover) rises tall. For those who loved
The Man Who Fell in Love with the
Moon for its exquisite characterization
and its fresh voice totally lacking in
artifice, Now Is the Hour will move and
please. For those who loved In the City of Shy Hunters for its unflinching yet almost
mythopoetic view of the birth of the AIDS crisis in New York, the stark emotion
of Now Is the Hour will satisfy and burn in the soul. For those fans who know and
love Faraway Places, Spanbauer’s first book, Now Is the Hour will illuminate and
drive deep some familiar themes and visions. But most of all, Now Is the Hour
strikes into its own new territory with a toss-the-coin sense that the world might ■
be changing for the better and with a thumbing-my-way-to-the-future kind of
hopefulness.
In some ways, Now Is the Hour is Spanbauer’s most violent book. The
misunderstanding and anger in the characters are at an all-time high, the yearn
ing is at fever pitch, and there are times when you want to slap the protagonist so
hard his whole family would feel it. But in this book, the darkness burns enough
light, and in time, a warm sense of optimism radiates from its pages.
This book is an anthem to male initiation (or the lack thereof) in rural
America. In some sense it belongs to the time period in which it’s set, but in oth
ers it is as applicable today as at any other time. It is also a poem to the stranded
rural housewife, the remnants of a kind of quiet patriarchal slavery that still
destroys many a soul today.
Spanbauer is a brave storyteller with an unapologetic sensitivity, a veritable
intelligence and a colloquial style unlike any other American writer today. The
queer community is lucky to have him. Hell, we’re all lucky.
—GSW ©
G lenn S cofield W illiams writes prose, poetry, plays,
periodica and pom in Portland.
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