Real Cities with Imaginary Prose About Them: An Interview with Thomas E. Kennedy - Interview

Literary Review, Summer, 1999 by Susan Tekulve

Publishers seem much. more interested in publishing novels these days. When they accept a story collection, they often look for a series of stories with a "narrative arc." In your opinion, how must the stories of a collection be tied together, if at all?

That is not so easy. I understand Max Perkins used to assemble and arrange Hemingway's stories in his collections for him, but I guess most of us have to try to figure out some kind of pleasing symmetry ourselves.

I remember once years ago, an agent who was thinking of taking me on, sitting in his office and instructing me to put my stories together in a cohesive collection and writing him a resume describing why and how the stories were interrelated. Then he looked at me and said, "And do not bullshit me, Mr. Kennedy, for I will know if you are bullshitting." Well, I guess I bullshitted and I guess he knew because he didn't take me on. Anyway, no agent has ever sold anything for me, though some of them have tried very hard. I always end up selling the stuff myself.

I find that I tend to organize the stories for a collection in a certain way and then in the course of a few months keep playing with it, rearranging it, dropping some stories, adding others, until it seems to have some cohesion. Looking at it now, it seems to me that the stories in Unreal City were made for each other, but in fact it took me a while to see that these were the ones that fit together under that title. The title came later, by the way.

For my second collection, I knew I would use the title Drive, Dive, Dance & Fight, because I always liked it and thought it was catchy. In fact, though, people have trouble remembering it. It took me a while to get those stories in the order I thought right, as well. I knew the last story in the collection would be the last story because of the way it ended--I liked that ending for the book (this is "Landing Zone X-Ray") and I like the kind of inviting opening line of the story, which I wound up starting the collection with, and the others found their order in time. I think that stylistically they all hang together more so than thematically, but I am sure there is an underlying theme that could be identified there. Maybe reaching is the theme--the isolated soul reaching out. In truth though these were, I think, just the best eight stories I had available at the time, and I hope that when people read them they feel free to read them in any order they wish.

Personally, I see no reason why the stories in a collection should have to be tied together. That seems to be a kind of obsession. I generally read a collection by taking the shortest story in it first, then the next shortest, etc., and I keep going as long as I continue to like the stories.

I tend to buy a collection of stories because I like the work of the author in question, and I don't care if the stories are related thematically or not. In a sense, I would probably prefer them not to be. I would rather they just be a collection of the best stories he or she has available at the moment.