Things I've learned, with Prof. Tristan Davies

In addition to being a Senior Lecturer in the Writing Seminars Department, Tristan Davies is a published author. Anticipating the release of his upcoming book, Forecast, Davies talked to the News-Letter about his journey as an aspiring writer and those who helped him along the way.

News-Letter (NL): Was there a major turning point - a book, a poem, a person - that inspired you at a young age to pursue writing? Davies (TD): This is a funny answer, because I remember when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out, the original Roald Dahl, and I remember my mother ordered it and it came in the mail - the first edition, hardcover. I had always followed Roald Dahl books, and I remember cutting and unwrapping the box, and it was the first time I'd ever had a hardcover book that had just come out, and maybe that was the moment. I mean, I guess I'm a geek because I still get excited when the Amazon.com box comes, and there's all the packaging and the shrink wrap piece of cardboard. So maybe that was it; I was about eight or nine. And also, I remember I went to an exhibit of American painting around the exact same time, back then the museum was really just a gallery. They had stuff from the Met and I remember seeing these paintings - and painting was something that was foreign and distant - and suddenly seeing all these American paintings and the American sensibility of these landscapes. It inspired me.

NL: It was inspiring in a generally creative sense? TD: Yeah, I think so. Well, for the longest time I thought I was going to be the greatest American abstract expressionist painter of my generation. Until I realized that no one had been painting abstract expressionism for about 30 years, so that kind of dashed my hopes.

NL: Who were the your most memorable professors at Brown? TD: There were a lot. There was a guy named Viktor Terras, was Estonian, a critic, and did Russian stuff, Duncan Smith, who did German, Dora Levy did Chinese. Then there was John Hocks, who was a fiction writer, who was really mean to me. I think if I'm ever nice as a teacher, it's me remembering how mean to me John Hocks was.

NL: What was the worst thing he said to you? TD: "You should really quit writing," he said. I remember very clearly it was during his office hours. I got into his class as a freshman, to a great deal of resentment among the seniors who were taking it. And about halfway through the semester he took me aside and said, "You seemed to have a lot of promise in the beginning, but I think you should just stop writing." He was tough. I think that most people have been told at one point to stop and quit what they're doing. But the story does have a happy ending. I ended up studying with him again as a senior and became good friends. He was very helpful to me until he died. He became a mentor that did a lot for me, and was an extraordinarily thoughtful, considerate, giving person.

NL: What was the best advice you received as an undergrad? TD: "Don't become a lawyer!" [Laughs] The guy, he was an anthropologist named William Beaman, and that was the great thing about Comp. Lit., I was encouraged to read internationally. So I ended up reading Chinese, Russian, Estonian, German, Latin American, Caribbean and African literature. There was a Ghanaian man named Anones Gazania who taught West African lit; I studied East African lit with a Malayan poet who was a refugee ... it gave me this incredible appreciation of the breadth of literature. I had that crisis that everyone has, and everyone goes through it, and it usually happens right about now - the fall of senior year - where you say "I've wasted my life, I know nothing, I better go to law school." And I was at a reading and I ran into Bill Beaman and he said "What are you doing?" and I said "I'm going to law school," and he said "Don't go to law school. Every lawyer I know is a glorified bean counter." I think that it was good advice for me at the time, because it came from somebody I knew and respected, and I think that if someone hadn't said that it's okay not to be a lawyer, I might have been an attorney. But there was another time when I really did feel lost, and I remember I was with Jack Hocks. I ran into him in the English Department by his mailbox, and he just said walk with me, so I walked him home, and he was just supportive. He cared, listened to what I was worrying about, told me I was thinking too much about myself. But just the fact that he cared, he genuinely cared, and was there to help me meant a lot as a student.

NL: As you were mentioning before about your professors with these far-reaching legacies and stories, weren't they a little intimidating to an aspiring writer? TD: Well you're right, it is overwhelming, but if you're not awed by it, you're in the wrong racket. And it's a little bit like the paradox in translation: "Either all is lost, or all is translation." You realize that it's impossible to do, but people do it. Once, I was a grad student and I had dinner with Louis Lamour, and he turned out to be the most interesting, nice, thoughtful guy and had so many great stories. At the end of the evening, he said to me, "Well what do you do?" You know, I was embarrassed to say that I was in this creative writing program because how presumptuous to even suppose to be anywhere near his stature. So I had to tell him I was in the creative writing program, and he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Stick with it, there's always room in the world for another good writer." I think it's the message I'm trying to convey. There's always room for more, the boat isn't full by any means.

NL: Was there a certain moment at Hopkins where you knew you were on the right track? Thankfully you chose not to go to law school? TD: Oh, that moment, it comes to a lot of people, and that moment is teaching. I remember the first day of being a T.A., I had this stack of books, I was in the office, running off all these copies of the entirety of Western lit and I'd stayed up half the night writing details for the lecture. And Steve Dixon came in, he only has a paperback and a manila folder on his way to teach, and he says "What are you doing?" And I said "I'm getting ready," and he looked at me askance, and he said "Well, remember to just be yourself, because they'll sniff it out right away if you're putting on an act, if you're trying to be someone you're not." It suddenly dawned on me that I was trying to be 'Mr. Johnny Hopkins,' and so I walked in and just asked how they [the students] were doing. I remember thinking of the first class I had as a freshman. It was a women's studies class and it was a section, and the T.A., she was this little earthy woman, we all sat down and she said "How's everybody doing?" I was so gassed that the woman said that at the beginning of section - we were at Brown University, studying the history of women, by God! This was serious [laughs]. And she's asking how everyone's doing? So then I started my first class asking, "How's everyone doing?"

NL: I want to touch on your first collection of short stories, Cake, for a bit. It came out in 2003, which is pretty recent. What was the significance of the chronology of your stories? TD: Well the way I ordered them, it's a very mystical thing. You where a special outfit and a hat. [Laughs] I don't know, I think it generally drifted from the most counter-factual to the most psychologically realistic, if that makes any sense. In other words, the first story is the least purely narrative, and the last is the most narrative.