John Wray Steps Up His Game
Most coverage of the press around underground poster boy John Wray paints the 37 year-old as a roguish, self-indulgent author. The unorthodox approach he takes to promotion provides his books with talking points beyond their literary laurels. His stunts continue this week with a [YouTube video] starring him and friend Zach Galifianakis, promoting the paperback release of Wrays third book, Lowboy. But the inflated treatments of Wrays endorsement capers dont give the author fair shake for being a modern literary pragmatist, infusing both his work and promotions for them with only what is required to get his point across. ---
There was a moment when making the video with Zach I was like, is this really necessary? Is this a little goofy, a little silly? Wray asked, eating coffee cake and spooning a latte at the Flying Saucer Café in Brooklyn on a rainy February Tuesday. He appeared just a little late, apologetic to a fault, wearing a dripping bicycle helmet. But if I didnt think my book needed some kind of out-of-left-field promotion, then I would choose not to do it. Because I dont want to be typecast as the person who does that. I dont want to distract from the books themselves.
Last year, megaphone subway readings and viral videos pumping up Lowboy gave critics esoteric gold to work with. But it was nothing compared to Wrays earlier marketing folly. After lackluster support from his publisher in 2005, Wray left Knopf deliberately by stretching his second novels $5,000 publicity budget across the South: He built a homemade raft for a 600-mile book tour down the Mississippi.
Although hes making a living beyond authoring now by teaching at Columbia and writing for The New York Times Magazine, that was a necessary step to keep his career, um, afloat. Wray said at least half the scant 4,000 copies sold of Canaans Tongue, an antebellum allegory for modern corporate America, were due to the river trip. Not something the lanky Austrian-American did only to make waves in his sales, it was also compulsory to accomplish his goal as an author.
Because thats not just 2,000 less copied sold, its 2,000 less people who have read it, he said after saying hi to a pair of fans or friendsit was hard to tell which. Its not about trying to make bank when I write a novel. Art is about communication, youre trying to get something across. If youre just getting it across to yourself, you may as well be wanking off, he said.
Canaans Tongue was trouble for Wray beyond its sales. As his debut novel was also a period piece, the typecast of historical novelist was setting in. Critics who loved his first book gave the second passing mention, and that drove him to the river. But it wasnt obsession with the past that spurned the choice of era, it wasas was the case with his first novel, The Right Arm of Sleepcritical to the storys dynamic.
It just happened that the type of book I wanted to writethe tone or the mood or the stylethe feeling of the book I wanted to write was best suited by the mid-19th century on the Lower Mississippi and slavery and civil war and old, fucked-up America, he said.
For Lowboy, he flew forward through time, moving to a contemporary aesthetic to accomplish his story-telling goals. He also shifted voice, somewhat a hallmark of his work. For him to tell the stories as he does, its vital to break free of whats come before, even if he penned the words hes escaping. Wray has spoken out often against writers locking into a singular style, a traditionalists view.
The era of that kind of ivory tower, cultural mandarin attitude has passed because it has to pass. Authors dont have the option.
Hes found more success following his instinct than others footsteps, although the clout of his friends doesnt hurt. Beyond Galifianakis and the video they made, New Yorker cartoonist and illustrator Adrian Tomine drew the cover of the Lowboy paperback release. As for Wrays next novel, a comic novel about a family of physicists, he doesnt have anything planned yet. But hes sure to be met with at least a curious eye.
Because the book industry in general has been perceived as circling its wagons and under siege, theres been a lot more generosity about these unconventional ways Im trying to integrate my novels into the actual daily cultural dialogue, Wray said.
When leaving the Flying Saucer at closing, Wray straps his helmet back on, although hes not bikinghis back wheel was stolen before he left his Brooklyn office. He left his helmet in place, shielding from the rain. It worked on the way to the café, it would work on the way home. More than anything, to Wray its about the practicality of the moment, especially when it comes to his work ethic.
If you start believing this weird, dated hype about it, that its somehow harder or more heroic than writing code for a living or working at Dunkin Donuts, then first of all youre just a jackass and secondly youre going to fuck yourself up. Youll end up like J.D. Salinger, totally retreating, thinking youre too pure to be tainted by the outside world, he said. The truth of creativity is it's both deep and mysterious and profoundly mundane.