Interview, "His Own Private Idaho," in Rain Taxi Review of Books. 
Interview
The author of the short story collection Horse All Over Hell (Wipf and Stock, 2019) and the novel Down in the River (Wipf and Stock, 2019) talks about his work, inspirations, and characters.
. . .
ASO’K: I’d like to ask about Horses All Over Hell, your short story collection released by Wipf and Stock in 2019.
It’s a book of related stories focused upon a family: mother, father, and two sons. You depict problems caused or affected by alcoholism, mental health issues, and religious fundamentalism. These are adult problems, viewed by Cory, a child, who is the elder son. He also does what he can to look after Matt, his younger brother. Why did you choose Cory as the central character?
RB: A child inhabits a compelling psychological world. To a kid, a dog might have the power to read minds. A horse on the side of the road might cast a judgmental glance. Cory’s young enough to live in that magic, but old enough to grasp the troubles of his family. He’s an ideal observer.
ASO’K: The setting of Horses is rural Idaho in the early 1990s. Please forgive the cliché question, but may I ask how much of the setting and characters reflect your real-life experiences?
RB: The town of Laroy is, more or less, Lewiston, Idaho. My family lived there in the 70s and 80s. My dad was an alcoholic, but not the wild drunk that Marty is, and my mom was a very traditional, heterosexual Catholic woman who sat with the dying. My dad was an anxiety-ridden parole officer who didn’t talk much except to yell, though he was good-hearted. I was a sports kid and wore my team uniforms at home, watching TV always. My family was hyper-normal, patriotic and God-fearing without question. Once, I tried on my mom’s bra as a joke, and my older brother screamed in fear and tackled me. My mom shouted, “Ryan, this is a Christian household!” My dad was at work. Naturally, I wouldn’t have tried that stunt if he'd been at home.
ASO’K: Cory’s father, Marty, arrives drunk (or at least uselessly hung over) on the morning when he’s supposed to be coaching Cory’s baseball team practice, then again when he’s supposed to be coaching them for a game. Cory’s mother Joanna has quit drinking and found religion, but sees imposing her religious views on her family as a solution to their problems, and is sycophantically desperate for the approval of the more affluent and socially prestigious members of her church group. What’s the biggest thing preventing Marty and Joanna from fixing what’s wrong with their lives? If they appeared to you and asked for advice, what would you tell them?
RB: I understand your temptation to wonder about this. But I say literature isn’t about solving problems. It’s about presenting problems. After all, we follow character trajectories that make sense, based on psychological realities. I’d feel content leading a character to prison if I understood he had to go there because of the story’s urgencies. I’d feel sad but I wouldn’t try to fix his life or anything like that.
Regarding Joanna, I feel sympathetic toward her. She is troubled by anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. She has quit drinking and needs help. Since she’s speaking from pain and not judgement, I don’t get irritated by her reading the Bible to her kids, the way I might in a more self-righteous context. She’s deeply unhappy in Laroy, but church is the only game in town. She seeks to act like the other mothers because she has suffered a loss of confidence during her depression. She’s my favorite kind of Christian—deeply flawed, on the edge, trying to stay alive. The woman she meets, Lucy, the Native-American, is a similar kind of woman, though farther down the road in her sobriety. Later in the book, Joanna locates strength and toughness, partly due to Lucy’s influence. Where Joanna ends up is far more important than where she is at the start.
ASO’K: Birds seem to be a major motif in Horses All Over Hell. Marty, the father, expresses his dislike of large gatherings of birds. What do the birds represent? Other motifs, it seems to me, are the river and the horses of the title.
RB: My favorite metaphor is one that feels meaningful and right but is somewhat out of grasp. The birds resist explanation because characters speak of them differently. The metaphor changes depending on who’s exerting psychological pressure on it. Therefore, it wouldn’t do to nail it down too much. But I will say that I love the mystery of the image and I think it’s right on the money.
Regarding the horses, I suppose they represent disaster and chaos in the book. Of course, there’s got to be a dash of Revelation in the title too, but I wouldn’t make too much of it.
ASO’K: I’d also like to ask about Down in the River, your novel published by Wipf and Stock in 2014. The protagonist, teenager Lyle Rettew, commits an incredibly drastic act in attempting to come to terms with the recent suicide of his twin sister. If you would consider mentioning it to be a spoiler, we can keep mum about it, or mention it openly if you prefer. Anyway, it’s rather macabre, and truly unconventional. Can you describe how this idea came to you?
RB: When Lyle robs a mausoleum, he is flying on his mania, and therefore believes he’s doing something good. Of course, it is terrible and macabre. Lyle’s action is mitigated, though, when the reader understands he’s acting out of love for his sister, in his own cracked manner. Though his sister’s remains are in Idaho, and he’s in Eugene, Oregon, he associates this body he steals with his lost best friend and twin, Lila.
He meets Rosa, a Latina who says about him, “Oh, you’re not quite right,” but knows he’s a good person at the same time. They happen into some speed. She becomes disturbed when she discovers what he’s carrying around in his backpack, but he explains it again and again—when she’s alternately high and tired—and she stays with him.
Although there’s not much sympathy for bi-polar people in the world right now, especially ones who rob mausoleums, I felt very tender about Lyle. Once, Lyle stands up for a goose who hits the top of a bridge while flying. It sits on the pedestrian walkways below, very dazed. Lyle guards the bridge and forces two kids to turn around, so they won’t frighten the goose.
Rosa says to him, “You’re like some kind of protector.”
But some readers won’t tolerate a sympathetic story about a grave robber. That’s okay. I wasn’t trying to please everyone.
Pittsburgh's City Paper "Arts Feature" Interview:
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/cp-catches-up-with-newly-arrived-novelist-ryan-blacketter/Content?oid=1851057
Paste Magazine's interview with Ryan Blacketter: "The human story is a fairly dark one with painful and dangerous impulses that we all have. And that's coupled with a fortress-like psychology that most people have, protecting them from the awareness of the fact that they are part of this human experience." https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/drinks-with/drinks-with-author-ryan-blacketter/
Fiction Writers Review: "What makes this novel so warm and heartbreaking despite its gruesome material is that all the characters are driven by their love and concern for each other." Click here to read the entire review:
The Rumpus: "[Down in the River] casts us deep into a haunting, crystalline forest of ice-lit trees, broken streetlamps . . . a place where a kind of inner wilderness has crept back through the city, where the lights of passing trains, the reflections of windows and the 'cry of night birds' appear intermittently like forms of meaningless chaos or secret signs." https://therumpus.net/2014/11/down-in-the-river-by-ryan-blacketter/
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2019/07/ryan_blacketter.html
“Horses All Over Hell is a heartbreaking new book from a master of modern American fiction.”
—Ernest Hilbert, author of Last One Out, book critic for Wall Street Journal. Dust jacket blurb.
“The eleven intricately woven short stories of Horses All Over Hell portray a family caught in an ever-deepening spiral of damage and despair while bound together by ties of love in a Western landscape that comes to life on the page. The deep flaws, the beauty, and the bravery of these richly imagined characters will linger with the reader long after the last page.”
—Mary Clearman Blew, author of Jackalope Dreams and Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin
--Arthur O'Keefe, author of The Spirit Phone
“Even as Lyle runs toward trouble and danger, his youthful optimism, however delusory it might be, flickers in these pages, compelling the reader to journey deeper into night, in search of hope and redemption.”
“Lyle is clearly disturbed, but Blacketter never lets him become a caricature, never lets his mental illness cloud his personality or override his humanity. Like Dubus’s characters, even his most terrible deeds are driven by noble impulses and understandable grief.”
“Ryan Blacketter's Down in the River is an impressive debut novel that effectively tackles themes of mental illness and grief.”
"A remarkable, darkly startling and endearing debut novel . . . As Lyle’s quest unfolds with messy inevitability, I am rooting for this young man, I am living as this young man, I am learning to feel as skewed and caring as Lyle does. And what a pleasure this is, and what great inspiration to a fellow writer the experience of Down in the River is. I cannot recommend this novel enough."
"A strange, haunting journey across the shadowy landscape of grief and longing. To our good fortune, Ryan Blacketter is a heroic guide into this exploration of the mysterious workings of the human heart . . . This is a brave first novel from a writer to be watched."
"I can't remember when I've liked a character as much as I like young Lyle Rettew, or when I've cheered one on so hard, despite the fact that he's clearly crazy and his quest is doomed."
"Blacketter's prose is paired with the torque of a plot that lives and moves like an indomitable engine. This difficult and necessary story is inbreathed with a ferocity that leaves the reader shaken."
"I was completely enthralled by this haunting, page-turning novel. The disturbing events, the evocative landscape, and the chaos of mental disorder self-medicated by drugs and rebellion are all rendered in humanizing, beautifully-rendered realism."
--Wayne Harrison, The Spark and the Drive
"Down in the River is a startling, disturbing, and ultimately entrancing novel, a fever dream that astounds and never sits still for a moment, breathlessly played out in the sad twilight between the innocence of childhood and the despair of age, life lived on the last edges of love and loyalty strained to their limits."
--Ernest Hilbert, author of Caligulan
"Blacketter has created an outsider story of adolescence that left me wanting to travel more with his characters; I felt connected to them as they opened my eyes to new forms of chaos."
--Max Wolf Valerio, author of The Criminal: the invisibility of parallel forces.
"If you want someone to tell you how good your writing is, have your mom read your work. If you want to learn how to make your writing better, I can't recommend Ryan Blacketter enough. Ryan has a keen ear for language and an excellent feel for a work's narrative flow. He will challenge you to become a better, more conscious writer." --Brian Peters (Princeton, New Jersey, & author of To Wander the Labyrinth)
"I go to Ryan when I want a tough critique that will get to the heart of what a story is, what it does, and what it can--and must--do." --Adam Farley ("tree lover" at Countryside Nursery and former editor of MARY)
"Ryan is one of the best, most effective, and enjoyable teachers I've ever had - THE best in my writing/literary experience. He has a way of teaching that is at once challenging, supportive, patient, humorous, refreshingly honest and straightforward, and extraordinarily concentrated and condensed. His teaching hits you with a one-two; it's packed with information that expands and stretches you in new directions and is absolutely fun as hell." --Kimberly Warren (Eugene, Oregon)
"I have taken many writing courses and Ryan's is the best, hands down. His intensity, passion and dedication to his craft are tremendously inspiring. Work with him and you will never view the art of literary fiction the same way. Survive his workshop and you will have gained many of the tools you need to thrive as a writer. The rest is up to you." --Lawrence Birch (Eugene, Oregon)
"Ryan has a magical ability to teach--and he repeats it until you get it, and knows when to move on. He believes everything in a piece of writing must link together. That's where the meaning is--in unity. Find the meaning beneath the surface, and get all the connections right. Let the reader see it." --Rebecca Evans (Boise, Idaho)
PEN America Recommendations. Ryan served as fiction mentor to prisoners via PEN's online system
High-Risk Fiction: A Writing Workshop
This class encourages fiction that, like all good writing, takes emotional risks. This riskiness sets literature apart from the dishonesty of bad books, TV, and movies. Workshop is not confession, but in the privacy of their writing rooms students might begin to tell personal stories that perhaps they have only told about other people.
"Tell everything on yourself," Raymond Carver urged. Virginia Woolf would have agreed: "If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people." Yet we will never assume anything in a story actually happened to the writer. Rigorous storytelling, of course, evolves into fiction, blurring and even obliterating its source material.
We will read published stories as models. Amy Hempel writes of a woman who abandons a close friend dying of cancer, and confronts the aftermath of her choice. Thom Jones explores one soldier’s psychological territory of war, aggression, and epileptic torment, in which “illness” provokes desires to find a better way to live.
Hemingway: A Writing Workshop
We will read the short stories of Ernest Hemingway as writers, applying his mastery of craft to our own fiction. Hemingway is still the most influential writer of our time. His literary principles are universal. He was no minimalist, nor a mere innovator of style. Writers around the world claim him as their greatest teacher, including such talents as Albert Camus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Frederick Barthelme, and John Updike.
To read Hemingway well is an experience of profound enrichment. He rendered human experience with such intensity and truth, creative writers will always search his prose for secrets.
While discouraging Hemingway imitations, this class will examine concepts that writers of all tastes can use to improve their work. We’ll discuss sensory detail, compression, density of meaning, musical language, coiled dialogue, and the iceberg principle. We’ll devote the second half of class to workshopping our own stories.
Raymond Carver: A Writing Workshop
His characters are often haunted by their own failings. But they would sooner drink or change the subject than own up. They blame others, tell lies, inflict subtle cruelties, and fail to love. Although tempted to judge them and find less honest reading, we keep turning pages for, of course, we are reading about ourselves.
Carver achieved the highest level of emotional power, spiritual force, and artistic excellence in his short fiction, each line rewarding the careful reader with its precision and depth. Thus he became the most influential author of the late twentieth century, inspiring a generation of writers, including Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Tobias Wolff.
Chekhov’s Characters: A Writing Workshop
"The Teacher of Literature" treats a man who constantly tells his friends and family of his own happiness, and discovers that beneath his surface he is quite a different person. In "The Petchenyeg," however, we meet a truly miserable man with a distorted vision who believes any happy person must be pretending.
No question is settled for Chekhov. He is more interested in the myriad ways we deceive ourselves than in any fixed truth. Perhaps for Chekhov truth is simply the careful observation of human beings.
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