Bookreporter.com - Author Profile: Alan Watt

Alan Watt

BIO

Alan Watt was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1965. At the age of three he moved with his family to North America, finally settling on a strawberry farm in Guelph, Ontario when he was ten. At eighteen he moved to Toronto to pursue a career as a standup comic. He has spent much of his adult life working as a comedian. He now writes full-time. DIAMOND DOGS is his first novel.

INTERVIEW

September 1, 2000

Alan Watt's debut novel, DIAMOND DOGS, will stun you with its stark and brilliant characters and prose. It's the story of what happens to your life after you make that one irrevocable mistake. And even further, what happens when your father helps you cover it up. Find out what it took for this standup comedian to turn novelist and more behind the title, the idea, and the desert of DIAMOND DOGS as TBR's Editorial Manager Dana Schwartz interviews Watt.

TBR: DIAMOND DOGS is an incredible debut novel --- what an achievement. It's seamless and intense, a literary psychological thriller over a tragic coming-of-age story. I couldn't put it down and now that I'm done, I can't stop thinking and talking about it. After writing such an amazing book, are you anxious about your next one? Do you have plans for another one?

AW: I am working on the next one. When my agent sold DIAMOND DOGS, she told me that a lot of people wanted to know what I was writing next and suddenly I felt this pressure. "Gee, what are people going to think of the next one?" It lasted about a day. It's liberating to know that no matter what one does, there will always be someone who detests it.

TBR: The book centers on a high school football star, Neil Garvin, who accidentally kills a fellow student while driving home drunk. When his father, the town sheriff, covers it up, there is no turning back. Neil spends the next few days in the novel coming unhinged, and all the while Neil Diamond --- his father's favorite singer --- croons eerily in the background. How did you choose Neil Diamond to be such a significant part of the book? Did you have any other musicians in mind?

AW: No, I never had any other musicians in mind. When I moved to L.A. I had one tape in my car. I don't know if I bought it or somebody gave it to me, but it was Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits and it was all I listened to for a year while driving around. I never listened to the radio; I'm not sure why. And his songs really burned a hole in my brain. Neil Diamond is a brilliant songwriter and I just knew that the father was obsessed with him and found solace in the music, some kind of absolution. It just couldn't have been another musician. His songs are very emotional, very powerful, but there's also something sort of manipulative about them, like he knows he's pushing your buttons. I guess maybe it could have been Don Ho. I could have called the book Ho Dogs. That's a joke.

TBR: Tell me the meaning you intended for the title of DIAMOND DOGS, and let me know if my theory is close or completely off base. I imagine that "Diamond Dogs" refers to the sad lonely men who follow Neil Diamond around, like Neil's father, who for those 90 minutes find peace and serenity. They are the dogs, forever roaming the desert and never coming up with anything substantial other than the brief moment of music. What was your inspiration?

AW: Well, yes, that is right. But the title I ripped off from Bowie's album from the early '70s, which my UK editor told me he lifted from William Burroughs --- that made me feel a whole lot better. It's the only title that made any sense. There was a time when we wondered about changing it, but nobody could come up with anything. It sort of had to be Diamond Dogs. So yes, it's about loneliness, isolation, these men at the concerts, looking to make a connection --- a connection with anything. Not even necessarily with another person, but just with some kind of meaning. The book is about searching to uncover your secrets that are keeping you trapped, whatever they are, and holding them up to the light and letting go of the stranglehold they have on you.

TBR: You mention in an essay you wrote about the book that for thirteen years after the end of a relationship you wrote like a fiend, in bars, in restaurants, drunk, sober. Is this when you were mulling around the idea for DIAMOND DOGS in your head? Did that time period lead to any other stories or ideas you plan to write about?

AW: I didn't begin writing as a result of a failed relationship, though that sounds very romantic and perhaps I'll start telling people that that is what happened. I wrote hours and hours of standup comedy plus many unproduced screenplays, most of them unreadable --- I am the antithesis of a prodigy. I never wrote any prose, except once I wrote a short story for my sister for Christmas. And yes, that time period did lead to a lot of stories that I want to write eventually.

TBR: You've been a standup comic for years, so one might assume your first book would be humorous --- but it's not --- the intensity of the novel rules out any space for humor. Why were you drawn to such a heavy subject matter?

AW: I know I'm the only person who feels this way, but I don't agree that the book is not humorous. If you saw me do standup you'd see that the voice is just very dry. But who knows, maybe my standup wasn't funny either.

TBR: If you think about it, standup comedy is inherently dark not only because you're satirizing the human condition, but also because it is such a cutthroat business. If you don't make people laugh you're a failure. Do you think your background in comedy aids in writing dark stories?

AW: Comedians and emergency surgeons have the darkest senses of humor. Comedians have heard every joke there is and nothing is going to make them laugh unless it's totally original or totally sick. And sick is so much easier to conjure in a bar at two in the morning than original.

TBR: I really appreciate how you took what is so often a cliche character --- good looking popular quarterback --- and make him so heartbreakingly human. During the first few pages you want to knock him out, but midway through you just want to hold him. How did you create such a realistic character out of what could have easily been a stereotype?

AW: I don't know. I guess I never thought of him as a stereotype.

TBR: From the first chapter, Neil explains how the absence of his mother, who left him when he was a baby, still affects his daily life. He can't concentrate in school because he is obsessed with finding out WHY she left. When the doorbell rings he still hopes to see her standing there. Do you think people who've been abandoned by one parent, or both, can ever get over the feeling of loss and the discovery of 'why'?

AW: Gee, I hope so, but I'm not a psychologist, just a hopeful person.

TBR: Neil's father inspires a frightening image in the reader's imagination. I see him as almost superhuman, as a very tan chisel-faced stony man, over six feet tall with large calloused hands that could knock anyone out. But this is really only a facade for a lonely man who finds solace only in Neil Diamond. How do you imagine Neil's dad? If someone were to play him in a movie, who would it be?

AW: I never imagined the father that much in a physical sense. For me, like all characters, he mostly exists as a state of mind. It's funny what we put on things. You described Neil as "good-looking," and I think they say that on the book jacket as well, yet nowhere in the book does Neil describe himself beyond saying that he's tall and skinny.

TBR: I got chills when Neil opened the trunk to find Ian's body gone and he realizes that his father must have gotten rid of the body. The psychological unraveling of Neil and his father starts here, first with the death, and then with the cover up. Neil would have been better off if his father unveiled his secret right then and there --- by covering it up he adds yet another secret to his soul. Why do you think he covers up for his son, besides the obvious reasons of helping him?

AW: Consciously, as far as he is concerned, that is the only reason he covers it up --- to protect Neil. Subconsciously, well, I'm not even sure I can answer that. I suppose, subconsciously, getting rid of the body is Chester's way of showing his son that he loves him.

TBR: The sand that comes in through the plastic sheet covering one absent wall of the house is a significant image. You realize things other than sand have been building up in that house for years --- secrets. Neil's father harbors secrets and drowns them every night with a glass of green midori. Do you think once the secrets are let loose he'll be able to move on with his life, put back the wall, stop drinking the midori?

AW: Good question. I guess one would hope. And like Neil says...all we have is hope.

TBR: High school football can be a dangerous obsession to the players, their parents, the faculty and the school --- especially in small towns where there is not much else to occupy the time. Fathers like Neil's live vicariously through their son's successes --- and failures. When Neil kills Ian, his father knows it will ruin his son's future and ultimately his. Why do you think Americans have become so fixated on football? Why do we let football players get away with what other teenagers cannot? Is football that important?

AW: We reward achievement. We always have. I suppose people are fixated on it, like everything in life, art and literature, because we want to see how it's going to turn out. I don't know if it's necessarily true that we let football players get away with more than any other teenager. I think it's true that oftentimes people aren't honest about their motives, and if a star player gets in trouble and that trouble is going to jeopardize a win for the school; then it's more likely he'll be sheltered than if he wasn't a star. We just never have as much character as we would like.

TBR: The action of DIAMOND DOGS takes place in just four days, but it feels like so much longer. Do you think everything that happened could have taken place in such a short period of time, or did you make it shorter to heighten the intensity?

AW: I don't think what happened in those four days is unrealistic. I worked with an FBI agent during the rewrite to ensure the accuracy of the events of the investigation. But it is fiction and not a police log, and so I really just wanted to focus on the vital elements necessary to tell the story.

TBR: The story in DIAMOND DOGS is so well crafted. Did you outline it ahead of time, or just write?

AW: I outlined it briefly. I'd had it in my head for a while.

TBR: What books, authors have inspired your life and your writing?

AW: Russell Banks for wisdom, Pynchon for language, and Hemingway for everything. Charles Bukowski has my favorite line about writing. This lady moves in with him and says, "Will I disturb your writing if I vacuum?" He says, "Nothing can disturb my writing, it's a disease." I thought that was funny.

TBR: What are you reading now?

AW: Right now I'm reading nonfiction, research for the next one.

TBR: What advice would you give aspiring writers? Aspiring standup comics?

AW: Advice? I don't have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you're writing, you're a writer. Write like you're a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there's no chance for a pardon. Write like you're clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you've got just one last thing to say, like you're a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God's sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don't. Who knows, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to.