Bostonist Interview: Jonathan Messinger, Author

It's not easy. I have a show tomorrow night where I have to read something original. I haven’t had time to write the story, so I'm going to go home tonight and start on that story around 10 o'clock tonight and just work until it is done. Either I wake up early and write, or I stay up late and write. Occasionally, if I'm really in the mood, I'll get something going on my lunch break, but it's hard to get your head in the right place to do that.

Is it easier writing short stories, then? You are also working on a novel, but why the short-story format?

I love short stories. I love the idea of being able to get in, tell a story, hit a moment, and really investigate that one moment, and get out. As far as the Dollar Store goes, I've written a lot of short stories because I've been doing the Dollar Store for three years now, and that format fits the show best. In the book, half the stories are from the Dollar Store. I've always had an affection for the short story. I am working on a novel, and it's been fun, but it's a little more unwieldy in a good way.

Do you have to go back and redraft a story over and over, or is it easier to tackle one moment?

It is easier. Writing a good short story is easier than writing a good novel in the sense that it takes a lot less time. The same techniques and the same skills are required of both, but as far as my time, with the day job and everything, it is easier to account for my attention span by working on a short story.

How did you go about picking the short stories for Hiding Out?

It was a long process. I started off with about 30 stories. I narrowed those down and started looking at a pile of maybe 20 or so stories, a couple more than that. I started reading through to pick out which stories seemed to work together the best as far as what they were about and what they were getting at. I had a couple of editors, friends who have either written books or have very, sort of, good heads when it comes to fiction. As far as organizing the book, it's one of those things where, it's like a musician or a band making an album. You want to organize the stories to have a certain rhythm. You don't want to have one story that has a similar tone right after another one so it doesn't get too repetitive, that sort of thing.

One story will be about a kid, and then another will go into the mind of a factory worker in China. I'm guessing the mug in the China story was from the Dollar Store, right? How do you get inside the heads of such different people? Where do you get the personal experience to develop a close third-person or first-person perspective?

I basically try not to bore myself. The last couple Dollar Store stories I've written have been about teenagers or involve teenagers in some way. The story I'm going to write tonight--I've made a rule for myself. No teenagers. How do you get in each head? That's what literature and reading is all about, trying to find that commonality that allows a writer or a reader to be transported into the life of someone else. That's an effort I make--hopefully it's successful at times.

Have you been to China?

I never have, no.

It had so much detail, so I was wondering where you got the descriptions of the city.

I read a lot about it. I've read a lot about China. Then there's the story about the kung fu master and his father, the grand master. I've studied martial arts. I don't currently study, but I have pretty much all my life. When I wrote both of those stories, I was around my Chinese kung fu teachers a lot in classes. My teachers would tell me stories. I was interested in that culture, of course.

Moving back from the book, how hard was it to start your own press? That's a pretty tall order.

It is! It is still a work in progress. We're getting better with each book. My friend Zach [Dodson] and I, I work as a book editor at Time Out Chicago, and Zach used to be a designer here. He designed the book section, so we became fast friends and started talking about small presses. That's one of the things I try to do a lot at the magazine is cover small-press books. There's a lack of that here in Chicago. The publishing industry is concentrated in New York.

I think the only reason we did it is because we didn't realize how hard it was going to be. If we had known, then we would probably have backed off, but we were too dumb. We modeled it on 2 things. One is one of the more successful small presses that we look up to a lot, Akashic Books in New York and Small Beer, which is in Northampton. I spent some time talking with both of those places, getting advice from them, doing a lot of reading. We tried to model it after a lot of the indie-rock labels that we admire. We take a lot of our business models from them.

Which labels do you mean?

The granddaddy of them all would be Dischord. We've partnered with Flameshovel Records here in Chicago. They sell our books at their events, we sell their CDs at our events, we put their sampler CD in what we mail out and that sort of thing. We have a nice partnership with them, and we were able to steal their ideas when it was applicable.

How did you end up in Chicago?

I grew up in Beverly outside Boston. I went to school in Worcester, and when I graduated from school in 2000, it's a long story, but I felt like I wanted to get out of Massachusetts for a little while. Being a Boston kid, I refused to move to New York. I could not live in the same city as the Yankees. I didn't want to move to LA. So what about Chicago? I came out here and checked it out and really liked it. I said, okay, I'll be here for a year, and then I ended up being able to get a decent job out here. A decent job, you make friends, I have a serious girlfriend out here now, so I kind of settled in.

Last night, I did a reading at bar here in Chicago, and I kept rudely backing up, taking a look at the TV to see if the Red Sox were still in the lead! I still have a lot of Boston in my blood, that's for sure.