Publishing a book is exciting for any author, but it also comes with a great deal of stress – there’s interviews to do, reviews to read (or avoid), and emails from well-wishers to answer.
Now imagine releasing two books on the same day.
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That’s the position that Dagoberto Gilb found himself in when City Lights published his latest short story collection, “New Testaments,” on the same day that the University of New Mexico Press’ imprint High Road Books released his new essay collection, “A Passing West: Essays from the Borderlands.”
Gilb was already having a busy week when he talked about his latest books. “I’m always a little nuts, but this is an exceptional level of nuts for me,” he said of having two books come out the same day. “I mean, it’s really nice and I’m really proud of them. I’m pleased. It couldn’t be cooler. And they really both are equal loves.”
Gilb, a Los Angeles native who studied religious studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, came to literature in an unusual way. After getting his master’s degree at the college, he began working as a high-rise construction worker in Los Angeles and El Paso, Texas, writing when he found the time.
He would send stories out to journals, eventually getting one published in The Threepenny Review, and published a chapbook, “Winners on the Pass Line,” in 1985. Eight years later, the University of New Mexico Press published his story collection “The Magic of Blood,” which won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award.
Gilb would go on to gain recognition for his novels “The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña” and “The Flowers” and his story collections “Woodcuts of Women” and “Before the End, After the Beginning.”
Gilb spoke about his work and career via telephone from his home in Mexico City. This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
Q: In the preface to “A Passing West,” you write, “Stories, short like they are, aren’t big, don’t holler, don’t go big screen like Titanic or Gone with the Wind.” Is that part of what draws you to writing them?
Absolutely. It’s because I like the nobodies. I don’t like big characters. I don’t care for them in life. I like small people. I’m from the small people, the little people. We’re not the big heroes. We’re the people that make tortillas. And writing short fiction – I don’t like to call it short fiction. I like to call it stories. I always feel like using the adjective “short” is a concession to the egotistical novelist.
Q: When you’re writing your stories, do you start with a character first?
Yeah, the character and usually an ending. I try to figure out where it began, and I go backwards until [I find] the beginning. It’s the same thing I do when I write nonfiction. The difference being with nonfiction, you have to stick with facts, and with fiction, I create the facts.
Q: Do you find one more gratifying than the other?
They’re both a mystery. I studied philosophy and religion; I didn’t study English. I studied myth. I studied the wisdom stories and the myth stories. That’s what I obsess on. Nonfiction is about getting the exact details, and then at the end saying, “Look at that. There is a moon and we are on a planet and we are both spinning around and isn’t it amazing that we’re alive?” Whereas with fiction, you are telling a story and you say, “Look what happens when I put on a yellow hat on the sky.”
The interesting thing with fiction, people often say, “You write from reality. You’re a realist.” No way. I use realism. I make it look like realism is Buddhist. It is just an illusion of realism. And I make it seem as real as nonfiction. But none of these stories are me. It’s a conglomeration, a collage, almost like a mosaic window of pieces I put together. You don’t notice, but I used a piece over here and a piece from there and a piece from there. When I’m done, I present the window, and people say, ‘Wow, that’s really good.” And I want to say, “Don’t get too close. You’ll see where I glued it.”
Q: You started writing while you were working at what I would consider a really hard job.
After college, I didn’t want to go to a library and read books and talk about the books I liked. I wanted a story to tell. I chose construction. Every friend I had basically had jobs like that. I had a hammer and made money and things didn’t always go well. I ended up homeless and living in the YMCA and then worried that, Oh my God, what if I get stuck here? What if I don’t get any money soon? But I lived an adventure. And I thought people would like that, but they don’t. They like going to MFA programs and talking to other people that read books. Writing is an adventure, not a credentialed life. “Let me get my MFA and go teach at Stanford.” I’m just like, are you kidding? I didn’t go to school to become a school person.
Q: In “A Passing West,” you write that there’s a Mexican America that tends to get ignored. Why do you think that is?
I hate to say it, but it seems like passive racism. It’s like that disease of your eyes, where you lose the center of your vision. They see hands serving them a plate of enchiladas and tacos. They see the architecture: “Oh, isn’t Tucson beautiful? We love the colors. We love Frida Kahlo.” And they won’t say it’s Mexican. It’s Mexicans that you let Trump call invaders. We’re always invaders, even three or four generations in. If you came from Kansas to California and your family’s from Kansas, you are American. But if your family’s from Reynosa, you’re an invader.
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