What is your view on the issue of the “American Dream”: putting down roots vs. going on the road?
I vote to abolish it. We have to find new ways to live and not follow formulas.
When you deny the American dream you, essentially, accept it.
Where are you from?
San Diego, California. The first house I lived in after I came back from the hospital was a little beach-town cottage on 1319 Missouri Street. There were chickens and a garden. These days I live on a farm near the Missouri River. There are chickens and a garden here too.
Even when you leave home, you ultimately take something with you. In this case, when Adam left his home, he ended up on a farm once again. In Winesburg, Ohio, George Willard and Elizabeth Willard are dissatisfied with their life and want to leave. This is similar but also different because even though they want to leave, they find escape impossible. In the end, George Willard does find a way out, but many people claim he will fail.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
In Locust House there are a few of them, but the one I want people to walk away with is that you will suffer if you try to hold onto your dreams but that it's worth the struggle. I say this because there's a particular awfulness in disappointing yourself by going back on your plans.
This connects to Gatsby and A Raisin in the Sun. It qualifies A Raisin in the Sun by saying that, yes, you will struggle if you hold onto your dreams, but that in the end it's worth it. It extends The Great Gatsby by adding the idea of disappointment by not achieving your dream.
When and why did you begin writing?
I began writing as a teenager after reading a magazine piece set in a small fishing village in Portugal. I liked the style so I wrote a story about my own life in the same fashion. It was published in the San Diego Reader and they gave me more money than I'd made all month mowing my parents' lawn and doing yard work for the neighbors. I like to think that when they found out how young I was they didn't take any of my new pitches. But really, my new pitches were awful, kid stuff as you might imagine. Years later I was interviewed by a journalist from Portugal and at the end of it he told me I should visit his village if I were ever in Portugal. Of course I asked him what the name of the village was hoping to hell it would be the same, and it was. A few years after that I ended up staying with him after a disastrous trip through Europe. The village was called Ericeira. A good, lovely place. Big cliffs and beachside fishermen's bars. Hilly streets, blue and white painted walls. The very old Old World.
Opportunity, a bi part of the American Experience, brought Adam Gnade his dream. The poem Cages qualifies Adam's statement by saying that even when opportunity is present, if you don't take it, someone else will and that it could be a possible a cage in disguise.
What inspired you to write your first book?
Wanting to show America as I know it which has been one of my big motivations for all the fiction since.
Locust House and Adam's other works are just one point of view on the American Dream/Experience. They're how he sees America. The Dream is always changing shape for every person.
I vote to abolish it. We have to find new ways to live and not follow formulas.
When you deny the American dream you, essentially, accept it.
Where are you from?
San Diego, California. The first house I lived in after I came back from the hospital was a little beach-town cottage on 1319 Missouri Street. There were chickens and a garden. These days I live on a farm near the Missouri River. There are chickens and a garden here too.
Even when you leave home, you ultimately take something with you. In this case, when Adam left his home, he ended up on a farm once again. In Winesburg, Ohio, George Willard and Elizabeth Willard are dissatisfied with their life and want to leave. This is similar but also different because even though they want to leave, they find escape impossible. In the end, George Willard does find a way out, but many people claim he will fail.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
In Locust House there are a few of them, but the one I want people to walk away with is that you will suffer if you try to hold onto your dreams but that it's worth the struggle. I say this because there's a particular awfulness in disappointing yourself by going back on your plans.
This connects to Gatsby and A Raisin in the Sun. It qualifies A Raisin in the Sun by saying that, yes, you will struggle if you hold onto your dreams, but that in the end it's worth it. It extends The Great Gatsby by adding the idea of disappointment by not achieving your dream.
When and why did you begin writing?
I began writing as a teenager after reading a magazine piece set in a small fishing village in Portugal. I liked the style so I wrote a story about my own life in the same fashion. It was published in the San Diego Reader and they gave me more money than I'd made all month mowing my parents' lawn and doing yard work for the neighbors. I like to think that when they found out how young I was they didn't take any of my new pitches. But really, my new pitches were awful, kid stuff as you might imagine. Years later I was interviewed by a journalist from Portugal and at the end of it he told me I should visit his village if I were ever in Portugal. Of course I asked him what the name of the village was hoping to hell it would be the same, and it was. A few years after that I ended up staying with him after a disastrous trip through Europe. The village was called Ericeira. A good, lovely place. Big cliffs and beachside fishermen's bars. Hilly streets, blue and white painted walls. The very old Old World.
Opportunity, a bi part of the American Experience, brought Adam Gnade his dream. The poem Cages qualifies Adam's statement by saying that even when opportunity is present, if you don't take it, someone else will and that it could be a possible a cage in disguise.
What inspired you to write your first book?
Wanting to show America as I know it which has been one of my big motivations for all the fiction since.
Locust House and Adam's other works are just one point of view on the American Dream/Experience. They're how he sees America. The Dream is always changing shape for every person.