Laura Ellen Scott is the author of the novel, Death Wishing (Ig Publishing), and the chapbook, Curio (Uncanny Valley Press). Her most recent fiction has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Monkeybicycle, and PANK.
Her story, "A Picture of a Man in a Top Hat," appeared in Issue Fifty-Two of The Collagist.
Here, Laura Ellen Scott talks with interviewer William Hoffacker about Alex the Parrot, Three Men and a Baby, and proclamations on social media.
What can you tell us about the origins of this story (how/why/when you began to write the first draft and/or to conceive the initial idea)?
While getting off the bus at my house I passed a stranger who said to me, “Don’t look at me, and don’t look in the shed.” Seriously, what a gift. The moment happened at a time when I was struggling with an essay that I had to abandon because my management of the subject was too nasty; it was about sadness in art and persona. But I can be as cruel as I want within the confines of a screwy ghost story.
The piece has a conversational tone, which I noticed on my first read-through based on the parentheticals in the third paragraph, especially “(with a kid, with a kid! we’re not weird).” Then the story takes an interesting turn in paragraph seven with the sentence, “My problem first, then yours,” making it clearer that the narrator is addressing someone specific. The sentences that follow contain multiple references to social media, including having seen “your update” and the lines “I’m not really your friend. I’m just one of the people you said could watch.” What made you decide to frame your story in this way, with references to unseen words and a larger context that the reader is not fully privy to?
I’m pretty sure I’m ripping off Scott Garson—especially “Kansas City Gymnopédie” (“Who keeps throwing papers on our driveways? No one subscribes!”). I like a conflict with lots of crenulations, but Scott is so skilled he can make do with The Topeka Shopper. The notion that one is arguing with an uncaring cosmos is always a fun one, but we’re in a moment where proclamations are part of our regular communications. Social media allows you to be a child in that you can say things like “Red-eared sliders are the BEST turtles,” without making anyone feel uncomfortable. However, I think most of us have manic acquaintances who abuse the privilege, so this story is a fantasy about diverting the discourse, turning it into a conversation. And from a dramatic point of view, conversations are most interesting when you don’t know what they are about.
I want to ask you about these lines: “‘You be good.’ The last words of Alex the parrot. (Google it.)” After my second reading of the story, I did Google it, and learned a few things about Alex the parrot. Do you hope that other readers have done/will do the same? Did you intend for the story to be read in this way? (Also, if anything, what interests you about Google and Facebook in interaction with writing, whether process or subject matter?)
My intention was to inoculate the reader against pathos. That parrot has done enough for us. RIP. But I guess there’s a useful reminder for me as a writer: any point I intend ends up achieving both my goal and its opposite effect. I hope the line, “The last words of Alex the parrot,” still takes care of business without going to the source. Even better, it sounds like “The story of Jerry and the Dog.” There are three statements of intentional/unintentional goodbye in that section of the story, with Alex the parrot’s being most public and discoverable. “We are already ghosts” was a writer friend’s last blog post, and “theft-dismemberment-rape” was a status update that I manipulated. Again, it’s like conversations—the more you know, the less interesting they become, but there’s this wide, middle area between ignorance and knowledge where you have the bits and pieces to imagine a gazillion explanations. That’s where I work.
I feel I must ask you about the title of this story, “A Picture of a Man in a Top Hat.” Not what one would expect to see, having read the piece. How did you come up with this title? What is the connection in your mind? What function does the title serve, besides merely labeling the story?
The working title was something like, “The Ghost in ‘3 Men and A Baby’ Was a Cardboard Cutout of Ted Danson in a Top Hat,” in reference to the Eleanor Roosevelt shadow that’s bugging the narrator. So shedding all those details is more anti-label, I think. I hope. Titles for novels need to gather and announce, but titles for shorter work can point elsewhere. If the narrator has life beyond these 700 words then I hope the reader can imagine her possible reactions to this picture of a stranger. I’m thinking she finds it behind a secret board in the attic, etc. I love that cliché.
What writing projects are you working on now?
I just finished my Death Valley novel, The Juliet, and now I have to convince someone to publish it. The main narrative tracks the seven-day pursuit of an infamous emerald during the great wildflower bloom of 2005, and that story is intertwined with a hundred years of the curse’s effects. It’s a sort of casual history of American depravity in the twentieth century that includes rock stars, cowboys, prostitutes, and the insane.
This summer I plan to finish a murder book comprised of three novellas set at a small college that, in its desperation to save the liberal arts, has partnered with a local prison to provide a unique crime-writing program. Look for death, sex, ivy, tattoos, good vocabulary, and so forth.
What have you read recently that you would like to recommend?
Not that it needs my recommendation, but Pessi’s Night Film was incredibly satisfying, and I’m looking forward to the release of the third book in Winters’ The Last Policeman series. Anyone who hasn’t read the first two should get on it because that asteroid is headed our way. I’m not a big anthology fan, but every story in Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder is great, even the one that makes fun of the place where I work. In non-murder books, get Megan Martin’s Nevers. Breathtaking.