Paul Vega is a managing editor for Pacifica Literary Review and received his MFA from the University of Washington. He has been published or has work forthcoming in BULL: Men’s Fiction, The Collagist, The Portland Review, theNewerYork, Ambush Review, and elsewhere. He teaches writing in Seattle and works seasonally in Alaska.
His essay, "Whiteout," appeared in Issue Fifty-Nine of The Collagist.
Here, Paul Vega talks with interviewer William Hoffacker about flash nonfiction, devastating memories, and the inclusive "we."
Your essay “Whiteout” consists of only one paragraph. Was it always this compact, or did you have to whittle it down over multiple drafts? What did you hope to achieve by keeping the essay so concise?
The essay came to me virtually intact, which is not at all my writing style, but it was a long time percolating in the back of my mind. A few years back, I brought a forty-page “fiction” manuscript to a workshop at UW that was something of a disaster—both for me and for my fellow workshoppers. (What to do with 40 pages of a stranger’s account of his sister’s death?) Her death was still so recent, and it read like more of a reportage, almost like a journal of the events so I could better process it, but not something that had another dimension to relate to other readers. When I wrote “Whiteout,” I’d been reading a lot of prose poem type pieces in other journals and also by friends, and it struck me that by limiting myself to 500 or 600 words I might strike nearer to the heart of the matter and also free myself from the artifice of short story or memoir. I didn’t need to explain to the reader how any of us got to that hospital room (which, really, itself is inexplicable) but could instead just focus on that transcendent moment and the effect it had on the speaker and the family.
With a speaker that makes more use of “We” than “I,” the essay never explicitly reveals the nature of your relationship with Julia. How did you decide that this detail should remain ambiguous? What effect do you think that choice has on the reader?
Obviously “We” is more inclusive, and I think it was a reactive choice to the “I” in the workshop manuscript I mentioned. That piece was mostly about what happened to me, as a brother and as a person trying to make sense of my own fractured life. A big part of that story, and something I still wanted show in this essay, is that even when something devastating happens to someone you love, you have the capacity to be very self-involved. You are human, and dying (for most people) doesn’t happen at all once but over a long period of time. You are paralyzed by the dying of someone close to you, but you are still living and you both revel in that knowledge and feel guilty for it. But I also wanted to point out that everyone involved has that capacity. So “We” focuses the essay on both the shared inner lives of the family and the speaker and on the community that death creates, a community forged not just through the relationship to the person dying, and but also through the logistical elements we are forced to death with - the phone calls to family and friends, the writing of the obituary, the arrangements of the funeral, the impossibility of how to best memorialize. “We” is also a way to include the reader as someone who has or will one day have to enter into this community.
“Death of a loved one” is a topic that many students and young writers are advised against writing about, because such a universal experience can yield some generic thoughts and feelings rather than fresh takes and new insights. What do you believe your essay brought to this sensitive subject that other memoirs and stories have not?
It’s a great question. Clearly it was a problem for me when trying to write about my sister in the past. And it would be arrogant and foolish to say this essay solves the problem of creating a “fresh take” from something as universal as death. Still, I’m proud that the emotional rawness is still here without consuming the work and how I was able to use the collective “we” to bolster the speaker, develop his character, and show the solidarity in “bearing the unspeakable burden” (my dear friend Lisa’s words). It’s a humble aim, to hope personal poignancy connects with readers and makes them reflect on their own experiences. In some small way, I hope I did that.
Was creating this essay therapeutic for you at all? Do you find writing and publishing to be helpful in changing and/or processing your feelings?
As I wrote above, it was definitely helpful in processing the feelings. I don’t know that I would say it was therapeutic, unless crying into your Americano in a public café while strangers stare at you and worry for your well-being is therapeutic. I would say it was personally significant to reflect more on Julia’s death and to have something permanent that says her life and death mattered and still does to a lot of people. At the same time, it’s devastating to re-visit the memories and put it out to there in a public forum knowing it might have the same effect on my family. My parents buried their first-born; I am already older than my sister was when she died. Who wants to be reminded of that? Ultimately, I hope the quality of the art outweighs the emotional toll of creating it, but I sometimes have my doubts.
What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m working on a number of short stories and other prose poems, just trying to keep the tiny flame of my writer life alive and tell anyone who wants to know that I’m a person in this world they might like to read and know. More precisely, I have another short piece about my sister out there, and a couple pieces about relationships and commercial fishing in the works. You can always Google me if you get the itch, lord knows I have. I’m out there sawing away in some corner of the Internet.
What have you read recent that you’d like to recommend?
The last four things I’ve read in order are Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere by Lucas Mann, Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins, Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson, and Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon. They are all eminently studly in their own ways. Mann if you like cerebral, non-pretentious sports writing. Watkins, if you enjoy brass balls, lyrical western stories. Henderson, if McCarthesque Montana tragedy is up your alley. Yoon if you have a pulse.
Journals are great too. I edit one so I’m always reading them. ZYZZYVA is great, Ninth Letter is great, CutBank is great, The Collagist is great. Small Portions over at UW Bothell is a gem. People should read more journals. They are great.