{"id":1188,"date":"2020-04-24T22:03:44","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T05:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2020-04-24T22:03:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T05:03:45","slug":"from-fire-to-mercy-a-conversation-between-steven-wingate-and-matthew-s-rosin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/?p=1188","title":{"rendered":"From Fire To Mercy: A Conversation Between Steven Wingate and Matthew S. Rosin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In April 2019, Steven Wingate\u2019s debut novel Of Fathers and Fire<\/em> was published by the University of Nebraska Press<\/a>. The novel follows a 17-year-old man-child, Tommy Sandor, who\u2019s just learning that his mother lied to him about who his father is, and whose actual father\u2014recently released from prison\u2014has come to town to find him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wingate is also an essayist and the author of a moving digital memoir, daddylabyrinth<\/em><\/a>. There, Wingate works to cultivate, on behalf of his sons, a more-merciful masculinity than the troubled and angry model given to him by his own father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I interviewed Wingate about the connections between Of Fathers and Fire<\/em> and daddylabyrinth<\/em>, navigating masculinities in youth and adulthood, fear and shame, and the necessity of mercy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * * * *<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosin:<\/em><\/strong> Having read both your novel and your digital memoir, it strikes me that <\/em>Of Fathers and Fire puts the reader inside Tommy\u2019s own fictional <\/em>daddylabyrinth. The novel describes \u201ctoo many Tommies\u201d inside the one young man, each emulating or rejecting a different vision of manhood. Tommy\u2019s story also borrows and remixes aspects of your own biography.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does one project predate the other, or were they roughly contemporaneous? Did working on one clarify your intentions with the other?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wingate: <\/strong>These two projects are two soups cooking from the same base. Ever since I first became a father in 2005\u2014after decades of believing I\u2019d never be one because I thought I\u2019d inherited my father\u2019s \u201ccurse\u201d of mental illness and emotional violence\u2014my mind has been chewing on fatherhood. I wanted to make sure I didn\u2019t go down the same path of anger that my own dad did, and I dealt with this threat the only way I knew how: by writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of that came out in fiction through writing Of Fathers and Fire<\/em>, which I started around 2006. At the same time, I had many nonfiction fragments of father\/son material but no way to make them into a traditional book. Finally, in 2012, I discovered Scalar, the digital platform daddylabyrinth<\/em> is built on, and it let me sprawl in a way linear storytelling wouldn\u2019t. By then, I\u2019d done a few versions of the novel, and I forgot about fiction awhile to \u201cgo digital.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing about fatherhood and sonhood in daddylabyrinth<\/em> gave me a strong sense of the multiplicity of male identity. Aren\u2019t men always facing the \u201ctoo many selves\u201d problem the way Tommy is, trying on and rejecting different versions of masculinity? And I don\u2019t mean just young men. I\u2019m continuously asking myself as an adult what kind of man I want to be, and I don\u2019t think the process is substantially different than it was when I was Tommy\u2019s age. I\u2019m simply more used to it now and can better foresee the consequences of my choices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever our age, we\u2019re continuously curating our own sense of masculinity. That\u2019s why I believe we can change our personal and intergenerational narratives. My sons are growing up in a very different environment than I did, and it\u2019s not just a matter of stability or social class. It\u2019s a matter of them having a father who decided that the line of emotional violence has got to stop with him. Both daddylabyrinth<\/em> and Of Fathers and Fire<\/em> are linked to that personal project: moving away from emotional violence, from anger toward mercy. I don\u2019t think writing these projects solved my problem, but the energy I spend stopping that legacy has defined how I curate myself as a man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosin: <\/em><\/strong>Of Fathers and Fire powerfully portrays the difficulty of sorting through the self, and I found the story\u2019s \u201cmagical\u201d elements particularly captivating in this regard. For example, I was intrigued by how hate accumulates physically in the characters\u2019 bodies as lumpy chunks, which they must learn to find and extract through the skin, lest it destroy their capacity to enter into fellowship with others.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wingate:<\/strong> The most direct sign that we don\u2019t know ourselves is our bodies. We take them for granted but don\u2019t fathom all their secrets or have control over them. They\u2019re our first paradox: intimately familiar, yet ultimately unknowable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The magic of the body is essential and primordial, and I wanted to get at that energy with my use of the supernatural in the novel. What I\u2019m working with isn\u2019t Harry Potter<\/em> magic. There are no spells you need to be specifically trained to use, because the magic is in your body already. The characters simply cultivate a direct connection with the natural elements that they can use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens in the novel is more like rain dances and shamanic incantations than it is like magic. I wanted to dig down to the roots where we are one with the world and write from there. This spiritual relationship with nature is the fundament of what would later grow into the religions of the world, and it\u2019s a current that still runs inside those religions, whether they choose to admit it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosin:<\/em><\/span><\/strong> Fear and shame loom large in the journeys of Tommy\u2019s mother (Connie Sandor) and father (Richie Thorpe), and Connie\u2019s predicament shows the brutal consequences of a narrowly-conceived masculinity most starkly.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richie is steeped in his culpability for the death of Tommy\u2019s grandfather, his shame at having been absent from Tommy\u2019s life while in prison, and his dread that Tommy will reject him when he learns the truth.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Connie\u2019s journey is the most painful to witness. The important men in her life have failed her repeatedly, and vulnerability at their hands is deadly. So, she lies to her son about his father\u2019s real identity. She won\u2019t engage with her son\u2019s faith because Christians have treated her as a fallen woman. When Richie finally shows up with his religious co-travellers, Connie is terrified that her son will reject her and run away with him. And in the most wrenching scene of the novel, Richie tries to force Connie to beg forgiveness before the entire town, as if she were the obstacle to his and Tommy\u2019s self-realization.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wingate:<\/strong> Connie and Richie\u2019s lives are grounded in fear and shame, and those dark forces are the two biggest engines in the novel. I think Richie wants to love his son, but his crimes and the time he did for them in prison have altered his moral compass. I didn\u2019t want to portray him as some crazy preacher, which would\u2019ve been the worst cop-out possible. Yet by any but the most punitive standards of the Christian religion he professes, he\u2019s crossed over into sin when he tries to shame and humiliate Connie into \u201cconfessing\u201d her lies to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connie\u2019s fear and shame, as you point out, unfold in the context of masculinity and her responses to men. She has an interesting relationship with patriarchy. Before Richie comes along, she\u2019s \u201cdaddy\u2019s little girl,\u201d who he dreams will take over his business someday. Then she\u2019s drawn to Richie Thorpe, a powerful male figure who\u2019s in tune with nature. The \u201cstrong man,\u201d whether a patriarchal presence or an animalistic one, remains a shadow with tremendous power over her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that her own son is growing up into a man like his father, Connie knows she needs to make a move. She\u2019s got to get out from under the thumb of Richie\u2014and Tommy\u2014the same way she got out from under the thumb of her father, whose rules she slipped away from by loving Richie in the first place. I don\u2019t want to present her as a feminist icon because she doesn\u2019t have the self-consciousness to bear that. But she\u2019s definitely looking for freedom from the shadow of masculinities that sought to define and confine her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosin:<\/em><\/strong> Of Fathers and Fire makes a compelling case that, without mercy and the courage to know and be changed by another, we\u2019re left with only fire. And in <\/em>daddylabyrinth, you write, \u201cIt’s possible to live your life in the light without first seeking the darkness. Don’t hoodwink yourself into believing that you have to take that road just because others have justified their time in the darkness.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do you find mercy today?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wingate:<\/strong> Of Fathers and Fire<\/em> is a tragedy of mercy not happening: between mother and son, between father and son, and within Tommy himself. I believe that the world is fundamentally a place of mercy, and that humans have beaten down mercy for as long as we\u2019ve existed. We beat it down with power and hate and greed. Mercy is light, and we\u2019ve created for ourselves a place of darkness\u2014possibly for no other reason than that it\u2019s our<\/em> place. It may be miserable, but it\u2019s of our own creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In daddylabyrinth<\/em>, I was looking for sources and instances of mercy because I knew I could never be a father without it. My own father never seemed to hold onto mercy for long. He lived in resentment and anger, and I brought forward both of those. But I knew I couldn\u2019t pass them on to my sons\u2014it would be a horrible birthright. Mercy had to be an essential aspect of my own life as a father, or I\u2019d end up poisoning my sons. I know I haven\u2019t completely succeeded at giving them the birthright of mercy, but dammit, it\u2019s my life\u2019s work\u2014more urgent than anything I\u2019ll ever write\u2014and I\u2019ll try to the very end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * * * *<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steven Wingate<\/strong> is a multi-genre author whose work ranges from poetry to gaming. His books include the novel Of Fathers and Fire<\/em>, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019, and the award-winning short story collection Wifeshopping<\/em> (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008). His digital works include the interactive memoir daddylabyrinth<\/em><\/a>, which premiered at the Art\/Science Museum of Singapore in 2014, and the interactive romance novel Love at Elevation<\/em>, published in 2018 by Choice of Games. He is a husband, a father of two sons, and an associate professor at South Dakota State University. His next novel is due from the University of Nebraska Press in 2021. Find him at www.stevenwingate.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew S. Rosin<\/strong> is a husband, stay-at-home dad, author, and composer based in the Bay Area, California. His essays explore how fatherhood changes the man and have appeared in STAND Magazine<\/em> and Fatherly<\/em>. Rosin also writes fiction, including the novelette The Honeydrop Tree<\/em> and stories in KYSO Flash<\/em>, The Luxembourg Review<\/em>, r.kv.r.y. quarterly<\/em>, and Shotgun Honey<\/em>. Find him at www.matthewsrosin.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In April 2019, Steven Wingate\u2019s debut novel Of Fathers and Fire was published by the University of Nebraska Press. The novel follows a 17-year-old man-child, Tommy Sandor, who\u2019s just learning that his mother lied to him about who his father is, and whose actual father\u2014recently released from prison\u2014has come to town to find him. Wingate … Continue reading From Fire To Mercy: A Conversation Between Steven Wingate and Matthew S. Rosin<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4,48,17],"tags":[9,6,49,89,55],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-fatherhood","category-interviews","category-writing","tag-family-2","tag-fatherhood-2","tag-interviews","tag-mercy","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewsrosin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}