2009-08-26 - Giving Up the Ghost

"Giving up the ghost" or "IV": Josh Jabcuga has the privilege of interviewing 4x Bram Stoker Award-winning author Jack Ketchum for the fourth time, about the recently re-released thriller COVER.

Leisure Fiction's description of Jack Ketchum's COVER:

"Lee is a veteran who came back from the war a changed man. He's haunted and scarred. And his grip on reality is weakening, especially since his wife and son left him. He keeps to himself, deep in the woods. But today he's not alone. A group of weekend campers have intruded on his fragile world. For Lee this means he's back in the war. For the unsuspecting visitors it means a fight to stay alive."

Josh Jabcuga: Leisure Fiction recently released COVER. In the foreword ("What did you do during the war, daddy?" dated September, 1999), you describe the novel as your attempt to write about someone who has to try to live without love. The notion of love in some shape or form is central in your work, and you frequently use variants of the theme, such as seeking it out, abusing it, craving it, searching for substitutions, controlling or manipulating the source of it, denying or destroying it for others, even protecting it...is there any weight to that? Do you think that's an accurate interpretation of your body of work?

Jack Ketchum: Love and death -- I can't think of anything more interesting to write about. Love in particular. Because the only really interesting things about death are how it comes to us and how we face it. You can say it's also The Big Mystery but so what? We're never going to solve it. Whereas love is multi-faceted, intricate, and it's capable of lasting a lifetime. We humans do love very well and very badly. We give and lose it. We search for it and deny it. We seem to need love even as it slaps us in the face over and over again. It's a very big word in that it embraces and encompasses so many other words. Like kindness, loss, indecision, fury, tenderness, to name just a few out of dozens and dozens. All you need to do is put the word "love's" in front of any one of them.

And maybe the most interesting and wonderful thing about love is that unless we're talking narcissism, we have to step outside ourselves to experience it. To feel love you're forced to acknowledge the Other, the Other's value to you, something or someone which is not you but which is of complete importance to your life and well-being -- a very big leap of empathy, sympathy and trust. And since we can never really grasp the totality of the Other's existence or predict its longevity, also a pretty damn courageous leap into the unknown.

"Meeting the 'Jerzy' Devil, New York City, January 2006": Joshua Jabcuga and Jack Ketchum

JJ: You continue: "And I doubt that there's a writer of my generation who hasn't wanted to address the subject (Vietnam) in one way or another." You are the Brando or James Dean or Paul Newman of what many label as genre fiction, in that you strive for truth and authenticity, much like a method actor, and you push forward into the unknown. You protested the war, and mention an episode in Cambridge when you were chased by the police in full riot gear. Given that dichotomy--the approach you take with your own work...the importance you place on realism...and your stance against the failed politics, did you feel any apprehension when seeking out veterans to learn their side, and that perhaps they wouldn't ever completely trust you and open up to you?

JK: Let's say that at first I was treading lightly. But I learned early on that if you made it clear at the onset that you respected the vets' reasons for serving, even though at the time you disagreed mightily, that you were serious about getting their stories straight and weren't just out to give them another black eye, they'd open up pretty quickly. And part of my reason for writing the book was that I was just as outraged by the government's treatment of them once they got back home -- or the ludicrous, shameful lack of it -- as most of them were. So we had a common ground there. My dad was in WW2 and came home to the G.I. Bill, which treated him very well. And even he, a staunch Republican and VFW man, was disgusted by the difference.

JJ: COVER is a slow cooker, very deliberate pacing until things reach a true boiling point. From a technical standpoint, did you ever anticipate that there might be a collision between your responsibility to stay true to the characters and the forward momentum of the narrative?

JK: Well, I didn't want RAMBO. David Morrell had already essayed that territory with a sure and steady hand. I wanted a build, a slow burn as you say. I wanted you to know and care about the characters -- particularly my troubled vet -- long before the shit hits the fan. And though I think it's suspenseful enough, I've taken some criticism for that. Let me go out on a strange kinda limb and say, reader, know thyself. If you're an impatient reader, if your idea of the perfect book is something like OFF SEASON, say, which goes off like a rocket and just keeps going, then don't buy this book. Wait for the next one. Because COVER, at least the first half of it, will disappoint you. And I'd rather not take your quarter than do that.

JJ: Your agent originally sold COVER to Warner Books in April '86 and there was hope that it was mainstream enough to be your first hardcover release. There was talk of it being your breakthrough novel with an initial print-run of 230,000 copies. Then they tried to turn your novel into pulpy exploitation and compromise the integrity of it, asking you to change the title, and you put your foot down. They countered by releasing it as a paperback with B-movie artwork slapped on as a cover, and cut back the printing to 40,000 copies. This question is not to draw comparisons to David Morrell's FIRST BLOOD. However, with the film adaptation and Sylvester Stallone playing the lead, the main character, John Rambo, was arguably an 80s pop icon, his image often associated with President Reagan. Do you feel that Warner's interference was an attempt to capitalize on the timely success of that franchise or was it strictly editorial incompetence?

JK: It was particularly true at that time, and may still be for all I know, that in publishing the tail wagged the dog. Editors could buy a book, see to it that it's edited lovingly, but the real power to make it happen was with the distributors and what they saw as marketable. Guys who probably had never read a novel in twenty years. Jim Frost, who bought the book at Warners, had the best of intentions for it I'm sure. But editorial meetings were all about what would please the distributors and sell the most copies. Keep in mind that distributors had already shot down Ballantine's ambitious plans for OFF SEASON and that a few years later, across the pond, Hodder/Headline in Britain would drop me from their list when they couldn't get a book-club sale for RED. I'm morally certain that the powers that be at Warners had these realities in mind when they urged me to change COVER's title to STALKING GROUND and then slapped on the tacky leering-vet cover art. But the distributors must have buried it anyway. The only place I ever saw it was in the Military Section of the little corner bookstore downstairs at Grand Central Station.

JJ: Lastly, in your intro, you write: "By the time of the Tet Offensive in 1968, when an estimated 34,000 souls gave up the ghost in just ten days and a thoroughly discredited LBJ's subsequent declaration that he warn't runnin' fer no durn reelection I had metamorphosized once more." You also describe yourself as being faster in those days. "Maybe I was luckier in those days too." I believe this is the book's third incarnation, as it was released by Warner Books, then Gauntlet put out a limited hardcover run in 2000, and now the mass-market Leisure edition. Since then, we've seen the tragedy of 9/11, and the US Government's response. It's depressing to think COVER is just as relevant today as ever, with many vets returning with post-combat stress, and that with all of this violence, history is repeating itself. Now that you're living through this again, except not as fast but maybe wiser than before, does it feel any different? Do you feel as if you've metamorphosized yet again?

JK: I've morphed into quite a few people since then I think. I'm glad the book's out in mass-market again, precisely because it's so relevant. And maybe it will stir some people up enough to pay attention to how we treat our own newly returning vets, their healthcare and general well-being. The suicide rate among vets these days is particularly alarming. If my book helps in the slightest to show what war can do to you and what's needed afterward, then I've done my job with this one.

Visit Jack Ketchum online at:
www.JackKetchum.net
or follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/JackKetchum.

Joshua Jabcuga is the author of the comic-book series' SCARFACE: DEVIL IN DISGUISE, and THE MUMMY: THE RISE & FALL OF XANGO'S AX, both available from IDW Publishing. His online column, Squib Central, is available exclusively for Scott Tipton's www.Comics101.com.

"Josh Jabcuga can take the 26 measly letters of our crude alphabet and capture the bi-polar soul of all that is classically yet disturbingly American. Then, when his typewriter is left to cool, he can turn right around...completely ready to trounce any drunk punk that's got me backed into a corner." -- The Colonel J.D. Wilkes of The Legendary Shack*Shakers, appearing on the soundtrack to HBO's hit series, TRUE BLOOD.

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