{"id":4265,"date":"2015-10-13T11:51:49","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T16:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=4265"},"modified":"2015-10-14T08:03:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T13:03:59","slug":"cnf-conversation-an-interview-with-william-bradley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/julijasukys.com\/?p=4265","title":{"rendered":"CNF Conversations: An Interview with William Bradley"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WilliamBradley\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

William Bradley, Fractals<\/em>. Lavender Ink, 2015.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

William Bradley’s<\/a> work has appeared in a variety of magazines and journals including\u00a0The Missouri Review<\/a>, Brevity<\/a>, Creative Nonfiction<\/a>, The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/a>, Fourth Genre<\/a>,<\/i><\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0The Bellevue Literary Review<\/a><\/i><\/b>. He regularly writes about popular culture for\u00a0The Normal School<\/a><\/i><\/b>\u00a0and creative nonfiction for\u00a0Utne Reader<\/i><\/b>.<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Formerly of Canton, New York, he lives in Ohio with his wife, the Renaissance scholar and poet Emily Isaacson.<\/span><\/p>\n

About Fractals<\/a><\/em><\/strong>: In his seminal book\u00a0The Fractal Geometry of Nature<\/a><\/i><\/b>, Benoit Mandelbrot wrote, “A cauliflower shows how an object can be made of many parts, each of which is like a whole, but smaller. Many plants are like that. A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don’t get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.” In this collection of linked essays, William Bradley presents us with small glimpses of his larger consciousness, which is somewhat irregular itself. Reflecting on subjects as diverse as soap opera actors, superheroes, mortality, and marriage, these essays endeavor to reveal what we have in common, the connections we share that demonstrate that we are all fractals, in a sense\u2014self-similar component parts of a larger whole.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"coverWilliamBradley\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy the book here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Julija \u0160ukys: In Fractals<\/em> you write of your numerous battles with cancer. It\u2019s about remembering and forgetting; about scars both physical and psychological; about a loss of and then a return to faith (in another form). Finally, this book is also a kind of love letter to the women in your life: to your mother and wife who have sat beside you as you weathered storm after storm.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you for talking to me about your book.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fractals<\/em> is a great title for an essay collection. A fractal is, of course, a never-ending pattern that repeats across different scales. Here, we see big and small essays, each of which circles similar but not identical territory to its adjacent texts. The collection has a looping structure or, as Benoit Mandelbrot described it, a cauliflower-like one. Can you talk a bit about how you pulled these pieces together and came to a final form? What was your guiding principle? Did you write any of the essays specifically for the collection? Can you tell us about essays that didn\u2019t make the cut?<\/strong><\/p>\n

William Bradley:<\/strong> I didn\u2019t know about fractals at all for the longest time. I was a very poor math student when I was a kid\u2014it took me five years to get through three years of high school-level math because I kept failing\u2014so I think maybe other people knew this stuff before I did. But once I did read someone referencing fractals, I started reading up on them even more, because I found the idea of the small thing containing the aspects of the larger thing kind of fit in with a belief system I was kind of clumsily assembling for myself\u2014it seemed like it was Montaigne\u2019s idea of each of us carrying the entirety of the human condition expressed in mathematical terms. So I loved that. I also loved the idea of each essay being a fractal, every book being a fractal. Once I started learning about fractals I started seeing them everywhere.<\/p>\n

The book itself has taken many forms before I found the one that worked. Once upon a time, it was a much more conventional cancer memoir. I sort of gravitated away from memoir and towards essays in graduate school, though I didn\u2019t realize I should be writing an essay collection and not a memoir for another several years.<\/p>\n

I started writing an essay about fractals while also working on the cancer memoir, but it gradually seemed to me that some of the \u201cchapters\u201d in the memoir would\u00a0work better as <\/span>distinct essays, and that a lot of the \u201cconnective tissue\u201d linking them together was actually pretty bad. So I got rid of that, and suddenly they seemed to have more in common with the essay about fractals\u2014\u201cSelf-Similar\u201d in the collection.<\/p>\n

I do have other essays that at one point might have been part of the collection, but ultimately didn\u2019t seem to belong. Some of these were more political, or were kind of off-puttingly angry, or just kind of argumentative. I\u2019m working on another essay collection focused on masculinity and violence right now, and some of those seem to fit better with that collection.<\/p>\n

In \u201cNana,\u201d you explore the issue of writing and silence in a really thoughtful way. I\u2019d like to have you share some thoughts on writers\u2019 responsibilities to loved ones and ancestors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNana\u201d starts out:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had promised my mother I wouldn\u2019t write an essay about her mother until the old lady died. . . . [S]he made me promise that I would not reveal to the world that my grandmother had once, over a breakfast of coffee and English muffins, wished out loud that I would die in order to teach my mother a lesson about grief.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just as we think you\u2019re going to spill the beans (and you sort of almost do\u2026), this essay ends up being\u00a0about not writing<\/span> the threatened piece (except that in not writing it, you\u2019ve also already written it!). Can you talk a bit about negotiating with the dead and how you determine which silences to break, which secrets to keep, and which wounds it’s\u00a0best to leave undisturbed? Do you have other ground rules for writing about your family, about your wife Emily, for example?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My biggest rule is that my essays are about myself\u2014I don\u2019t usually try to tell other people\u2019s stories. Other people appear in my stories, but the reflection should always be about my relationship with them, my thoughts about them. So I might write about an experience my wife and I share, but I wouldn\u2019t try to write about her relationship with her beloved grandmother, because that\u2019s her story to tell.<\/p>\n

But generally, I don\u2019t think I need anyone\u2019s permission to write about my own thoughts. That\u2019s why \u201cNana\u201d is written the way it is\u2014all these things I don\u2019t really know about my grandmother, but suspect may be true. In fact I recently talked to my mother about this essay and learned that I got most of it right, but some of it wrong\u2014my grandmother did not find her father-in-law\u2019s dead body, the way I thought she had. But her frustration with her husband\u2019s refusal to talk about his suicide was real. But again, the essay really winds up being about my own desire to spare my mom\u2019s feelings rather than the story of this troubled woman who said really mean things to people.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t actually set out to write an essay about my relationship with my mom when I started writing about what my grandmother said, but I actually learned a lot about myself as I was writing that very short essay.<\/p>\n

You use the word \u201cchrononaut\u201d in your collection. I love this word \u2013 it suggests\u00a0an image of writer as time traveler, but also as adventurer. \u201cCathode,\u201d the essay that felt most like a trip back in time was for me, was amongst the most gutting in the collection (it felt like we were spying on a past version of you). In this piece you look back at a friendship \u2013 a not-quite-sincere friendship \u2013 with a boy in your youth. So much is intriguing about this text: its lack of resolution, its questioning of memory, and of the facts. The reader gets a sense of how the past versions of ourselves can seem foreign when we look back on them (ourselves). It\u2019s infused with cringe-worthy regret and maybe even shame. Very powerful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

How did the essay come to be so short \u2013 was this its original form or did you whittle it down from something larger? Do you think its power comes from its form? (I do\u2026)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oddly enough, given the essay\u2019s preoccupation with memory, I don\u2019t remember how I went about writing \u201cCathode.\u201d I think maybe some magazine or journal had a call for essays about memory, and I came up with this idea of my memory being like an old television set where the picture slowly came into view. But I also think I was probably trying to imitate Nabokov, who wrote about memories being projected onto a movie screen.<\/p>\n

And yeah. That essay\u2019s really about my own shame at how cruel I could be as a kid, even though I thought I was the hero of the story I was writing for myself. I think most boys are probably similarly cruel\u2014even when we see someone in pain and know we should offer some type of support or comfort, we don\u2019t because we don\u2019t want to become the ones who are picked on or ostracized. Or at least that\u2019s how it felt for me.<\/p>\n

It was definitely designed to be short. I don\u2019t think the idea of the television image that sort of bookends the essay would work if I\u2019d put, like, 3,000 words between those sequences. And it\u2019s true that I don\u2019t really remember much of the event\u2014just the image of this sad boy making an obscene gesture at the kids who are supposed to be his friends, and the feeling that I should have been nicer.<\/p>\n

Why did you call this text \u201cCathode\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t really remember why I titled the essay “Cathode,” but I suspect it was because I liked the idea of my memory working like an old cathode ray tube television set, like the one I’m watching towards the end of the essay. I do remember looking up old television sets and how they worked, and obviously something about the word “cathode” appealed to me. I think because it’s something I associate with a past that I’m sometimes nostalgic for but that I know wasn’t actually better than the present moment (in much the same way that cathode ray televisions are not, in fact, better than the LCD and plasma screen televisions we have today).<\/p>\n

Given the book’s obsession with the pop culture I watched on old television sets– soap operas, game shows, horror movies– it seems kind of appropriate for the entire book, too, though I admit that idea just occurred to me because you asked about it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Writers often talk about taking risks: usually, at least in the United States and Canada, by this we mean emotional risks. Rarely do essays published in literary journals carry material, legal, or physical penalties for their authors. But in \u201cThe Essayist\u2019s Creed\u201d you tell of how a text you published dramatically changed the course of your life: you lost a tenure-track position because of an essay you wrote about sex and love when the Baptist college\u2019s pastor took it upon herself to hound you out. It\u2019s a story that absolutely floored me when I read it (so much for academic freedom!).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tell me about this episode. How long ago did this happen? Did you fight back? Did the writing and academic community support you? Was there outrage on your behalf? Do you have regrets or would you do it all over again? Has there been an unanticipated upside to what happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Those are a lot of questions, and the truth is I haven\u2019t said much publicly about what happened for a variety of reasons, but with the book coming out it\u2019s probably time.<\/p>\n

I went to work at a small Baptist college in 2008 because my wife\u2014an early modern scholar\u2014negotiated jobs for both of us there. I interviewed with the provost and the department chair and told them that while I was interested in working for them, they should be aware that I had written an essay about sex and marriage that contained some strong language and some vivid descriptions, but that it wasn\u2019t pornography. At the time Ira Sukrungruang had read the essay and asked me to submit it to Saw Palm<\/em>, where he was editing nonfiction, so I had a strong feeling it was going to be published soon.<\/p>\n

Both assured me that the essay wouldn\u2019t be a problem for anyone at their school. They did not require any type of faith or lifestyle commitment, and anything I published would be protected under the school\u2019s academic freedom policies.<\/p>\n

(The essay discusses a time in my marriage when my wife and I found ourselves the only monogamous couple staying at a Key West Bed and Breakfast with a group of senior citizen swingers and includes a moment when an elderly couple began having sex in the inn\u2019s clothing-optional pool while I looked on, too shocked to say anything or even leave the area. It ends with the observation that the woman\u2019s hair was clearly still growing in from chemotherapy treatments and that though their marriage is different from mine, if it\u2019s as happy as mine is, I\u2019m happy for them).<\/p>\n

The summer before my tenure year\u20142011\u2014I learned that someone who I thought was a friend had given a copy of the essay to the campus minister, who I didn\u2019t realize did not like me. Details from there are hazy\u2014it\u2019s hard for me to know who said or did what at the time\u2014but it resulted in me meeting with the provost, who told me that some staff members thought I should be fired but that he knew I had done nothing wrong and that the president agreed with him. But he also added that some of the more conservative members of the Board of Trustees would not approve of the essay and that he would prefer they not find out about it.<\/p>\n

So, of course, these trustees did learn of the essay. I had the support of my department chair, my dean, and a unanimous vote for approval from the promotion and tenure committee, but the provost still wrote that he recommended that the president deny my tenure application due to \u201clifestyle\u201d\u2014which I think either means because I went to a bed and breakfast with a clothing optional pool or that I refused to cast judgment on people due to their sex lives. The president then denied my application for tenure.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the provost maintained that it wasn\u2019t the essay that caused the problem, but what I revealed about myself in the essay. So he argued that academic freedom wasn\u2019t an issue. I disagree and find his reasoning rather astounding, but it\u2019s worth reiterating that the school didn\u2019t have any type of lifestyle expectations of their faculty. And that the experience recounted in the essay happened before I\u2019d even heard of the school. And that I don\u2019t think I actually revealed anything particularly scandalous about myself.<\/p>\n

I fought back in the sense that I began the process to appeal the decision and started thinking about a lawsuit, but I was then offered a job I\u00a0felt was\u00a0a better fit \u2014my friend Natalia Rachel Singer called to tell me about this visiting gig at St. Lawrence University. I could either stay and appeal and then eventually file a lawsuit when my appeal was rejected by the Board of Trustees, or I could return to my home in upstate New York. Although it meant living separately from Emily for huge chunks of the year, I decided to go.<\/p>\n

To be honest, though I think I would have won a lawsuit\u2014or received a sizable settlement\u2014it didn\u2019t feel like the right thing to do. The school was not in great financial shape, and I realized that suing would really punish the students and faculty, who had been really supportive of us during this time. It was really just a minister and a handful of administrators and trustees who hurt us, and I don\u2019t think they are the ones who would really suffer if the school suffered, you know?<\/p>\n

But that was a really dark time. My wife cried every day for a month straight\u2014I think she felt the betrayal even more acutely than I did. We had worked really hard for that school and tried to make the place home, and to be just cast out like that was a devastating blow.<\/p>\n

Regrets? That\u2019s hard to say. I regret trusting two people\u2014one in particular was someone who had been a very close friend before really turning his back on us when we could have used his help. But seriously, so many other people were wonderful and supportive and remain close friends to this day, so I can\u2019t say that moving there was a mistake. I worked with some talented student writers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the process now of surrendering the house to the bank because we can\u2019t really afford to pay the mortgage and pay rent now that we\u2019re both living in Ohio. I\u2019m working as a reporter, and it doesn\u2019t pay as much as I got when I was an academic. So I regret that we don\u2019t have much money, but then I remember that we found our cats as abandoned kittens in the backyard of that house. So if I say I regret buying that house, it means I regret having the cats. I don\u2019t want to sound weird about this, but I think loving these creatures has made me a better person in a lot of ways. So I can\u2019t say I regret buying the house either.<\/p>\n

Publishing the essay? Maybe. But I\u2019ve gotten some really good feedback on it\u2014people seem to like it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also benefited from some tremendous kindness from the few people in academia and creative nonfiction who know about the situation. Patrick Madden sent me a very nice email. Natalia Singer and Jill Talbot were both so nice when I moved to Canton. George Justice\u2014was he still in Missouri when you got there? [No, he had just left. J\u0160.<\/em>]\u2014has offered wise counsel, as he has since I was a graduate student. Andy Hoberek keeps finding work for me to do for the Los Angeles Review of Books. And Ned Stuckey-French especially has just been awesome. He was the first person I talked to when I began to suspect things were getting bad there, and he has been so helpful with advice but, even more importantly, with friendship and support. He consistently reminded me that I hadn\u2019t done anything to deserve such treatment at a time when I really needed those reassurances.<\/p>\n

The unanticipated upside is that I realized how great my friends are. Also, my marriage seems to have become even stronger in a way I never would have predicted. We sort of evaluated what was important to us, what we wanted out of our life together, in a way we hadn\u2019t before. I don\u2019t think either of us prioritizes our careers as much as we probably used to. We still work hard, but I think we were reminded that we work hard so we can have enough money to keep a roof over our heads while we watch horror movies or read books\u2014that we don\u2019t need much more than that.<\/p>\n

Above all, Fractals<\/em> seems to be a testament to survival, life, and love. Despite the cancer, the job loss, the meditation on aging, this is an incredibly hopeful book. Hope resides in your decision to get married, to write, and to continue on despite an uncertain future. It lives in the joy and comfort you derive from television watching rituals, from your work, and from your life partner.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, the work of writing has always, in some way, been a fight against oblivion. It\u2019s my way of resisting death and (however delusional) of trying to ensure that a trace of me remains after I\u2019m gone. Also, I write to create of trace of people who are already gone and in danger of being forgotten.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What about you? Are you also writing against death in some sense? Against cancer? As a way of cementing or preserving the past (here I think of that 2-year-old girl getting chemo \u2013 she \u201clives\u201d in your essay, or is that too facile?) or as a pathway to the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love the idea that the little girl \u201clives\u201d in my essay\u2014I\u2019d never thought of it that way before.<\/p>\n

I am absolutely writing against death\u2014and I like the way you put that. I didn\u2019t know the word, but I developed this thanatophobic streak when I was in the second grade, after my grandfather and uncle died and I realized that one day my parents would die\u2014that one day I would die too. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve been kind of haunted by since then, although, you know, I can function. But every so often I get kind of overwhelmed by it.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, at the times in my life when I was probably closest to dying\u2014when I had my bone marrow transplant and this past summer, when I had some sudden heart problems\u2014the fear completely went away and I was remarkably accepting of the possibility that I might die. But now that I\u2019m healthy again, I\u2019m terrified.<\/p>\n

But, as you say, I\u2019m hopeful. I mean, I\u2019m a really fortunate person. I may be broke now, but I\u2019m still in love with my wife and she\u2019s still in love with me and I get to write about comic books and game shows and my cats are healthy and I have no reason to think that I\u2019m going to wind up out on the street. Being mortal may suck, but it\u2019s hardly an injustice. And the truth is, I\u2019ve had a pretty happy life. There has been conflict, and some things had to be overcome, but that hardly makes me unique.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not necessarily writing to immortalize myself because I\u2019m so charming and wonderful, but because I think every human life matters, and that includes my own. My essay or book is worth writing\u2014and reading\u2014because, just like everyone else, I\u2019m part of the human experience. I\u2019m a fractal, I guess you could say, and fractals are fascinating.<\/p>\n

Buy Fractals<\/em> here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

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