Mat Johnson, author of Pym, Incognegro and Dark Rain, calls the novel, League of Somebodies, "so rich with originality that it's actually radioactive." Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban calls it "a whirling force that blends the family saga, superhero lore, and a coming of age story to a frothy cocktail." Samuel Sattin is an original and I'm thrilled to have him here.
So much of the novel is about what it means to be a superhero
and what it means to be a guy. Care to talk about that?
I think the superhero genre, albeit a lynch pin for my personal
sanity, is dominated by male heroes, male writers, and an uncomfortable amount
of female stereotypes. Of course there are risk-takers, things are changing
every day and even the most basal comics have a lot of worth to them. But for
the most part, the industry was built upon the shoulders of atypical men shunned
either sexually or socially by society. Repressed male identity, and especially
repressed male sexuality, is sublimated into the pages of most every comic book
from the golden age on. At the same time, however, that sexuality is
simultaneously put on absurd parade by practitioners of the genre. In the male
superhero we witness a strange embrace AND refutation of traditional male
roles, demonstrated by the ironic dissidence between the near-sighted, nebbish
comic artist and the 6 foot tall brawny Adonis he proceeds to sketch.
Male identity itself is simply bizarre and grotesque. I grew up
surrounded by veritable gorillas who saw themselves as both alpha and omega,
viewing the world through a prism of command. Comic books, if anything,
allowed me to digest manhood as oblique and exaggerated as a concept. I now
view male identity as patently absurd, the byproduct of preternatural
insecurity. There's also a tendency towards self (and external) destruction
present. I think there's a reason why color blindness is solely a male
disability, anyway. Uniformity is essential to the male psyche. Difference is
viewed as weak. Danger is overvalued, and exploited for maniacal purposes.
The plot is so knockout original (a dad feeding his boy
Plutonium to make him a superhero) that I have to ask, where did the idea for
this novel spark? It's absolutely inspired.
Thank you! I'm glad you think so. As I explain a little later, League
of Somebodies started out as a completely different book. The characters
were mostly there from the beginning (except for Fearghas; you can credit him
for the follow-through), but I think I was afraid, or unsure of, how to carry
them towards the end. I'm obsessed with comic books, science fiction, and
malevolent beings, however. And I was playing with all these ideas RE origin,
tradition, legacy, identity. Such traits are the warp and woof of comic world,
and heroism, that idea of single human with the weight of the world on his
shoulders, is epic in it narcissism, which interests me. Growing up as I did, I
learned what it is to be an object of someone's design. And so this idea of the
experiment emerged. The desire to turn one's son into a type of Frankenstein.
It's perfectly plausible someone has already attempted to do this in real life.
I wouldn't be surprised, anyway.
I loved that you carried the idea from father to son to the son
of the son, which brings on this whole question of destiny. Do you believe in
it? Or do you think we can create our own futures?
Hopefully this won't sound silly, but I believe in both. I think
that parents, for example, often attempt to force destiny upon their children
(and often for their children's own good!) You wouldn't want harm to come to a
loved one, anyway. We enter the world with incredible futures, whether
beautiful or terrible, and our parents are responsible for making sure we
maneuver reality so that we don't end up in a ditch. But sometimes, a lot of
the time, even healthy parental expectations take on too much insistence. We
demand our children attain impossible heights. Or we just want them to be so
much like us we'll do anything to make it so. But there are always hiccups.
Things you don't expect. Sure, a father tries to raise his son to be like him.
But sometimes, even if the son follows suit, he starts to wobble. He falls out
of touch with who he is. And if that man ends up raising a son, the path
he's been taught to follow might falter indefinitely. So in some ways, destiny
and self-determination are one in the same. By attempting to make someone into
one thing, he or she becomes something completely different.
What's your writing life like, particularly in relation to this
wondrous novel? It was so intricately plotted, I want to know if you planned it
out beforehand, a la John Irving, or if you just sort of followed your
characters' leads?
As mentioned earlier, League of Somebodies was not
ever itself to begin with. The book’s first title was The Ivory Flag, and
it centered around a mentally unstable suburban father outside of Denver who
was erecting a turret atop his Tudor home. At the end of a frenzied year of
writing, however, the whole damned narrative ended up crumbling like Pompeii. I
only salvaged twelve pages (one particular scene in League is exactly as
when I first wrote it). But when the real writing actually began I didn't stop
for 2 years. I wrote whenever I could. I wrote through my entire MFA. When I
finished my MFA I applied for (and somehow got accepted to) a studio art
Masters program for the loan money just so I could make sure the book got
finished. In retrospect, it was a stupid, crazy thing to do. I ended up failing
out after my first semester. But I knew League needed to be finished and
that loan money allowed me to do so. I would have done anything for that time
to write. Well, almost anything.
As for the plot, I did somewhat end up letting the characters
take me for a ride. But I found myself tinkering with the controls along the
way (mostly in favor of sabotage). The structure became the real key to
finishing the work. Even if I had an idea of where I wanted things to go, the
dimensions of the novel kept on throwing me into a tailspin. I'd take off into
tangents, end up in a completely different novel. I had to find a way to
connect the two generations of family without dragging on into ubiquity. Once I
figured out how to fix that problem, I fell into a speedy rhythm and finished
the second half of the book in two months, writing 8 to 10 hours a day. I
wasn't sleeping well. It was a manic period in my life, with my mother passing
away soon after its completion.
What's obsessing you now and why?
I'm into scary things. Blood, specters, unspeakable evil.
Whatever frightens me, really. And hopefully what makes me laugh at the same
time. I read The Devil In Silver by Victor LaValle, and was taken by the
untapped wealth of the horror genre, how it might be appropriated in an
interesting fashion. I've taken up frightening Japanese comics and American
horror novels. I watch a lot of strange and eerie films (nothing gratuitous).
I've been working on a literary horror novel that I'm hoping will scare the
socks off someone, someday. I'm also into political non-fiction and
biographies.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
Is it true that you have webbed feet?
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