Alan Gratz
Alan starts off the original "uncorrected proof" of Grenade with "Dear Reader, in 2010 I was invited to the American School in Japan to be a Writer in Residence. While I was there, an Okinawan man who had been a boy on the island of Okinawa during Word War II told me an incredible story. The day the Americans invaded his island, the Japanese army pulled him and his classmates out of school, lined them up, and gave them all grenades. Their orders: Go off into the forest and don't come back until you've killed an American soldier with your grenade."
He goes on to write about how the story captivated him. His research revealed so many different players, complicated circumstances, and moral dilemmas. This made him realize how hard it would be to write a book about that experience, especially for younger readers. He goes on: "It wasn't until I wrote my novel Refugee that I figured it out. Refugee is a story about people forced to leave their homes due to violence...Grenade, then would be about people who were refugees in their own land."
Well, he did an excellent job. Alan doesn't shy away from describing the horrors of this battle but he does it in a way that is so compelling, from both a young Okinawan boy's point of view and that of a "green" American soldier. At first I thought I would have a problem reading a story about war but I had to keep reading because the two main characters, the boy Hideki and marine Ray, had me hooked. Then, in the end, after putting the book down after a non-stop reading session, I was so extremely gratified to have read the story.
I know you will be, too!
Here's what Alan came up with:
And my interview with Alan Gratz and his time travel answer:
Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.
We live downtown in Asheville,
North Carolina, and we love it because we can walk to so many great things!
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| Asheville, NC |
Movie theaters, restaurants, game cafes, parks, events, the library, and of
course our terrific local indie bookstore, Malaprop’s!
Were you living in Knoxville when you were 7 years old? Are they fond
memories?
I was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, and went to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, so I spent a lot of my life there.
I was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, and went to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, so I spent a lot of my life there.
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| Knoxville, TN |
My parents and my brother and his family still
live there, as do some of my old friends, and I end up getting back there at
least once a year. I do like Knoxville. My childhood was pretty easy, growing
up in the suburbs. I spent a lot of time playing outside, exploring and
building forts and creating a make-believe country with my friends in fields
and forests that are now subdivisions.
Did you have a favorite teacher and are you still in touch with him or her?
Most of my English teachers had significant impacts on me from middle school on, but my favorite writing teacher of all was a professor at the University of Tennessee, Jon Manchip White.
field car backwards over the Alps after the war because the forward gears
weren’t working.  |
| Jon Manchip White |
He had written mystery novels and science fiction novels and
biographies of famous people and an episode of The Avengers for the BBC, and he
celebrated and encouraged the reading and writing of genre fiction in a
department that generally turned its nose up at such things. He was an enormous
influence on me, and became both my thesis advisor and friend. He has, alas,
passed away, but we still corresponded up until his death.
Do you “feel” like your birth sign Aquarius?
I don’t take any stock in the zodiac, but according to the Internet (which is never wrong), Aquarians are independent, strong, mysterious, eccentric, intelligent, and attractive in personality. (I like the qualification on the last one there—not attractive PHYSICALLY, mind you.) I like to think I am all of those things except mysterious—I don’t think anyone would ever describe me that way. I’m also supposed to be “equally good at thinking about abstract and practical things,” and I would argue that anyone who makes a living creatively, as I do, has to share those traits. It also says that my ability to accept people as they are makes me very popular, and I do try to accept everyone for who they are—though whether it’s because I’m older or due to the polarization of politics in America, I do find that I do not suffer fools as gladly as I used to.
I don’t take any stock in the zodiac, but according to the Internet (which is never wrong), Aquarians are independent, strong, mysterious, eccentric, intelligent, and attractive in personality. (I like the qualification on the last one there—not attractive PHYSICALLY, mind you.) I like to think I am all of those things except mysterious—I don’t think anyone would ever describe me that way. I’m also supposed to be “equally good at thinking about abstract and practical things,” and I would argue that anyone who makes a living creatively, as I do, has to share those traits. It also says that my ability to accept people as they are makes me very popular, and I do try to accept everyone for who they are—though whether it’s because I’m older or due to the polarization of politics in America, I do find that I do not suffer fools as gladly as I used to.
Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?
I’ve never had the kind of profound, life-changing experience with a book some people have had. I wish that were the case, but it just isn’t. I do remember Salinger’s Franny & Zooey being very meaningful to me in college.
I’ve never had the kind of profound, life-changing experience with a book some people have had. I wish that were the case, but it just isn’t. I do remember Salinger’s Franny & Zooey being very meaningful to me in college.
When I reread it just a couple of years later though, hoping
to have the same experience with it, I found I couldn’t even finish it. I was
already a different person.
Do you have a favorite children’s book?
My favorite picture book is D.B. Johnson’s Henry Hikes to Fitchburg. It’s the story of Henry David Thoreau and a friend both heading to Fitchburg, but while his friend takes the crowded, smoky, expensive train, Henry hikes there, eating berries and catching fish and reading a book along the way. Henry arrives late, of course, and his friend crows that he “won.” But it’s pretty clear to Henry and the reader that Henry really won by slowing down to smell the roses.
My favorite picture book is D.B. Johnson’s Henry Hikes to Fitchburg. It’s the story of Henry David Thoreau and a friend both heading to Fitchburg, but while his friend takes the crowded, smoky, expensive train, Henry hikes there, eating berries and catching fish and reading a book along the way. Henry arrives late, of course, and his friend crows that he “won.” But it’s pretty clear to Henry and the reader that Henry really won by slowing down to smell the roses.
It’s a charming story, and the artwork—Henry and his friend are
bears, and the art is very stylized—is fantastic. I read that book to my
daughter many, many times, and we still own it and its three or four sequels.
For children’s novels, I love
Diana Wynn Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle
and Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game.
What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family
tells about you?
My daughter’s entire Instagram feed is, apparently, pictures of me over-written with the text of crazy things I say in everyday conversation. I wouldn’t know, because it’s a private account and she won’t accept my or my wife’s requests to join. One of my favorite family stories is how I came to be named Alan—as opposed to Allan or Allen. I didn’t think to ask until I was an adult, thinking that perhaps they had been inspired by someone like Alan Shepard or Alan Alda. My mother said, “Do you remember that chest of drawers we had when you were a child? The one that had your name spelled out in alphabet blocks as the drawer pulls? It only had four drawer pulls.” So that’s why I am named Alan, and not Allan or Allen—because it fit the furniture. My brother, it should be noted, inherited the chest of drawers after me. His name is John.
My daughter’s entire Instagram feed is, apparently, pictures of me over-written with the text of crazy things I say in everyday conversation. I wouldn’t know, because it’s a private account and she won’t accept my or my wife’s requests to join. One of my favorite family stories is how I came to be named Alan—as opposed to Allan or Allen. I didn’t think to ask until I was an adult, thinking that perhaps they had been inspired by someone like Alan Shepard or Alan Alda. My mother said, “Do you remember that chest of drawers we had when you were a child? The one that had your name spelled out in alphabet blocks as the drawer pulls? It only had four drawer pulls.” So that’s why I am named Alan, and not Allan or Allen—because it fit the furniture. My brother, it should be noted, inherited the chest of drawers after me. His name is John.
Is there any message you want to give to or anything you want to
say to your great-great-great grandchildren when they read this?
It’s okay that my books just went out of copyright. We had a good run. Let them go.
It’s okay that my books just went out of copyright. We had a good run. Let them go.
How did you meet your Wendi? How did your first date go?
Wendi and I met while both working at the now defunct indie Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Wendi and I met while both working at the now defunct indie Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Knoxville, Tennessee.
I have eaten a pizza for dinner pretty much every night of my life
since I was in middle school—something like 35,000 pizzas by my last count—a
fact I usually hid from first dates by taking them to some restaurant where I
could get a steak and French fries. (Which I only ate when I had to on first
dates.) With Wendi though, I took her to my favorite pizza place near the
bookstore on our first date. I guess I had a feeling she could handle me only
eating pizza. And I was right.
How would you say you are different now than you were in your 20’s.
Well, I’m not a total idiot anymore.
Well, I’m not a total idiot anymore.
What would constitute a “perfect” evening” for you?
I watch Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, eat a Mellow Mushroom cheese pizza
I watch Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, eat a Mellow Mushroom cheese pizza
with
Wendi and Jo, watch an episode of something with Wendi, go to Well-Played Game
Café and play games with Jo, then come home and read until bedtime. Which is a
lot of nights for me, actually.
Your latest book, Grenade,
was very moving and sometimes overwhelming in it’s intensity. You know I was
quite affected by it and very glad I read it. I’m assuming it’s been released
in Okinawa; what has been the reaction?
Well, I wouldn’t assume it’s been released in Okinawa. As far as I know, it hasn’t been published there. I’m guessing that would be a Japanese publisher, and I’ve never once had a book published in Japan—not even Samurai Shortstop, my first novel, which is set in Japan! Most of my books don’t have foreign editions. There are exceptions here and there, and then there’s Refugee, which I think has been published in nineteen other countries so far.
Well, I wouldn’t assume it’s been released in Okinawa. As far as I know, it hasn’t been published there. I’m guessing that would be a Japanese publisher, and I’ve never once had a book published in Japan—not even Samurai Shortstop, my first novel, which is set in Japan! Most of my books don’t have foreign editions. There are exceptions here and there, and then there’s Refugee, which I think has been published in nineteen other countries so far.
If Grenade were to be published in Okinawa, I hope they would say that
I did right by them, and helped shine a light on what happened to the citizens
of Okinawa during World War II.
They basically became refugees in their own
land. I’ve had a few Okinawan-Americans tell me I did good, which means
everything to me.
Were there parts, in any of your books, that your editor cut that
you hated to see go?
If so, what were they?
In the first draft of Refugee, I wrote little interstitial pieces in second person, putting the reader in the shoes of each of the primary and secondary characters. You’re Josef. You’re Isabel. You’re Mahmoud. I thought it was a powerful way to force the reader to see through the characters’ eyes, and to understand some of their personal, internal motivations and challenges in an innovative way. My editor disagreed. I fought for them, but ultimately those sections came out. I loved them, but it was right for them to come out. In the end, a clean, clear-cut, emotional story that could be followed by readers of all ages and levels was more important than literary creativity or playfulness.
If so, what were they?
In the first draft of Refugee, I wrote little interstitial pieces in second person, putting the reader in the shoes of each of the primary and secondary characters. You’re Josef. You’re Isabel. You’re Mahmoud. I thought it was a powerful way to force the reader to see through the characters’ eyes, and to understand some of their personal, internal motivations and challenges in an innovative way. My editor disagreed. I fought for them, but ultimately those sections came out. I loved them, but it was right for them to come out. In the end, a clean, clear-cut, emotional story that could be followed by readers of all ages and levels was more important than literary creativity or playfulness.
And finally, in a short
essay…………………………
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME
to any period from before
recorded history to yesterday,
be safe from harm, be rich, poor
or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,
actually, experience what it was
like to live in that time, anywhere at all,
meet anyone, if you desire, speak
with them, listen to them, be with them.
When would you go?
Where would you go?
Who would you want to meet?
And most importantly, why do you
think you chose this time?
This is going to sound weird, but
I would like to go back in time to meet myself as a boy. There are moments of
clarity in my memory, those important and sometimes trivial moments that left
enough of an impression on me to remember them forty years later. But for the
most part, my childhood is a blur. I’d like to go back and see what I cared
about from day to day. How I interacted with people. I know I was very afraid
of dying when I was a kid, and I’d like to assure myself that we at least make
it to 47, which will seem like forever to me then.
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| Seven year old Alan Gratz |
I’d like to tell myself to
be more confident, and to tune in to what’s happening in the world, and to
speak up about it—all things it took me a long time, too long, to figure out. I
would tell myself to start a journal to record every movie I watched, and every
book I read, because I wish I’d done that now, and to take a picture of myself
once, every year, on my birthday, so I could see myself getting older. I would
tell myself to not stop drawing. I would encourage myself to keep all my old
Star Wars action figures, and to read more books because there’s less time for
that later. I would tell myself to relax, to not get angry at the little
things, and to seek out happiness. I would reassure myself that we do it—we
become a writer, just like we always dreamed, and millions of kids just like me
read my books. But I would warn myself too that for one big dream to succeed, a
hundred others have to be abandoned, and that still hurts.
There’s a Harlan Ellison short
story like this, where an adult goes back in time to comfort his younger self,
and it all goes horribly wrong. But hopefully I wouldn’t mess things up too
badly. Also, I would tell myself to bet everything I owned on Leicester City
winning the English Premier League and the Chicago Cubs winning the World
Series in 2016, so no matter what damage I do, at least we’d be rich.
Thank you so much Alan, and congratulations on such a fine book. You handled all the issues that come with writing about this time and place brilliantly.
Oh, one last thing, please tell me how you keep your hot bod and are still able to eat a pizza every night!
Alan's other celebrated books are:
Thank you so much Alan, and congratulations on such a fine book. You handled all the issues that come with writing about this time and place brilliantly.
Oh, one last thing, please tell me how you keep your hot bod and are still able to eat a pizza every night!
Alan's other celebrated books are:
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