Interview: January 29, 2010

In this interview with Bookreporter.com's Melanie Smith, author Ken Wheaton traces the humorous and unlikely origins of his debut novel, THE FIRST ANNUAL GRAND PRAIRIE RABBIT FESTIVAL, and examines some of the motivations that drive his characters' actions and behavior in the book. He also provides some background information on Cajun culture in Louisiana and shares story ideas for future projects.

Bookreporter.com: When a Pentecostal Reverend invades Father Steve Sibille's Parish in Opelousas, Louisiana, the priest retaliates by organizing a community event that will unite St. Pete's parishioners for good. Planning for the First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival brings Father Steve closer to his friends and also to the former priest's daughter, Vicky Carrier. Your novel was exceptionally entertaining and about a very unusual subject, and you mention that it was the result of a drunken bet on New Year's Eve. May I ask how you came up with the ideas behind the book and what that bet entailed?

Ken Wheaton: I really had no interest of ever writing about a priest, to be honest, but as I've said previously, this came out of a bet. Years ago, another writer friend of mine, Jason Primm, and I would come up with tricks to get our lazy selves to get some writing done. He, in particular, was looking for a push in fiction because he dealt mostly with poetry and had trouble coming up with more than a page. So one drunken New Year's --- I forget who brought it up --- we agreed to have a race, of sorts. We'd see who could write a novel in six months. Winner buys the other a bottle of whiskey. If we both made it to the finish line, then, hey, we've both finished writing a novel. I'd had an idea for a book in my head at the time, but it was one of those precious, writerly ideas and I didn't want to "waste" this extremely fabulous Pulitzer-worthy idea on a crazy bet.

So, the question became, what do I write? Now Jason and I had also previously assigned each other topics for short stories. His assignment for me had been to write about a priest going into a gay bar and trying to talk a renegade priest back into the fold. And the kicker was, it couldn't be funny. It had to be deadly serious. So I had that sitting around. And I started thinking it over and then I remembered going to Mass at St. Peter's in Grand Prairie as a kid and thinking how weird it was that St. Pete's had altar girls at the time and I just became fixated on a scene of a priest standing on an altar and having two adolescent girls running around up there. And off I went. I won the bet. Granted, the first draft was serious and boring and nothing like what came out. That first draft had most of the weird elements --- Miss Rita, Mark, Vicky --- but it wasn't very light. It was also missing Blackfoot, who was a first attempt at layering in some comedic relief. And I didn't add the subplot of the encroaching Evangelicals until years later. I'd toyed with the idea, but was too lazy in the first draft. But without it, Father Steve was just a passive navel-gazer with only internal conflict and no external conflict.

BRC: I really liked Father Steve and felt that he is formed from quite a different mold from many Catholic priests. He lacks any "holier than thou" attitude, and outside of mass behaves much like many laymen: he curses often and drinks as much as he can, making him flawed in the eyes of the Church but nevertheless the kind of guy many people could relax around. His ability to loosen up about certain conservative ideals also makes him seem personable and understanding. Do you believe that Father Steve breaks the mold as a priest, and do you feel that his character traits are beneficial to his community?

KW: I'll fess up that much of Father Steve's personality is, well, me. But I don't think Father Steve would be the first of his kind to come out of Seminary. A priest, after all, is still a person. Straight or gay, he still has regular old human thoughts and urges and flaws. It's actually surprising to me that some people are getting hung up on the drinking as the drunken Catholic priest --- particularly of the Irish extraction --- is a stereotype, if not an archetype. And I've known at least one priest who spoke to us at Catholic School about his days as a fallen man --- and we're not talking "Oh, I slipped up here." One of the stories he told us involved drunken driving after a rendezvous with a prostitute and getting pulled over by an African-American cop and using the n-word. As a kid that shocked me. But, looking back on it, it also had a huge impact on my belief that we're all more or less alike.

It's funny, I was worried that I'd get a flurry of comments right off the bat saying "It's obvious you've never set one foot near a seminary." But so far, aside from some complaints about the cursing and drinking, I've received only an email forwarded by a friend of mine. A friend of his who’d read the book --- a guy who'd actually been in the seminary --- wanted to know if I had...because it came off as extremely real.

BRC: The festival is an enchanting idea, like Mardi Gras and the state fair combined. It's the biggest party of the year for St. Pete's, and the parishioners need no excuse to get together and drink. What an entertaining way for the community to unite! Is there any event at all similar to this in Louisiana, or is this a creation unique to your novel?

KW: No. It's far from unique. There actually was a Rabbit Festival in Grand Prairie for a few years. I don't think it exists any longer. There is one now in Iowa, Louisiana, I believe. In South Louisiana, there's a festival for everything. I think I included that in the book --- and that list isn't fake: Watermelon Festival, Wagon Wheel Festival, Frog Festival, Smoked Meat Festival, Yambilee (in my home town of Opelousas), Cotton Festival, Crawfish Festival, Rice Festival, Shrimp & Petroleum Festival (yes, really). The list goes on and on and on.

BRC: I loved the Southern culture in your book and also the vigor with which you defend your Cajun recipes. The "real monstrosity cookout" is also quite the scene, and I wondered how that must have tasted. Do cookouts involving whole animals make up a part of Louisiana cooking? Also, is Turducken worth all the work put into it? (It's something I had personally never heard of.)

KW: To my knowledge, nothing like the roast beast has actually been attempted in Louisiana. I don't know if it's feasible or if the thing would fall to pieces. But I'm pretty sure once the idea is out there, someone will try it. The idea actually is a tribute to a scene in Bohumil Hrabal's I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND, in which a group of Ethiopians do something similar with African animals. In this case, my editor had pushed me to include something that showed the community being built --- and I realized I'd sort of neglected the men in the parish. So I thought about barbecues and gumbos and the fish fry and I said, "Well, why not go nuclear?" So I created that sort of arm's race between the two warring camps and it ended with that scene. Whereas Hrabal's version is pretty magical and captivating, I played mine more for laughs and to show a sense of male bonding.

In terms of whole animals being cooked (aside from turkeys and such), there is something called Cochon de Lait in South Louisiana, which is basically a pig roast. I don't want to give the impression that this sort of thing happens every weekend in Louisiana. It doesn't. They're just as likely to be sitting in front of the TV eating Popeye's Fried Chicken or calling Pizza Hut for delivery.

My own feelings on Turducken is that it's not worth the trouble and it all sort of ends up tasting the same. I'd much prefer a deep-fried turkey than a Turducken.

BRC: How much French do you truly have to know to communicate in Cajun country?

KW: Absolutely none. In the beginning of the 20th century, the public school system did a stellar job of beating the French out of people. That doesn't mean it taught anyone proper English, but you'd have to go out of your way to hear French in South Louisiana these days. There have been attempts to reclaim the linguistic heritage, but that whole wave of homogenization that came along with TV and interstate system pretty much guarantees that's little more than a pipe dream. But there are plenty of linguistic hold-overs. The overall culture is still unique in its own right, but you don't need to know a single word of French to get along down there.

BRC: Vicky is a very warm character, and it seems significant that she's the former preacher's daughter. Do you feel that fact aided her to any significant degree in tempting Father Steve?

KW: A reader asked me a similar question about Vicky tempting Father Steve, and it strikes me as odd that it comes across as so, I don't know, active. The way I saw it was they just sort of came across one another. Would she have hung around any other priest who had shown up? Perhaps. And perhaps nothing would have happened. I just saw it as an intersection of two people with things in common, including age, likes, dislikes, location and loudly ticking biological clocks.

BRC: Do you feel that Mark's sexual orientation (as a gay priest) has any bearing in the development of his friendship with Father Steve?

KW: Well, it certainly would have been a different dynamic --- especially in regards to Vicky. Another straight priest might have confused things some! In this case, both men needed something. Father Steve needed some company...and Mark needed a refuge. And in his case, it helped that Steve was straight. I think one thing that gets overlooked when discussing gay priests is that you have a group of men sequestered from society, all with something in common. And if some of them are gay, and gay men face the same temptations as straight men, well, how much harder is it if you're faced with that temptation every day. I try to think of it like this. What if you're a straight priest and they house you with a room full of nuns? And, look, this is where I veer largely into fiction. There was no research done here. I don't know the numbers or how often this sort of thing happens. I just tried to imagine what it would be like for a gay man who's perhaps gotten himself into some entanglements in his job. Where does he go to get away? I think, oddly enough, Mark is the more spiritual of the two, and I think his rift with the Church hurt him more deeply than Father Steve's transgression.

BRC: Though Father Steve is a devoted Catholic, he admits that he made the decision for the priesthood rather rashly. He seems proud to be a priest but hadn't foreseen the degree of the consequences. The biggest of those is his solitude, where involvement with the community is no substitute for family.

The issue of celibacy also inevitably comes up, and it's something that Steve eventually struggles with. Do you feel it is possible for Steve to have both Vicky and the Church, in reality? And considering his character, could he be happy with just one or the other?

KW: Well, in reality, no. He can't have both. The Church finds out, by its own rules, it has to give him the boot. The conservative side of me sort of likes how stubborn the Church can be. "Listen, pal. We have rules. They're not made to be broken. You want feel-good-Jesus, go someplace else." At the same time, I think the Church is begrudgingly inching toward some sort of change. You can see this in some of the overtures it's making to Episcopalian priests. True fact: If a MARRIED Episcopalian priest wants to convert to Catholicism, he can bring his wife along, stay married and still be a priest. At some point, I'm thinking straight Catholic priests might say, "Hey. Now wait a minute, here."

BRC: Your novel touches on some difficult subjects, and one of those is Miss Rita. She's a wonderfully feisty 100+-year-old black lady staying in a nursing home, who Father Steve visits regularly. Miss Rita helped raise Steve, and she's like his own grandmother. Yet racial relations still play a part in their lives, and Miss Rita is justified in bringing up the way things were not all that long ago. What influenced you in the creation of Miss Rita's character and her role in the story?

KW: I don't know what prompted me to come up with Miss Rita. I never personally had someone like that in my life --- not that close at any rate. I do remember my grandmother having some extra help around the house and them squabbling over who would actually do the work, "As in, 'Sit down. I'm going to do it.'" And they did sit around and watch soap operas. And I've had a lot of response from readers saying they know someone just like Miss Rita. But I think there is a little danger in the nostalgia associated with such characters. You start to think about it, Why is a Miss Rita in your grandmother's house, rather than her own? How did this start? And I didn't want, to use Spike Lee's phrase, "A Magical Negro" --- the wise old African-American character (usually played by Morgan Freeman) stuck into a movie to give wisdom to the white protagonist. Now, obviously Miss Rita does this, but I tried to subvert what's become a stereotype. She has an attitude. She has memories. She sort of begrudgingly puts up with Steve but doesn't communicate with the rest of his family anymore. And I tried to have fun, too, with her t-shirts. I figured if she lectured him every single time, it would get boring, but the Black Power t-shirts are sort of there looking at him every time he enters the room.

BRC: Have any current events shaped your writing, regarding Christian faiths or otherwise?

KW: There wasn't much that shaped the writing of this book. I tried to stay far away from the altar-boy abuse cases because that's not what this book was about. It's about characters and story and making people laugh, not about me making some grand statement about religion. I had no plans of writing a sequel to this as I don't feel the urge to keep dwelling on religion. That said, a) some people have asked, "Well, what the hell happens to Vicky and Steve next?" and b) the development with the acceptance of married Episcopalian priests into the church has planted a seed or two in my head. But that's not what I'm working on at the moment.

BRC: What are your future writing plans?

KW: Well, unless I stumble into Stephen King sort of money, I'll keep plugging along at my day job at Advertising Age. It's editing and writing and it keeps me abreast of all sorts of things (technology, pop culture) that I might lose if I were just sitting in my apartment or teaching or something. I'm currently doing the second draft of another novel --- another one written as part of a six-month bet --- it's the only way to get me to crank out that first draft. I don't want to get too much into it, but this one is set in the future and in the Northeast and is more a goofy social commentary. I think what will happen is, if publishers and readers put up with it, I'll end up alternating, Southern Book, Something Else, Southern Book, Something Else. Maybe throw something serious in there, too! And, if I could get a humor-essay gig going --- not that the world needs another David Sedaris or Dave Barry, or that I could compete with either one of them --- and I'd be all over that.

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