Jay Kauffmann’s story collection, The Mexican Messiah, transports readers from the North Pole to Tokyo, Paris, the Sahara, and beyond. Kauffmann, a former international model, earned an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He chairs the English Dept. at the Miller School of Albemarle. The Mexican Messiah, runner-up in the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize, was also nominated for The Story Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and he was named one of the “Best New American Voices.” His writing has appeared in CutBank, Prime Number, The Writer’s Chronicle, upstreet, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere.
BettyJoyce Nash: When did you start writing these stories?
Jay Kauffmann: I wrote these stories over the last ten years. Many are drawn from real experiences. They fall somewhere between memoir and fiction. Ironically, the stories that are most fictional tend to reveal my most personal aspects. You can find references to divorce, estrangement, father-son relationships, but if one theme runs through all of them, it’s the expatriate experience. Echoing my own early life—the roughly 15 years I lived out of a suitcase—each character is lost, in one sense or another, and seeking a sense of home.
BJN: In “The Prince of Denmark,” the main character musters courage to perform for a cigarette ad; the photo shoot was near the North Pole, a whale rolling over at starboard. Are these scenes true?
Jay Kauffmann
JK: I did shoot an ad for a cigarette company on a ship in the north seas, and the photographer was slightly mad, intoxicated with power, and felt he could do anything. While there were no killer whales, I did leap from the ship onto a dinghy, and this ended up being the shot they used for the campaign. I wanted to draw out the humor of the situation but realized you can’t “try” to be funny; the best way to find comedy—as illustrated by Joseph Heller—is simply to point out absurdity. And if ever there was a realm ripe with absurdity, it is the fashion world. The fact that my father died from smoking—and here I was promoting it—certainly added a layer of poignancy to the story.
BJN: “In the German Garden” portrays a high-ranking military official visiting his son, living in Berlin with his ex-wife. One night after a father-son dinner, his son takes off with friends, and Henry tails him to discover anything he can about the boy’s life. How did this story evolve?
JK: I have an ex-wife who lives in Berlin and who has a son. While he isn’t my son, he could have been. I’ve visited Berlin over the years—even before the fall of the Wall. I’m intrigued by its history, particularly its elements of dystopia and perversity. The Grunewald is a vast and surprisingly wild place, where wild boars really do roam the forest and wreak havoc. The confluence in Berlin of old Nazi estates, an old American military base, a large transsexual community, my ex’s teenage son, and a boar-terrorized park, all cried out to be made into a story. The story also allowed me to express my struggle with being separated from my kids in their early years.
BJN: Your world-building skills are superb. You establish each global setting. Which are your favorites? Any advice to writers about details to include or omit?
JK: Thanks for the compliment! I’m attracted for whatever reason to hot, dry places, deserts, parts of the Mediterranean. Timeless, raw, unforgiving landscapes. I always start with place. Story and character come later. I love plopping my characters in foreign lands, where, far from the familiar, they are forced to confront who they really are. It’s not a matter of piling on predictable details but finding that unique, poignant detail that triggers in the reader’s mind a chain of details. The reader does the rest, fleshing out the landscape. Marguerite Duras is excellent at this. One authentic sensory detail is far more effective than a dozen hackneyed ones.
BJN: How would you characterize the themes in your stories? I “discover” themes in my stories.
JK: I’m drawn to moments that are charged. There’s a mystery that points to something profound. I just don’t know what it is. So, yes, I only learn what the story points towards as I’m writing it. It’s always a surprise and an act of discovery. But a consistency of theme runs through every story… of loss and being lost.
BJN: Can you share your route to publishing?
JK: I had a contract to publish the novella, but the publisher went bankrupt. Devastated, I shared what had happened with Sue Silverman, a brilliant author and friend, and she recommended Cornerstone Press. It can take months to hear from a publisher; Cornerstone got back to me within 24 hours! Apparently, the publisher, Ross Tangedal, was up in the middle of the night with his newborn and started reading my manuscript. The next morning, he sent back a contract.
BJN: What authors do you return to again and again?
JK: Cheever, Fitzgerald, DeLillo, Paul Bowles, Cormac McCarthy, James Salter, and two writers I was fortunate enough to know and consider mentors, Leonard Michaels (at UC/ Berkeley) and Frank Conroy (at Brandeis). I’m drawn to expatriate literature and writers with a unique prose style, to stories that explore nostalgia and loss. For me, it’s less about story and more about rhythm and voice, capturing a moment, the mood and mystery.
BettyJoyce Nash
BJN: How did Mexican Messiah, this complex and original story, arrive in your mental toolbox?
JK: I spent years in my twenties travelling India and Southeast Asia—I even lived in an ashram—and met holy men and women from different traditions. Some, I believe, were the real thing, others charlatans. I’m fascinated by the expectation, built into so many cultures, of a prophet, savior, or messiah who will save us—the Second Coming for Christians. If such a being were to actually appear, how would we respond? And what if he or she failed to meet our expectations, or their beliefs were antithetical to ours, or forced us to confront our prejudices? Would we think he (or she) was a conman, madman, bum? Marquez addresses this metaphorically in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.”
The character Almirez is a composite of monks I met (all shared a child-like innocence), and I made a point to leave it a mystery as to whether or not he is genuine. Catharine, based on my mother, is a nod to the Cathar movement of the 12th century and their worship of the divine feminine. And Donny, well, he is an aspect of me. Through him, I was able to work through tangled feelings around my divorce.
The novella also grew from trips to Mexico and my fascination for its culture, specifically how Catholicism and indigenous traditions have merged.
BJN: How many drafts do you write before you’re satisfied?
JK: I write exceedingly slowly; my first draft is pretty close to my final draft. I started as a poet, so my work is all about sound. This, more than anything else, determines whether a passage works. I used to read every sentence aloud over and over again, listening to every minute detail, its beat and melody, to figure out what makes a sentence “true” or not (to borrow Hemingway’s term.) If I follow a guiding principle, it is to find the balance between lyricism and efficiency, between beauty and function. Go too far in one direction and you end up with a work that is lacking, uneven.
BJN: What are you writing now?
JK: I’ve been working—and giving up—on a memoir about my modeling career, “Mannequin.” I planned to alternate first-and-second person chapters—reflecting my modeling persona in the second person and the real me in first person. But the two identities—artificial and genuine—kept crossing. Who would have thought memoir would be harder to write than fiction? I’m also working on a novel, “Ibiza,” about a beautiful Moroccan girl, discovered in a souq in Marrakesh, and launched into the modeling world. Two men, a Parisian dealer of forged paintings and a New York financier, in a battle of egos, try to possess her. It’s meant to be a thriller in the vein of Patricia Highsmith.
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