By Victoria Gaffney
This Saturday, author Jonathan Harper will read from his debut short story collection, “Daydreamers,” filling One More Page Books with the dynamic characters of his imagination. A Falls Church resident, Harper has been in the D.C. area for a while, graduating with his MFA in creative writing from American University in 2010. The stories in this new collection—some of which he started in the MFA program—abound with a cast of characters, all young men, who feel trapped in the monotony of their lives. Many of the stories are set in the NoVA suburbs where the characters consistently daydream about what their lives could be. Tensions ensue when their daydreaming leads to feelings of inertia and the inability to act. For many of Harper’s characters, it may be time to stop fantasizing, and perhaps, as the ending of one of the stories suggests, they’ve “been daydreaming way too long.”
We sat down with Harper at Soho’s in D.C.—the writer’s favorite place to write for almost a decade—to hear about his short stories and what it’s like to be a writer in the area.
Some of the stories in “Daydreamers” have been previously published. What was it like to revisit some of the stories that you had already worked on?
Well I don’t think I ever really stopped. Some of the stories were started in my MFA program, and I am a very slow worker, so I’m constantly going back. I sit in the editing process for sometimes three months at a time on one story, but then I’ll cycle through them. There are stories in here that have—and I’m not exaggerating—about a dozen drafts. And they’re all kind of different. There’s still part of me that wishes I had another year to do another edit.
Tell me a little bit about the process that went into writing the stories. I know you stuck with a similar theme—being sort of adrift, kind of between decision and indecision, all young men in a similar age range dealing with their humdrum everyday existence. How did you work out that theme when writing the stories?
It’s funny because I went to American University for the MFA. I started in 2006, and the thing I’ve been telling people a lot lately (is) I had this loose idea of what I wanted to do. I knew my favorite writers; I kind of knew my themes. You build up these expectations for specific projects, but then the actuality is never really the same as what you imagined. I was writing the same characters over and over again, so I would start trying to switch them up and I would have different scenarios come in, but it always came down to people in their 20s and 30s who could not grow up to some extent. I guess it was after I graduated when I was really pressuring myself to actually have a project when I got to reread everything and was like, “OK, this is what we have to do, capture this psychology. Now what are the interesting events to focus on?”
How do the stories come to you? And the characters, how do they come to you? If there’s an easy answer to that question.
There really isn’t, and that’s the tricky part. I’m like the title; I’m a daydreamer. I live in my own little fantasy world half the time. I would be perfectly fine if I was locked in a room alone for three days where I could just play make believe. The ideas will come up when I’m in a conversation, when I’m reading a book or playing a video game. There will be some sort of, “Oh wouldn’t it be interesting if this happened,” or there will be something someone says that will jar something, and it sits in my head for a while. I usually have notebooks I bring with me, so I jot down notes. Then I have a clear working time, and that’s where I start taking all the jumbled stuff and start playing that mental Tetris with them. That’s how they get structured. But my imagination process is unstructured. When you’re shifting in the imagination realm, the most ridiculous things happen, and sometimes that’s where all the fun is. Then it’s about trying to make it sensible. I would prefer to just stay in the first part. If that could just work, I’d be happy.
A lot of these are set in the suburbs of D.C. and in Northern Virginia itself. How long have you been in the area?
I was a military brat, so I have no hometown; I’m from nowhere and everywhere. College was I think my 13th residence. I moved here in ’98 for college at George Mason. I thought I was moving back to New York. That’s where the queers were; that’s where I was going to go. I ended up just sticking around. I had no idea what I was going to do when I graduated. I had an English degree, and I got an internship with the Lambda Literary Foundation that was here. I had no idea about queer literature. I read fantasy novels. I kind of read the stuff that was assigned for me for class. I was really into other stuff. Then what was going to be maybe three months turned into a three-year career there getting kind of schooled and being the young 22-year-old who was surrounded by queer fiction writers in their 50s and 60s. We were shut down in 2005, but at that point I was so secured in this area that I just couldn’t imagine leaving. So I think I’m a lifer here.
How has living here informed your sense of place in your stories; do you feel like living here helps and that’s why you chose these particular settings for the stories?
There was a lot that went into choosing the settings. I was always living on military bases or in the suburbs growing up, and it really informed this very strange identity on me. I was always on the outside of what was happening in the places I wanted to be. A lot of queer fiction, especially from younger writers, is always set in New York or maybe San Francisco, and it’s always about queer space, whereas in the suburbs I was finding that they are becoming queer spaces.There’s a lot of people being pushed out, and it was just an instant tension for the stories—these people who are trapped in the suburbs that are becoming more welcoming to them but aren’t really appealing to their own sense as outsiders. There’s just so much there.
What’s it like to be a writer in this area? I know you said Soho’s is one of your favorite spots to write. Do you have any favorite spots in the Northern Virginia area?
Well, all of my independent coffee shops in the Falls Church area are now gone. There used to be this place, Stacy’s Coffee Parlor, which is referenced somewhere in the stories. They’re all kind of gone. I don’t work well at home. I have a husband, two cats; there’s an X-Box; I have new built-in bookshelves with all of my books, including the ones I haven’t read yet. No work will get done at home. For me it’s just places like this. When you’re in a nice vibrant environment but people are kind of leaving you alone, you get the best of both worlds. But these places are disappearing. It’s getting harder and harder.
What do you think about the arts scene in Northern Virginia, particularly the writing scene?
I think D.C. gets such a bad rep. We have such a vibrant arts culture; there are so many reading groups out there. We have the National Endowment for the Arts here; we have the PEN Faulkner Foundation. I think there’s so much going on that it’s hard to find because you easily get tunnel vision on the few things you notice.
I don’t know what it is about D.C. specifically, but I feel like there’s still enough space here where you can show up and then you can find your niche. Like in New York—it’s so funny, I went back to Manhattan, and I hate Manhattan now. One time when I went up I brought my little word processor with me, and I got chased out of every place I tried to sit down with it. I wasn’t even using it. It was like the minute they saw me, they wanted me out. And I was like well where do you go just to kind of sit and daydream for a little bit anymore. Here at least you can find spaces all over the place. There’s so much going on that you just can’t help but notice some really amazing facets of humanity and culture just by people watching.
Jonathan Harper Reading:
Saturday, March 28, 5-7p.m.
One More Page Books
2200 N. Westmoreland St., #101
Arlington, 22213
703-300-9746