Robert Hellenga published his first story in 1973 and after 39 rejections, he published his first novel in 1994. In 2006, he published his fourth novel, Philosophy Made Simple.
In this special interview, Hellenga discusses his books and his personal writing process.
Your novel, Philosophy Made Simple, marks the return of the Harrington family. Why did you decide to bring back these characters?
In the original version of The Sixteen Pleasures, Margot's father, Rudy, had his own chapters. These were ultimately deleted, because the editor and I agreed that they impeded the forward momentum of the novel.
I published these three chapters separately, as short stories, but I never got over the feeling that I still had some unfinished business with Rudy. So, I just took up his story where I'd left off - on an avocado grove in Texas.
How did you first learn about elephants that paint and at what point in the creative process did Norma Jean start to take shape?
Several years ago I heard a spot on NPR about elephants painting and thought immediately of a circus elephant named Norma Jean, who was struck and killed by lightning in Oquawka, an old Mississippi river town not far from my home in Galesburg, Illinois. Once a year or so we drive over to Oquawka to have a look at the river and to stop at Norma Jean's grave, which is in a little park near the center of town (right where she died).
I put this elephant information together with the fact that Rudy's middle daughter was already (in The Sixteen Pleasures) engaged to an Indian, and decided to include Norma Jean in Philosophy Made Simple, which was just a rough sketch at the time.
There are elements of King Lear in Rudy Harrington, and you''ve mentioned that, like Lear, you have three daughters. Is he a favorite classical character of yours?
It's really the archetypal situation of the Lear family that I'm drawn to - the king and his three daughters who are the staple of fairy tales. After The Sixteen Pleasures and The Fall of a Sparrow, I decided it was time to write a novel that was not about a father and three daughters. So I wrote Blues Lessons.
But then I was drawn right back to the fairy- tale archetype in Philosophy Made Simple. Fortunately the parallel is not exact: my wife is very much a part of the real family constellation, and our two older daughters are not nearly as wicked as their fairy-tale counterparts.
Rudy works in produce, as did your father. Are there other elements of your father - or other people you have known - in Rudy, or do the similarities end there?
Very interesting question. My father was also a professional basketball player, though in those days there was no NBA. It was all semi-pro industrial leagues. So that's where that came from in the novel.
The fact is, Rudy is much more easy going than my father was, but now that I think of it, all sorts of things from my father have a way of sneaking in. For example, Rudy refers to a boatload of black- market avocados from the Cayman Islands. The men who worked for my father told me that he once had a boatload of black- market cement, something he always denied.
But they said it docked in Hammond, Indiana. And my father was a hunter and fisherman. Rudy is too, but only very vaguely. I suppose that's because I never got into hunting and fishing myself.
