PRINTThe wilding of Benjamin Percy
Author discusses his muse and upcoming debut novel
Courtesy of Benjamin Percy
February 5, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Although the average story by Benjamin Percy spans no more than a few pages, a reader immediately gets lost in the adventures, the characters and, most of all, the excitement of Percy’s words. When he visits MU Feb. 5 to promote his award-winning short stories and upcoming novel, The Wilding, Columbia will have a chance to get drawn into Percy’s adventures — straight from the author’s mouth.
The self-described news junkie eagerly approaches tough subjects that infiltrate front-page news. “I’m inspired by things that happen on an everyday basis,” Percy says. “I have an encounter at the grocery store, or I read an article in the newspaper. Some of it is documentary. Some of it is imagination. There is no one source; it all swirls together.” He writes the types of stories that paint such a gory, graphic picture that you can’t help to squeeze your eyes shut midsentence — only to open them and hurriedly continue.
Unlike his characters who spend their days exploring the outdoors, Percy is a man who lives to write and spends much of his time scrawling away. He is an author, professor and freelance journalist. When he isn’t writing, he’s teaching about writing. In 2004 he accepted a visiting professor position at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Now he lives in Ames, Iowa, and teaches creative writing courses to budding authors at Iowa State University.
His characters are stereotypically masculine; they hunt, grunt and drink beer. Percy strikes a balance between the boyish outdoorsmen he grew up around and the intellectual journalist he now is. Although his characters bond by gutting deer and beating one another up, Percy has a sensitivity that allows him to write about these masculine ideals without sounding macho.
He doesn’t shy away from topics that intimidate many writers. He likes a little violence and manages to work blood into the majority of his stories. In “Refresh, Refresh,” which earned Percy a Pushcart Prize and made it into The Best American Short Stories 2006, he writes about the devastation of war. Instead of making a political statement, he focuses on the personal impact war has on family. The story is so realistic and raw that it’s a surprise none of Percy’s immediate family or close friends has enlisted. “I set out with the express purpose of writing about the Iraq War because I hadn’t seen anyone do so,” he says.
Often calling his home state of Oregon his muse, Percy continues to find inspiration from his upbringing. “It comes down to the fact that you are imaginatively rooted in childhood,” he says.
“The first few years of life are when you’re most open, when everything is a curiosity.”
After years of writing short stories and publishing two books of his best tales, Percy decided it was time to tackle a novel. The novel is made up of numerous interlocking plot lines, including Native Americans, locksmiths, real estate schemes, miscarriages and wild bears. “I guess you could call it Crash meets Deliverance,” Percy says. “If I was providing a dust jacket synopsis, it’s about expansionism in the form of the war and in the form of the commercialization of the frontier, Californication of Oregon, and the animalism that lurks within us all. That’s getting back to the title of The Wilding. The end is, hopefully, explosive.”
In addition to working on the novel, Percy has been an Esquire contributor for the past year, which allows him to flex his comedic skills. He enjoys the freedom of fiction but is quick to highlight the upside of reality. “I enjoy both genres,” Percy says. “I get more fulfillment from fiction, but nonfiction is a welcomed challenge.”
For an April 2008 fiction piece in Esquire, Percy wrote a short story called “April 20, 2008” about, among other things, the falsities found on Wikipedia.
Coincidentally, Percy has his own Wikipedia page. Until recently, it said he used to teach at “Marquart University” in Wisconsin. Such a school does not exist.
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