It didn’t go exactly as planned, but here’s the transcript of an interview I did with Mary Margaret Carroll-Merrill for her weekly podcast Who’s Writing What in Iowa.
Carroll-Merrill: Welcome to the show. Today making his first appearance on the podcast is John M Donaldson—
Dono: Oops—that’s Donovan.
Carroll-Merrill: Are you sure?
Dono: Mostly.
Carroll-Merrill: Well, shoot. My bad. Anyway, John is the author of The Cave Ghost and The Davis Kids: Mystery Under the Street, two books ideal for people with short attention spans—
Dono: Hold up there just a second—the titles you mention are from stories I wrote in third and fifth grade.
Carroll-Merrill: And they’re nothing to be ashamed of.
Dono: Well, I don’t know about that. I hadn’t exactly developed a style at that point, unless leaving out huge chunks of narrative that might have helped readers understand the plot could be considered a style choice. No, I thought we were going to be talking about my new novel—
Carroll-Merrill: You have a new novel?
Dono: Yes, and it’s called The Smalltown Way. It’s set in Colby County, Illinois over a period ranging from 2003 to 2016.
Carroll-Merrill: Is this also from your grade-school period?
Dono: No, that would have made it a futuristic novel.
Carroll-Merrill: So it’s science fiction?
Dono: No, I’m saying that if I had written a book set in 2003 during my grade-school period, it would have been a futuristic novel.
Carroll-Merrill: I’m not following you.
Dono: My grade-school period would have started in the late 1960s. [UNCOMFORTABLE PAUSE] I’m old.
Carroll-Merrill: Ohhh. Well, congratulations on picking up your hobby again after all those years—
Dono: No, I didn’t just pick it up and it’s not a hobby. I’ve been writing somewhat steadily since, uh, my grade-school period. This is my seventh novel and eighth book. I’ve also put out about 200 essays and podcasts on a thrice-weekly basis for more than a year.
Carroll-Merrill: I wonder why I didn’t know that. Are you a member of any groups for Iowa writers?
Dono: You’d think so, wouldn’t you?
Carroll-Merrill: Well, anyway, it’s been great having you on the show. Good luck with The Smalltown Ghost.
Dono: Way.
Carroll-Merrill: Say what?
Dono: The Smalltown Way. That’s the name of the new book.
Carroll-Merrill: You should write a novel about a smalltown ghost.
Dono: Probably.
Carroll-Merrill: Thanks again for being with us. John M Donaldson, everyone.
Ah well. Speaking of The Smalltown Ghost, let’s take a look at my sixth novel, Kerouac’s Ghost. Some of the information that follows appeared in the May 30, 2023 newsletter, Kerouac’s Ghost Is Now Available, in which I noted that Kerouac’s Ghost was now available.
It still is.
A Little History
There’s a scene in Kerouac’s Ghost where John Cornish is ruminating about a novel he decided not to finish. Oh, look, here it is:
Cornish couldn’t remember exactly when he thought he’d become noveled out, or when he’d lost the mood to write. He’d started a first-person satire of academia shortly after putting The Ten of Clowns to bed, lost the thread after 150 pages, and when he picked it up shortly after Ellen’s diagnosis found the narrator so obnoxious he never opened the document again.
The same thing almost happened to me. I was going full goose bozo on a draft of what was going to be called Ghosts and Not Ghosts back in 2012. Professor Cornish was telling the story himself in first person. I was almost 200 pages in when something happened—probably production of a new sketch comedy show—something that started cutting into my writing time.
Well, no problem, I thought—I like where this book is going. I’ll pick it up again when I have time.
Four years later I started wondering if Ghosts and Not Ghosts had become a best-seller. Then I remembered oh, wait, no, I forgot to finish that one. I opened up the document and started reading and thought holy cow, this narrator is kind of an asshole. His asides were smug, cutting, and unfunny, and if I didn’t like him I knew readers wouldn’t either.
Still, the premise—essentially the study of a man who might or might not be in contact with the ghost of Jack Kerouac—was one I knew I had to explore. I knew that one way to make this character more likable and relatable would be to take the microphone out of his hands. Another way would be to make him more likable and relatable.
I think I was working on edits for The Rocheville Devil at the time, so Ghosts went on the back burner until 2018. At that point I started from scratch, wrote it in third-person, and made John Cornish a much more humble and much less judgmental character. This John Cornish was someone I liked, someone whose story was worth finishing.
The Title
I was sold on Ghosts and Not Ghosts for a long time, but after a while it started to sound like a collection of ghost stories you might have ordered from the Scholastic Book Club way back when. When I started thinking of alternates, I thought hey, maybe the title should just get right to the point.
What It’s About
One night Professor John Cornish wakes up to find a strange woman sitting in a chair at the end of his bed. She speaks to him in French—“You do not know”—and disappears. Cornish racks his brain the next morning and remembers seeing the woman in an old picture from the 1940s, but can’t figure out why he would have such a realistic dream about Jack Kerouac’s mother. She returns again and again—to the point where the professor is almost ready to believe in ghosts—and eventually gets around to asking the professor for a favor: Help her son get his writing back on track.
Cornish protests that he’s not the right man for the job. Not only is he not a Kerouac fan, he once published an essay accusing the Beat writer of wasting his talent. Plus, Jack Kerouac died in 1969—though Cornish isn’t sure if that matters in the ghost world or dream world or wherever these conversations are occurring.
In the meantime, while he’s definitely awake, John Cornish has to deal with an impending visit from his estranged son, a fan who wants him to be her mentor, and the murder of a family friend. And as he grudgingly accepts the task of helping Jack Kerouac—whatever that might mean—he finds himself confronting his own thoughts and preconceptions about the art of writing and the need to write.
Main Characters
John Cornish, professor of English at Midwestern Illinois University. Now in his late 50s, he teaches creative writing courses to students who generally neither know nor care that he has three novels to his credit.
Alyce Cornish, the professor’s daughter, who owns and manages the Infinite Coffeehouse in Spalding. Always concerned about her father’s health, she can’t believe he didn’t go see a neurologist after the first “visit” from Gabrielle Kerouac.
Emily Cornish, the professor’s precocious granddaughter, a perfect match for the old man’s sense of humor.
Laurel Palestina, Alyce’s new girlfriend, a singer-songwriter, and MC of the Infinite’s new Open Mic Night.
Peter Bench, a languages prof at MIU, a good friend of Cornish’s who nonetheless finds it amusing that his colleague might be receiving ghostly visits from the Kerouac family.
Nicole Burghman, a barista at the Infinite and a talented young writer who becomes obsessed with her boss’s father.
Phyllis Loomis, Cornish’s cleaning lady, a hardworking soul who’s constantly being taken advantage of by her lazy children.
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), author of On the Road, Desolation Angels, and much more. Is he a ghost? A manifestation of something haywire in Cornish’s brain? Whatever he is, he offers a new perspective on the professor’s own life.
Favorite Passages
Here’s a long passage from Chapter 5. At the insistence of his daughter, John Cornish makes an appointment with his family physician and isn’t entirely sure how to describe his situation.
The scale said 240, up three pounds from the last visit. The nurse said 5’10 and Cornish said he was holding steady there. Blood pressure slightly elevated. Pulse was fine. “Insomnia, you said?”
“That or I’m seeing things. Or both.”
The nurse tilted her head. “Are you seeing things right now?”
“Just you. And that portal to an alternate dimension beside you. Or has that always been there?”
“We just installed it. Dr Brady will be in shortly.”
Cornish doubted that but said it would be fine and started flipping through the magazines on the wall rack next to the sharps disposal unit. Celebrity news. Homemade Christmas centerpieces on a budget. The World Series preview issue of a sports magazine. There was also a copy of American Rock Climber, which was what the doctor was when he wasn’t doctoring. Evan Brady and Cornish had been friends during their MIU undergrad days, and one weekend in 1977 Brady had dragged a carload of his fellow sophomores to a site in Wisconsin that was a thousand feet high and absolutely perpendicular. Cornish and two of the others looked up once and said nope and enjoyed a nice picnic on the ground.
Dr Brady was single and not looking. His wife had left him for an appellate-court justice in 2005. Cornish couldn’t remember running across any appellate-court justices in real life and wondered where they went to meet people.
“So,” said Brady before the exam room door was even closed. “What are you seeing?”
“I’m seeing a frumpy woman who speaks French.”
“Well, it’s good that you’re dating again.”
“Unfortunately this woman has been dead a long time. It’s Jack Kerouac’s mother.”
“The guy who wrote Cuckoo’s Nest?”
“That was Ken Kesey. Kerouac wrote On the Road.”
“Never read it. But let’s start at the beginning.”
Cornish told a condensed version of the tale: the Louis XVI chair, the accusations in French, the feeling of being awake and asleep at the same time, the most recent conversation about the number of books he’d written, and the hint that a visit from Jack Kerouac himself might be coming.
“And,” he said, “even if I believed in ghosts, I wouldn’t think this was a ghost because she always appears in the same place. She doesn’t pop up in the kitchen or the car or anything.”
“Well, just to play devil’s advocate,” said Brady, “maybe there’s only one entrance from the ghost world into your house.” He aimed his penlight into Cornish’s left eye. “Realistically, though, there’s probably a reason for this particular recurring dream. Somewhere in your mind there’s a connection between all the things she’s said.”
“There was an essay I wrote years ago. I might have been a little hard on Kerouac and his mother both.”
“There you go. If I were a psychologist I’d say you’re feeling guilty about that.”
“After 20 years?”
“Did I say I was a psychologist?” Brady shined the light in Cornish’s other eye. “Any drug use?”
“Glass of wine now and then. The occasional lager.”
“That’s fine. I’m going to take some blood, do a screen for toxins. If that’s all negative we’ll get you in for an MRI.”
“Whoa now—so it could be a brain thing?”
“I’d like to rule out a physical cause. Make sure nothing out of the ordinary is going on in your noggin.”
“Sometimes I’m not sure anything’s going on in there at all. But just so I understand, there’s a possibility that something in my brain is malfunctioning and causing me to see and have a conversation with Jack Kerouac’s mother—and making it seem real?”
“I don’t know yet if you’re asleep or awake when it’s happening, but if I were you I’d get an MRI scheduled.”
“The tube? I’m considerably claustrophobic.”
“I’ll stop by and hold your hand. Any other complaints?”
“Just aging in general.”
“Start walking. When you get to an ocean you can stop.”
In a number of chapters we see some Amazon reviews of Cornish’s novels, which are long out of print. This was a fun way to illustrate the subjectivity of reader taste.
From The Virgins of Terrapocrypha Amazon Review Page
* * * OK But Why Not Skip This and Go Read Vonnegut
I’ve always heard you should develop your own writing style and not let yourself be unduly influenced by your heroes. Cornish must not have heard that same advice. This novel is darkly comic sci-fi, rich in detail with lots of long complex sentences—classic Vonnegut. I kept waiting for the author’s real voice to be heard!
* English Majors with Too Much Time on Their Hands
I only made it to this page because your algorithm said that customers who bought The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot also bought this. I haven’t bought either one yet, but I was reading the reviews and about fell off my chair at the genius who said Kurt Vonnegut wrote long, detailed, complex sentences. Hello? Have you ever actually read any Vonnegut?
* * * * Can Someone Please Do Something About Lame Reviews?
I don’t mean poorly written reviews or scathing reviews. I mean people who admit in the review that haven’t read or purchased the book!! Virgins is a perfectly fine novel, not for summer beach reading, but certainly a good use of time for readers willing to use their brains a little bit. You can probably skip the weird unnecessary parts—like the whole section where there were a bunch of sentences 26 words long, with each successive word in alphabetical order. I didn’t think it advanced the story that much.
* * * * * Absolute Genius
I felt like John Cornish was whispering this novel directly into my ear.
What Readers Think
I have no freakin idea.
Want to read it. Read on the road in… seventy something, maybe 2 or 3. I’ll be out of town next week but let’s get coffee sometime after that