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An Interview with Jerry Dennis
Jerry Dennis was born in Flint, Michigan, but grew up in Northern Michigan most of his life. He earns his living writing about subjects he’s passionate about, being the author of such works as It's Raining Frogs and Fishes: Four Seasons of Natural Phenomena and Oddities of the Sky, River Home: An Angler's Explorations, and The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas. His work has been widely praised, translating into five languages, and being recognized with great honors such as the Michigan Author of the Year (1999), the Great Lakes Culture Award, and the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. Dennis is married, has two sons, and continues to have encounters with Michigan’s incomparable lakes, rivers, and forests to this day.
Jacob Powers and Megan Ward interviewed Jerry Dennis about his inspirations and accomplishments via e-mail for the website, UpInMichigan.org:
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UpInMichigan.org: When it comes to writing, where do you begin?
Jerry Dennis: Beginnings are usually the hard part. More often than not I'll start with a single phrase, sentence, or image that has some emotional content, around which the writing gradually accrues. If it doesn't have enough "weight" to carry the work, I'll discard it and try again.
UIM: What are your inspirations?
JD: Three reliable reservoirs: the people I love, great books, and those moments of alertness in which the world becomes deeply interesting. Of course reading—books or the world—can be both inspiring and inspired.
UIM: Why did you choose to focus on specific places in your writing?
JD: In my reading as well as my writing I'm always looking to become engaged in concrete experience, and place is integral to it. Places fascinate me because they each have a character that is as unique and challenging to portray as it in humans.
UIM: How has your birthplace affected your writing or your perceptions of writing?
JD: My birthplace, Flint, Michigan, has had little effect, but northern Michigan, where I have lived most of my life since I was five years old, has been important in many ways. But that would probably be true of Flint if I had grown up there, or Brooklyn or California or any place that was the setting for my formative experiences. One way or another the places we live in are going to inform our work.
UIM: There is often the argument on whether or not the Great Lakes region has a unique literature that separates it from the rest of the Midwest. How do you feel about this?
JD: I guess I feel it's a minor argument. Literature tends to become associated with places that have distinct landscapes and enduring mythologies. The Great Lakes region is made up of such a variety of landscapes that the region is not readily identifiable to someone who doesn't live there, which might account for why our literature is usually labeled as Northern or Midwestern rather than "Great Lakes."
UIM: How do you feel writing about a place you are from is different than writing about a place you are not from?
JD: The difference in individual writers is more significant, I think: a great writer will write with power and insight about any place. But in general, certainly, the depth of our experience is going to be revealed on the page, and in most cases the places we are from provide the deepest reservoir of experiences. On the other hand, new places grab our attention and can allow a newcomer to see things that those who live there might miss. But no matter where we go, the place we are from is always going to influence how and what we see.
UIM: When writing about something a person is familiar with, what kind of distance should an author keep?
JD: Enough distance to always keep the reader in mind. But the bigger challenge is to get close to a subject, no matter how familiar it might be.
UIM: Your book, The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas, feels very much like an immersion essay. What advice would you give to writers when they are considering “immersing” themselves in a particular culture or event?
JD: I doubt if it's possible to understand another human being or a place or a culture or a complex subject of any sort without being immersed in it for weeks, months, years. The challenge becomes how to sustain yourself during your immersion. How do you stay alive in the meantime? How do you remain attentive, engaged? My advice is to cultivate curiosity at all times, and, while immersed, to walk that fine line between objectivity and passionate interest.
UIM: Many of your stories are heavily fact-based intertwined with personal experience. How do you keep a balance between the two?
JD: If you work long enough at it, that kind of balance becomes pretty clear. You have to learn to trust the little voice that tells you when it's time to lay off one or the other. In my narratives I work hard—obsessively, even—at maintaining a balanced flow. Too many facts clog the flow. Too much about me throws off the balance.
UIM: What would you recommend to a writer when researching material for a novel?
JD: I've never written a novel so I'm not really qualified to comment, but I would recommend learning everything you can about the people, place, and time about which you're writing—not to try to impress readers, but to win their trust. I think it was John Cheever who said you have to weave a believable rug for the reader to stand on, in order to pull it out from under him.
UIM: You currently reside in northern Michigan, also known as “Vacationland”. Do you cherish the tourist industry as a means for inspiration in your writing, or do you feel that the industry is damaging to certain aspects of Michigan culture?
JD: I certainly don't find inspiration in the tourism industry, though I'm inspired every day by many of the same qualities that draw vacationers here. I've been in places where tourism seems to damage the culture—certain well-worn spots in the Maritime Provinces of Canada come to mind—but I don't see much of that in northern Michigan.
UIM: When you write, do you write specifically for readers from the Great Lakes area or do you try to focus your writing towards a more national (or worldly) audience?
JD: I always imagine inquisitive readers who have never been here. But, again, balance: I want to share my knowledge and appreciation of the place, yet I don't want to insult the intelligence of those who already know it.
UIM: For someone new to the Great Lakes region, what would you recommend to see first (besides the Great Lakes themselves)?
JD: I'd give the same advice I give myself when I travel to new places: read the tourism publications on the way there, then throw them away. Get off the main streets highways. Ask questions of people in restaurants, gas stations, and libraries. Drive to places off the beaten path. Park the car. Walk.
UIM: Are there any specific authors that you look toward when writing your own works?
JD: Alice Munro, Donald Barthelme, Donald Hall, Saul Bellow, Jorges Borges, Evan S. Connell, Wallace Stegner, Italo Calvino, Margaret Atwood, Montaigne, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, William James. Those are the authors I keep on the handiest shelf, and whom I reread most consistently.
UIM: What advice would you give to upcoming regional writers?
JD: I don't know anyone who wants to be a "regional" writer. That's unfortunately a tag attached to writers who don't have the talent or good fortune to be appreciated beyond local borders. But if what you mean is a writer who chooses to write about a specific region, then I would advise that writer to become a student of the place. Read everything that's been written about it, talk to everyone, be an explorer in search of amazing discoveries. Next, I would strongly advise going elsewhere. The best way to understand your own backyard is to explore other backyards.
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