“I’m Just Pleased to Get the Books Published”

Tennessee writer William Gay’s Twilight (2006) didn’t register with me right away as fitting into the crime-fiction tradition. But this “Southern gothic novel about an undertaker who won’t let the dead rest” definitely makes the cut, as might his previous novel, The Long Home (1999). As Gay explains today in an interview with John Kenyon of Things I’d Rather Be Doing,

I actually think I’m influenced by Flannery O’Connor. A Good Man is Hard to Find is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I think my stuff was influenced in style, and characters, by O’Connor’s characters.

I also read a lot of Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald [sic], hard-boiled stuff. There is a general feel toward the end of The Long Home when the kid’s sort of walking away that’s like that. Otto Penzler, who runs the Mysterious Bookshop, called me after The Long Home. He stocked it. He considered it a crime novel. I have a story coming in the Best Mystery Stories of 2007 chosen by him. It was from Tin House, about the meth trade. It’s kind of a surreal, bizarre story. It’ll be in Best American Short Stories, selected by Stephen King, too. First time I’ve ever been in there.

The full text of TIRBD’s fine interview with Gay can be found here.