Exploring The Mind Behind Henry’s Chapel, Tailgater, And Winter Park
Award-winning author Graham Guest discusses his innovative approach to storytelling, merging philosophy with fiction, blending genres, and crafting powerful narratives that explore southern gothic, psychological complexities, and unconventional protagonists with striking originality.
Graham Guest is nothing short of a literary chameleon. With a career spanning not only an impressive array of academic disciplines but also a striking diversity of creative endeavours, he has emerged as one of the most innovative voices in contemporary literature and philosophy. Born in Houston, Texas, but with intellectual roots that stretch far and wide—from Texas to Scotland to California—Guest’s body of work demonstrates a rare ability to transcend genre, medium, and even traditional narrative boundaries. Author, philosopher, musician—he wears each of these titles with an ease that belies the depth of talent they represent.
From the gripping psychological textures of Winter Park to the southern gothic experimentation of Henry’s Chapel, and the sharply philosophical Definition, Guest’s novels are as thought-provoking as they are boundary-pushing. And in works like Tailgater, we see his originality as both a storyteller and a keen observer of human idiosyncrasies. His writing delves deep, unearthing the anxieties, obsessions, and contradictions at the heart of contemporary life, while never shying away from a sense of humour or philosophical inquiry. In addition to this, his upcoming book, Primitive Perceptual Concepts, marks yet another stride in his philosophical explorations, this time within the realm of the philosophy of mind, promising to enrich an already remarkable bibliography.
It is no exaggeration to say that Graham Guest stands at the intersection of art, philosophy, and storytelling. His writing dares to challenge conventions while remaining deeply compelling, filled with a curious blend of realism, intellectual depth, and imaginative daring. Whether tracing the convolutions of human psychology or plumbing the depths of philosophical absurdity, Guest masterfully engages his audience, encouraging us to question our certainties and embrace complexity. It was a privilege to sit down with such an erudite and versatile author, delving into the genesis of his stories and the themes behind his most celebrated works. Prepare to be inspired, provoked, and entertained as Graham Guest shares the insights behind his brilliant creations.
Graham Guest is a masterful storyteller, seamlessly merging profound philosophical inquiry with daringly imaginative narratives that captivate and inspire.
What inspired you to write Henry’s Chapel, and how did you develop its unique narrative structure?
There were a number of sources of inspiration for Henry’s Chapel. Firstly, I am originally from southeast Texas, and my dad’s family is from South Carolina and Georgia, so I got full exposure to the South growing up, and I guess I got the sense, or suspected, that there were some seriously depraved shenanigans – a particularly southern sort of depraved shenanigans – going on just beyond the surface scene. Secondly, I read Faulkner (may favorite is As I Lay Dying), which corroborated my suspicion about those depraved southern shenanigans. Thirdly, I saw Billy Bob Thornton’s film Slingblade, which brought those depraved southern shenanigans to visual and cinematic life.
Fourthly, I read Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy, whose simple, reportage-like narratological approach inspired me to write ‘Grass’, a short southern gothic tale about an autistic boy and his love affair with his lawnmower. I tried unsuccessfully to turn ‘Grass’ into a film script, and then I dropped it until… Fifthly, I read David Foster Wallace (I read all of Wallace, but I really liked Infinite Jest (novel) and Oblivion (a collection of stories – his last before his suicide)). The Wallace-ian narrator really resonated with me, and it occurred to me that I might try to mix a Wallace-ian narratorial style – which is very casual-conversational and philosophical at the same time – with the Faulknerian southern gothic vision, or content, of ‘Grass’.
“The Wallace-ian narrator really resonated with me, and it occurred to me to mix it with Faulknerian southern gothic content.” – Graham Guest
These five sources came before I started writing Henry’s Chapel, but there is a sixth source, which came as I actually wrote the book: that this book could be a serious hybrid of a lot of things: philosophy, creative non-fiction, fiction, film, tragedy, comedy… And narratologically speaking, a really big formal idea I had was to try to include ‘everybody’ in it: fictional characters (he, her, they), a non-fictional narrator (I, me), and a reader-audience, who watches the film with me (we) and to whom I can turn and ask questions (you). Having the Wallace-ian narrator watch, report, and comment on the Faulknerian film is what made this hyper-inclusion, this radical heterogeneity, possible.
Once I figured out how the novel would work and got going on it in earnest, I did have the concern with Henry’s Chapel that I was writing in a genre – metafiction – that had been played out. Indeed, once I got going on it, I realized that the novel’s structure was an awful lot like Mystery Science Theater, where the TV audience watches these weird creatures sit in the audience of a film, which they comment on, laugh at, etc. But this parallel did not deter me; it just became yet another intertext that the book explores.
Setting up the narrator as someone watching a film and commenting on it helped me control the metafictional mêlée. The narrator can watch the film, Lawnmower of a Jealous God, and relay its contents to his audience (the readers) as if they are all simply watching the film, or the narrator can go off on whatever ideas he wants. The narrator serves as the fulcrum that supports the film and whatever comes into his head. The book, then, is about a film, which is a fictional story about a dysfunctional East Texas family, and it is about whatever comes to the narrator’s mind, which often seems to be non-fiction. This makes the book a hybrid of film and fiction, and of fiction and non-fiction. It is also part memoir and personal (philosophical) essay because the narrator is essentially me.
“Tailgater was born from a mix of deep personal frustrations, psychological introspection, and my love for Lynchian storytelling.” – Graham Guest
Tailgater presents a dark yet intriguing premise – what drew you to explore this kind of character and story?
The central threads of Tailgater came together organically and without a lot of pre-vision or preparation. And (for me) the central threads of the story are these: my inability to tolerate tailgating and a deep love for the tailgating scene from David Lynch’s Lost Highway; dialogue inspired both by David Foster Wallace and by psychotherapy; connected interests in Millennials, serial killers, and how similar serial killers and superheroes can be; and, lastly, a need to work through some things from my past.
First, I think my inability to tolerate tailgaters originally stems from the personal space violation that is inherent in tailgating and that is anathema to someone like me, who is outfitted with a certain degree of autism. I mean, I’ve been working on it, but I tend to get viscerally burned up by tailgaters – which explains why the tailgating scene from David Lynch’s Lost Highway is so meaningful, cathartic, and satisfying to me. Lost Highway, recall, contains an explosive scene in which the Robert Loggia character (called Dick Laurent in the film) teaches a young tailgater a lesson about tailgating that the young tailgater will never forget. The scene perfectly captures the mindless thirst (in the Buddhist sense) of tailgating, and it captures the perfect justice of totally shutting it down. Thus, as a victim and an artist, I think I was naturally inclined to try my hand at my own tailgater story.
Second, by this time in my writing life, I felt like I had my Faulknerian scenes and subject matters pretty well down, but I was still struggling with my narrative voice and with dialogue. I needed a smart sounding, casually philosophical narrator, who was also deeply funny and irreverent; and I needed real-sounding, witty, fast-paced, and expositive dialogue that could push a story forward for pages at a time (if necessary). Reading David Foster Wallace helped me solve both problems. I adapted the Wallace-ian narrative voice in Henry’s Chapel; and I adapted Wallace-ian dialogue in Tailgater – indeed, Tailgater is a story written entirely in dialogue.
What’s more, most of the dialogue in Tailgater takes place between the two protagonists, John Franco (‘The Tailgate Killer’, or, ironically, just ‘Tailgater’) and Danielle Winter (who also has a bit part in Winter Park – sort of Yoknapatawpha County style). Danielle is the psychologist sent in to speak with Franco after he’s been arrested, so the dialogue is largely of a psychological nature. Since I have done my fair share of psychotherapy, it was a natural move to blend the Wallace-ian casual philosophical register with the psychotherapeutic register.
Third, John Franco is a Millennial by birth, and he does bear some of the commonly identified Millennial traits – but in his own, unique ways. He thinks of himself as special but not in a positive way; he’s been sheltered by his parents but not in an uber-caring way; he’s intellectually confident but totally inept socially and emotionally; and he feels great pressure to achieve but not for money or job success: Franco seeks a principled life in which he is celebrated and acknowledged (and loved) for having identified what is morally right and for having done the job that the law cannot do: theactual enforcement of what’s morally right – superhero style. Indeed, John Franco had perceived his future as foreclosed for a long time, but now he has rejected that foreclosure and taken his future into his own hands by becoming Tailgater – combination vigilante serial killer and superhero. Writing Tailgater was a way for me to explore all of these ambiguities.
Lastly, I assure you that all the weird and bad things that happened to and around Franco as a child are totally fictional. However, the spirits of some of those bad things are autobiographically true; and I do know that, like Franco, I was made to sleep alone in a cage-top crib in a pitch-black room as a young child. So, writing Tailgater was a way for me to work through all of this sort of stuff as well.
Your book Definition blends philosophy and satire – how do you strike a balance between intellectual depth and humour?
Yes, Definition is an experiment in satirical meta-philosophy, where the particular subject matter being philosophized about is clearly absurd, but the philosophy being done seems beguilingly legitimate. I mean, agonizing over the definition of ‘parking lot’ as it appears in the dictionary that comes built into a MacBook computer is obviously ridiculous. But what I wanted to do was to make the approach to that analysis so philosophically rigorous and systematic that one couldn’t help but think that there must be some real philosophical merit here, some real philosophical point being made that’s worth getting to the bottom of.
And while I knew very well how to do the specific philosophical-linguistic-conceptual analysis as I wrote Definition, I confess that I did not really know the underlying philosophical point. And this really bothered me, so much so that I borrowed a fictional character from Winter Park – Philosophy Professor Bob Jogs at Rice University – to try to figure it out. So, if you are interested in a detailed (if ultimately unsatisfying) account of the philosophical merits of Definition, see Jogs’ letter to the public entitled ‘A Brief History of Definition’, which appears in Tailgater (pp. 143-151). Very generally speaking, though, I can say now that one of the philosophical goals of Definition is to explore what dictionaries and definitions are and to debunk the common assumption that dictionary definitions are somehow absolute.
“Philosophy can be funny and imperfect, but that doesn’t tarnish its value—it adds to its dynamic vitality and exploration.” – Graham Guest
It is true, though, that philosophy and humour are uncommon bedfellows, with the exception of a lot of Monty Python skits, which do explore the humorous implications of philosophical or philosophical-type thought; for example, their ‘dead parrot’ and ‘argument’ skits, and most directly their unforgettable and ingenious ‘philosophers’ football match’ skit, in which Archimedes is struck by the brilliant (philosophical?) idea to kick the ball down the field towards the goal, Socrates heads it in for the score, and the Germans argue that it doesn’t count because there is no such thing as reality: a seemingly ridiculous but nonetheless legitimate or at least not unimaginable philosophical position to take – because look, if there’s no such thing as reality, then there was no goal!
So, I suppose another thing I was trying to do by wedding philosophy and humour in Definition was to show that while poking fun at philosophy exposes its fallibility and non-absoluteness, it doesn’t necessarily obliterate the value of philosophy and of making good philosophical points (e.g., the point that the fallibility and non-absoluteness of philosophy is a healthy and legitimate philosophical position in itself). Indeed, I think that philosophy takes itself too seriously, and I hope that one thing Definition shows is that it doesn’t tarnish or delegitimize philosophy and good philosophical thinking to admit that philosophy can be funny and imperfect.
Winter Park features two very unconventional protagonists – what was the creative process behind their development?
Winter Park is a tale of two unlikely friends: Eric Swanson – a drug-addled philosopher from Colorado who suspects he has committed some terrible misdeed, and Nat Stobbs – an African American, epileptic, synesthetic savant from the deep south who has memorized a dictionary. Stobbs and Swanson first meet in the Odessa, TX, bus station before being bussed off to Dude Ranch, a sort of rodeo college/penal camp. The two are told they are to be ‘dude brothers’ at the Ranch and are given aliases: Stobbs becomes Harris Birdsong; Swanson becomes Wayne Floyd. On the way to the ranch, Floyd has a stroke (from severe dehydration), and Birdsong has an epileptic seizure, the repercussions of which are: Floyd is rendered quadriplegic and comes to move and talk via an electric/electronic wheelchair (think Stephen Hawking); Birdsong is reduced to being a ‘walking dictionary’, and both suffer total retrograde amnesia and identity loss.
Under the direction of the ruthless vice warden, Rudy Dude, Floyd and Birdsong work at the ranch consolidating rocks: Birdsong, with a heavy rake; Floyd, with a wheelchair ‘snowplow’ attachment. They also attend therapy sessions with Doc Holiday. Birdsong thinks he’s made a real friend in Floyd, but Floyd only likes Birdsong because he thinks Birdsong is an ‘Oracle of Essences’: that Birdsong has the ability to access the true essences of things. When Floyd discovers that Birdsong has ‘only’ memorized a dictionary, they have a falling out. Floyd then sets out on his own to write a philosophical thesis on the nature of parking lots, and Birdsong has a sexual encounter with a counselor named Rachel Hill and gains in emotional and intellectual independence. However, tragedy awaits both Floyd and Birdsong in the end. Part I of the novel is from Swanson’s perspective; Part II through the end, from Birdsong’s.
Now, let me back up. Winter Park was initiated as an imitative response to Lynne Tillman’s experimental novel American Genius, which is rife with internal reflection, so it will come as no surprise that Part I of Winter Park is rife with internal reflection. Swanson is a young philosophy PhD student at Rice University, so, character-wise, the emphasis on reflection makes sense as well. Tailored punctuation schemes are used to facilitate the mimetic presentation of Swanson’s trains of thought. Swanson, however, also has a mental deficit: he is a drug and alcohol abuser.
Swanson’s substance abuse causes him to ‘blackout’: suffer total amnesia regarding deeds and events which take place over a period of several hours and in which he is an active participant. At the end of Part I, Swanson suffers an epic, almost twenty-four hour blackout. When he emerges from it, he is stricken with the overwhelming feeling that he has committed a horrible misdeed, but he is not certain, and neither is the reader. By virtue of this blackout, a massive blackhole conceals the heart of the plot, and both Swanson and the reader are forced to reckon with this over the remainder of the novel. What is highlighted, I think, hope, is the powerful, desperate, human need for epistemological certainty and the human ability to create epistemological certainty where there is none.
Part II of Winter Park highlights perception, emotion, and reflection. When we are first introduced to Stobbs, he has (in a manner reminiscent of Faulkner’s Benjy and Vardaman) not yet developed the ability to reflect; he is largely a synthesis of perception and emotion: his perceptions are infused with emotion. The evocation or mimesis of emotion is achieved through tailored uses of grammar (namely word repetition) and punctuation (namely its omission). By the end of the novel, Stobbs-now-Birdsong is also a synthesis of perception and reflection. Since he has memorized a dictionary, he has learned to reflect, to think, by following chains of inference that inhere in and between that dictionary’s definitions, and those definitions become totally constitutive of his conception and reflection. What is highlighted here is the false epistemological confidence, the false sense of objectivity we gain by relying on definitions and/or ingrained concepts, for they are all (on this view anyway) merely supplemental, provisional constructions.
As a musician and writer, do you find any overlap between your songwriting and novel-writing processes?
I have carried music into Henry’s Chapel via the soundtrack ideas in the film of the book, Lawnmower of Jealous God, and I hope that I bring a certain musicality and rhythm to all my fiction writing, both formally and at the sentential level. I can’t say that I’ve carried a lot of prose writing ideas into my music, but I can say that I have tried to bring philosophical thought into my music. For example, Moses Guest has a song called ‘Bird in My Hand’, whose lyrics are a direct ‘musical-ization’ of an artery of Quine’s philosophy about language, creativity, and identity.
How has living in Northern California influenced your writing and creative pursuits?
I have been lucky enough to live in many places: Houston, TX; Middletown, CT; Austin, TX; Boston, MA; New Orleans, LA; New York, NY; Davis, CA; San Francisco, CA; Glasgow, UK; Ross, CA; Mill Valley, CA; Ketchum, ID; Bristol, UK; and Durango, CO. But I think the place that has had the most influence on me and my writing is Texas. For a long time, I have been repulsed by Texas for fostering a culture that I see as baselessly narcissistic, reactionary, violent, ignorant, and hubristic. So, I write about Texas to fight against Texas.
But Northern California has had an important influence on me and my writing as well. First of all, I was lucky enough to attend the MFA writing program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where it was no holds barred writing twenty-four/seven, and where I had the best writing mentor ever in Miranda Mellis. And second of all, I was lucky enough to live in Mill Valley, where I was surrounded not only by a superabundance of magical redwoods, but also by a superabundance of tailgating assholes, without whom I might never have been inspired to write Tailgater.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors looking to experiment with unconventional storytelling?
If you are like me in your approach to unconventional storytelling, then you will not know from day to day where your novel is going. Each scene will set up the next, and that’s all you’ll know. Inevitably, this organic, scene-by-scene approach will run you into trouble because you will realize that a scene that follows naturally from its immediate predecessor contradicts a scene or story element or plot element from much earlier in the novel. The advantage, I think, of this organic approach is its spontaneity; the disadvantage is this occasional house-of-cards problem, where you have to go back and revise previous scenes to be consistent with new, organic scenes that you really want to keep. So, with the organic approach, there’s a lot of painstaking going back-and-forth between writing ahead in the novel and tweaking earlier parts of the novel that otherwise would be inconsistent. But have patience, loads and loads of patience. When it comes to the internal consistency of your story and plot, do not compromise.
This second bit of advice concerns voice and applies to all writers, not just experimental ones. When it comes to your narrative voice – your own, unique, narrative voice – keep writing until you find it. Finish your first novel (as long as it’s internally consistent) before you find it if you have to; finish your second novel (as long as it’s internally consistent) before you find it if you have to. Keep working on your voice and reading other writers for clues, but don’t let finding your voice prevent you from finishing novels. I think that as long as your fundamentals are solid, then you can get away with having a somewhat generic narrative voice. I had not found my voice when I wrote Winter Park; I was closing in on it when I wrote Tailgater; and I finally found it in Henry’s Chapel, when I discovered the Faulkner-Wallace (casual philosophical) blend. If you have not yet found your voice, keep writing and reading; through practice, patience, perseverance, and a profound passion for your project, you will find it.
