The Rock Garden and Other Stories received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Dan Newland.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
The Rock Garden and Other Stories / November 2021
What’s the book’s first line?
After a couple of marathon days of getting acquainted, there’s a point during a rare lull in the conversation at which I can’t help saying, “You, my friend, are one crazy sonuvabitch.” To which he laughs genuinely and heartily, taking the pronouncement like it was uttered—as a compliment.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
The Rock Garden is an anthology of non-fiction stories about Jim Bowsher and his extraordinary Rock Garden, the centerpiece of which is the Temple of Tolerance. This book also describes Jim’s stunningly eccentric home, a veritable museum of eclectic objects and artifacts, with the connecting thread linking them all being that there is an amazing story behind each and every one.
Additionally, the book recounts an unsolved murder mystery from the town where both author and protagonist were born, as well as a road trip they took together in the company of mutual friends.
The Rock Garden reads like a series of compelling short stories, all of which paint a portrait of a unique and captivating man and of the strange and haunting world that he has built around him in a small Ohio town.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
Clearly, it was the uniqueness of the main character and his inspiringly eccentric view of the world. Ever since I was a young journalist in South America in the 1970s, I realized that there is no such thing as a “non-story”. Each and every place, person and situation that we come into contact with has a story their own. The difference between certain writers and what might be termed “normal” people is that of being curious enough to investigate. A person could wander around my small Midwestern home town and come away with the impression that it is the most boring place on earth. But what makes a person feel that way is that they’re failing to look beyond the window-dressing. As I say in The Rock Garden, you might drive by Jim Bowsher’s house on Wood Street in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and not even notice it. Structurally, it looks like any other typical early twentieth-century rural American house. But if you happen to be walking, you kind of can’t help but notice right away the heavy glacial rocks that completely clog the easement between the sidewalk and the curb. And if you turn and look toward the house, you’ll see a set of red letters painted on the wooden riser of the top step before the porch that read: TEMPLE OF TOLERANCE. Juxtaposed to that, both physically and philosophically, if you were to walk down the other side of the street and look toward Jim’s house, the first thing you’re going to notice is the bomb hanging from the gable of his dormer. More accurately, it’s a bombshell and looks, almost comically, hanging there like a bizarre, forgotten Christmas ornament, like every bombshell you ever saw in cartoons as a kid: torpedo-shaped with tail fins at the rear. You’ll also notice it has something written on it: If it belonged to Wiley Coyote it would say ACME BOMB, or if it were Bugs Bunny’s it might say BOMB or BANG or BOOM. But when you get close enough to read this one, it says PEACE.
That bomb is really a first-look hint at the entire philosophy behind Jim’s “life as as art.” It’s a lot like the message the “flower children” sent when they smiled at dog-faced soldiers blocking their path and slipped the stems of fresh-picked daisies into the barrels of their rifles at the myriad peace rallies of the sixties. It’s a disarming gesture with an empathic message of peace and harmony—one that seems almost outdated and futile in a world that, except in tiny corners like this one, has all too cynically accepted war and mass murder as “inevitable” or as “collateral damage”.
In the incredible world that lies behind the door of that otherwise unassuming house on Wood Street in Smalltown America, Jim demonstrates his uncanny ability to recognize historical significance wherever time and oblivion have hidden it under a shroud of dust and indifference. But he does so with the subtle purpose of “drawing the poison” out of everything evil and ill-intentioned, purging their negativity, shining a light into darkness and rendering it harmless, while embracing a message of peace, forgiveness and understanding, but not without remembrance, reparation and atonement that comprehends the perennial inevitability of human foible.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
At the risk of coming off as arrogant, I think asking why someone should be interested in reading this book is like asking why someone should visit the portrait gallery in an art museum. Except that this is, like Jim Bowsher’s life-long Rock Garden project, and like his mind-boggling home–where he shares his life with a treasure trove of items and the stories behind them–a “living museum”, where long-forgotten items are brought back to life by his telling of their stories. It’s a chance to discover how seemingly ordinary people may well have absolutely extraordinary lives that are practically hidden from view. That utterly unique and incredibly interesting people often garner only the most limited of recognition. If nothing else, it’s a chance for the reader to get know a uniquely interesting character just as I’ve come to know him.
When did you first decide to become an author?
Although Whitie, my dad, was anything but a reader–he was a common sense, meat and potatoes kind of guy who had no little contempt for guys who “always had their nose in a book” (hence our perennial difficulty in communicating with each other)–my mother and sister were avid readers. In the latter part of her life, when her time was no longer divided between hard work and a growing family, Reba Mae, my mom, read at least 50 books a year. And from the time she learned to read, my older sister Darla read everything she could lay her hands on, and started teaching me to read before I ever reached the first grade. So from my earliest recollection, my memories are, first, of my mother and sister reading to me and, later, of discovering the wonderful world of the Public Library.
Almost from the outset, I wanted to learn to write the kind of stories that enthralled me. But I suppose I first knew I wanted to be a writer when I was about nine, and my mother bought a typewriter. Our neighbor across the street, Mr. Summers, who was the local newspaper editor, was taking another newspaper job elsewhere and was selling a few items before moving. Among them was his manual Smith Corona portable typewriter that my mother bought from him for five dollars. As soon as she brought it home, I commandeered it, started developing my “hunt and peck” typing method, and began turning out my first stories. That was when I first started thinking of myself as a storyteller–although, if you’d have asked Whitie for a term, I’m sure he’d have preferred “bullshitter”.
Is this the first book you’ve written?
Rather incredibly, since I’ve been writing my whole life, yes, this is my first book. If you don’t count the ones lying at the bottom of my file drawers or the books I’ve written anonymously as a ghostwriter.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
In the last 48 years, I have never earned my living any way but via the written word. I know that sounds strange for a debuting author, but it’s the god’s-honest truth. I began working as a reporter and desk assistant for an English-language newspaper in South America (Buenos Aires) in 1974. I took the job in order to learn to write, and because it was a post that would not only allow me, but would also oblige me to write every day, and make a living at it. I ended up staying at the paper for nearly a decade and a half and eventually serving as its chief editorialist and managing editor. In the meantime, I was also a free-lance correspondent (known in the trade as a “stringer”) for at least a score of publications–some of them quite renowned–in the US and Britain. Later, I worked as the special projects chief for a major Buenos Aires business magazine creating international editions and handling licensing negotiations with top US business magazines such as Forbes and Fortune.
For the last 27 years, however, I’ve been making my living as a free-lance writer, translator, editor and ghostwriter. Now, at age 72, I’m still taking on ghostwriting projects that interest me, but am devoting the greatest part of my time to my own writing, which is why I’m just now getting around to self-publishing my first books (two to date, the second one, Visions of What Used To Be, having just come out earlier this year).
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
My wife would say, way too much. And she’d be right. I pretty much write all day between, say, 9a.m. and 9p.m. I actually sit at my desk in my tiny studio an inordinate number of hours. But even when I’m not there, I’m writing in my head, jotting down notes, thinking about what I’m writing or want to write, or reading others and analyzing how they’ve written what they’ve written. So I can be driving my truck, chopping firewood, talking a walk or watching TV and my head is always working on a story or some other writing project. Besides working on medium and long-term writing projects, I also write a twice-monthly literary blog called The Southern Yankee: A Writer’s Log and an occasional political blog called A Yankee At Large. Currently, I’m also working on a two-book ghostwriting project with a client for whom I’ve researched, edited and translated two previous books.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
The best part of being an indie writer is, obviously, independence. I never tire of saying that no matter what sort of mainstream criticism may be leveled at Amazon, the greatest of its legacies from a cultural point of view has been the democratizing of publishing. And this is true as well of less major but still important indie publishers such as Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. It is, in my opinion, the greatest revolution in publishing since the Gutenberg printing press.
That said, independence is also indie publishing’s greatest pitfall. The hardest part of being an indie writer/publisher is getting your work seen. So many really interesting, well-written and researched and potentially important books on indie publishing sites never end up being seen by more than a comparative handful of readers–hundreds at best. There’s a theory that indie books that don’t get read never should have been written in the first place and that their lack of renown is the result of their deficient quality. That may well be the case of some, many even many, indie publications. But services like Indie Reader’s reviews and listings prove that this is not always the case, and that there’s a lot of really worthwhile reading that’s simply getting lost in the shuffle. Hopefully, that will change, and some other forward-looking firm will eventually democratize literary marketing in the same way that Amazon has democratized publishing.
What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors?
I’m no one to be giving advice to anyone else. I mean, except if the criterion is that “the Devil knows more because he’s old than because he’s the Devil.” But what I can say from long experience is that if your goal as a writer is to write a book that will make you a wealthy bestseller, whether you go the mainstream route or you go indie, at least nine times out of ten you’re probably wasting your time. But if you write because you need to, because you’re obsessed with it, because you love to see and hear the words on the page, if you write because you love it, and love the stories you tell, then have at it! It costs you basically nothing nowadays to publish your work in really professional-quality print books, and in ebook format. And whether you end up with 50 readers or 50 million, you have a following, a readership with whom you form a storyteller’s bond.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
That’s a hard question to answer. I suppose it would depend on whom the publisher was and what they were offering, I love the immediacy of being an indie writer, of deciding when my works will come out and getting a much bigger chunk of the cover price than mainstream writers do. But a big chunk of relatively few books sold could easily be offset by the chance to get your work seen on major markets, getting professional marketing help and getting your books onto TV and into the newspapers. I suppose any real chance of vastly widening my footprint could convince me. But all things being equal, I think indie’s the way for me to go.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
For me, it’s all about telling the story, though clearly, the small recognition I’ve gained is very rewarding, and a little money would be nice.
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
It’s tough to narrow the answer down to one writer. But I have very clearly been influence by several major 20th-century male writers: Ernest Hemingway (who, like me, made his first writing bones as a newsman), John Steinbeck (another muscular writer and an incredible storyteller), J.D. Salinger (a singularly human writer with an uncanny talent for dialogue), and Truman Capote (a meticulously disciplined writer’s writer and an absolute master of disturbing and provocative images). I’m also a great fan of Henry Miller, for his perfection of the art of casting the author as protagonist.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
I’m a story-writer more than a book-writer per se. Even my as yet unpublished novels tend to be written in episodic chapters, any one of which could stand alone as a short story. So a piece of writing that I have always held as one of my absolute standards of the kind of story-telling I want to achieve is J.D. Salinger’s For Esme With Love and Squalor. For me, it’s the closest writing gets to perfection.