Email
PrintAcclaim, rejection and the next big novel
Robert Flanagan sits enwreathed in a cumulus cloud of cigar smoke pondering his reasons for writing. It doesn’t take him long to state his motives.
“I write because it’s my calling,” he says, taking a puff off the cigar and blowing out a stream of blue-gray smoke. “I don’t write commercially. I write from the heart. I write because something has to be said.”
Flanagan’s books—of fiction, short stories and poetry—have a sense of urgency to them. The Delaware-based writer’s first and only published novel, 1971’s Maggot, about a marine platoon at Parris Island that has a sadistic drill instructor, sold 250,000 copies and went into 12 printings. It also received critical acclaim, catapulting the then-young writer into popularity. By then, he was director of creative writing at Ohio Wesleyan University.
But fame can be tricky. Though Flanagan wrote three subsequent novels that he feels captured the heart of his talent, no publishing house would give him a deal.
“It hurts, but rejection is a huge part of life,” says Flanagan, who at 69 keeps fit practicing boxing, a lifelong love. “If you can’t stand rejection, don’t be a writer.”
Flanagan wrote in other formats, including numerous volumes of poetry and three short story collections. One of them, Naked to Naked Goes, was hailed by novelist Tim O’Brien as “a terrific group of stories . . . drama in the very best sense . . . all of it activated by clean, tight, powerful prose . . . a jewel that will be shining for years to come.”
Where Maggot, his debut, is a touchstone for his youth, Flanagan’s latest novel is apt to be his defining work. Called Champions, it is an epic, multigenerational saga, a piece of historical fiction set in Toledo where the son in a troubled family, tired of trying to make it as a boxer, instead turns to stand-up comedy.
“The novel is about struggle. Hardship toughens you, but hardship is good. It makes you develop the self. Comedy and boxing have the same setup and rhythm,” says Flanagan. “Both comics and boxers know you have to deliver the punch line or punch with impact.”
That said, Flanagan has some worries.
“It’s a 1,000 page novel that I’m now rewriting. I put it aside for a long time because it’s my best book and I was afraid for a long time that it might be rejected. But it’s a big, sprawling, family novel that I think is going to appeal to people.”
Flanagan grew up in the Old West End of Toledo, the son of a disabled World War I vet and a mother who worked. “We were poor, but didn’t know it,” he recalls of his hardscrabble upbringing. “It was a railroad apartment with one bedroom. I slept on a roll-out bed in the dining room and took care of my dad, who was shell shocked and subject to ranting.”
In grade school, Flanagan wrote comic books and later acted in plays. But it wasn’t until he was in college—the University of Toledo and then the University of Chicago—that he knew he wanted to be a writer.
For a few years, he headed up the creative writing program at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. “That’s where I wrote Maggot,” Flanagan says. “But it didn’t get published until I was at OWU.”
Back at his office, he plays Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing,” noting the drum solo by Gene Krupa. He sets about to work. Then I ask what kind of advice he would give young writers. Flanagan smiles.
“A notion may come to the beginning writer. But they need patience to let it evolve. What does the story want to be? You have to let the story grow. That’s what beginning writers need to know. Don’t be in a rush to force it into something.”
Jory Farr can be reached at joryfarr@gmail.com
