Interview with Rush Williams Reader Views would like to welcome Rush Williams, author of the new novel “Night Work.” Rush is being interviewed by Juanita Watson, Assistant Editor of Reader Views Juanita: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today Rush. Would you please tell us the storyline of your book “Night Work”?
Juanita: Is this your first novel? What inspired you to write “Night Work”? Rush: I have been an avid reader and amateur writer all my adult life, but Night Work is my first finished novel. I have started some earlier but never brought them to what I would consider a finished state, due to time problems mostly. I wanted to write Night Work because having worked at many levels in many occupations, the contrasts of ethos I saw in work milieus fascinated me. When Curt Mellam went from the top to the bottom, these differences became stark for him, and often, humorous. Night Work has much humor. Juanita: Tell us more about your main character, Curt Mellam. Who is he, what motivates him, what life issues is he dealing with? Rush: First, Curt is widower and for five years a single parent. This intensifies his relationship with his only child, Karen. Curt is also an only child, of a man who held only one job in his entire life. Curt, too, has worked for one company in his life although he progressed in rank steadily. Curt is steady, reliable and considers himself a company mainspring. He loves his daughter deeply. He prices a foreign sports car for her high school graduation present, expecting her to drive it to Georgetown University for her upcoming freshman year. His life has revolved for five years around his daughter and his company. Yet, his reveries provide a peek into romantic urges. Curt is middle aged. Juanita: I understand that your own personal history is somewhat similar to your lead character Curt. Would you elaborate on this, and how many stories did your garner from your own experiences as a taxi-cab driver? Rush: I drew heavily on personal experience, which includes cab driving and executive work, in writing Night Work. Writing about work you have done and milieus you have lived in makes for authenticity, I believe. But Night Work is not autobiographical. I just drew in my imagination on the kind of events I know about. For instance, I know personally a cab driver, and his story, who had been shot by a passenger, and I know several who were robbed. So I made shootings and robbery part of Night Work, but I have never personally experienced either. The drivers in Night Work have similarities to drivers I have known, but I don’t believe anybody could claim to identify a Night Work driver. They are all from my imagination. Most all of the stories in Night Work, however, have some grounding in a real happening. I don’t mean by that, though, that they are reported with legal or historical exactness. Juanita: What was the experience of driving a taxi-cab like for you? What did you learn about life and people by being in this particular profession? Rush: The hand-to-mouth life of drivers, except for the part timers, was shocking. What one earns in one day is gone the next. Even hard scrabble farm life is not so hand-to-mouth; farmers have some kind of food stored usually. In this grit, drivers learn to fight in some way, often unusual, to survive. Yet, hope lives among most of them, like flower seeds in a desert that bloom when the rains finally come. For instance in Night Work, Otha, the scruffy dispatcher, by demanding a share of the fare when he dispatches a driver on a big money trip manages to send his son to private school. Juanita: What significance does Curt’s daughter Karen, have to the storyline? Rush: Karen is a key character. She is more like her mother than like Curt. Her feelings show all the time. She is direct, out-spoken—very unstodgy. She loves her father deeply and makes big sacrifices to help him during his hard times. When she falls for what Curt calls a “do-gooder hippy”, however, she bristles at Curt’s disapproval. Her growing up and becoming an independent, sexual woman motivates many of the changes that take place in Curt. Juanita: Curt was forced to transition from being a successful business man to a nighttime cab driver. What was this process like for him? Rush: In his new life, Curt is busy staying alive and earning a living, so he reflects little except at crisis points. At each point, he softens, changes a little. One crisis point is his discovery of a murdered driver. Handling a dead body shocks him. Another is when he becomes friendly with a passenger who could be called a pornographer (he runs a sex shop), a man he wouldn’t have associated with earlier, and the man’s shop is burglarized. To his surprise, he finds commonalities in the problems of running a sex shop and his old job, and Curt ends up trying to help him. Juanita: Curt finds himself in a number of interesting situations, and meeting some very fascinating people. Can you tell us a few of his encounters? Rush: There is Slick, a driver who lives large and dresses fancy, ostensibly on a cab drivers income, but who meets a violent end. There is Sarge, a rough hewn ex-marine who is senior advisor-protector of his cabbie friends. There is Calvin, a hard working career policeman who is lured into drug dealing. There is Plato Pankey, a career bootlegger who decides that the times demand that he expand into drugs. There is the woman who, while nude, tries to entice Curt into her trailer. There is Bernie, the pornographer who suffers repeated break-ins and thefts of a sex toy from his shop. There is Charles, Karen’s beau who drops out of college and joins the police force to learn about life and about helping people and who learns more that he bargained for but helps few. There is the Cat Woman who provides a home and food for about forty cats, her only companions. Juanita: What is the timeframe of “Night Work”? When is this story taking place? Rush: Night Work takes place just as the sixties are ending, just past the time of the Chicago trials and the Weatherman explosions and the student riots. This timing intensifies Curt’s anxieties as Karen goes off to college. Further, this is a time of business recession. Many executives lost their job in 1970. The articles in Life, Look, and New York Times about unemployed executives mentioned in the Night Work are based on actual articles. Juanita: Does most of “Night Work” take place at night? How do you capture the atmosphere of the late-setting? Rush: At night, you are limited by the light, by what you are able to see. You never know what exactly is behind the next building, around the next curve. Driving during a dark night through the empty countryside with a stranger who has an odd look in his eye sitting directly behind you can be harrowing. So can driving a man past midnight to his home in a district where murders are so common they don’t make the news headlines. Most readers can empathize with these kinds of situations, I believe, if you simply write truthfully about them without embellishments. Juanita: What does Curt learn from the wide range of people he encounters as a cab driver? Rush: The big thing he learns is the commonality of man human problems, top to bottom, and the value of strong human relationships, top to bottom. Juanita: Is “Night Work” a mystery? Adventure? Rush: Most readers have termed Night Work as literary fiction, although it has a strong mystery component. The mystery starts in chapter one and is not resolved until the final chapters. Juanita: Would you tell us a little about the mystery that winds its way through “Night Work”? Rush: The mystery becomes a part of the Night Work story in the opening chapter when Curt’s and Karen’s apartment shows signs of a break-in. It threads through the book until the final chapters. Early on, somebody in a cab shoots at Curt in his cab. The police become part of the mystery when a car smashes into Curt’s cab forcing it into a ditch, and Curt sees a police uniform among the garbs of the people in the smashing car. Curt carries the burden of mystery within himself for most of the book, since the police and other cab drivers seem to be involved. Juanita: Curt goes through a profound growth process in “Night Work.” Can you elaborate on that theme? Rush: At the end of the book, Curt has found a woman to share his life, has reached an entirely new relationship with his daughter, and has decided never to return to the life of an organization man. In fact, he means to consider the Peace Corp after Karen graduates from college. This from a man who all his prior life toed the company line. Juanita: Are there any other themes that you address in “Night Work”? Rush: I touch briefly on the lack of control of modern men for large parts of their lives. Curt always believed he had great control until he found himself driving a cab. There is also the theme that men must allow their children to mature. Juanita: How have Curt’s priorities, and his personality changed by the end of the book? And, why did he decide he’d never return to life as an organization man? Rush: Curt once evaluated many of his impulses against his company’s values, whether he realized it or not. If the company wanted him to move, he packed up and moved his family. And he knew that the company did not brook behavior beyond an accepted norm. After his stint at night work, much of his work at his company seemed frilly. Not worthless, but frilly. Early on, in research, Curt spent time trying to develop a fabric that could be laundered forever without having to be ironed. In management, his big effort was to keep costs to the bare minimum. In the bare-knuckle driving life, those kinds of programs lost importance to survival and the well being of other human beings. Curt decides that Peace Corp work might suit him better. Juanita: I understand that you are dedicating all of your time now to writing. How is that going and do you have any other projects in the works? Rush: I have a book of poems about ready to go. I call them Sea Chanteys as many of them focus on life aboard a naval mine sweeper. I also am well into a second novel. Juanita: Rush, how can readers find out more about you and your endeavors? Rush: I have a website, www.nightworkrwilliams.com. It needs revision, which I hope I can get to doing soon. Also, my e-mail: joncarlw@utinet.net Juanita: Thanks for talking with us today Rush. Reviews for “Night Work” are nothing less than fantastic and it sounds like your first novel is a hit with readers. Do you have any last thoughts for us today? Rush: When people report, voluntarily and with nothing to be gained from me or others that I know of, that they liked Night Work, that they found it hard to put down, it is very gratifying. To write such a book is what I set out to do. I love the work I do now. At the computer writing, I detach myself from all other things, including worries. That immersion in itself is worthwhile. I consider myself lucky in that. |
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