Monte Schulz On Writing the Great American Novel
Melinda Palacio -- July 8, 2009
Monte Schulz has emerged from the shadow of his father, Charles Schulz of the famed Peanuts comic strip. He's proud of his latest novel, This Side of Jordan, a crime thriller and part of a literary epic that spans two other books, Fields of Eden and The Big Town which will be released in 2010 and 2011 by Fantagraphics, also publishers of The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. The ten-year journey that has landed Monte Schulz a five book deal represents the decade that was his forties. The result, says Schulz, is a book similar to Steinbeck's, set in the time of his parents's youth. His big American book and dream of writing the great American novel has been split into three different books. For readers who are doing the math, the 2nd book is a true crime novel, Naughty and the fifth book is the collection of This Side of Jordan, Fields of Eden, and The Big Town.
Monte is a faculty member of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. His history as a student of SBWC the conference dates back to 1975, when his dad used to be a regular speaker. His father was his greatest influence. Monte devoured the literary examples that his father showed him, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, and Joan Didion, to name a few. Monte mentioned that before his dad passed away in 2000, Charles read This Side of Jordan and proudly proclaimed the book was raising the level of art in the family.
Having a famous father doesn't mean that the road to publication was a piece of cake for Schulz. He struggled with bad publishing luck for eight years before making the deal at Fantagraphics. Prospective publishers sat on the manuscript and he received his fair share of "stupid rejections", a frustrating journey considering his first novel, Down by the River, was published by Viking in 1991. Then again, This Side of Jordan is the work that Schulz himself is truly satisfied with.
Schulz speaks of his own work with passion and confidence. He delivered a clean manuscript to his publisher Gary Groth who didn't have to do any editing on the work. "I trust my own judgement," said Schulz. This Side of Jordan is only the second original prose novel, produced by Fantagraphics Books in the company's 33-year history. The manuscript managed to impress publisher Gary Groth. Just don't ask the author about how he writes.
"I don't talk like I write. I don't know how I wrote what I wrote. As a writer, I am an idiot savant. I'm the muse inspired writer. I write from images. I do not write about characters. The book begins with place or voice. I choose a place and ask what happened there."
He works at his writing, as evidence by the decade it took to complete his great American novel. Schulz spent 9 hours completing one particular sentence for his novel, a stylist at heart. In Big Town, he copied the voice of his great grandmother. "I'm good at mimicking," said the 57 year-old author whose special interest is architecture. He says his latest publishing venture with Fantagraphics Books has made him realize how tied he is to the idea of writing. "Writing isn't fun because I write too showy," he said. "It wasn't until I finished it that I liked it."
Schulz maintains strong ties to Santa Barbara, where he received his M.A. in American Studies from UCSB, but he lives in Nevada City with his wife and twin sons. He will be signing This Side of Jordan at Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara on Sept. 28, shortly before joining the faculty at the Southern California Writers' Conference in Los Angeles, September 25-27.