WRITING OUT OF THE PIG PEN
Author Doug Crandel Speaks On His Books, Life & More
By Cicly Janus

 

 

There’s always a certain risk to putting yourself out there.  There is the risk that someone, somewhere might see you for who you really are.  But, this is what author Doug Crandell, who has absolutely no reservations when it comes to showing the world exactly who he is, writes about.  Taking no interest in the perfect people of the world, he prefers boogers and broken birdie fingers to beauty; oily hair, disabilities and big ears to big names and do-gooder Hollywood types. Doug’s shoot-milk-out-your-nose humor and uncanny charm, which is almost unheard of in the introverted world of writers, has the ability to draw you into his stories in person as easily as he does on the page.  Over barbeque sandwiches, of course they were pork, and a few overly caffeinated drinks; we talked about his life, his books, even the rejected one and what it means to be Pig Boy.

Doug’s resume reads nothing like your typical Hog-man’s CV. With a writing style I would best describe as John Irving meets David Sedaris, Doug has set out to place himself among the very best humor writers of our time. He’s been published through esteemed literary journals like Glimmer Train, Missouri Review, Nebraska Review, and the Sun.  Doug has also been the recipient of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, Hohenberg Foundation’s River City Fiction Award, Goldfarb Fellowship in Non-fiction, awarded by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and he was named as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. His memoirs, Pig Boy’s Wicked Bird and The All-American Industrial Motel have been published through Chicago Review Press and his novels, Flawless Skin of Ugly People and Hairdos of the Mildly Depressed are both published through Virgin Books.  But, there’s always a story behind the success.  With Doug, the turning point of his career started with a Geo Metro and ended in Charlotte, NC with gay swine and flannel shirts.

Most writers, upon winning an award or fellowship of ten thousand dollars, would save it away, or use it to subsidize their writing career.  But for Doug, this money was just the beginning of his road to success, literally.  Over the first two years, Doug collected many, many, many rejections.  But he kept going with his dream, entering contests, fellowships, and most important, writing. The backdrop was the steamy summer of 2001 in Smyrna, GA. Doug had just been awarded the River City Award for a short story he submitted in their fiction contest when the grandson of Sherwood Anderson phoned him announcing his appointment as the recipient for their Annual Fiction Fellowship.

His car: A Geo Metro from 1992, which most of the time, he describes, had to be pushed in order to run.  The dilemma: Getting to Charlotte, North Carolina in order to claim the prize.  As a turning point in his career, he realized he had to do whatever it took to get him there.  He went to a CarMax dealer, showed them the letter for his fellowship and promised them the money for the car.  That day, he drove out of the parking lot with a used, working, Hyundai and only one dollar in his pocket left over from the prize money. 

After arriving in Charlotte, he met with the Anderson grandchildren and was asked to attend the banquet to receive his award.  First off, he had never attended a writer’s conference nor was he told any specifics.  Showing up at the banquet in a flannel shirt, he was then expected to read from his works after two very well known authors.  He had also never read in front of a crowd.  He says that he half expected for the host to produce one of those lottery size checks. 

Doug flashed me a warm smile and began to laugh, and then explained that the food that was served at the banquet was pork.  He said he turned to the woman in charge and said, I can’t read here, their eating pork…She said, don’t worry, some of them are from New York and their not eating it…So, he began reading from his first novel, Man-vs.-Nature, which was about Gay Swine and twenty minutes later, he stopped, not knowing what else to do. And although he doesn’t recall exactly who started clapping to get him off the microphone, he does remember the two looks across the sea of faces in front of him were either disgust or boredom.

Across the table, Doug changes his expression to mimic them, and then laughs. He said it didn’t help that the excerpt involved the bowel habits of his MC, which he described as little cocoa puffs floating around in the toilet.  After this atrocity of public speaking, Doug was walking to his car and someone, probably from the dinner, called out at the top of their lungs, Hey Pigboy! You’re great, that stuff was really disgusting…

And Pigboy, would live on…He says the lesson of the story is to NOT read for twenty minutes to a crowd, they don’t care.  Give them humor and something they don’t know, talk about rejections, or something interesting…anything!  Know your limits.

Even though his first book, Man-vs-Nature, never made it to print, his memoir, Pig Boy’s Wicked Bird, which tells the heartbreaking and wonderfully written story of his personal dream to go from Pigboy to Hogman on a small farm in Indiana, all the while nursing his “wicked” bird finger from a farming accident, has done very well. It has received critical acclaim from authors Martin Clark, John McNally and Clyde Edgerton.  But his latest book, Flawless Skin of Ugly People, released through Virgin Books in 2007, shows the brilliance of his fiction writing abilities. 

 

Flawless chronicles the lives of Acne afflicted, self-conscious ‘Hobbie’ and his common-law wife who has run away to a fancy fat-farm, their wiener dog, who audaciously survives a bear attack and a father-in-law who can’t forgive himself for the family secret.  This story of blemished lives is woven into a gutsy tapestry of highly charged emotional situations. As a tragicomic story, it highlights the flaws we all have and how bringing them to light, may just be the solution to our problems as well as the problems of those around us.  This has got to be one of the best books I’ve ever read. His poignant look at the average flawed life is unblemished.  His next book, Hairdos for the Mildly Depressed, also to be published by Virgin Books in August, 2008, as he has promised, will be along the same hysterical lines as Flawless.  And telling by the research he has done, which involves everything from alopecic hair wigs to rock star locks arriving unexpectedly in the mail, this could potentially be his best work yet. 

Doug currently lives in Douglasville, Georgia with his teenage daughter.  When asked about what she thinks of her father’s writing, he actually compliments her on her excellent narration skills.  She’s not mortified of him like most teenagers are of their parents, which I believe has to be a reflection on his easy-going nature.  Instead, she wins cool points by listening to him, especially on his latest project of Hairdos, offering her suggestions along the way. 

Doug’s writing habits are as unpredictable as the subjects he writes on.  In any given day when working on one of his novels he can hit 2K words, even when self-editing a draft.  He likes to write all hours of the day, but tries to get it out of the way before noon and with the aide of monster energy drinks and coffee.  But as for diet soda…yeah, he had to give it up.  He gave me two reasons why: gas and kidney failure. 

When he’s not writing, his day job involves saving the world--sort of.  He works in the noble profession of mental health services.  Currently, he is running a project in the correctional system to help ex-offenders start their own micro-enterprises. But as most writers do, it took him a while to recognize his true career.  When did he finally give himself permission to say he was a writer?  It started out at the post-office in Smyrna, Georgia.   He was there mailing out, what he calls, a shit-load of stories to literary mags. 

The postal worker says, “So you’re a writer?”

Doug recalls being embarrassed that she noticed he was sending out so much stuff.  So he said, “No.”

She returned with, “So what’s all this,” while scanning and punching zip codes. “Indiana Review, Glimmer Train, Nebraska Review…”

“Oh well, I guess I’ve published some stories, but that’s it.”

“Okay,” she said, looking at him, he describes, as if he was a boil. “You’re a writer then.”

In that moment he decided he was indeed, a writer. 

Doug Crandell is a magnificent wordsmith and storyteller.  His personality reeks of charismatic uniqueness and his works are equally as fresh.  As a reader of over a hundred books per year, I suggest you start your collection off with a little patch of Flawless Skin… accompanied by his…Wicked Bird.  You may visit and keep up with Doug’s writing life on his website: www.dougcrandell.com.