Katzenjammer
Soon to be a major motion picture
by Jackson Tippett McCrae

List Price: $23.00
Pages: 359
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0971553637
Publisher: Enolam Group Inc

Jackson Tippett McCrae has worked for various magazines and publishing companies in New York.  Educated at the University of North Texas and the Juilliard School in New York, he originally made his living as a composer. His books include The Bark of the Dogwood: A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens, The Children’s Corner --- a collection of short stories --- and the novel Katzenjammer:  Soon to be a major motion picture. He currently writes fiction full-time, dividing his time between New York City and Connecticut.

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Question: When reading your books, I was struck by your extensive knowledge of culture, both popular and classical. Would you elaborate on that and why you think it’s important to your work?

Answer: It’s just something that’s always interested me; music, dance, art, literature. I was fortunate to have friends who felt the same way when I was young, and together we gleaned a great deal from libraries, record stores, and live performances. I was heavily involved in music when I was in high school and college, traveling around the country and Europe to perform. In New York, I became involved in dance quite extensively.

At any rate, I’ve always incorporated art, music, dance, and anything else I found fascinating into my books. I think it gives the books an added depth. But, at the same time, I’m conscience that the books can’t hinge on that --- that they have to stand alone as stories. If you want to dig deeper, get the cultural references, sure, go ahead, but it’s not necessary for understanding my novels and short stories. So, in that sense, it adds another dimension to the work.

About popular culture, well, there was a great deal of television in the 1960s, even in the South, so there are myriad references to TV sitcoms and the like in my books. I talk about that some in DOGWOOD, the fact that television was bringing everything into our living rooms. And certainly in KATZENJAMMER, film, music, and art references all tie in with the plot.


Question: Your books take unusual forms and everything seems to tie together. Especially in DOGWOOD I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be one sentence in the novel that doesn’t “belong.” How did you achieve that?

Answer: Form is something that was drilled into me as a composer. My first degree was in music composition and I had some fantastic teachers who stressed form and the “big arc.” Aaron Copland talked about this in some of his books on composition --- the “long line” --- that dramatic arc of the music. It relates to the real drama coming three-quarters of the way through a book or piece of music and this is based on the Fibonacci series and certain ideas the Greeks had about art and form. It just carried over into writing. I’ve learned more from music and art than I have from reading all the literature I’ve ever come across. It really amazes me, you know, that music is so codified, has such as written history, yet there’s virtually nothing really “set down” on writing. Oh, there’s sentence diagrams and the like, but nothing that really takes things apart and puts books into categories the way music does. Music has a name for each note, space, line, text, everything. With books it seems as if we’re still trying to figure it out. It’s a blessing in some ways, and a curse. I think it was Somerset Maugham who said “There are three great rules for writing a novel. The trouble is, nobody knows what they are.”

The form in DOGWOOD is pretty unique, I guess. It’s a book within a book. There’s a set of short stories that make up one book and can be read by themselves. Then there are the New York chapters which make up another book entirely --- they can be read alone as well. But together they tell a much more powerful story --- one of denial and remembrance; one reaching across the generations; and one of clashing cultures. And even within these two stories there is that “long line” that Aaron Copland talked about --- again, the musical training helped.

There has been some criticism on the length of DOGWOOD. This I don’t understand. I can take you through the book, sentence by sentence and show you that every word is there for a reason --- that it either contributes to a character’s psychological make-up or that it is a thread to some theme. I literally read the book, say, maybe 150 times, each time for something different. I read it, thinking to myself, “Okay. I know the story, Does this sentence contribute to it?” And if it didn’t, I took it out.


Question: Talk about your book KATZENJAMMER and how that came about.

Answer: DOGWOOD didn’t do well when it first arrived on the scene --- couldn’t give it away. Then it started flying off the shelves. I got this one really horrific review, calling the book depraved; calling it pornographic and subversive. Well, when that came out, the distributor couldn’t keep up with sales. I guess people really do want to read about that type of thing! But in my opinion, it’s not all those things. I wrote from the heart. I wanted to give people something that entertained and inspired them. I wanted to make people feel something.

I wrote KATZENJAMMER at the time DOGWOOD was doing well sales-wise everywhere but the Southern United States. The book was selling in New Zealand, Australia, England, Canada, and even in parts of the U.S. like Nevada and Wyoming. KATZENJAMMER was sort of my answer to the South ignoring my work. I’d promised myself that my next book would have nothing to do with the South and the result was KATZ. Now, of course, I have some very supportive book groups, many in the South, the main one being in Georgia. And they’ve single handedly been responsible for the decision to keep DOGWOOD in print.


Question: How long does it take you to write a book? You said that you wrote KATZENJAMMER while DOGWOOD had just come out. Could you talk about the creative process and what you do to achieve your goals?

Answer: Well, to start with, the first part of your question, it usually takes me about a month to write a book --- the first draft. The Bark of the Dogwood was written in one month and it was no small thing; something like 900 pages. I got it down to 400 or so in the end. KATZENJAMMER took about six weeks and I was depressed because it took me that long. Of course I’m talking about the first draft on both these books. I’ll write a book out, day and night, then put it away for a year; sort of let it age, if you know what I mean. Then I go back and write and re-write till I get what I want. I’ll do anywhere from 15 to 25 re-writes. In one read-through I might just look for commas --- just to see where they all are and if they’re used intelligently. In another I might look only for typos. And in another I might look at the layout. Of course in the first go-over I look for the overall story line, consistency, that kind of thing. The creative process is somewhat unusual for me. I go into a kind of trance and just type for days on end. I let my subconscious mind do most of the work.


Question: Talk about that --- the subconscious mind and how that fits into your work.

Answer: Interesting question. I was talking to a book club the other day about just this sort of thing. It all goes back to music. When I was composing, I’d just write --- you know, whatever came out. Then I’d go back and analyze it, say, “Why did I do that?” and “Does that make sense?” even though it “sounded” the way I wanted it to.

At one point I’d written a piano sonata that incorporated an incredibly complicated double fugue. Now, fugues are hard enough to write, but a double fugue is really tricky. I didn’t realize what I’d done, but it worked, sound-wise. I went back and took it apart note for note. The countersubject of the first fugue was a mystery to me --- I couldn’t figure out how I’d come up with it --- all I knew was that it sounded “right.” So I took it apart and found that it was the main fugue subject, only in reverse and in retrograde. Somehow my subconscious mind had done that --- made it all work. That’s when I knew I had to trust it --- the subconscious --- because it’s got so much more power than what’s on the surface.

The same thing goes for my books. Most of the time I have no idea where the characters are going; I just write. Then they --- the characters --- start doing the strangest things. I sit there amazed at some of their antics. Now, I don’t just start in a vacuum. I start with some ideas, some people I want to paint portraits of verbally, that sort of thing, but it’s just a germ of an idea. Once I start writing, things take off and I’ll find out that so-and-so was actually someone’s brother who was lost or had amnesia or something like that. I let the characters tell me where they’re going and it seems to work pretty well. With DOGWOOD, I had a lot of experiences, both mine and other people’s to go on, so it was inspired by some true stories, and I incorporated that into the book.


Question: Speaking of DOGWOOD, I know a lot of people have had trouble with one scene in particular in the book.

Answer: Chapter 28.


Question: Exactly. Can you talk about that?

Answer: I’ve gotten a lot of flak over that chapter. I’ve been accused of putting it in for shock value. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I said before, I just write and what comes out, comes out. You’d be surprised by what little control authors have over some of their characters and what they do. You’re probably thinking that it’s our own little universe --- that we can make things go the way we want, but that’s not always true.

Chapter 28, the one with the infant, is, well . . . true. It actually happened, and to me, rather, before my eyes if you will. Now, the man responsible was someone totally unrelated to anyone in my family, but he was out to get even with one of my parents and thought he was doing the act to Yours Truly. I had gone through some past life regression sessions and repressed memory therapy and it took years for this incident to surface, but one day it was there, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I’d like to tell you that I made it up --- that it was put in for shock value, but that’s just not the case. I wrestled with whether or not to keep it in or to soften the way the act took place, but in the end I had to tell the story.

Believe me, it was harder for me to remember that incident and relive it than it will ever be for anyone to read about it. Also, I was pretty free with writing styles in DOGWOOD. But in chapter 28 I was extremely cognizant of how this horrific scene was going to be perceived, so much so that I very, very carefully crafted it --- writing it over and over. I wanted to be so gentle with the reader at that point (and I hadn’t been before) because I knew it was going to probably be the most shocking scene in literature up to that point. I’ve had a lot of people write to me, telling me that they had to read the chapter over several times; that they weren’t sure exactly what happened; that they might have misunderstood. And this is exactly what I wanted --- that blur factor so that when you read it, you’re not completely shocked by the graphic nature of the act. After I initially wrote it, in the first draft, I ended up on the floor, in the fetal position, not even remembering what I’d done. That’s how powerful it was for me. And really, the whole book centers on that one act.


Question: Some have questioned Althea’s motive with regard to the scene. I don’t want to give anything away here, but could you elaborate on that? Clarify things for some of the readers?

Answer: First of all, I believe that books should be written from one perspective most of the time. And in this case that would be the perspective belonging to Strekfus. Of course, he has borderline multiple personality disorder and the book uses first person narration and third person narration, but in the end, it’s Strekfus who is writing it and no one else. So I, or he, or whomever you want to say is actually writing the book, couldn’t read Althea’s mind.

Now, he is telling the story; putting things together; so there are clues. Althea did know and was helped by Strekfus’s uncle at one point, and she had lost her own child in a way, so there is that motive; that connection. Also, in the first draft I had her considering blackmail but I took that out. I say, very specifically that she’s not sure why she’s doing it; that some inner thing was telling her to, and that’s an important point --- that she trusted herself and perhaps a higher power. Plus, it really isn’t that important --- her motive. While she saved Strekfus’s life, it’s not the why but rather the fact that she did, and at a time when it could have cost her her own life. One other point I’d like to make is that, when you’ve finished the book, you have to ask yourself, “Did this whole thing really happen, or was it the main character’s way of making sense of his life?” Whatever you decide is fine with me.


Question: What are you working on now?

Answer: I’ve got another book completed and about three or four others mostly done. Two plays I’ve written. Some poetry. I’m trying to find a publisher for my next novel.


Question: Can you tell us what it’s about?

Answer: Rather not. Let’s just say that it’s a bit of a continuation of DOGWOOD.