Each time, I would throw the book out and start from
scratch. I wouldn’t refer to it. I wouldn’t edit it. I would
rewrite it. And in this, I was informed, albeit obliquely,
by my uncle. My uncle was a curator of arts at the
Metropolitan Museum in New York City. He was one of
the world’s foremost experts on prints, so he wrote
many-a-volume about prints. His process was to type
triple-spaced - and one page at time. He’d take page one
out, and he would cover it with notes. (That’s why the
triple-spacing!) Then he would take the page, throw
it out, and rewrite it refreshed, but only from memo-
ry. And then he’d do that a second time. And the third
time would be the keeper. He never edited it. He
would crumple it up, throw it away, and not refer to
it. I wrote my first book in the same way, and it was ex-
traordinarily rewarding, because when I wrote the third
and final version of Open Season, it damn near wrote
itself. I’d found my musical voice. I found the place:
Brattleboro. I found the greater context: Vermont. I
found Joe Gunther and his playmates. I found a base from
which I have been expanding ever since. It turned out to
have been uncannily reliable as a starting point.
Sherman: Why “Joe Gunther?”
Mayor: [In an earlier unpublished book - what I call, “a
training exercise” - ] I had a character named Joe Gunther,
and I killed him off by chapter four, but I liked that name.
It’s such an utterly-normal, pedestrian name. There’s a Joe
Gunther in every phone book in America, and I like that.
Sherman: It’s a distinctly American name. It also has the
word “gun” in it, which of course, subliminally helps with
a detective murder-mystery novel.
Mayor: There - you delved deeper than I did.
Sherman: In that earlier book - in which Joe Gunther
was killed off by chapter four - who was Joe Gunther?
Mayor: I haven’t the slightest memory … but now you’re
forcing me to (which is the whole intention of going back
in time into tenebrous areas I haven’t been to in many-
a-year). When I wrote this terrible story in which Joe
Gunther was knocked off, I was informed by my agent
at the time, “Well, you got some things going on this
miserable book. And you know, I’m not going to touch it,
because after you knock off this guy, Gunther, it all falls
apart.” That was prescient insight on her part.
Sherman: What’s your process 30 years later?
Mayor: When I write one of my Joe Gunther manuscripts,
I send it out to a coterie of anywhere from 4 to 6 editors.
Primary among them is my wife, Margot, who has a laser
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eye and is not shy to speak her mind, which is crucial
by the way. Some of these [edits] I’ll resist, but most of
the time, I’ll [only] resist initially, because the worm will
have gotten in my ear … I resisted because I wanted to
move on. I already got another book in my head, because
I’m a machine. I turn out a book a year. That’s how I
make my living. I don’t have a choice in the matter. But
by the same token, I also like to pay attention to smart
people with smart insights. And if they’ve got something
to say - and they paid me the courtesy of saying it - I
might react emotionally at first, but I need to pay tribute
to their intellect and ask myself seriously several times,
“Am I going to stick by that rejection? Or might I actually
meet somewhere in the middle?” Usually, that’s where I
go. Sometimes I’ll just say, “Yeah, you’re absolutely right.”
But on other occasions, what I use the revelation for is
insight. How does [her comment] untangle the log jam
in my head and suggest a better way, so that it won’t hang
up in her head? See, John Gardner once said, “Don’t
interrupt the fictional dream.” You can do that by showing
off. You can do that by screwing up … If the reader asks
you, “Gosh, what about this?” Don’t even start explaining,
because you’re already too late. You already screwed up.
You broke the fictional dream. So it’s up to you to remedy
that. Now, you might remedy it by saying, “Well, you’re a
nitwit” - and sometimes you may be right. So, you’ve got
to pay attention to a multiplicity of sources, if you will.
But if it sounds right, pay attention. If it sounds absolutely
wrong, well, then pay attention to yourself. Because you’re
the guy whose name ends up on the page. So you do own
it in the tail end, and people will read it, they’re not going
to know about Margot and the other editors, but they are
going to associate this with your name. So you know, the
buck does stop with you. But it’s an interesting, construc-
tive, rewarding and energizing experience and the whole
idea of writing a book - in isolation and away from that
process - I just don’t understand where that degree of ar-
rogance would be rewarding for one and all. I think one
is courting disaster. Because - even if you are a Mozart -
you can’t just put it down in one shot … He’s dead and he
was rare. Do not presume you’re a Mozart, just because
you like what you see in the mirror. You probably aren’t.
So let’s start from that presumption. If enough people in
the room - whom you haven’t paid - tell you that you’re a
Mozart, well, then okay, fine. But I’ve never met a Mozart.
Sherman: Tell me about your new book, Bomber’s Moon.
Mayor: People always ask me, “What’s your favorite
book?” Writing a book and reading a book are
completely different things. So I can actually safely say,
“I’ve never read any of my books.” I don’t know what
they are like from a non-exposed reader’s viewpoint.