John Wray may be the only hot, young literary thing to start off an interview by saying, “I really think the word infrastructure is sexy.” (Thank you, so do we.) And now that his third novel Lowboy (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux) is out, it’s becoming clear how much Wray is helping the cause. The protagonist of Lowboy is a paranoid teen on the run, but New York’s subway system—where novel takes place–gets equally devoted and inspired authorial attention. Wray, who for a while lived in a tent in Brooklyn with frisky rats and no running water, has recently been recording subway musicians to create an MP3 Lowboy playlist. Next Thursday, he’ll read on the L train en route to the book’s above ground launch party.
Really, sexy?
Well, I don’t agree with Arnold Schwarzenegger that we need to come up with a better word. I like that word. But I think what he means is that the people who know what infrastructure is have a different relationship to how it functions. For them it’s more about feelings.
I think he wants a new word because he can’t pronounce “infrastructure.”
For years Arnold Schwarzenegger was the only Austrian anyone had heard of and we were all so embarrassed. [Wray's mother is Austrian and he grew up spending summers in Austria.] My uncle kept saying, “He’s smart, look at what he’s managed to do.” It’s very easy to think if someone talks funny that he’s not smart but really if you go back and look at Pumping Iron, he has this surfer’s persona but he’s undermining all the other competitors. He makes all the other dudes incredibly insecure by complimenting them in a backhanded way.
Do you ever write on the subway?
I wrote a huge chunk of Lowboy on the subway. I had to give up my office in DUMBo. I figured I’d spend a couple days on the subway with my laptop on the A train. I’d go all the way out to the Rockaways with no internet connection or cell phone. I found I could actually concentrate, and it’s great when that line goes above ground. It was probably only three hours a day, pretty consistently, but I got a lot more done on the subway than I did in my office.
How did you research the intricacies of the subway lines and stations?
I think I’ve always had a connection to subway systems. My uncle was a planner of the Vienna subway, and as a kid I’d go to various sites where they were extending the subway lines. I got to watch them put the finishing touches on new stops. I think that’s where it started.
How did you research schizophrenia? You give a real voice to the fluctuations and perceptions of people diagnosed with mental illness.
Riding the subway, you encounter a lot of schizophrenics. Most of New York’s homeless have mental illnesses and we shouldn’t wonder why there are tons of people wandering the streets with no direction. They’ve been kicked out of their homes.
Your character is driven by a quest to save humanity from very imminent climate change–imminent in his mind as in, “It’s going to happen this afternoon.”
Paranoid delusions are an interesting index to what society is obsessed with in general. Schizophrenics now tend to be more concerned about climate change and government agents. They are a hyper-sensitive meter to what the population in general is thinking about. In the 50s schizophrenics were concentrated on communism and the nuclear bomb. Their preoccupations and delusions change as the culture changes.
According to the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are currently 1.25 million inmates in the U.S. prison system that are mentally ill.
This is part of our city’s infrastructure and it’s deteriorating. The City of New York will build housing for people [with debilitating disorders] and then just shut them down. They just get kicked out of their homes. The city of New York uses jails as a halfway houses for schizophrenics. The city will even cop to that.
On a lighter note, do you think technology is taking over our lives?
The ways in which the internet saves time are clearly outweighed by the ways in which you can waste time. But, then again, that’s a human choice.
Jaime Lowe is the author of Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB. She lives in Brooklyn.
