Willy Vlautin : “I grew up thinking of Steinbeck as a hero”

Willy Vlautin © Dan Eccles

Micmag.net : In your lasted novel, The Free, you write about your contemporaries, and especially those who are neglected and unable to fulfil the American Dream. Is-it a message to the leaders of your country?

Willy Vlautin : In many ways I wrote it as a distress call to both the leaders of US and to the Patron Saint of Nurses, Camillus de Lellis. I dedicated the book to him and hoped he might notice the struggles of Leroy, Freddie, and Pauline.

M.: Some critics have compared you to John Steinbeck : « Vlautin is a novelist who, like Steinbeck, takes the ordinary and the mundane, the simple everyday experiences and builds a fascinating story around them. » What do you think of that?

W.V.: I grew up thinking of Steinbeck as a hero. I had his picture by my bed, right next to pictures of my favourite bands. The Grapes of Wrath was such an important book. It was one of the few successful mainstream American novels that really took on the plight of the working class.

M.: You are author and also the lead singer and songwriter of the Richmond Fontaine band. For you, what is the difference of impact between a social message you send through music and through a novel ?

W.V.: The lyrics to my songs and my stories and novels are all a part of each other. They all live on the same block, in the same apartment complex. My heart is the same doing both so the ideas tend to be the same. But both are so hard to do well in such different ways.

Willy Vlautin at the Ulster Museum about his latest novel The Free.

The Free, Imprint : Harper Perennial, 2014.

Traduit (Hélène Fournier) en Français sous le titre Ballade pour Leroy,
Ed. Albin Michel, Février 2016, 304 p., 22 €.

Everything  about Willy Vlautin on his website.