This week’s installment of Ten Questions features T. Geronimo Johnson, whose novel The Occidental Book of the Dead is out today from William Morrow. In 1992, a young cop named George Washington Jonson finds himself monitoring the rough Atlanta streets he lived on as a kid with a partner who is, in many ways, his opposite: a thickly accented man named Tucker with an affinity for the Confederacy. “It was a widely acknowledged truth that a short white peace officer with a big personnel file was in need of a black partner,” we learn. But despite their obvious differences, the two men form a close bond. Then, over a decade later, Jonson gets assigned a new partner, Utner. When the young white trainee fatally shoots a white teenage suspect during a tense moment, the city—and Jonson’s sense of himself and his own life—are turned upside down. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly praises Johnson for “thrillingly play[ing] on expectations of a sympathetic main character and a story of vindication by keeping the reader guessing at the truth and the nature of his protagonist.” And Attica Locke adds that “no one is having more fun with language than T. Geronimo Johnson.” T. Geronimo Johnson is the bestselling author of Welcome to Braggsville (William Morrow, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and Hold It ’Til It Hurts (Coffee House Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has been awarded the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize, and the Rome Prize. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he taught writing, and has held Stegner and Iowa Arts fellowships.
Of this week’s Ten Questions, Johnson writes that he “did not write [The Occidental Book of the Dead] as much as he channeled it, being privy as he was to daily visitations from the spook known as White Supremacy; hence, in reference to the request which has solicited these remarks, Johnson allows said spook to speak for itself, for who would do otherwise knowing that for all sage remarks most turn to America’s indomitable ghost writer, da Whizz—the original AI, dat proto-American OG, your favorite uncle.”
T. Geronimo Johnson, author of The Occidental Book of the Dead. (Credit: Elizabeth Cowan)
1. How long did it take you to write The Occidental Book of the Dead?
This novel has been in progress since I—the original Native American, da Whizz, architect of the Racial Contract, White Supremacy itself—graced these New World shores with my glorious presence. All praise be to ME.
2. What was the most challenging thing about writing the book?
That Geronimo fellow—the purported author, in reality my secretary, if not my spooky familiar—being of African American dissuasion, thereby terminally recalcitrant, too frequently attempted the insertion of allusions to the “hippity-hop,” that most confusing illusion. The anti-vax movement has backfired. What else could account for his emotional drapetomania?
3. Where, when, and how often do you write?
Write? I perform no such menial labor. I sing into your ear sweet whispers you mistake for your own thoughts.
4. What are you reading right now?
Your mind. Don’t be shocked. I gave it to you.
5. What is one thing that surprised you during the writing of The Occidental Book of the Dead?
T. Geronimo Johnson believed he was writing the book, not me—as if he is permitted any disposition independent of my charity and grace. His naiveté is my punchline.
6. What is the earliest memory that you associate with the book?
The disbelief on that kid’s face.
7. What is one thing that your agent or editor told you during the process of publishing this book that stuck with you?
Surely you dare not suggest that I, the original Native American, da Whizz, White Supremacy itself, suffer editing or agenting.
8. If you could go back in time and talk to the earlier you, before you started The Occidental Book of the Dead, what would you say?
I, da Whizz, the proto-American OG, the original-original grand dragon, am timeless and perfect.
9. Outside of writing, what other forms of work were essential to the creation of The Occidental Book of the Dead?
The usual. Doublespeak, gaslighting (as the youth call it), and the like. I have dutifully invested centuries of tormented projection into the black body politic that I may ever present to you as evidence of my love these accounts of continued existential disorder. Don’t say da Whizz never did nuthin’ fo ya!
10. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever heard?
The best writing advice known is my own, offered while authoring the earth: Rest every seventh day.
