Free Willy: Hot Press Interview with Willy Vlautin

I've always liked working class stories, because I’ve always liked stories where I can see myself in them,” declares novelist and musician Willy Vlautin. “When I read John Steinbeck, for instance, I felt I understood his people. I liked reading about people like me, that maybe weren’t doing too good, but were still in the fight to find a better place.”

The three central characters in Vlautin’s heartbreaking new novel, The Free, wouldn’t seem out of place in one of Steinbeck’s works. All are working class, struggling and wounded in some way or other.

There’s Leroy, a brain damaged war veteran in a coma and slowly ebbing away following a failed suicide attempt. He’s watched over by Pauline, a big-hearted nurse whose life is largely divided between her hospital duties and caring for her mentally ill father. Leroy is also regularly visited by Freddie, the nightwatchman from his group home for disabled men, slaving at two jobs to make ends meet and pining for his young daughters after his wife took off with another man.

“They’re all in the fight, most especially Pauline and Freddie,” the likable 46-year-old explains, speaking in a soft Nevada drawl. “I write about those characters because they’re really the only kinds of characters I know.”

The Free is Vlautin’s fourth novel, the follow- up to 2010’s Impac-nominated Lean On Pete. It’s easily his most artistically ambitious work to date. “Well, it has the most moving parts in it. It has the most touchy and heated subjects that I’ve ever tackled, and big polarising subjects, too.”

He wrote the book while Richmond Fontaine – the alt-country band he formed when he relocated from his native Reno to Portland in 1994 – was on an extended hiatus from touring.

“I wrote the first draft real quickly, in like six months, and then spent three years re-writing it. I wrote this one 13 times, and I was off the road for two-and-a-half of those years. So I would just finish a draft and then start over, then finish a draft and start over. Because I was so worried about getting all the parts right, and making sure I could stand behind it.”

Was there much difference between that first draft and the published novel? “The ideas were the same and the characters were the same,” he says. “It was getting the essence of what I was trying to say with each character down, and the rhythms, jumping back and forth. I’ve never been a big fan of novels that had simultaneous stories going on, because it throws me out of the world. So I was worried about that, as well. And just trying to get the rhythms right, so in case you didn’t like one character, you could get through it to get to one of the characters that you do like.”

Curiously, there’s also a surreal sci-fi element to The Free, with some of the story taking place in Leroy’s damaged imagination. Deep in a coma, he’s having a hellish nightmare about being pursued by murderous fanatics through a dystopian USA.

“Of everything I’ve learned about brain injuries, it’s the volatility of your emotions that I find so frightening,” he says. “They call Iraq and Afghanistan the ‘brain injury wars’. Because to get home with a shattered mind seems like the cruellest trick of all. Because you have no control of your emotions. Or you fluctuate between being euphoric to great despair. And I thought, every person has their own version of hell, and their ideas of darkness.

“In a broader sense, I wanted to say, ‘Hey look, we send this guy over there, and we bring him back, and now he has to live in this. We’ve created a guy that has to live in this kind of hell, where he can’t even decide or control what his mind does’. And then that gave me the avenue to talk about the more hawkish nature of America. These guys come home shattered, and they’re always working class guys, poor guys, that get the short end of that. That’s always really fired me up.”

The mental illnesses depicted in the book aren’t all combat-related. Pauline’s strained relationship with her difficult father also raises some uncomfortable issues about family loyalty.

“It’s all about control when you have a family member who is mentally ill or volatile. You just have to keep building walls to where it is safe for you. It’s sad, but it’s true. I had to do that myself, and you just keep building walls back to where you’re safe, and then, before you realise, you’re maybe meeting one of your relatives in a restaurant twice a year for an hour. And that is the best you can do.”

Vlautin smiles when it’s put to him that there really should be a question mark in the
title. “Obviously it’s an ironic title. Pauline is definitely not free, Freddie is definitely not free, nor is Leroy. Nor is Leroy’s mom, Darla. She’s only set free when he dies, and she can be herself again.”

Despite years of sustained critical acclaim for his music and books, Vlautin isn’t exactly free himself, either. He still has to work for a living, and is already well into the first draft of another novel. As for his music career, he’s currently preparing to tour with a new side project called The Delines, and also “getting ready to roll out another record” with Richmond Fontaine.

“I haven’t made a ton of dough off of anything I’ve done,” he says, shrugging. “So I’m still making about the same amount of money I was making when I was a house painter. It’s just a lot easier than house painting.”

A film version of his debut novel, The Motel Life, starring Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson, was released last year. Surely he made a few quid from that?

“It took the heat off me, that’s for sure, for a couple of years,” he admits. “You never think that sort of stuff is actually going to happen. This friend of mine said, ‘If they make a movie of yours, it’s so rare, it’s like hitting the lottery. And if the movie is good, man, it’s a miracle of God!’ And the more I learned about people’s stories dealing with movies, it is really rare.

“So I was very lucky that they did make the movie. They shot it in my hometown, and they shot it in a lot of places where it takes place in the book. A lot of the bars, restaraunts, even in the casino: they were really loyal. And they stewed over it, and worried over it. They tried the best they could. I’m really happy with it.”

What’s your next book about?
“I’m three-quarters of the way through the first draft of a novel about two Nevada guys
who get laid off from a ranch, and they just kind of drift around the South West. It’s a gift to myself, because The Free was so taxing and so hard. I bled into that book, so this one is for me. It’s fun. It’s one of the funnest things I’ve ever written.”

The Free is published by Faber & Faber.