The Bright Spark

Josh Ritter and I have the image of a Nobel laureate doing handstands in our heads. Chalk it up to Ritter’s way with words. Long a storyteller in his songs, the adopted Irishman from Idaho recently turned fiction writer with his first novel Bright’s Passage. He’s mulling over the challenges of moving into another field.

“If tomorrow,” the American reasons from his Brooklyn abode, “Seamus Heaney decided that he wanted to become a gymnast, there’d be a learning curve there. Or if Nicolas Cage wanted to be a violinist. But whenever you do something in public, that’s what makes it so exciting. And really, the fun of writing the book was just tremendous. It was so important to me.”
As anyone who has heard his narrative-driven, literate folk will gather, putting down the guitar and picking up the pen wasn’t too grand a movement for Josh. A born raconteur, a novel always lurked on the horizon.
“I never really thought that there was much difference between writing songs and writing anything else,” he reasons. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and thought was a possibility. It just took a little time to get the tools I would need. The endurance was one, and then the belief that you actually have something worth sharing.”
What he shares in Bright’s Passage, a brief and beautifully pared-back fable, are ruminations on religion and questions of destiny and control. We meet Henry Bright, a young soldier from West Virginia who has recently returned from the First World War. In many ways, he’s still there. Upon losing his wife in childbirth, Bright must flee his forbidding in-laws and keep his newborn son safe.
He is aided by a horse, and a guardian angel who claims that Henry Jr. is the future king of heaven. Claustrophobic flashbacks to his time in the trenches (the smell of mustard gas almost rises from the pages) and increasingly dubious directions from ‘the angel’ indicate that Bright is a man in turmoil. Placing it in the era of the Great War was important.
“There was the idea, ‘Is anybody in charge?’. In reading about a lot of people coming back from the war, they seemed to feel that prior to that moment, the human species had things figured out. We thought we knew it all. And anything we didn’t know was something God had control over. Then the war happened and everything went out the window. That’s what grabbed my attention, the complete loss of any sense in the world. There’s this idea of a vast omnipotent, omniscient god who can not only begin horrible, senseless conflicts but is also concerned with the tiny minutiae of our brains. A huge thing for Henry Bright to try and wrap his mind around.”
Readers across the Atlantic drink have been wrapping their heads around it since last summer and the plaudits have been flooding in. Deservedly so – Bright’s Passage is an extremely accomplished and affecting debut. Its strengths lie in its stark simplicity, seamless flow (ten drafts in the making) and Ritter’s inspired turn of phrase.
“People have given me the chance to go into something new and that’s a big leap of faith,” he smiles. “You can give someone a record and they can put it on in the kitchen while they’re making salsa. But when you give somebody a book, ask someone who listens to your music to now read a short novel, that’s a big thing. A little daunting. When you hold the finished book in your hand, or see a friend reading it, that’s a whole other side of nerves. ‘Did I just walk off a cliff here?!’”
The literary world is taking note. American heavyweights such as Dennis Lehane and Robert Pinsky are marking him out as one to watch. His inspirations are nodding approvingly. In a warm New York Times review, Stephen King issued a piece of advice: “Start work on another book immediately”.
And so he has. “I’ve taken lessons from Bright’s Passage and brought them into the new thing. It’s going great. It fits me well, moving between music and writing. There’s times when one is easier than the other. Sometimes songs are easier to fit in the cracks. Whereas writing a novel seems to work really well with a schedule.”
Given Ritter’s touring life, it helps that he can write on the road.
“That was something I initially learned from songwriting. If you want to write, you have to be able to do it anywhere. If you allow yourself to become too calibrated, then suddenly all the things start to jump on you. There’s always an excuse or reason why not. Stephen King has talked about it. Too many wide open spaces can be dangerous for writing.”
For Bright’s Passage, he would sit in various cramped conditions and slip on the headphones. Aphex Twin’s Drukqs, Radiohead’s Kid A and Chopin were the soundtrack.
“I felt like I had gone to the beach. When I closed my computer down or put the pen away for the day, it felt like I had done something. That I had gotten pride out of nowhere. The other day I heard an Aphex Twin song somewhere and it immediately put me right back in that moment.”
Music remains in Ritter’s life. An album is on the way, containing songs more autobiographical than ever before. A reaction to several years dwelling on the lives of fictional characters?
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” he considers. “But that could be. I’d just been through a divorce, which was really difficult and painful. It certainly would have been a huge moment to just let go by the wayside without dwelling on it a bit. Maybe the record will be the one redeeming thing to come from all of that.”
So it will be his Blood On The Tracks?
“That’s very hopeful! But it does feel very cathartic to write.”
If catharsis is all that comes from it, at least he’s surpassed Dylan in one regard – Zimmerman’s first novel Tarantula was utter muck. The writer collapses in giggles. With Josh Ritter’s career now splintered into two separate paths, they’ll merge at his upcoming readings in Ireland this June. A few songs are on the cards.
“It’s pretty much a free-for-all. Being over there and not playing would be horrible. I’ve been doing gigs my whole life, but it’s much more nerve-wracking to be standing there with a book in your hand than standing there with a guitar. The guitar covers up your vital organs!”

Bright’s Passage is out on June 28, published by Dial Press.