The 2007 North Country Reads Selection:
The Ha-Ha, by Dave King

Imagine suddenly losing your ability to speak, read, and write, and from then on, feeling that all your thoughts and emotions are locked inside. Dave King's debut novel, THE HA-HA places narrator Howard Kapostash in just such circumstances. Howie, a Vietnam veteran left mute by a head injury, now rounds out his days as groundskeeper for a convent and custodian of his ex-girlfriend's recalcitrant nine-year-old son. This novel is about the costs of war, the hope and heartbreak of the disabled experience, and the value of human connections.

Awards and Honors

• Northern Ohio Live Award for Achievement in Writing
  
  
• Finalist for a Quill Award in the Best Debut of the Year category
  
  
• Finalist for Book of the Month Club's best Literary Fiction Award
  
  
• One of the best books of 2005 by the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
  
  
• 2006 Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
  
  
• Optioned for a movie by Warner Brothers as the directorial debut of Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman
  
  
• One of five books nominated for the Book of the Month Club's 2005 "Best Literary Fiction" award
  
  
• New York Times Bestseller

Dave King, author of The Ha-Ha

Dave King holds a BFA in painting and film from Cooper Union and an MFA in writing from Columbia University.
He has served as Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College, City University of New York, and is currently a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome 2006-2007. He has been published in The Paris Review and Big City Lit, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Ha-Ha is his first novel. You can find out more about the author and his work at his website: http://www.davekingwriter.com.

A Conversation with Dave King

The author of The Ha-Ha talks with Danielle DeFrain of FictionAddiction.NET about the origins of his first novel

Dave King has done it all. He’s been an artist, a florist, a New York City cabdriver, a bartender, a small business owner, and even an editor. Now he’s taken a successful leap into writing fiction with his debut novel, The Ha-Ha, and Warner Brothers Pictures will turn his book into a movie. FictionAddiction.NET talks with King about his creative past, his novel, and his take on the writing craft.

You’ve had such a successful painting career and now it appears your writing is going to be equally flourishing. What made you finally decide to delve into the world of novel writing?

To be honest, my painting career was a mixed bag. My undergraduate degree was in painting and film, and I was a serious painter for almost ten years — without too much success. During the end of that time a partner and I founded Dynaflow Studios, Inc. (now called Franklin Tartaglione, LLC) to create decorative painting and murals for high-end residences.

I enjoyed the decor world very much, and it’s true we did well, but it’s a different kind of creativity when you’re pursuing a craft and delivering a commissioned product; I missed the freedom I’d enjoyed in the studio. Since I was already painting all day, I enrolled in a writing class as a creative outlet, and one of my first teachers, the wonderful novelist Melvin Jules Bukiet, encouraged me to consider graduate school.

After several years of writing on nights and weekends, I relinquished my portion of the decorative painting business and entered the MFA program at Columbia. The Ha-Ha (in quite a different form) was my master’s thesis.

The character of Howard Kapostash in The Ha-Ha is three-dimensional in his role as protagonist. He has such a convincing mixture of flaws and feelings, and you did an amazing job bringing him to life. What inspired you to choose him as the basis of your novel?

My interest in disability is a consequence of having a profoundly autistic brother, but it’s important to note that while my brother Hank (who died in 1993) certainly helped spark the character of Howard Kapostash, Howard is not an attempt to “give voice” to Hank’s experience.

The two lives are substantively quite different, and one of the book’s primary dynamics is the exploration of Howard’s loss; since Howard, unlike Hank, has known the full range of a normally abled life, his rebirth as a disabled person encompasses the narrowing of every expectation for what we loosely term the American dream. With this knowledge of what might have been, Howard bears an extra burden of sadness I hope my brother never experienced.

Child rearing is one of life’s greatest challenges. With the difficulties that Howie already faced, why toss that into the mix?

There are a number of reasons I included Ryan in the story, the first being that I enjoy writing about kids. Though we don’t have children ourselves, The Ha-Ha was written during a happy period when my life was rich with children, especially my young nieces and nephew. They — and many children of friends — contributed immeasurably to the portrait of Ryan.

A second reason to build the story around Howard’s time with Ryan was to raise the level of challenge for myself. The story of a damaged child and damaged adult who bond and find reconciliation is pretty classic and has already been told in a variety of ways (the foremost example in our American literature probably being Huckleberry Finn). I wanted to see if I could add something to this literature without allowing my book to become cheesy, predictable, or clichéd. Treading this line was one of the harder tasks I addressed in writing The Ha-Ha, and in fact the book follows fairly foreseeable lines for its first half before ultimately veering off in a direction that I hope will surprise most readers.

Howard has been compared to some impressive characters of literature. How does it feel to have crafted someone who has touched the hearts and souls of so many?

It’s wonderful, and I never tire of hearing from readers. Among the most satisfying responses I’ve received have been many notes and e-mails from Vietnam vets and from those in the health care professions: employees of long-term care facilities, nurses, surgeons, even shrinks. An unexpected number of readers have had some experience of traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder, and it’s been thrilling to earn the validation of those who have gone through challenges like the ones Howard faces in the novel.

The Ha-Ha has received such high accolades and is already slated for film production. Did you ever imagine it would gain popularity so quickly?

Frankly, I did not. During my graduate school days some professors and fellow students were intrigued by what I was up to, but there was certainly no consensus that this was a special project. That’s primarily because it took me a long time to get it right.

Over the six years it took me to complete the novel, I wrote approximately five full drafts and rewrote problem scenes perhaps as many as twenty times, and while I was struggling with Howard’s voice or the book’s pacing or some other difficult aspects of The Ha- Ha, it wasn’t at all clear I’d ever get it right. Only when the book began to be read by publishing professionals did I have an inkling of its wider appeal.

Is there any one author who motivated your writing more than any other?

E. M. Forster’s influence is all over this book: so much of The Ha- Ha is about making the human connection, and Forster’s own vision of writing as a moral activity is enormously important to me. But in working out how to capture Howard’s consciousness, I also considered some of the twentieth-century modernists, particularly Faulkner and Woolf.

Despite the fact that The Ha-Ha is a mostly conventional narrative comprised of conventional sentences, the formal innovation of the voice — the sheer contradiction implied by the fact that the story is told by a mute — nevertheless owes a debt to others who have written from inside the human head. Among many other writers whose impact may be less evident in this novel but who matter greatly to me are Wharton, Cather, Beckett, Chekhov, and Whitman.

You have such a diverse background in both your education and your career. Where do you see yourself going from here?

I’m continuing to write. My novel-in-progress is tonally different from The Ha-Ha (among other shifts, the new book’s narrative voice is more worldly and skeptical than Howard’s), but the story will continue my investigation of themes that are important to me, including friendship and family, loyalty and betrayal, and the duties of the individual within a community.

I’m also continuing to write and publish my poetry.

One of the more popular pieces of advice for aspiring authors is “write what you know.” Do you agree with the importance placed on that?

“Write what you know” is especially useful for new writers, who may feel that even beginning to write is a pretty big step. It’s good for one’s confidence to be sure of a subject, even if how to capture that subject in words remains elusive.

Ultimately, though, my method is to rely on my imagination, so the dictum “write what you know” becomes more elastic, more abstract. I feel I write what I know about life, about love, about human relationships and emotions and joy and sorrow, but in The Ha-Ha I made up the details of the town, the characters, and the plot. It was in the attempt to bring those two worlds together that my book took flight.

What words of wisdom would you like to share with fledgling writers?

Try taking a “good cop/bad cop” approach to your manuscript. In the first draft, be endlessly loving and supportive of yourself. Toss in anything you can think of; be optimistic, positive, and forgiving, and embrace digression. In the second draft, bring out your harsh and punitive side: look for flaws in the logic and force yourself to do plenty of heavy pruning. Take the long view: think fiercely about structure, pacing, story arc, theme, and other big issues. Your final draft, of course, will be some combination of the two.

The complete text of Danielle DeFrain’s interview with Dave King originally appeared at FictionAddiction.NET. Reprinted with permission.

The story of The Ha-Ha

Howard Kapostash has not spoken in thirty years. Ever since a severe blow to the head during his days in the Army, words unravel in his mouth and letters on the page make no sense at all.

Because of his extremely limited communication abilities—a small repertory of gestures and simple sounds—most people see him as disturbed. No one understands that Howard is still the same man he was before enlisting, still awed by the beauty of a landscape, still pining for his high school sweetheart, Sylvia.

Now Sylvia is a single mom with troubles of her own, and she needs Howard’s help. She is being hauled into a drug rehab program and she asks Howard to care for her 9 year-old son, Ryan. The presence of this nervous, resourceful boy in Howard’s life transforms him utterly.

With a child’s happiness at stake, communication takes on a fresh urgency, and the routine that Howard has evolved over the years—designed specifically to minimize the agony of human contact—suddenly feels restrictive and even dangerous. Forced out of his groove, Howard finds unexpected delights (in baseball, in work, in meals with his housemates). His home comes alive with the joy, sorrows, and love of a real family. But these changes also open Howard to the risks of loss—and to the rage he has spent a lifetime suppressing.

Written with a luminous simplicity and grace, The Ha-Ha follows Howard down his difficult path to a new life. It is a deeply moving story about the cost of war and the infinite worth of human connection.

A Reader Guide to The Ha-Ha

Back Bay Books, publisher of The Ha-Ha, the 2007 North Country Reads selection, has generously provided a reader's guide to the book. The guide contains information about the book and author, further suggested reading, discussion questions and an interview with the author. This guide is recommended as an aid to book groups and teachers. Some of the information, especially the discussion questions, reveal major details of the plot, and so should not be read in advance the book.

Download Reader's Guide for The Ha-Ha *

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The 2006 North Country Reads Selection:
A Northern Light,
by Jennifer Donnelly

A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the scenic Adirondacks and a true-life 1906 murder that shocked the nation, A Northern Light is narrated by 16-year-old Mattie Gokey, a precocious young woman who longs for more opportunities than tiny Eagle Bay can give her.

Awards and Honors

• Carnegie Medal Winner, United Kingdom
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner
• Borders 2004 Original Voices Award Winner
• Printz Honor Book by the ALA
• De Gouden Zoen Honor, The Netherlands
• Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults by the ALA
• Best Book of 2003Publishers Weekly, Booklist, School Library Journal, The Irish Times, The Times (London), The Financial Times and The Albany Times-Union.
• Chosen by amazon.com as a top teen title for 2003

Jennifer Donnelly, Author of A Northern Light

Jennifer Donnelly grew up in Port Leydon, Lewis County. Before embarking on her career as a novelist, she was a staff writer at the Watertown Daily Times. Not having forgotten her north country roots, A Northern Light includes references to Boonville, Castorland and Watertown. She now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter and two greyhounds. You can find out more about the author and her work at her website: http://www.jenniferdonnelly.com.

An Interview with Jennifer Donnelly
(Used with permission from the Study Guide, © 2004 Harcourt)

Have you always wanted to write?

Yes, ever since I was a small child, I spent much of my elementary and high school career inflicting terrible poems and overwrought stories on my family and friends. I didn't write any fiction in college, but I did write for my college newspaper. Mainly on local restaurants, bakeries, and ice-cream stands, as I had hopes of becoming a food writer. I was to discover; how ever, that publications like Gourmet magazine require better qualifications than mere gluttony, and so I didn't end up pursuing that line of work.

What inspired you to write this story?

First and foremost, Grace Brown's story. The one told about her by friends, family, and eyewitnesses, and the one she told in her own letters. When I read those letters, I was upset--grief stricken, actually--that such a kind, funny, perceptive, decent girl had been trapped by her circumstances and then murdered because there was no way out of them. Mattie was born, in part, because I wanted to change the past. I wanted Grace's death to have meaning. And I wanted her death to allow someone else to escape her confining circumstances and live her life, even though Grace herself didn't get that chance.

Your portrayal of everyday life in the early 1900s is so real and vividly detailed, What kind of research did you do for this book? How long did it take you to write the story?

I consulted oral histories, histories of the area written local residents, tax records, photographs, newspaper clippings, a Cranberry Lake farmwife's diary, court transcripts ot Chester Gillette's trial, old camp menus, old postcards and autograph books--most of which were made available to me the Town of Webb Historical Society and the Adirondack Museum. I also used stories told to me by my great-grandmother, my grandmother, her brother and sister, my father and my uncle. These stories were accounts of how my upstate relatives--all Irish immigrants or their children--lived, worked, and played in and around the western Adirondacks. Some were sober descriptions of the hard, everyday lives of poor farmers, hotel workers and woodsmen, and some were out-and-out whoppers. I knew one from the other and I didn't care, I just loved the telling.

A Northern Light is your third published work, Your first two, The Tea Rose and Humble Pie, are for completely different audiences--adults (for The Tea Rose) and kids ages four to eight (Humble Pie), How do you manage to write for these vastly different types of readers?

I'm not sure how to answer this because it doesn't take any effort for me to switch between audiences. Each story might be for vastly different readers but they're not vastly different stories. They're all about lacing challenges, confronting hard things, being afraid, being confused, changing, and ultimately triumphing.

In both The Tea Rose and A Northern Light, you write about compelling women who fight against sexist stereotyping; they also struggle to find meaningful work in eras when women had few opportunities. Are there any parallels in your life--have you found avenues that are closed to women?

I honestly haven't. I had parents who told me that I could do and be whatever I wanted, as long as I worked hard. But I deeply feel for previous generations of women--and men--who did not have my opportunities. My great-grandmother received an eighth-grade education, and then was sent off the farm and into hotel service to help feed her family. My great-grandfather received only a fifth-grade education. At the age of twelve, he was put on the Erie Canal to drive mules. He was terrified of lightning storms and tried to crawl onto a boat for shelter whenever one came, but was once whipped down off the boat by the captain. He endured a lifetime of backbreaking physical labor--farming, logging, running a hotel--and died young from a weak heart. My grandmother, his daughter, told me that in the last months of his life, when he was laid up in bed, he discovered books and devoured one after another. That breaks my heart. I wonder what his life would have been like if he'd been able to finish school and go to college.

What was your favorite book as a teen?

Boy, is that hard. There are so many. I read both mass and class, and liked the mass more than the class, The Shining a huge favorite. Anything by Stephen King was. I felt like I knew the people he wrote about. My aunt Grace had stacks and stacks of what's now called women's fiction, and I frequently dipped into her stash. Some of my favorites were A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford, The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, and Scruples by Judith Kranz. At the age of thirteen, I probably shouldn't have been reading any of them. They all had racy bits. On the more literary side I loved Lord of the Flies, The Scarlet Letter, and Animal Farm. To be perfectly honest, though, I didn't fall hard for literature until I went to college and was fortunate enough to be taught by some seriously gifted professors. They opened my eyes to the beauty and majesty and power of writers like Shakespeare, Joyce, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Dickinson, and Eliot.

Do you have any advice for would-be writers?

Read as much as you can and write as much as you can. Listen hard to what's inside of you, and try--it's hard when fourteen or fifteen and everyone's telling you how to think and feel and be--but try hard to hear your own voice and to believe in it.

The Fact and Fiction of A Northern Light

Scene from An American Tragedy (Source: Metropolitan Opera) Broadcast Premier of the opera, An American Tragedy Saturday, December 24, 1:00 pm Aired live on North Country Public Radio from the Metropolitan Opera in NYC, with specially produced regional content from Brian Mann preceding the premier. More at NCPR. Theodore Dreiser’s classic 1925 novel based on the events at Eagle Bay is listed among the best American fiction.

The Oscar-winning 1951 Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift film A Place in the Sun, was based on Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.

Grace Brown, who worked in Gillette’s uncle’s skirt factory, was murdered on July 11, 1906.

Chester Gillette, who was found relaxing at a nearby hotel three days after the murder.

Two nonfiction works have attempted to document the murder and trial.

In 1906, the murder trial of Chester Gillette, a prep school graduate accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend, Grace Brown, created an international sensation.

Hear author Jennifer Donnelly reading Grace Brown's last love letter.

The trial attracted media from across the country and Herkimer County Courthouse was filled to capacity every day of the trial.

Americans of the Victorian Era were particularly scandalized by the personal drama involving Gillette’s social climbing and his cool demeanor throughout the trial.

The Hotel Glennmore on Moose Lake

Learn more about the murder, the trial and the historical background of A Northern Light at these websites:

• Herkimer Country Historical Association
• The Adirondack Museum
• Jennifer Donnelly's website

A Reader's Guide to A Northern Light

Harcourt Books, publisher of A Northern Light, has generously provided a reader's guide to the book. The guide contains information about the book and author, further suggested reading, discussion questions and an interview with the author. This guide is recommended as an aid to book groups and teachers. Some of the information, especially the discussion questions, reveal major details of the plot, and so should not be read in advance the book.

Download Reader's Guide for A Northern Light *

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