Iraq: Experiencing the War at Home

By Courtney E. Martin, AlterNet. Posted February 21, 2008.

A lot of really glowing things have been said as of late about 28-year-old fiction writer Benjamin Percy. Peter Straub called Percy "one of our most accomplished young writers" and Anthony Doerr described him as "a force." Percy is writing for Esquire. He just got accepted into the Sundance Institute. He won a Pushcart Prize. His second collection of short stories, Refresh, Refresh, has been called "full of bravery and bravado" by none other than Ann Patchett. She goes on: "These stories mark the beginning of what is bound to be a long and brilliant career for Benjamin Percy. Welcome him." OK, or hate him. Just a little bit. You imagine he's already bought his million-dollar brownstone in Brooklyn and made friends with Paul Auster, already drinking microbrews and talking about writing as if it were a religious experience. But you'd be wrong. Perhaps the most exciting thing about this young writer, besides his fierce talent, is that he's still quintessential salt of the earth. Still, for lack of a less cliché way of putting it, in touch with his roots. In fact, the stories in this collection are nothing so much as the surprisingly beautiful and tender roots of a boyhood pulled out, brushed off, and held out as an offering. The title story is named for the insistent fingers of a teenage boy, pressing the refresh button on his computer over and over in hopes that an email will miraculously appear from his father, a reservist in the Iraq war. The reader feels a little like this after turning the last page of these stories; you just want another. Indeed, welcome Ben.

Courtney Martin: Tell me about your background -- geographic, economic, familial.

Benjamin Percy: I spent most of my childhood in Central Oregon, the backdrop of my fiction. Many people know about Bend -- once a mill town, now a ski town, nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, on the edge of a great wash of desert -- having traveled there on vacation for mountain biking or whitewater rafting or skiing. I lived about 10 miles from there, in a small community known as Tumalo. One of my neighbors was a sheep farmer named Ott who killed our dog with a shotgun. Another ran a horse ranch. Another grew alfalfa. Though only a short drive, I lived worlds away from Bend, far from the coffee houses and sushi restaurants and European car dealerships. In many ways my fiction is informed not just by the craggy landscape, but by the ever-growing tension brought on by the Californication of Oregon. My family ended up middle-class, but I spent a lot of my childhood on a lower rung of the ladder. My father was trained as a lawyer but found the life morally objectionable. He went into business for himself -- about 20 times over. He's constantly reinventing himself, sometimes working with Chinese immigrants, sometimes working with gold mines. We joke that he's an international spy, because he wears a lot of black, travels often, owns a sizable arsenal, and never fully explains how he makes a living.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I wasn't one of those people who always wanted to be a writer -- though I'm sure the idea would have been attractive to me had it seemed an option. But growing up, I never met a writer, never heard about anybody even trying to write a book. That wasn't my neighborhood. To pursue writing seemed like something otherworldly, like being an astronaut. I always had a book in hand. English was always my best subject. But, for whatever reason, it struck me as an impractical subject to pursue. Then I met my girlfriend -- now my wife -- when working at Glacier National Park the summer after my freshman year at Brown. She was, she is, drop-dead gorgeous, not to mention five years older than me. So I had to pull out all the stops in pursuing her. After so many lascivious love letters and doe-eyed sonnets, she was mine. But here was the deal: I needed to go into writing. No kidding. It was almost contractual, something I signed in lipstick and saliva. So she gets the credit. I can say with complete certainty that I would have never pursued writing had she not taken me by the throat and said, "You're really good at this, damn it."

See more stories tagged with: iraq, masculinity, fiction, benjamin percy, refresh refresh

Courtney E. Martin is the author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. You can read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Media and Technology! Sign up now »