Matt Weiland: Through 50 States With 50 Writers

World Hum: I know you wrote a little about how you came up with this project, but could you explain a little more specifically where the idea came from?

Matt Weiland: A couple years ago, we’d done the Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, and it did really well. And the way these things work at the big publishing houses is that they came back to us and said, “Would you guys do another anthology to come out at the time of the elections in 2008?” They have ways of being convincing about such things, but we thought “Nah, what would we do? The thinking fan’s guide to democracy?” It just seemed dreadfully dull. And I wouldn’t want to do a book that I wouldn’t want to read myself, so we said no.

But then we went away, and were thinking about it. And I’ve always loved the old WPA state guides. So Sean and I talked about it a bit, then we went back to them and said, “Look, we’d like to do something on the same principle as the first book, which was 32 writers on 32 countries. This would be 50 writers on 50 states. It wouldn’t be a practical guidebook. It wouldn’t say anything direct about the elections. It would just be a lasting book about America now.”

I thought they were going to say no, but instead they were really enthusiastic.

Yeah, I love those old WPA guides, too.

They’re so great. And a funny thing about them is they had all these wonderful writers: Nelson Algren, Saul Bellows, Zora Neale Hurston, Jim Thompson, Richard Wright, John Cheever. A lot of them were edited down, and they were published anonymously and some of them can be really boring, unfortunately.

We were aware of that. We wanted [“State by State”] to be inspired by that, but we didn’t want it to get ground down in a meat grinder. We wanted the writers to do their thing, and to let them bump into whatever they bumped into. And I think that makes it a much more idiosyncratic book, and one that’s much more fun.

It seems like there were two ways to go about picking writers: Either choose a writer who knows a place really well, or a writer who comes to a place with fresh eyes. 

You’re right. What we decided early that we didn’t want was for the book to be a kind of beauty pageant where 50 writers from a particular state write about that state and why it’s so great. And as appealing as it would be to have some of these writers come out with their little staff and tiara and to do their little dance, we wanted it to be stranger and even ambivalent at times. So some of the writers we went to are from the place they’re writing about. Others are writing about the place they moved to, or are residents of. And still others visit places they’d never been before, because we thought it would be interesting to get that perspective that you only get with fresh eyes and a deadline looming over you. I think in some ways those pieces are the best, some of the best of the book, like David Rakoff in Utah, and Dagoberto Gilb hanging out with the Mexican workers in the cornfields of Iowa. They’d never been to these states before, but I think they tell us something about the states that we haven’t much heard, and that’s important. 

As far as the things that they’ve bumped into, was there anything that surprised you most?

One thing that surprised both of us was how much the writers found that hasn’t been bulldozed for speed, as Laurie Lee once said about the English landscape. We think of the country as being so homogenized, and of course it is if you only stay on the interstate and only shop at the big box superstores and listen to commercial radio. But when you get out in it, you see that there are still all sorts of things that are still very local and that vary from state to state, whether it’s mint farming in Indiana, or pawn shops in Las Vegas, or a little mom-and-pop diner in Key West. These things are all under pressure from larger commercial firms, but nonetheless exist and retain some of their idiosyncrasies and their fundamental authenticity and localness.

Yeah, most people seem to think America is done, as far as authenticity and localness go.

It may be. I don’t know. It’s certainly on the outs. But not if we don’t let it be. The way to defend those things is, first of all to recognize they’re still there and not give up on them. And that goes as much for independent stores as for ways of living and building. Ha Jin writes about how the clay in Georgia is different from anywhere else, so the bricks are different. And that hasn’t changed. 

What are some other things you were surprised to find?

Even the writers who said they were going to write negatively about their states came out with these wonderfully ambivalent pieces that reveal just how much they love the places they’re from, or that they live, despite their flaws and imperfections. And that really surprised us both. And I think that’s really true of a lot of people when they think about place and where they live. The place is you. And if you grow up in a place, you may complain about it endlessly, but nevertheless its flaws are lovable and worth defending.

Did doing this book kind of make you want to hit the road? 

It sure did. You know, the whole book, when we started, we hoped would replicate the experience you have when you go on a road trip. You get off the interstate, and you bump into surprising, interesting things wherever you go. Or that’s my experience anyway. And that’s one of the great things about the road trip. As you go along, the next town is different from the last. And that’s what makes it fun to keep going. Every time you see a sign that reminds you you’re in a different state, you kind of already knew it, by the way things look, the way people talk, the look of the landscape, the sort of stops you see. And that’s sort of what we wanted the book to feel like. And having now finished it, I am really ready to get on the road again.

Photo courtesy James Lester Films.