Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.

Recently, we talked to Douglas Robinson about his writing and his recently published book, a Republican Romance, a captivating and thought-provoking tale that delves into the complexities of power, legacy, ambition, and the weight of responsibility.  (Read the review here).

When were you hit with the inspiration to write Insecticide: A Republican Romance? Was it during the Bush administration, or not until years later after you’d had time to reflect on it?

Good guess! The inspiration hit during the George W. Bush administration, fueled by frustration at all the terrible things they were doing, and it took shape in my imagination, and on the computer screen, during later years, as I reflected back on both Bush administrations, #41 and #43.

What has been the most satisfying part of writing Insecticide? What about the most surprising?

There were lots of satisfying things, and lots of surprises, and lots of satisfying (or funnybone-tickling) surprises! The weird science fiction was one: W. Averell Harriman struck me as a fundamentally inexplicable human being—a power-broker who was everywhere at once, with his utterly amoral control of historical events for profit and right-wing power. What could possibly explain him? The idea that he was actually a 10,000-year-old space alien in humanoid-insectile form was the surprise answer that came to me. All the rest of the weirdness—the zombies, the wooly mammoths, the John Wilkes Booths, Abraham Lincoln living at the bottom of a lake in Texas with his devil-water-cow Bessie—all that just sort of burbled up from that initial inspiration.

One of the biggest and ultimately most satisfying surprises, though, was the sympathy I began to feel for the Georges Bush, father and son, as I narrated the story from their points of view. It was political satire, dammit! No sympathy please! But both men as I imagined them were so hapless, so out of their depth, so absurdly incapable of understanding the horrific things that they were involved in, and that ultimately began to be done in their names and with their money, that I not only began to feel sorry for them—I also began to find that uneasy sense of not knowing what’s going on, not being able to control my own destiny, in myself.

At first glance, Insecticide might seem like it takes an absurdist view of politics, but the more you dig into it the less far-fetched it seems! How did you go about developing your story’s unusual “setting” in a way that still feels so grounded?

Well, it’s basically a far-fetched skin stretched over a solid body of historical fact. Most of the events narrated by the Georges Bush did actually happen—at least according to the more or less (un)reliable sources I was mining! The disclaimers on the back cover are a smokescreen hinting at the opposite: that there’s a lot of historical truth to the story. Making it super-weird and bizarrely funny served as a way of accommodating disturbing political history to reader pleasure.

Who (or what) are your writing inspirations?

My literary influences would include postmodern novels by Robert Coover (especially of course The Public Burning—Coover’s Eisenhower is one inspiration for my Dogsbody Harriman, and his Nixon is the main inspiration for mine, though I bet Coover is kicking himself for not imagining Nixon catching and eating flies), John Barth (The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy), Thomas Pynchon (especially Gravity’s Rainbow), and Kurt Vonnegut (especially Slaughterhouse 5), but also “postmodern” novels going back to François Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. (One of my recent books is a postmodern transcreation of an unfinished posthumous Finnish science-fiction novel by Volter Kilpi called Gulliver’s Voyage to Phantomimia.). Oh, and of course the comic science fiction of Jonathan Lethem, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Connie Willis, and the like. And then let’s not forget Monty Python and other absurdist humor (Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of my main sources of inspiration—I must have watched it a dozen times, and basically have it memorized), the wilder strains of stand-up comedy, Ryan Reynolds movies (especially Free Guy), comic sf tv series (3^rd Rock, Family Guy, Lost in Space, Space Balls) … Lots more!

If there was one thing you could tell your younger writing self, what would it be?

Stop thinking of whole novels as these perfect things that are almost impossible to emulate. Tell little stories. Craft them carefully and passionately. If they end up becoming novels, great. If not, that’s great too.

What’s next for you as a writer?

I’m writing what I’m thinking of as a flash-fiction novel titled Lord Trump the Undead, on the writing site medium.com. 24 chapters so far, starting with “Easter Trumpcat.” It’s set in 2074, revolving around skirmishes between the Church of Trump (and their undead deity Lord Trump) and the nefarious Trump Haters. Fred Trump as a noncorporeal agent of the church. Kellyanne Conway as an earthworm, Sean Spicer as an intestinal flatworm, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders as a leech. Right now Lord Trump the Undead is hiding out in the belly of a whale shark, where he is interviewed by the worms. More weird comic science fiction. Come check me out there!

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