Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Northeast Philly, whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apiary, Philadelphia Printworks, and The Offing. A memoirist and poet, he also wonders how things might have gone had he fallen in love with hominids first, and so writes speculative fiction only by the night. He is currently working on two book-length projects: Sink, a memoir about coming of age as an undereducated blerd in the city, and a fantasy novel, The Gift From Alondria. An excerpt from his story “Cold War Kirby” can be found here. It appears in the Mar/Apr 2020 issue of the Kenyon Review.
What was your original impetus for writing “Cold War Kirby”?
I think a lot about animals and the inner lives of kids, especially those forced to grow up mad quick and then are treated even more like children sometimes because of it. I also caught, bought, and sold a ton of different pets as a child, even breeding garter snakes for a bit until I realized it was never really about the pets but my own loneliness.
I want to hear about writing pets who talk back to children! How did this first come to you? Are we meant to believe that only the children can hear them? And why did you concentrate on reptiles (until later in the story)?
It’s part of an old fairy tale trope mostly, but for me “Cold War Kirby” has more to do with the fact that the adults aren’t interested in the animals in any real way because they’re not interested in the kids in any way that feels real to the children themselves. Hearing the animals is foreclosed for the adults because hearing the kids, or thinking about and valuing how they think and feel from their perspective (without great condescension) is out of the question. It’s a lot of the problems with ideas that children should stay in a child’s place and be seen not heard, etc.
And reptiles are definitely just really cute though, but they’re also small and seem easy to take care of (to a kid) and end up getting neglected, so there’s kind of a similar problem with how human children are sometimes thought about.
The sense of place is especially strong in this story. Was “Birds, Birds, Birds” based on a pet store you knew?
Oh, it’s definitely a version of this pet store that I used to live near on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philly. It was so close to the apartment where I grew up that I could run over there after cutting grass or shoveling snow or whatever for money and grab a new animal to love and to hold and which, despite my overwhelming excitement, would always die too soon. Back in the day, you could even get an alligator there, but I had to return mine when it got a little too big. So damn cute though.
In the final scene, Brandon says, “Later, I would construct a fabled variant of this that erased us all, so that I could be seen.” Did you draft another version of this story, or did you imagine multiple ways for Brandon to tell his story?
Yeah, both, kind of. I was writing through other ways that this story could be told, thinking about how first person narrators do or don’t tend to signal their own virtue and for what purposes. I’m also just really interested in how telling any kind of story can be seen as limiting another, especially with regard to people who have shared experiences with the storyteller. I don’t think there is any version of this story that Brandon could tell that wouldn’t be a fable to at least one other person in the house.
How has your writing changed since you started out?
It’s definitely gotten better, if the immediate embarrassment that comes with reading anything I’ve written before is any indication. But I think that’s normal. All I can hope is that it continues to get more complicated and honest; that would be good.
Which non-writing-related aspect of your life most influences your writing?
Probably running, because it’s one of the few times where my thoughts aren’t racing and I can hone in on something long enough to make it coherent. But plenty of other things help, too, like my own kids, who are stranger and way smarter than I was at their age. Critical theory and sex are good, too, but above all else, finally being at a point in my life where most basic needs are met is nice. It’s one of those privileges/freedoms that most people will never get, yet it sustains a lot of us who get to say things out loud.
What is either the best or the worst piece of writing advice you’ve received or given?
Most recently I’m reminded of being in a writing workshop with Mitchell Jackson at Tin House. He kept asking folks, “How they gonna know it’s you?” In other words, we are all pretty much creating “coherent” writing, but he was really interested in what would differentiate our writing from all the millions of other coherent stories out there. For me, this was a great motivator because it helped give me permission to be more and more myself in each piece. It’s helped make some revisions that felt daunting before more enjoyable now.
What project(s) are you working on now, or next?
Right now, I’m revising a memoir about growing up as an undereducated blerd in Philly, mostly about video games, violence, sex, and learning, whenever all those aren’t the same thing. There’s also a collection of mostly fantasy short stories I’m rearranging, of which “Cold War Kirby” is a part, that think through health, race, and militarization together.