Stephen Graham Jones on his novel 'I Was a Teenage Slasher'

Transcript

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Seventeen-year-old Tolly Driver is a good kid. Well, he's at least not a really bad one. Or he wasn't always bad, but he's been through some bad things. In Stephen Graham Jones' newest novel, "I Was A Teenage Slasher," his luck only gets worse. See, Tolly has a peanut allergy, and before you think it killed him, let me be clear. One fateful night in 1989, it kills everyone around him - or almost everyone. Here to explain more is Stephen Graham Jones himself. Hey, Stephen.

STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES: Hello.

RASCOE: So let's start with the location, which is really, like, another character in the book. We're in the town of Lamesa, Texas. Describe that for our listeners.

JONES: Well, Lamesa, in 1989, it was maybe 10,000 people. And Lamesa is oil country. It's flat for as far as you can see, mesquite everywhere.

RASCOE: And this is where the lead character, Tolly Driver, is from. Talk to us a little about him.

JONES: Tolly - he's 17. He has a best friend, Amber Big Plume Dennison. They're outsiders together in the whole social scene of Lamesa. They just ride around in her Rabbit truck on Friday night and pretend like they belong.

RASCOE: Well, talk to me about that, 'cause I mean, you often get these stories about outsiders who kind of band together because they're not in with the in clique, and I certainly was never in with any clique. I didn't even have a sidekick. I didn't have nobody. But (laughter)...

JONES: Yeah. Yeah.

RASCOE: I was just outside. But talk to me about this relationship at the center of the novel. Why was it important to you? And do you think that, you know, people can really just relate to that?

JONES: You know, for me, Tolly and Amber's friendship - it's kind of the story of horror, 'cause we as horror fans, I feel like we're always standing at the fence, looking in at the stuff going on in the big tent. And you have your hands hooked up in that chain link. And every once in a while, the side of your hand will touch somebody else's hand, and you've made a connection.

And I think that we get a lot of solidarity in the horror community, and I think that's a big source of it. And that's definitely a big source of it for Tolly and Amber. Amber is more of the horror fan. But they've been on the outside looking in, and their hands finally touched, and they're friends now. They're together for life.

RASCOE: Can you talk to me a little bit about Tolly's evolution into the slasher and the role that Amber plays in that?

JONES: What I used as a model for it was "The Wolf Man" from 1941, where Lawrence Talbot gets infected with the werewolf virus and starts to transform nightly into a werewolf.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE WOLF MAN")

LON CHANEY: (As The Wolf Man, howling).

JONES: I looked really closely at the beats of that story, and I kind of transposed a lot of them into "I Was A Teenage Slasher." And it was really, really helpful 'cause that's a really well-told story. It was a wonderful scaffolding to have.

And so, yeah, Tolly - he doesn't realize at first that these characteristics he's starting to exhibit are actually things that are going to aid him in his justice quest as a slasher. He's not in charge, necessarily. And Amber, as his best friend, wants to help him, wants to save him, and she also has grown up watching slasher films. And she brings the slasher stuff to Tolly to educate him on what he's becoming and what he's going to have to do.

RASCOE: Well, you know, one of your earlier novels, "My Heart Is A Chainsaw," has been called, like, a love letter to the horror genre. But you also really put us into a slasher's head and mind and thinking. Why?

JONES: I wanted to explore the slasher from every angle I can. And with "I Was A Teenage Slasher," I found what feels like a new doorway into the slasher, and that's through the slasher's head, through his eyes, through his voice, through his memory. And I want to understand this genre as well as I can. And so in order to do that, I have to come at it from all angles. And coming at it from the killer's angle seemed like a step I should have taken five or six books ago already.

RASCOE: Obviously, you know, there are slashers that have a lot of personality and backstory. And you know, I've talked a lot about my favorite, Freddy Krueger. But, you know, he was a horrible child murderer. Michael Myers was a child who murdered and then just kept murdering. Jason is more innocent. I mean, he was innocent before he died. But, you know, they're all kind of treated like these unfeeling murder machines. But Tolly Driver isn't that. Like, he has feelings. And throughout the book, I mean, it's clear he doesn't want to kill, right?

JONES: Yeah. No. He doesn't. He wants to give these people who pranked him a pass. He's like, it wasn't that bad. I can live with it. But he is in the story he's in. And when you're in a slasher story, it's very black and white. And Tolly, he wants that gray area. He wants to give people a pass, but he has to fulfill the mission of a slasher. And the mission of a slasher is to pay these people back with a lot of interest. In the slasher world, brutal fairness is the order of the day, and he has to follow that.

RASCOE: I want to go back to that immortal slasher seeking vengeance. You told my colleague Ari Shapiro some years ago that you think people can really connect with that idea of karma for past wrongs. Do you think Tolly follows that tradition? He doesn't really seem to lean into that, even though the people did do him wrong.

JONES: No, you're right. They did do him wrong. They should have been nicer to him. I think any group that is entitled and uses their power against people who are less entitled - they deserve some sort of comeuppance. The question is, how severe should that comeuppance be? And you're right - Tolly doesn't lean into that as hard, except when he is out killing. Then he's an unstoppable machine.

RASCOE: I think you've said in the past that you didn't always want to be a writer, but it just kind of happened. And that seems to be the same for Tolly. I was wondering if you could read this passage, and it's from page 102, and it starts, (reading) at the time, junior going senior.

JONES: (Reading) At the time, junior going senior, before everything that happened happened, I wasn't necessarily thinking about college in any real way - maybe a few classes down at Midland just to see what the tall city was like on the weekends. But I admit that lately I've been watching all these washouts my mom kept having to hire, as it was them or nobody. What I was kind of starting to suspect, or at least sort of see the edges of, was that if I didn't get any schooling, then I was going to be one of them, wasn't I?

RASCOE: How much of you did you put into Tolly?

JONES: A whole lot - that's practically me when I was Tolly's age. I had no plans to be a writer. I was just going to be a farmer or do manual labor my whole life. So it's totally random that I ended up being on the bookshelves.

RASCOE: Why put so much of yourself into a killer?

JONES: Yeah, that's a good question. I probably should have done it differently, so that - such that I'm not indicting myself.

RASCOE: (Laughter).

JONES: But that's the only way I've ever really known to write. My very first novel, I had no idea how to write a novel. But I quickly learned that a novel is, you write 10 or 12 pages, and you hit a wall. You cast about for what happens next, and maybe it takes 10 hours, maybe it takes 10 weeks. And then you finally get the next 10 or 12 pages. Every time I hit that 10 or 12-page wall, I just reached into my head and pulled out a piece of my life and put on the page.

RASCOE: Do you think there's anything worthwhile that we could learn from a slasher?

JONES: You know, I think if we all imagined that we had a slasher standing up out of our shadow who was going to punish us for what we've done wrong, I think we might do less wrong, you know?

RASCOE: That's Stephen Graham Jones. His new novel is "I Was A Teenage Slasher," and it's out this week. Thanks so much for joining us.

JONES: It's been an honor talking to you. Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TEENAGERS")

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE: (Singing) They're going to rip up your heads, your aspirations to shreds, another cog in the murder machine. They said all... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.