A Conversation with JP Vallières
Recently, our Assistant Fiction Editor Melanie Jennings sat down with our Spring 2021 contributor JP Vallières to talk about the story published in Crab Creek Review, his new novel The Ketchup Factory, living in Idaho, and the themes and motifs that return in Valliéres’s work. You can find The Ketchup Factory on Vallières's website.
In your short story, "Swimmer and The Whale" (CCR 2021:1), you use deceptively simple sentences to create great impact and humor. Having now read many of your short stories, I think of your work as strongly imagistic and poetic without being fancy. There is an elemental quality to your storytelling, almost like fables. I’m curious to hear how you describe your fiction, to others or yourself. What are your thoughts on its genre or genre generally? What are you mostly trying to do in your fiction?
I tell people I’m the continuation of Philip K. Dick. Then they ask, “Oh neat! I love science fiction!” And I’m like, “Well, I probably don’t write science fiction, exactly. Not really. But neither did he.”
Philip K. Dick is probably closer to the New Directions authors, César Aira and Roberto Bolaño, than he is to science fiction. But the genre was placed on him early on. Doesn’t genre have more to do with cover art than what’s actually written inside? Stephen King is categorized as horror because his covers use creepy horror-font. Flannery O’Connor writes horror, but her books are proper-looking as literary books are supposed to be. My copy of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon is bland, boring, with awful gold lettering on a shiny navy-blue background. But that’s one of the wildest things ever written! Morrison is closer to Philip K. Dick than Robert Heinlein is. Anyway, categorizing authors can be deceiving.
Then there’s children’s literature. I’ve been reading to my sons out loud for the past sixteen years and have concluded that the children’s lit genre should be looked into more respectfully by the “grown-up-literary-folk.” Especially Louis Sachar’s Wayside School books. Sachar is a line by line genius. I also love the voice of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The way his imagination moves in such small spaces is pitch perfect, especially the original and Old School.
I also read Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. Specifically, the 2014 Princeton University Press edition translated by Jack Zipes. Although it doesn’t contain my favorite tale, "The Story of the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was."
When writing I am constantly reminding myself of what I wrote when I went to the principal’s office in the 7th grade. The principal told me to write down exactly what happened, word for word. I wrote four simple sentences that told the entire story. I didn’t add anything that was unnecessary.
This is what I wrote:
He tripped me. I pushed him. He punched my face. And then I beat him up.
Besides being a father, which is a running theme in your stories, what kind of jobs have you held and in what ways do you think they have impacted your work, whether in content and form, or more broadly, in time to write?
In high school I had it all planned out. My goal was to one day become a gym teacher. I went to college and studied hard and then graduated! My dream became a reality.
Life was good and pleasant. Life was a dream. Who do you know who has fulfilled their childhood ambitions so early in life? I had keys to the gym. I had keys to the closet that kept all the balls and bats and nets and mats. I was revered by all the children, especially the first graders, who seemed to never fear me no matter how much I yelled at them. Sometimes I even set down the book I was reading and participated in a game of badminton or kickball.
But one day a two-headed dragon flew into my office to blow foul air and tell me the state of Utah no longer allowed dodgeball in the PE curriculum. I said, “Good thing we’re a private school and don’t have to abide by such nonsense!” But dragons can be super insensitive and unreasonable and, I guess, influential. The dodgeballs were all confiscated and thrown into a big green dumpster.
So I quit.
Since then I’ve been a delivery driver, a sunglass salesman, and sales rep that sells advertising. When I was a delivery driver, I would pull my truck over and write on the backsides of pickup lists. As a salesman, I write whenever I can find the time. I write every day; there’s always moments here and there to write. It doesn’t take me much to sit down and simply begin.
In your novel, The Ketchup Factory, you extend one of the most prominent motifs from your short stories: the hero wife who has strength enough to share. How do you write these heroic women, and what are some challenges that you tackle when working these inherently noble characters into your stories?
I grew up with super strong women: two sisters and Ma. When you live in a small town in the 90s without the internet, you don’t know all that is happening in the world. So, as you can imagine, when I got out into the real world I was frightened and extremely offended by all the Women’s Empowerment hoopla. I was like, Wait, you want to give them more power?
Anyhoo, then I married a superhero. I didn’t know I needed a superhero at the time, but it turns out I did.
Writing heroic women is no challenge for me. I have actually never attempted it. It’s just there, all the time. Strong women are EVERYWHERE.
How does living in the Northwest, or more specifically, Idaho, affect your work?
We’ve lived in northern Idaho for ten years. The moon and stars shine bright at night. Predators surround us. My wife Kimmy shooed a wolf off our property when she spotted it eyeing our ducks. Coyotes yip, yip, yip at night. When we see the ravens circling low we know some beast has broken into our chicken coop. Recently, a young moose was looking through our back window at my youngest sons while they watched Madagascar. A herd of elk ran out in front of us on our way to the high school. When we go hiking, we bring bear spray just in case we meet a grizzly. I heard there is the last herd of caribou living in the Selkirk Mountains, just north of us.
Also, Bigfoot looms large in this region.
I don’t plan on writing nature, but I often find ravens, wolves, chickens, goats, and the forest in my stories. Also, lakes, floating docks, stacks of wood, and a small, cloud-covered town in the center of it all.
Idaho is rapidly changing. Growing! People are fleeing California, Oregon, Washington, and other “Communist states,” building houses on the prairies, in the woods, and up in the mountains. They’re stockpiling guns and ammunition; some are buying those bunker things that you drill into the sides of hills; many wave flags, and join militias.
I think I’m the only person I know in Idaho who doesn’t own a gun. But I’ve shot plenty. On a family camping trip we were all sitting around, watching the little kids play in the creek. One of the fathers turned to me and said, “Wanna shoot?” I have a rule: Other people’s Booze, Boats, and Guns. I was like, “Sure!”
We proceeded to shoot a .22 rifle, Glock 9mm, .12 gauge shotgun, and then got to the real business of automatic weaponry. First, the AR-15. And we rounded things out with the classic AK-47. This is a completely normal thing to do. We decimated the hillside.
The extremes seem to be congregating to their respective corners of the country. They’re carving out their territories and drawing the line. Preparations are being made, but for what exactly? Civil war? I can never figure out who’s attacking who, and why.
So, where does that leave me? A guy with no militia or gun. The only flag I’ve ever waved is the Buffalo Bills flag.
The only thing I can think to do is write and see where the story leads me. Maybe I’ll find answers along the way.
Which artists (writers or otherwise) have most influenced your work? What is it about their work that has spoken to you?
The most influential stories are the ones I read when I was young: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
All of these stories are about societies gone horrifically wrong.
Looking over these influences now, it makes a lot of sense that I wrote The Ketchup Factory, a book about a society that keeps its citizens productive through normalized self-sacrifices. It’s also about an average Joe named Benji who loses his mind searching for love.
Jesus is a recurring character in your short stories. I’m surprised that religion doesn’t appear in more contemporary fiction. What are your thoughts on this?
Referencing biblical characters used to be a normal thing. But I don’t think it’s as common now since there are a lot of readers who don’t always get the references. I remember buying a subscription to Poetry Magazine. I couldn’t believe how many of the poems referenced Greek mythology. It was super frustrating since I didn’t understand any of it. My fourteen-year-old son is constantly educating me about Greek and Norse gods, but it never sticks. His football coach nicknamed him Valhalla.
The only biblical characters I use consistently are Jesus, Mother Mary, and God. Although God has been renamed Ken Dwyer and has started a new religion that involves dancing, eating, and drinking.
Maybe the book of Genesis is the foundation to all Western literature? I’m not sure it’s escapable, even if you haven’t read it. It’s such a strange and primitive text. So much happens on one page: hundreds of years roll by; fallen angels swoop down to kidnap women; beasts roam about; animals speak. Not to mention the gore, incest, natural disasters, and the invention of wine.
The book I reread most is The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. It’s a devastating read. By the end it feels like another great lost love story – God slowly separating from His creation. At first, He walks through nature and talks with friends. Then He drifts off, occasionally revealing Himself in dreams. In the last chapters, He only communicates to the people through prophets. Everyone’s hearts are broken. And you, as the reader, are left with a deep aching, a longing to return to the garden when you didn’t know you were naked and you ate the good fruit and named all creatures.
Many eons later came Jonah. God told Jonah to go over there. Jonah said, “Sure thing!” but he went the opposite way. I imagine God knew Jonah would disobey. He chose Jonah because Jonah is way more fun than all those boring obedient guys. If Jonah just did what God asked there wouldn’t be much of a story. There’d be no hungry whale, which also means no Pinocchio or Moby-Dick.
I tell people I’m the continuation of Philip K. Dick. Then they ask, “Oh neat! I love science fiction!” And I’m like, “Well, I probably don’t write science fiction, exactly. Not really. But neither did he.”
Philip K. Dick is probably closer to the New Directions authors, César Aira and Roberto Bolaño, than he is to science fiction. But the genre was placed on him early on. Doesn’t genre have more to do with cover art than what’s actually written inside? Stephen King is categorized as horror because his covers use creepy horror-font. Flannery O’Connor writes horror, but her books are proper-looking as literary books are supposed to be. My copy of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon is bland, boring, with awful gold lettering on a shiny navy-blue background. But that’s one of the wildest things ever written! Morrison is closer to Philip K. Dick than Robert Heinlein is. Anyway, categorizing authors can be deceiving.
Then there’s children’s literature. I’ve been reading to my sons out loud for the past sixteen years and have concluded that the children’s lit genre should be looked into more respectfully by the “grown-up-literary-folk.” Especially Louis Sachar’s Wayside School books. Sachar is a line by line genius. I also love the voice of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The way his imagination moves in such small spaces is pitch perfect, especially the original and Old School.
I also read Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. Specifically, the 2014 Princeton University Press edition translated by Jack Zipes. Although it doesn’t contain my favorite tale, "The Story of the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was."
When writing I am constantly reminding myself of what I wrote when I went to the principal’s office in the 7th grade. The principal told me to write down exactly what happened, word for word. I wrote four simple sentences that told the entire story. I didn’t add anything that was unnecessary.
This is what I wrote:
He tripped me. I pushed him. He punched my face. And then I beat him up.
Besides being a father, which is a running theme in your stories, what kind of jobs have you held and in what ways do you think they have impacted your work, whether in content and form, or more broadly, in time to write?
In high school I had it all planned out. My goal was to one day become a gym teacher. I went to college and studied hard and then graduated! My dream became a reality.
Life was good and pleasant. Life was a dream. Who do you know who has fulfilled their childhood ambitions so early in life? I had keys to the gym. I had keys to the closet that kept all the balls and bats and nets and mats. I was revered by all the children, especially the first graders, who seemed to never fear me no matter how much I yelled at them. Sometimes I even set down the book I was reading and participated in a game of badminton or kickball.
But one day a two-headed dragon flew into my office to blow foul air and tell me the state of Utah no longer allowed dodgeball in the PE curriculum. I said, “Good thing we’re a private school and don’t have to abide by such nonsense!” But dragons can be super insensitive and unreasonable and, I guess, influential. The dodgeballs were all confiscated and thrown into a big green dumpster.
So I quit.
Since then I’ve been a delivery driver, a sunglass salesman, and sales rep that sells advertising. When I was a delivery driver, I would pull my truck over and write on the backsides of pickup lists. As a salesman, I write whenever I can find the time. I write every day; there’s always moments here and there to write. It doesn’t take me much to sit down and simply begin.
In your novel, The Ketchup Factory, you extend one of the most prominent motifs from your short stories: the hero wife who has strength enough to share. How do you write these heroic women, and what are some challenges that you tackle when working these inherently noble characters into your stories?
I grew up with super strong women: two sisters and Ma. When you live in a small town in the 90s without the internet, you don’t know all that is happening in the world. So, as you can imagine, when I got out into the real world I was frightened and extremely offended by all the Women’s Empowerment hoopla. I was like, Wait, you want to give them more power?
Anyhoo, then I married a superhero. I didn’t know I needed a superhero at the time, but it turns out I did.
Writing heroic women is no challenge for me. I have actually never attempted it. It’s just there, all the time. Strong women are EVERYWHERE.
How does living in the Northwest, or more specifically, Idaho, affect your work?
We’ve lived in northern Idaho for ten years. The moon and stars shine bright at night. Predators surround us. My wife Kimmy shooed a wolf off our property when she spotted it eyeing our ducks. Coyotes yip, yip, yip at night. When we see the ravens circling low we know some beast has broken into our chicken coop. Recently, a young moose was looking through our back window at my youngest sons while they watched Madagascar. A herd of elk ran out in front of us on our way to the high school. When we go hiking, we bring bear spray just in case we meet a grizzly. I heard there is the last herd of caribou living in the Selkirk Mountains, just north of us.
Also, Bigfoot looms large in this region.
I don’t plan on writing nature, but I often find ravens, wolves, chickens, goats, and the forest in my stories. Also, lakes, floating docks, stacks of wood, and a small, cloud-covered town in the center of it all.
Idaho is rapidly changing. Growing! People are fleeing California, Oregon, Washington, and other “Communist states,” building houses on the prairies, in the woods, and up in the mountains. They’re stockpiling guns and ammunition; some are buying those bunker things that you drill into the sides of hills; many wave flags, and join militias.
I think I’m the only person I know in Idaho who doesn’t own a gun. But I’ve shot plenty. On a family camping trip we were all sitting around, watching the little kids play in the creek. One of the fathers turned to me and said, “Wanna shoot?” I have a rule: Other people’s Booze, Boats, and Guns. I was like, “Sure!”
We proceeded to shoot a .22 rifle, Glock 9mm, .12 gauge shotgun, and then got to the real business of automatic weaponry. First, the AR-15. And we rounded things out with the classic AK-47. This is a completely normal thing to do. We decimated the hillside.
The extremes seem to be congregating to their respective corners of the country. They’re carving out their territories and drawing the line. Preparations are being made, but for what exactly? Civil war? I can never figure out who’s attacking who, and why.
So, where does that leave me? A guy with no militia or gun. The only flag I’ve ever waved is the Buffalo Bills flag.
The only thing I can think to do is write and see where the story leads me. Maybe I’ll find answers along the way.
Which artists (writers or otherwise) have most influenced your work? What is it about their work that has spoken to you?
The most influential stories are the ones I read when I was young: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
All of these stories are about societies gone horrifically wrong.
Looking over these influences now, it makes a lot of sense that I wrote The Ketchup Factory, a book about a society that keeps its citizens productive through normalized self-sacrifices. It’s also about an average Joe named Benji who loses his mind searching for love.
Jesus is a recurring character in your short stories. I’m surprised that religion doesn’t appear in more contemporary fiction. What are your thoughts on this?
Referencing biblical characters used to be a normal thing. But I don’t think it’s as common now since there are a lot of readers who don’t always get the references. I remember buying a subscription to Poetry Magazine. I couldn’t believe how many of the poems referenced Greek mythology. It was super frustrating since I didn’t understand any of it. My fourteen-year-old son is constantly educating me about Greek and Norse gods, but it never sticks. His football coach nicknamed him Valhalla.
The only biblical characters I use consistently are Jesus, Mother Mary, and God. Although God has been renamed Ken Dwyer and has started a new religion that involves dancing, eating, and drinking.
Maybe the book of Genesis is the foundation to all Western literature? I’m not sure it’s escapable, even if you haven’t read it. It’s such a strange and primitive text. So much happens on one page: hundreds of years roll by; fallen angels swoop down to kidnap women; beasts roam about; animals speak. Not to mention the gore, incest, natural disasters, and the invention of wine.
The book I reread most is The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. It’s a devastating read. By the end it feels like another great lost love story – God slowly separating from His creation. At first, He walks through nature and talks with friends. Then He drifts off, occasionally revealing Himself in dreams. In the last chapters, He only communicates to the people through prophets. Everyone’s hearts are broken. And you, as the reader, are left with a deep aching, a longing to return to the garden when you didn’t know you were naked and you ate the good fruit and named all creatures.
Many eons later came Jonah. God told Jonah to go over there. Jonah said, “Sure thing!” but he went the opposite way. I imagine God knew Jonah would disobey. He chose Jonah because Jonah is way more fun than all those boring obedient guys. If Jonah just did what God asked there wouldn’t be much of a story. There’d be no hungry whale, which also means no Pinocchio or Moby-Dick.
JP Vallières is from the Village of Adams. Some of his work can be found at Tin House, Winter Tangerine, and Santa Monica Review. He lives with Kimmy and their four sons in northern Idaho.