Interview With Poetic Author Michael Nanfito On His Untraditional Memoir

  

1. What compelled you to write the book?

I’d like to say that I had some grand plan to write this book but that’s not true. I didn’t even plan to write a book at all. This project began as a series of Skype conversations with a friend. We were comparing notes on our eerily similar family histories. I shared some stories about my own youth and she encouraged me to write them down. What began as apparently unrelated “vignettes” about my life evolved into a memoir of poetry and prose with a recurring theme.  

2. What's the book about? 

As a memoir, it details elements of my life between the ages of 12 and 22. The book provides background about the trauma and challenges of my youth to help explain choices I made as a young man. As a boy my life oscillated between the poles of the two men most influential to me at the time: my abusive biological father and my intellectual Father, a Jesuit priest who was my mentor, tutoring me in classical literature and philosophy and grooming me for the priesthood. At the age of 16 I broke with both fathers and made my plans to leave home as soon as I graduated high school. I did just that and fell in with some small-time drug dealers who took me under their wings, having recognized my ability to keep my own counsel, a valuable trait in that industry. The rest of the book explores relationships I had with men and women as a result of my choice to engage with the gritty side of society.   

3. How is the book structured?

The book is in three Parts: “Rotten Fruit,” “Rat Eat Rat,” and “Dare the Flame.” I wanted a story arc that represented the personal conflicts of my youth and described the eventual resolution, redemption even. Part One focuses on my youth, the period between 1970 and 1974, ages 12-16, detailing my relationships with my “lesser biological father,” and my intellectual Father. Part Two, Rat Eat Rat begins with details of my rise in the drug trade, becoming a trusted courier of contraband and cash while the bulk of Part Two describes relationships I had with other outcasts and some of the things I did to help them. Part Three, Dare the Flame, is about redemption. Describing my eventual return to “civilian” life.  

4. What themes do you explore in the book?

There are two central themes in the book. Namely redemption, and also what it means to try to live a virtuous life (echoing Plato) in the face of life’s realities. In the main, the book is my effort to celebrate outsiders and outcasts who worked to reclaim their true selves, the ones that polite society stole from them. Toxic family relationships, social dislocation, prejudice, and debilitating Vietnam wartime experiences are some of the issues confronted by those I ran with then and write about here. I use my own life’s stories as an armature about which to weave together these themes as well as those of alternative lifestyles, lost love, and hope and aspiration for a life worth living having survived such debilitating abuse and trauma.  

5. Who is the intended audience for the book?

Initially, since I did not set out to write a book, per se, there was no intended audience. I began by trying to write about my life in a manner that I hoped would be interesting to my friend. As I began to develop a few stories it suddenly became clear that there was a central theme emerging, that of people reclaiming their lives, including me (and my friend). I began sharing snippets of the book with a writers group on social media as I was writing and, from the responses I was receiving, I realized that the book was resonating the most with people who had experienced some form of trauma, whether abuse, or loss, or painful family lives. Comments I received were very emotional, powerful even, and revealed that the book was useful to people for whom it resonates. Since then, I am most keen on getting the book into the hands of those for whom it is helpful. Interestingly, although these people were responding to the representation of trauma and resolution and redemption, that is not what drew them to the book initially. They like reading good writing and discovered that they related very strongly to the themes and meaning as they read.   

6. What do you want to say in your writing?

As a writer, I explore vulnerabilities in myself and those I write about. I don’t propose any answers in this book, it’s not a how-to reference on coping with trauma and loss. It’s not a book to be found in the self-help section of your bookstore. My writing is fundamentally social commentary wrapped in a literary style. I am drawn to the average person, man or woman, and what it means to live in the US (specifically California) in the latter part of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first century. This book is a literary memoir in poetry and prose. I use both to articulate my observations about society.   

7. What writers inspire and influence you?

Several writers have inspired and influenced me over the years. Hemingway, Steinbeck, Didion, Plath, Whitman, Hunter S. Thompson, Plato, Tom Wolfe, D.H. Lawrence, Nietzche. I’m drawn to critiques of social realities accomplished through effective storytelling. I like the “literary journalism” of Didion and Wolfe. The philosophy of Plato, D.H. Lawrence, and Nietzche (misunderstood as he is). Whitman has always been huge for me but perhaps not for the same reason that most people seem to love him – he is not the man of the people he portrays himself to be in Leaves of Grass. He is a political creature as his much less well-read volume, Democratic Vistas makes clear.   

8. What is your writing style? Who are you compared to?

I'm often compared to beat writers and others who write about the rawness of society and the street. A recent review of this book compared me to specific writers: "Regarding style, Nanfito's writing resembles the road-weary recollections of Salinger, the flophouse dreams of Kerouac, the brilliant nihilism of Bukowski, and even Pirsig's poignant eye for deeper meaning.” I refer to my writing as “poetic prose.” I work very hard to create vivid views into the grittier layers of society, using a voice that is at once poetic and literary.   

9. What impact are you hoping for with this book?

I really just want to get into the hands of those for whom it might be helpful, useful.   

10. What is your experience of writing? Does it energize you?

I like to say that writing is torture. I’ve heard some say it soothes them, relaxes them and when I hear someone tell me that I tend to think if that’s the case one of us must be doing it wrong.   

For more information, please consult: https://mnanfito.wordpress.com/ and https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/michael-nanfito-1/

 P.S. — I had the pleasure of consulting with Michael and highly recommend his book.

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Brian Feinblum should be followed on Twitter @theprexpert. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2023. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.3 million pageviews. With 4,400+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and two jobs at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America, and has spoken at ASJA, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. He has been featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald. For more information, please consult: www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum.