Gina Nutt: “Rachel Goes Grocery Shopping” is a brief portrait of a narrator named Rachel shopping for herself and her husband as the two of them navigate injury and illness. Could you share what drew you to these characters?
Eric Boyd: This is actually meant to be the first chapter of a novel I’m calling Brownfields, which was originally a story collection. In the original collection the town was the glue holding everything together but maybe half of the stories were based around this family. I had some kind rejections from agents who all noted the most compelling stories were from that side of things, and slowly I stopped thinking of the book as a thematic-based project and more of a character-based one. Rachel was a character I couldn’t quite crack and really a lot of the book will deal with her family having the same issue. Why would my wife / our mother hide this from us? I hope that last dialogue exchange sums up her thinking on the matter. It’s corny, but that moment always makes me cry when I read it. I hope that doesn’t sound conceited. I just really care about these characters.

GN: The highly cinematic details here really pulled me into the story, as well as the character dynamics. The brand-name groceries, the scratchers, the duo watching Wheel of Fortune come into focus like a developing Polaroid. How do you approach streamlining those visual elements while pushing toward logistical and emotional clarity? Where do you get stuck and where do you hit your stride?
EB: I’m not one of those writers who thinks reading somehow dilutes their own craft, but I don’t read a lot. I’m just a terrible, terrible reader. AuDHD is a hell of a combination. But I do watch a ton of films. In a given week I’ll try to see at least two or three movies in theatres; I actually started with screenwriting when I was thirteen and that slowly moved towards traditional fiction. So my style is almost certainly molded by my own limitations in that regard. Like I know exactly what / who these characters look like, but because I’m writing so much as if I were a camera, I kind of forget to write those descriptions. The camera just sees stuff, it doesn’t feel the need to describe it. This is why I need an agent and/or editor, Gina. I need help! So it’s not that that’s something I get stuck on, it’s just something I’m bad at. The things I do mention, like the brand names, I hope display the inner thoughts of the characters. In film terms, how can I write the Kuleshov Effect in a way where the juxtaposition of a character peeling price stickers off Progresso soup reveals something?

GN: While editing this piece, I mentioned that something I found intriguing is the air the story holds around what’s unsaid, the steady simmer of tension. How did you decide which reveals could hover and which ones felt significant to moving the story forward? 
EB: Thinking about Rachel and Clay’s relationship, so much of it seems to be about keeping things afloat. Keeping things steady. Clay doesn’t need to know that Rachel is sneaking discounted groceries into the house. That feels objectively harmless. There’s nothing Clay could do about it either way. Along those same lines, what could he do if he knew Rachel was sick? It would just spoil whatever time they have left, right? That makes sense but it feels… less objective. But Clay is obviously aware something is happening. These are two characters who know each other well enough to know when to just shut up. Playing with that is important to a lot of my work. What needs to be said? Not just by the characters—because nearly all of my work is in first person—but to the reader? What details justify or betray what someone just said? What do people need to read and what can they intuit on their own? I don’t trust every reader, but I trust the readers I’d like to have.

GN: I’m also curious to learn how you approached portraying Rachel and Clay’s tenderness toward each other. Did this feel like a counterweight to their tension, a way to intensify their struggle, or perhaps a bit of both?
EB: A bit of both for sure. These are two working class people going through it, for me there was no world where they weren’t a light for each other in dark times. I’m sure these characters fight, I’m sure they have resentments, but I just couldn’t put them through all of this and not have them love one another. Whatever tensions they have come from outside sources. Their income and the economy at large; Clay’s belief that name brand groceries mean something may be faulty logic, but it’s the classical American Dream’s fault for making him think it. The characters each have these illnesses or disabilities, but none of that is them. So it was important to me that their circumstances dictate how they live, but not who they are.

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
EB: All of that, everything! I’ll just do a little of each, ha.

Like anyone else with a functioning brain I’m absolutely blown away by McClanahan’s latest, Fights! I may assign that to a class this upcoming semester.

I’ve been listening to the latest Domi & JD Beck album recently and think it’s simply amazing. It’s wonderful to see progressive jazz acts like them and Kamasi Washington maintaining a fairly mainstream presence.

There should be a new conveyor sushi place opening up right next to the the movie theatre I visit every week so that’s gonna be exciting as I try to stay up to date with new films, though on that front I recently found a local library that offers the Kanopy streaming service, which I’ve wanted for a long time to finally watch Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó.

I’m hoping to soon stretch an unframed Christopher Wool canvas I bought a while ago and hang a lot more artwork on the walls of our apartment. My girlfriend’s been buying some beautiful local art lately which definitely needs to be displayed.

As far as fashion goes I remain excited by Alessandro Michele’s work and am happy to see Valentino slowly bend to his will just as Gucci did before them.

I’m becoming a little bit of a stamp collector but in the hopes of mailing letters with said stamps, not just looking at them. Additionally I keep applying for a writing residency in Italy and my promise to myself is, if I ever get accepted, I’m going to buy the special edition of the Lettera 32 typewriter which came in a custom Gucci case in the 70’s and write with it there.

Living in Pittsburgh and often traveling to New York every few weeks, it’s hard not to admire many of the old buildings in each city. For my day job I work in a former bank building from 1926 and there’s exactly one spot left of original architecture which I sometimes stare at. For Rachel Goes Shopping and its related material I’ll sometimes walk around the town where this work is set. I’ve been at it on this project so long that some of the buildings don’t exist anymore. Were changed, demolished, or burnt down. It’s strange to think about.