Wedded to the Word: an Interview with William Hoffman

by

Jason Huskey

William Hoffman's career has spanned five decades and has produced thirteen novels, more recently Tidewater Blood, which won The Hammett Prize, and four collections of short stories, including By Land, By Sea and Virginia Reels. Mr. Hoffman has won numerous awards throughout his extensive writing career, including the Andrew Lytle Prize and the John Dos Passos Prize awarded annually by the Department of English at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. Mr. Hoffman currently resides in rural Virginia with his wife. His current novel, Wild Thorn is available through HarperCollins. His fourteenth novel, Lies, is due out soon. He has received honorary degrees from Hampden-Sydney College, Washington & Lee University, and Sewanee.

From his home in Charlotte County, Virginia, Mr. Hoffman shares a reflection of his literary life--from his formative years writing love letters in the military to living out the "Sisyphean curse" he calls being "wedded to the word."

Dos Passos Review:

When did you begin writing and how did you know you were good at it?

William Hoffman:      

I started writing at Kentucky Military Institute during my high school years. Chiefly I composed love letters for myself and then others. I got paid for the others. The money said to me I

was good.

DPR:   

That's interesting. Do any of those letters happen to stick out in your mind?

W. Hoffman:  

Yes. One I wrote ended my career in that genre. I could often use the same letter for several of those fellows who had gals at different addresses. Trouble was two girls that knew each other got exactly the same letters and raised hell about it with their boyfriends. The word got around the barracks. My writing business shrank and died.

DPR:  

Letters aside, what were some of your first ventures into pushing toward a literary career?

W. Hoffman:

After discharge from the army in 1946, I entered Hampden-Sydney College as a freshman and became seriously interested in literature. I was encouraged by Dr. T. E. Crawley, professor of English. Mostly I wrote poetry, and it was terrible stuff. Luckily I've destroyed all of those poems, so blackmail is not a threat.

DPR:  

Fiction is your primary genre, but often, when someone writes poetry, it stays with them. Do you still write poetry? Not for publishing, but for pleasure?

W. Hoffman:  

I haven't written any poetry for some time, though occasionally I've used a bit here and there in my stories and novels, yet nothing of any length or value. I still love to read poetry and am often envious of those who have taken it wholly in hand. I am a failed poet.

DPR:

Though poetry turned out not to be your primary genre, you seemed to pick up the art of fiction fairly quickly. When did you start realizing that being an author would be your path in life?

W. Hoffman:

After graduation from Hampden Sydney, I entered Washington & Lee to study law. While there I took a course in creative writing taught by Dr. George Foster. At the end of the year, I stopped by his office and asked what he thought of my becoming a professional author. He told me he never liked to encourage any student in that particular field of endeavor, but he thought I had the talent and courage to try. He made me a believer in myself, and I dropped all efforts to become a lawyer. I owe Dr. Crawley and Dr. Foster big time.

DPR:  

Working in an academic setting later in your career, did you ever encourage anyone the way Dr. Crawley and Dr. Foster encouraged you?

W. Hoffman:  

I've encouraged several students, but I never told any one of them that I was absolutely certain he had talent and drive enough for success--however success is defined or judged. I felt doing so was too risky and that those who had to write, paint, compose, dance, sing, or sculpt would be driven to it by their own demons with or without any strong urging from me. I suppose you could call it, in the Presbyterian manner, literary predestination. How much choosing do we really do and how much is laid upon us by forces we can't really understand? Choice is often an illusion or trick of the mind.

DPR:  

Changing gears, I was wondering where your novel and story ideas come from? How much of your experience in World War II have you drawn upon in your writing?

W. Hoffman:  

Mostly I draw on my life and what I know. I don't mean I am an autobiographical writer, but I use what I've experienced by shaping it to fictional ends. World War II both directly and indirectly furnished much of what I drew upon for my first two novels, The Trumpet Unblown and Days in the Yellow Leaf. Also my fifth novel Yancey's War involved World War II. My eleventh novel Tidewater Blood made references to the Vietnam War, though it was a conflict I was not invited to.

DPR:  

Drawing on what you know of your own personal life, what do you think about those writers out there with the notion that writing what you know is a bad concept, that it brings nothing original to the craft?

W. Hoffman:  

I think they must be academic inbreeds. My own personal life is everything I do know. Imagination is known. So is all that comes through the senses. You have to know and feel the clay before you can sculpt it into something good, compelling, and beautifully wrought.

DPR:  

Though you draw from your own life, over your extensive career you must've come across quite a few writers who inspired you. What writers first influenced your work, and who do you admire now?

W. Hoffman:  

Some of the writers who influenced me in my formative years were: Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, Gustave Flaubert, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, and Robert Penn Warren. I admire so many contemporary writers I can't name them all. I will list a few: Robert Stone, Larry McMurtry, Lee Smith, Ellen Glasgow, Tom Wolfe, George Garrett, Fred Chappel, Elizabeth Spencer, James Jones, Shelby Foote, Mary Lee Settle, and dozens of others. We are blessed with a profusion of great books and writers. I stop naming them here because I would fill up pages.

DPR:  

Young writers are taught that reading, learning the art of writing through reading, is the best, if not the only, way to hone their craft. What is it about a piece of writing that inspires you?

W. Hoffman:  

Chiefly the use of our rich and wonderful language. Clever plots and characters do draw, but it is the way a writer handles English that lights my candle. I bow before its shrine.

DPR:

What gives you the most satisfaction from writing? Is it the creativity aspect? Is it the feeling of accomplishment? What is it that satisfies you both as a writer and as a human being?

W. Hoffman:  

It is the instant that I know that I've written something really good. It may be a sentence, a paragraph, a story, a novel. Other than my family, writing has been everything to me. I don't mean it's been sport and fun. Sometimes it's been the depths of despair during periods when I can't write well or at all. When a manuscript is turned down I bleed. I've sworn off writing dozens of times but can't let go. The word condemned . . . is an apt one [to describe it].

DPR:  

Writers approach the act of writing in so many different ways, and students are encouraged to keep a daily writing schedule. We're interested to know about your writing process. What is your writing schedule like?

W. Hoffman:  

I rise at six o'clock in the morning and work a couple of hours. I used to work on novels in the morning and short stories during the afternoon, in total some five or six hours a day. At my age I no longer have the energy for that. Lately I've given most of my time to the novel.

DPR:  

Teaching young writers the importance of revision is often a difficult task. But I'm sure you would agree that the real art of writing is in revision. How much time would you say you spend just writing something, and how much time would you say you'd spend revising?

W. Hoffman:  

At my age a couple of hours in the morning is about all the time I put in at the desk unless I have some sort of deadline to meet. At least fifty percent of that time is given to revising. I write fast and revise slowly.

DPR:  

The strength of your novels lies in the fact that they are character-driven. Do you just start with a character sketch and see where he or she will lead you, or do you have some set idea of that character's destination?

W. Hoffman:  

The first thing I set before me in a story or novel is destination. I learned that from reading Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition." I have the plot's end in view and in essence work backward from that point. Character development steers toward that end, as should everything else, such as suspense.

DPR:  

I notice that, similar to William Faulkner's characters, the successes of many of your characters are limited by their family's pasts. (Walter is undermined by his father's scandal. Charles is undermined by his own family's missteps.) Is this limitation based on anything from your own past or the pasts of people you know?

W. Hoffman:  

As I explained earlier, just about everything I've written is based on my knowledge of the past. That doesn't mean that my characterizations are directly focused on any single person. Rather I take the qualities of many people I've known, observed, or read about, and mix them up to form my own fictional stew. Remember too, as Mr. Faulkner has written, "The past is never even past." At any rate it's always with us and strongly so with me. As to missteps they are a part of daily life. Man's imperfections make for great fiction.

DPR:  

The characters in your novel, Blood and Guile, are drawn with an exacting eye on the Virginian way of life. What settings do you draw upon for inspiration when you sit down at your desk or get set to put your ideas on the page?

W. Hoffman:  

I live in the country. As a boy I often stayed summers and worked on a farm, though city bred. I belong to the rural landscape. Here in Charlotte County we have a total population of no more than 15,000 people. The county seat is about 600. The largest town, Keysville, would be around a 1,000. There are no traffic lights in the entire expanse of the county. I think you see people more cleanly in a country setting.  Everyone seems to stand out. As you walk down the street, people look at you. They want to know about you. When I lived in New York I hardly recognized the person in the apartment next door.

DPR:   How long were you in New York, and what did you do while you lived there?

W. Hoffman:  

I lived in New York City during 1951-1952 on West 73rd St. In1952, Hampden-Sydney hired me as an instructor in the English Department. My job in NYC was in the Foreign Department of the Chase National Bank. The hours were from six at night till one in the morning. I was hired there not because of any business training but the fact I'd taken several languages while at H-SC.

DPR:  

Recently, Virginia's budget has suffered a number of cutbacks, many of which have directly affected the arts community. Have these cutbacks influenced your writing, and have you noticed any changes in Virginia's writing community (programs, sponsorships, grants, and so forth)?

W. Hoffman:  

Among serious writers (including those who are serious about comedy) there is most often a shortage of money. I've never received much from Virginia's budget or anyplace else. The writer's life is frequently feast or famine and usually the latter. In my opinion the best authors write not for money or with ink but use their blood. Dollars are secondary event. In essence the best writers can't help creating. They are driven. The question is by what or whom?

DPR: Judging from your rich body of work, obviously, you yourself know this drive to create; what is it then that drives you?

W. Hoffman:  

William Faulkner once remarked that he was demon driven. I agree with that explanation. I had the opportunity to become a lawyer and the connections to join a good firm. I also was offered the chance by Scott & Stringfellow, a brokerage business in Richmond, to open up an office for them in Farmville. At that time there was none. I could've made myself a lot of dollars. I hesitated, wrestled with the problem because at the time I wasn't making much money, but passed it by, though I had a wife and two children to support. I just couldn't turn loose of the pen. Is that a demon or a divine that resides in my brain or heart? Whatever [it is], it has never allowed me to let go and rest even to this day and hour.

DPR:  

How much of your ability as a writer would you chalk up to inherent talent and how much would you say comes from a conditioned response, possibly from that which drives you, to work, to craft, to write and rewrite until you feel something, say a short story, is just right?

W. Hoffman:  

I don't know about inherent talent. I do know I work hard. As to saying or knowing that something I've done is "just right," that never lasts long. And there's always a word, a phrase, clause, or sentence that when you see your stuff in print you wish you'd changed or handled better. The feeling of "just right" has only a momentary life. Out of the darkness will come doubt and disquiet that perhaps you've been deceiving yourself. And you probably have.

DPR:   How do you feel about the current writing climate in Virginia and the South, in general?

W. Hoffman:  

Virginia has always been good for me. I do love the South and its literature. I don't really believe that states or cultural organizations have a lot to do with the soil in which writers flourish. They'd grow like weeds if they all lived in Antarctica. But the South has been particularly blessed with talent and still is. I've lived most of my life in Virginia and expect my bones to rest here permanently.

DPR:  

What practical and philosophical advice would you give a novice writer?

W. Hoffman:  

I have no philosophical advice other than to say be prepared to take blows and endure internal and external suffering. As to the novice I'd say write, write, and write until you have a real feel for the language. You may have to throw away thousands of words and dozens of manuscripts until you reach that state. Think of people who take up sports. It's often years before they find the feel of the ball, club, or racket. Some of course never do. You might say it's not in their blood. But [you've] got to keep swinging even if you have the count of two strikes on you and a bug in your eye.

DPR:  

When you're not writing, what do you like to do?

W. Hoffman:  

Of course I read not only books but also magazines and newspapers. Until recently I rode horses and swam. I still do the latter, but my bones are now too brittle to take a fall from a galloping hunter. Mostly I walk. In fact here in Charlotte County, I'm known as the man who walks. I have a great front porch where I sit, rock, and gaze at a multitude of ancient trees. I watch the sky. There are often forms and stories there. The sky's an ever-changing canvas.

DPR:  

What projects are you currently working on?

W. Hoffman:  

I just finished another novel a couple of months ago. My agent has found a home for it with a publisher. I'm considering returning to a novel that I wrote back in the mid-90s and was rejected so many times it became an orphan. I believe it holds a lot of good stuff, and I'm thinking of taking a crack at completely revising it. Frankly at my age I don't know how much longer I can lift the pen. Time drags at me like claws of glue that never release. Still there appears to be no choice. I can't seem to stop reaching for the pen. After a fashion, I feel being a dedicated writer is a Sisyphean curse and punishment.

DPR:  

Can you give me some details about the finished novel?

W. Hoffman:  

The finished novel is named Lies, and my agent tells me the contract is on the way, though I don't yet know the commercial details. The novel is about a poor Southside Virginia boy who survives war, settles in Florida afterward, and returns as a rich man to attend his daughter's graduation at Sweetbriar. The time is the present, and in his mind he relives and attempts to resolve problems of his youth and troubled past.

DPR:  

Fifty years from now, what would be the one thing that you would want people to know about William Hoffman, the writer? What about William Hoffman, the man?

W. Hoffman:  

That he rarely, if ever, cheated by using forced or fake endings or tricks on his stories and novels. That he was faithful to the English language. That if he could have escaped being a writer he would've. He felt condemned to it. As to the man, he was wedded to the word and to his long-suffering wife and the loving of his children and grandchildren.