Conversation: Christin Loehr talks to Joe Taylor about The Theoretics of Love.
Christin Loehr received a B.S. in Film from Northwestern University, an MFA from New York University, and a Pre-Med degree from Spring Hill College. She was certified as a Forensic Scientist after working most of her life as a fine art photographer. She currently writes poetry and stories and works at The University of West Alabama library.
INTERVIEW WITH JOE TAYLOR, AUTHOR OF THE THEORETICS OF LOVE, NEWSOUTH BOOKS, 368 PAGES. $28.95. SEPTEMBER PUBLICATION.
CHRISTIN: Joe, I am a huge fan of The Theoretics of Love. I think it is the closest approximation to a living breathing thinking singing sweating copulating work of art that a two-dimensional piece of writing can attain and I wondered if you would answer a few questions, digress on some of your processes.
There is a large cast of uniquely dynamic characters in Theoretics and all who are meant to be are very likeable. How do you make your characters so likeable? And who are some you are most fond of?
JOE: I’m not sure that Gray (the young religious zealot) is completely likeable, but he certainly is pitiable—with his wiry mother and all his hormonal angst. And I must admit that his voice with all the rhymes running in his speech and in his head commanded a great deal of empathy from me. I liked Clarissa and her boyfriend Willy a good deal. I felt empathy for their inability to connect permanently, their constant bickering and bouncing. Overall, I think that I steal traits from people I’ve known or know, and I suppose that I’m a bit of an idiot for I resemble Will Rogers in that I’ve never met a man (or woman) that I didn’t like—even when I probably should dislike them.
CHRISTIN: Philosophy plays an important role in Theoretics. Which philosophers are you, as a person and writer, most influenced by?
JOE: Well, I admire Aristotle for his earthiness. I admire Plato for his dogged ethereality. I admire Spinoza for his concept of God’s unknowability. I especially admire him from my own atheistic perception. (Ho-ho-ho.) Hume? What modern thinker cannot admire Hume’s cynicism? Kant? Who cannot admire him for giving the old heave-ho try? And Nietzsche? Not only his walrus moustache but his whole honest shaking of his head at life and ethics captivate. Which brings up Zen Buddhism and the honorable D. T. Suzuki . . .
CHRISTIN: The twists and turns in Theoretics keep the reader on her toes. Do you chart your plots ahead of the writing or does the mayhem come to you as you write?
JOE: I plotted one novel ahead. I don’t know where that novel resides now. If I remember correctly, even my plotting didn’t keep matters under control. With all other novels and stories I typically stop writing with the next scene or bit of conversation lurking in the back of my mind. So, yes, the mayhem arrives from who knows where? I suppose an FMRI could locate the origin. But then, all that nasty dye—who could stand it?
CHRISTIN: The element of time is very fluid in Theoretics. The reader moves back and forth in time. Why did you choose this approach?
JOE: Confession time. Theoretics started as stories. The characters began to overlap, as did the plot and situations. So a multiple viewpoint novel emerged, with overlapping times. Maybe the time and situations sing to me. But then I need to remind myself of what Willy the detective says when the bookstore owner tells him that a tooth sings to him: “It fucking sings to you? Jesus, pal, you need to be dating a shrink, not a physical anthropologist.”
CHRISTIN: Professor Circle has a theory that no one really touches anyone. Have you faced times in your life that made you ponder a theory like this? Do you think that is a common philosophical question most people face at some time in their lives? Or a question only those who have been badly injured and are trying to protect themselves derive?
JOE: Well, her on-and-off lover Willy the detective of the Wandering Ways theorizes just the opposite: that everything and everyone touches everyone. I believe them both at times. Drinking helps squeeze a tube of glue on matters—sometimes. But then right along comes some dissolvent.
CHRISTIN: Do you have hope for the human race? Or do you write to console yourself and the reader that wisdom really does reign at heart if often hidden behind the scenes?
JOE: One of my favorite semi-quotes from Joseph Conrad to H. G. Wells: ‘Wells, the difference between you and me is that you hate humanity and believe it can be improved. I love humanity and know it cannot.’ Similarly, I think that moments of reflective light are pretty much all we can hope for.
CHRISTIN: Do you believe the Game Theory table that the odds for love and happiness between two people is one out of nine?
JOE: One out of ninety thousand is more like it, but there wasn’t room on the page for that table. And that one resides only for temporary reprieves. This is why I resort so often to humor and a concomitant fantastical setting—Theoretics being an aberration from my typical comedic style.
CHRISTIN: Your word choice throughout all your books is exceptionally apt. I have great admiration for it. You come up with the perfect word to describe or denote time and time again. What gave you such an extraordinary knowledge and thrilling love of words?
JOE: William Gay—who sadly has left—once told me a woman asked him a similar question, indicating that he acted like such a country bumpkin hayseed and did he maybe have someone help him with inserting the harder words. He replied that he used a Thesaurus. Oh, William, we miss your humor. On the other hand, I do occasionally resort to one, a thesaurus that is. But mostly, I think, I depend upon my inner ear—not to be confused with a third eye or any such malarkey—but a near-auditory echo in my head of every word and every sentence. And . . . my regret is that I don’t know more foreign languages. Every child in America should be brought up on two! Spanish, French, and German do help me a lot, I think, in making singularly ringing word choices. And you know what? I think music helps also—just how I’m uncertain that I could put into words, but I do admire cadence and echo(lalia).
CHRISTIN: You are deeply fond of digression. Will you comment on that?
JOE: Well, let me start with a story about this man I knew when I made a living as a waiter. (Ho-ho-ho.) But really, let’s go back to Detective Willy of the Wandering Ways: I think that his theory that everything touches everyone and everything holds a certain amount of credibility. I also think that echoes—even if they are negative echoes—underline meaning. So digressions work; they work very hard. What I mean is: the man I knew when I made a living as a waiter was advised that alcohol was going to kill him. So he started shooting up heroin . . .
About the Book
In The Theoretics of Love, Joe Taylor turns his fierce wit and storytelling talents to love, death, and murder in the Bluegrass state. Fresh out of school, anthropologist Dr. Clarissa Circle finds herself thrust into a mysterious forensics investigation after exposing what was thought to be a Native American burial ground as a mass grave of not-so-recently murdered bodies. Is a cult behind the killings? Were these ritual murders? Hired as a consultant to the local police department, Circle spends half of her time dusting bones and the other half knocking boots with homicide detective Willy Cox and an aging hippie who goes by the name of Methuselah. A double suicide is discovered. And the plot thickens from there as other disturbing events unfold and people of questionable character surface and collide in this kaleidoscopic murder mystery/love story that is also madcap fun.
Part Hunter S. Thompson, part Woody Allen, Joe Taylor’s tilted realism and quirky humor combine in this fast-paced novel that gleefully exposes our human foibles and heart. In The Theoretics of Love, the motives behind the ritual murders rocking Kentucky are obscure. Intimacy and love, as it turns out, prove to be every bit as theoretical. Joe Taylor gives love and passion a workout in the Bluegrass state in this new novel, which may be his best. Charles McNair, award-winning author of Pickett’s Charge and other novels, asks "Why isn’t Joe Taylor famous? I laughed out loud three times in the first chapter of The Theoretics of Love. A few chapters later, I felt my heart would break. There’s nothing theoretical about Taylor’s talent. You’ll love this love story."
About the Author
Joe Taylor had a brief excursion at birth in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was whisked away after five days into Kentucky, where he spent his early formative—though whoever stops forming?—years. Perhaps the trauma of leaving Ohio stamped a mistrust of the South on him, for he has ever been wary of being called Billy Joe and enduring other Southernisms. Despite this, he has lived his life thus far in the Deep South of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. He especially enjoys the latter, as he lives removed from the ills of any metropolis. His most recent novel, The Theoretics of Love, came out in September. Another novel, Back to the Wine Jug, will be forthcoming early next summer. He has also published four story collections, and he has edited quite a few anthologies, including Belles’ Letters and Tartts One through Seven. He presently directs Livingston Press.