It’s hard to keep up with new books. Two months ago I read Arcade, Drew Nellins Smith’s first novel. It’s a hard-to-pin-down book about cruising and coming out in Texas, centered around a seedy “adult store.” The book is bold, direct, often uncomfortable, often hilarious. It was published a decade ago. The day I finished reading it I learned Smith’s second novel was coming out soon.
Wince arrived in the world last week. It’s the story of Winston “Wince” Fisher, Jr., a former wealth manager, living in a rented McMansion on the outskirts of Austin, subsisting on DoorDash and cocaine. Stressed about money and with somewhat-loved ones relying on him, he gets involved in a side hustle modifying AR-15s and selling them to disreputable dudes. Wild shit goes down (cartels, bad sex, shootouts). But throughout, Wince (the guy) becomes relatable enough to tread into antihero territory, and Wince (the novel) is a seriously entertaining read.
The book has already been praised by such reputable players as Sam Lipsyte, Dan Chaon, and Nico Walker, and the gang over at Kirkus call it “compulsively readable.” Wince might just be the perfect American crime saga for this disturbing semiquincentennial summer. Move over Willie Nelson and/or the ghost of Larry McMurtry, the new bard of Texas has arrived.
Smith and I corresponded over email, where I found him to be chatty and eloquent, generous, and down for whatever. Kind of like his books. This interview has been revised and condensed for length.
So what’s with all the guns?
Guns have never seemed as weird to me as they do to a lot of people. I grew up in a small town in Texas, and I went through a real gun phase in my early 20s, thanks to an older business partner I had at the time. I always liked that carnival thing where you pop a balloon with a dart. Guns just seemed like another version of that. Then I discovered firing ranges and gun shows. It was a world full of people nothing like me.
Subcultures and microcosms always have a draw for me. My first book was about cruising culture and an arcade where men meet up for sex. With Wince, it happened to be guns. I researched cocaine and depression too, but mostly guns, which turned out to be a much deeper and more complex subject than I’d ever realized.
The thing I wanted to avoid was treating guns the way they’re treated in movies and TV, where finding a gun in a drawer is instant proof the guy is a psychopath. I’ve never had that reaction. If I opened someone’s bedside table and saw a gun, I’d think, “Huh, interesting that he went with a .32. Why not a .45, or at least a 9mm?”
Whereas I grew up in a big city in New York. Guns are scary. Something I admire about the book is that you created a protagonist who’s really into guns, and is quite flawed, and you humanized him. I kept being surprised at how much I enjoyed spending time with him. I imagine talk about this book will focus on the protagonist’s “(un)likability,” so I’m wondering if we can get ahead of that. How important was it to you to make him this complex character who some readers may want to write off as a “bad guy”?
I’ve always liked assholes. It connects to something I believe about basically everything, which is that the answer to every question is “It’s complicated.” Right down to what I ate for breakfast. Assholes are complicated. They almost always have a sentimental streak, or a strange softness, or a weird opinion I share, or the same taste in movies. I often find common ground with an asshole more easily than with someone who introduces themselves as, for instance, “a hugger.”
There’s such a weird emphasis on likability in fiction, and it can be really boring. I like when things get gritty and strange. I like when there’s no overt redemption or apology. Wince was always meant to be a character study, not a case study. He’s an asshole, but he thinks and says a lot of things many people think and say, and in his truth-telling there’s real vulnerability. I wanted the reader to arrive at their own conclusions about him.
On the surface, Arcade and Wince are very different books. But both could be considered first-person case studies of guys who do in fact have a lot in common. I think of both protagonists as “lone wolves.” You’ve referred to Arcade as “autofictional,” and that book is very… “homosexual” is a word that comes to mind. Whereas Wince is almost aggressively straight. Gay writers are often (unfairly) expected to write about gay life. I half-expected Winston and Luis to take their pants off at some point, but nothing doing. Did you feel any pressure about any of this? Was it on your mind?
Not really. I’ve never felt like part of any community, gay or straight or otherwise. I honestly don’t even know many gay people, and I’ve never felt especially drawn to gay literature or gay movies as categories. Between Arcade and Wince, I wrote another novel with a gay character in kind of an ensemble cast, but it’s definitely not a gay book.
When Arcade came out, I remember feeling a little stung to find it shelved in a remote LGBTQ+ section of my local bookstore I didn’t even know existed. To me, it was just a book. Later, I was on a panel with some kind of gay theme. It was a nice panel, and I was grateful to be included, but I didn’t love the feeling of answering questions on behalf of gay people, or being treated as if reading Arcade was a kind of good deed.
So no, gay life wasn’t really on my mind while writing Wince. I don’t think of myself as an emissary. I just want to write about characters and worlds that interest me, in the hope other people might find them interesting too.
We’ve been referring to your “first novel” and your “second novel” but I know you’ve written at least a couple others. There’s something crazy-making to me about referring to them that way, but it would also sound dorky, maybe––or at the very least confusing––to call Arcade your second novel and Wince your fourth, or whatever the numbers are. Non-writers (and even some published ones) can be unaware of how dramatically the publishing world can affect one’s writing life. Care to comment?
I know what you mean. It’s funny to call Arcade my first novel and Wince my second, because those are just the two that made it into the world. I’ve written other novels. Some were from my twenties. Sometimes I had an agent, sometimes I didn’t. One in particular I still think is quite good and publishable, but it hasn’t sold.
That’s a strange part of being a writer. The public version of your career and the private version are totally different. Publicly, it looks like: first book, second book. Privately, there are abandoned drafts, unsold manuscripts, agents who come and go, and long stretches where nothing happens. In my thirties, I spent years interviewing people and gathering material for a book about Simon and Garfunkel’s 1981 concert in Central Park that was supposed to capture the whole world in a single night. I still have the material and a bunch of unfinished drafts.
Years ago, when I was working at a motel, I told a coworker who was an aspiring writer that I had no doubt I’d eventually be published. He thought I was being arrogant, but I didn’t mean it that way. At the time, I was reviewing books and interviewing writers, and I could see that publication wasn’t some magical reward for genius. I was writing a lot. I figured something would land.
I still want to believe that, but it feels harder to believe now. Publishing seems more driven by hooks, timing, platform, connections, and luck than I understood then. I never went to writing school, so there’s a whole literary-networking world I’ve mostly witnessed from the outside. I don’t think I was arrogant back then. I think I was just naive.
The funny thing is that both Arcade and Wince happened when I stopped worrying and wrote quickly. Maybe that’s the lesson. But probably it’s just dumb luck.
I did go to writing school. One of my wiser teachers once said something like, “It doesn’t matter who publishes your book, just get it out there. People will find it.” I take comfort in the fact that it took ten years for Arcade to find its way to me, but it did finally reach me. So even if it takes twenty years for some people to find Wince, that’s okay (maybe a bummer to hear the week of publication). I feel like the best books have to have a certain timelessness to them, and trying to write for the “market” is a fool’s errand. I hope. Relatedly–– When your debut novel was published you said, “My best hope for Arcade is that someone will read it and relate to it and connect with it, and feel less alone somehow.” Do you feel similarly about the new book? Do you have other intentions/“best hopes”?
I completely agree with your professor. I once wrote an essay for Electric Lit called “You’ll Fete Me When I’m Gone” about writing and posterity, and I reached a similar conclusion: the best you can do is thrust your work into the flow of culture in whatever way you can.
The quote you found is funny because it makes me sound so idealistic and cornball. But yes, I do think that’s what I want. Wince is more entertaining in some ways than Arcade was, so I want people to feel engaged by it, maybe even horrified that they’re enjoying themselves.
I like the idea of people seeing themselves in the uglier parts of Wince. He’s infuriating and relatable at the same time, which is true of a lot of people. I think of those true-crime shows where an acquaintance of some unmasked murderer says, “He really had us fooled. He volunteered at the food bank and took care of his aging parents and, hell, he even mowed my grass for free, but all along he was a MONSTER.” It’s like people can’t hold both thoughts in their head. He did decent things. He also did horrible things. It’s complicated.
The goal, I guess, is still to make people feel less alone. Not by reflecting them back to themselves, exactly, but by showing them someone they might want to dismiss on page one, then making him complicated enough that by page two hundred, they have to hold two ideas in their head at once: he’s the worst, and I hope he lands on his feet.
Sam Axelrod has written for McSweeney’s and The Paris Review. He lives in Kingston, New York, where he’s at work on a novel called Brief Drama.