Sam at the Gun Show
An Interview
with author Greg Bottoms

Although Greg Bottoms did not write “Sam at the Gun Show” with the specific intent to raise awareness about gun-related issues, the images he created through his narrative render a vivid and disturbing scene.    

“I don't usually set out with any kind of message.  And I always want narrative and image to do most of the work of ideas and suggestion, as opposed to exposition.  When I revise my work, I often try to rework narrative—scene, character description, tone—to make it dense with implication, so explanation isn't needed, or at the very least is not disembodied from action.  In that way, I take a lot of my cues from realistic short stories and narrative poems.”

The incident at the gun show struck a chord for Bottoms.  While he views this encounter as, paradoxically, “usual and entirely scary,” what scared him the most were the gun show’s implications, which were, in his words, “kids wanting guns because they're ‘cool,’ as a sort of fashion accoutrement, like a money sign on their necklace or Hilfiger Jeans, is alarming in its weird amoral American thoughtlessness.”

In addition to his essays and memoirs, Bottoms has also written in the longer form.  His book, Angelhead: My Brother’s Descent into Madness (University of Chicago Press), was an Esquire “Book of the Year” in 2000. 

In both long and short writing endeavors, Bottoms employs the same technique. “My books are very much made of component parts—connected fragments.  That's probably a shortcoming, but that's how I work.  Part of revision of the longer stuff is to work a smooth, clear line through all the pieces.  So in a way, all I do is the short form.  I work in 2,500 words or less spurts.”

Regardless of the length of the piece that he is writing, Bottoms constantly tells himself that every word must count.  This can often be a long and tedious process.  “My first book is about 47,000 words.  I've just finished a book that's about 48,000.  I probably write 300,000 words to get to the ones that matter.”

Bottoms describes his writing style as “photographic realism—a kind of mixing of the intent of the documentary and the imagistic and metaphoric and narrative order of the short story.  I like efficiency and propulsion and musical rhythm in prose.”

As an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Vermont, Bottoms hopes to impart two primary writing lessons to his students.  First of all, he encourages them to read well as writers.  This is done by directing half of their intention to the “how” of a piece.  “I feel we can discern a writer's intentions in an essay, and then go back and see how those intentions play out formally, aesthetically, and technically.”

Bottoms also stresses to his students the importance of looking outside of their own experiences to see the world, people, life, and new ideas.  He believes that readers do not care about a writer’s specific life and problems, but are instead interested in the voice and perspective used to invent meaning from these raw experiences. 

Bottoms attributes his decision to become a writer to “A mix of life and literature.  My life didn't make sense to me at one point,” he recalls.  “Reading a lot starting at the age of about 17—mainly philosophy and literature—helped me to be able to think abstractly and make connections and sense of things in my own life.  And,” he notes, “I feel remarkably unsuited for most other vocations.”

--Corey Ginsberg