Journalist's First Novel Tells of Stark, Brooding 'Midwinter'

Writer Robert Clark was nothing I expected. The amiable man dressed in khaki cords, a trendy blue Henley, and a wholesome brown bomber jacket walking toward me was not the image I had formed from reading his introspective first novel, In the Deep Midwinter. Here was no disturbed bohemian artist or shy quirky man with a stammer, Robert Clark was startlingly normal.

Clark was quick to establish his background. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife Carrie and his first son. He first encountered the writing life as a journalist with a specialty in food and travel. His penchant for history, however, soon took over, and he wrote two nonfiction books: James Beard: A Biography and River of the West. Since publishing In the Deep Midwinter, Clark has finished another book with the working title Mr. White's Confusion and is researching for his next project, a memoir and genealogy of his family.

All of Clark's practices as a writer stem from his experiences as a journalist. He writes quickly: In the Deep Midwinter was finished in four months--incidentally in the deep of summer 1995. "I think if you've been writing as a journalist or whatever, one of the things that happens is that you learn to write under any circumstances--when the whole world comes crashing down on you. It gets progressively easier to write, say, 1,000 words a day," he says. The transition from nonfiction to fiction was not awkward for Clark. "There is not a great distinction between the two," he says, explaining that he wrote River of the West as a story that happened to be based on actual events.

Clark began the novel as an experiment. "I didn't want to do any kind of literary writing," he claims. Yet literary writing seems only fit for Clark, who describes the conception of this novel in terms of the imagery of its opening scene--"a train, and a man in this train, speeding along in the bitter winter in an amber light..."

In the Deep Midwinter takes place in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Clark grew up and where his grandfather grew up with childhood playmate F. Scott Fitzgerald. "I want to say he's a presence," says Clark, referring to Fitzgerald. Indeed Fitzgerald's people are present in In the Deep Midwinter, the MacEwan family might have been the next generation of Gatsbys. Set in the 1950's, the novel is fraught with the restraint and repression associated with that era.

The story traces the lives of Richard and Sarah MacEwan, their divorced daughter Anna and grandson Douglas, and Anna's lover Charles Norden. The book opens as Richard is riding in a train to retrieve the body of his brother James who had just been killed in a hunting accident. "Perhaps the world was a wound..." the novel begins, and the despairing tone grows ever more hopeless from there. Later in the chapter, a grieving Richard sorts through James' belongings and discovers a letter that leads him to believe that his wife Sarah had an affair with James. Unable to confront his own shock, let alone Sarah, Richard becomes more and more detached from his family.

Meanwhile, their daughter Anna is falling in love with Charles Norden. Their love is mutual, and their relationship passionate. She expects him to propose at any minute. Then she discovers that she is pregnant. Charles cannot come to grips with this and arranges an abortion, after which their lives fall apart.

While this family has never been one to deny that "such things happen to them," they are unable to accept that anyone would ever find out. "We squelch [the world], blind ourselves to it with propriety and high-minded-ness and good cheer; act as though there's a few bad eggs out there, but the rest of us are just fine. But there's another world--a counterworld, you could say--where life is complicated and mistakes get made and women get pregnant when they're not supposed to and people do stupid things and betray each other," one of the characters exclaims. "And we are those people. But we can't acknowledge that." And that is the problem. Hardships are not as difficult to deal with on a personal level as their ultimate disclosure.

While all loose ends are tied up, the dramatic events of this winter leave a heavy residue on the lives of the characters. "Sometimes it is February all the time," Anna reflects in a late chapter.

Indeed February conjures perfectly the dull, grey tone that glazes the whole novel. The tone is diffuse, though, due to Clark's heavy use of metaphors. Every character's gesture and description of setting evokes a precise image in Clark's mind that he can capture only in reference to another. While these images are exacting and often beautiful, they are confusing. In the words of George Eliot's Middlemarch, which Clark was reading while he was writing his novel, "we get our thoughts entangled in metaphors."

The characters in the novel live very vividly in Clark's mind. For him, the identity of the character is key: "I've been lucky at least with this book and the novel I just finished. The characters kind of presented themselves to me. I never really had to worry too much about what they were going to do. I could almost sit down and basically know, 'O.K. It's Tuesday in this book--what are we going to do?' and it comes very easily. That's not writing from an outline as much as living in your character's skin." Clark explains that creating characters who live out one's fears, hopes and joys is in a way creating the truest kind of autobiography. Invoking the words of The New Yorker's Janet Malcomb, Clark said that "the only literature that is 100 percent true is fiction."

Through what might seem like wrenching introspection, Clark remains a very happy writer. When queried about every writer's nemesis, writer's block, he said that the work of writers is writer's block. But, when all else failed, he'd go rollerblading. "With this book, after lunch every day, I'd go out and rollerblade for about two hours. There was this lake with a paved track about three miles long around it and I'd do usually about four circuits. That's generally when I work on what happens next."

Though he is happy, Clark is still very intense about writing. "It's like when sailors would sign up for an 18 month voyage. You know, go on a whaler for 18 months to 2 years--that's your life. You're sort of condemned to do it, depending on your point of view."

Clark ended our chat with a friendly smile and twinkling eye. He picked up the Starbucks coffee cup from the table--"Coffee is very important in writing; you have to reach a manic state."