UCO Associate Professor of Creative Writing Constance Squires will be reading an excerpt from her recent book, Along the Watchtower, today at 7:00 p.m. in the Heritage Room of the Nigh University Center. The event is free to the public.
Vista: Can you give a quick synopsis of the plot of Along the Watchtower, and where you pulled your inspiration from?
Squires: Well, do you want the plot, or do you want how I started writing it?
Vista: Both would be alright, but the plot first, if that’s okay.
Squires: Okay. Well, it’s about an Army family that is stationed over in Germany, and then later stationed at Fort Sill, Okla. It takes place in the last decade of the Cold War; the 80s through the early 90s. The final culminating scene is when the father, Major Collins, comes back from the first Gulf War.
And it’s about this family, and they’re sort of deteriorating; the family experiences a divorce. The main character is Lucinda, she’s the eldest daughter. She’s sort of growing up in the middle of all this. She uses rock ‘n’ roll as a way to cope, and as a way to find her own tribe.
Vista: Are you a rock ‘n’ roll fan yourself?
Squires: Yeah I am, I definitely am. I was a military brat myself, and I always found that music was one of the only things that was the same wherever you went, you know? You could listen to a song and it was like a room that you could walk into where the furniture was always in the same place. And there was no other stability like that in my life, so it was important to me.
Vista: It also seems like Lucinda’s story is based off your personal experiences as an Army brat and as a part of that culture.
Squires: Yeah, a little bit. I mean, the events of the story never happened, but I lived in those places and I was an Army brat, and the rock ‘n’ roll thing really was important to me. So I feel really comfortable writing about these people and these places, even though the plot is fabricated.
Vista: So, how did you start formulating the idea for Along The Watchtower?
Squires: Well, it started off as short stories, and they didn’t even seem connected to me at the time. I had this story about this Nazi ghost, I had this story about this GI with a record collection, and I started publishing those. It got me an agent, and the agent talked to a bunch of publishers in New York, and all these different publishers all said the same thing.
They all said, “You know, no one has really written about Army families, and that’s a huge part of our culture, and we really need that in our literature. And she can write a collection of short stories on that and we’d be really interested.”
So I did that, I took a couple of years and did that. And then he took it back to them and they said, “You know, if she turned it into a novel it would reach a wider audience.” So then I had to sort of dismantle the short stories and turn them into a novel. So it was a long process. It was kind of involved.
Vista: A lot of changing plots around subtly to fit with the overarching story.
Squires: Yeah. Oh yes, there was a lot of that, yeah.
Vista: What was the kind of rock ‘n’ roll music that you listened to growing up and moving around?
Squires: Well, what was really important to me was alternative music, was punk rock music, but I didn’t always know about that.
And so the character starts off just sort of knowing the stuff that’s on the radio at the time. She’s 13 when the book opened. So the first musical reference is like, Blue Öyster Cult or something, you know? And then she meets this character named Nately, who is this GI, and he just shames her. He’s just like, “You’re not allowed to have that Journey in your record collection, you’re not allowed to listen to the Eagles, I’m sorry.” And then he kind of schools her, and so she learns about that.
And I think the story ends in 1991, so most of the stuff that I really cared about and was interested in was stuff that came out after that. I had to keep true to the historical period. I think the last concert she goes to was X. Hüsker Dü is a really important band to her.
Vista: And a great band, as well.
Squires: Yeah, absolutely.
Vista: This sounds really interesting.
Squires: Yeah! Definitely. It’s a fun read, from what I’ve been told. People have been like, “Yeah, I read that in one sitting!” and I’m like, “Are you kidding me? It took me like, a couple of years to write and you read it in one sitting?” But I guess that’s a good thing.
I sent copies of Along The Watchtower to the members of those two bands, Hüsker Dü and X, and I was just like, “Hey! I just wanted to tell you that I love you, and here’s my book, and you’re in it!”
Vista: Did you get a message back from Bob Mould, or someone?
Squires: Yeah, I did! Not Bob Mould, actually, but Grant Hart. I got a nice little note back. So yeah, I was just like, the total fan. I was like, “I’m signing my book to you because I LOVE YOU!”
Vista: I saw on your Liberal Arts profile that you’re releasing American Thighs next year in the Atlantic Monthly. Can you talk about that?
Squires: Oh god, what is that? No, American Thighs—that’s not right. Oh, wow. I need to update that. The Atlantic Monthly was a magazine that published one of these stories, and the original title of this story was American Thighs. It was published a couple of years ago, and man, I didn’t know that it still said that anymore, I need to update my page.
Vista: I’m sorry.
Squires: Oh, no, I’m glad you told me about it. Yeah. But it was actually the story about Lucinda and her friendship with the GI with the record collection, and American Thighs was a reference to that line in AC/DC’s song “You Shook Me All Night Long”
She’s sort of asking him about that, and he’s embarrassed, you know. He’s like, “Oh, I can’t explain this to you.”
Vista: Music purist.
Squires: Yeah, yeah.
Vista: I’m glad I brought that up, then.
Squires: Yeah, I’m glad you did, too! My gosh, I’ve gotta update that.
Vista: Did you write your dissertation with these stories?
Squires: Yeah. My dissertation was four of the stories that ended up going into being part of the novel. And then six other stories that were completely different, they were just completely different characters and subjects not related to this at all, and so it was not by any stretch of the imagination the same book, but it was sort of a germ, the germinal project.
Vista: Isn’t Along The Watchtower referencing a Jimi Hendrix song? Why’d you pick that?
Squires: I’ll tell you, the part of the reference in the song that was important to me was the part where it says, “All along the watchtower/ Princes kept the view/ While the women came and went/ Barefoot servants, too.”
Which is describing these soldiers up there on the wall, watching, while behind the fort, the families are going about their lives. And I thought that was just a perfect metaphor for what the American troops were doing over there in Germany when it was the front line, you know, because it was the Cold War and there was the Iron Curtain.
And so I thought well, that’s what I’m trying to show, is that little line right there. But then it also has the rick thing, so it was like the two threads kind of met in that lyric. And actually, it’s a Dylan song, and Hendrix covered it. Lucinda learns that in the book. She’s amazed. She’s like, “No! It’s Hendrix,” and Nately corrects her.