Up Close with Author Russell Potter

Friday, November 18, 2011

Anthony Faccenda, GoLocalProv Contributor

From hip-hop to learned pigs: Russell Potter

To simply call Russell Potter a writer and professor would be doing this Providence resident a major injustice. Not only has Potter taught at Rhode Island College for over fifteen years, but he has also authored three vastly different books (ranging from hip-hop to Arctic exploration), contributed essays and poems to countless publications, edited a bi-annual publication and appeared in the Emmy nominated TV program Arctic Passage Prisoners of Ice.

GoLocal caught up with the ever-eclectic Potter to discuss his new novel Pyg, past projects and upcoming works.

First off, what inspired you to write Pyg: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig?

It's always tricky to say exactly where fiction comes from -- at its best, it emerges out of an inscrutable mix of ideas, dreams, and the happenstance of experience. But in one sense, at any rate, Pyg has a very local origin; although I'd long known that there had been an "educated pig" in the 18th century who spelled out answers to questions using cards, the novel emerged, somewhat unexpectedly, over the course of a series of walks at Lincoln Woods State Park, where my partner, Karen Carr, and I bandied back and forth all kinds of narrative ideas until the outlines of a story emerged.

Does your unusual spelling of "Pyg" hearken back to the Greek figure Pygmalion or George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion?

Absolutely right! My partner had just finished teaching Shaw's Pygmalion, and a large part of our discussion was about how giving language, or (in the case of Shaw) "proper" language to any creature (a word used by Shaw in reference to Liza Doolittle) confers both a sense of self and an identity crisis. Liza, though "elevated" to the point where she can be mistaken for a Duchess, feels ill at ease in such company, and yet she can hardly return to being a flower girl. My pig "Toby," has it somewhat worse: although language has fitted him for human company, he'll never be human -- and yet his greatest terror is of being returned to the status of a common pig.

The book that all began on a walk around Lincoln Woods: Pyg

The pig seems to be an eternally popular literary figure (Animal Farm, Charlotte's Web, Babe): is it easier or more challenging to write about a frequently cited animal?

Pigs, I suppose, are a likely subject for fiction. I must confess that I'm not a huge fan of Orwell's insistent allegory, nor of the cute little pigs with winning personalities that are such a feature of books for children and young adults. Of course I think that pigs are interesting animals, but they are also, somehow, disturbing ones. They are the subject of religious prohibitions, figures of human excess, and yet -- both culturally and in their very DNA, they share so many qualities with humans. Recent research has shown that pigs understand the use of mirrors -- a rare capacity among animals. So I actually found a pig to be an ideal animal narrator.

Pyg comes out this month in the UK, but when can US readers plan on seeing it in bookstores?

The US edition will be coming out from Penguin Books as a paperback original on July 31st of 2012; I'll be doing some local and regional events with the novel then. In the meantime, those who are eager to get their hands on a copy can order it from any of various online UK retailers.

What do you wish readers to gain from Pyg?

A pleasant afternoon? But of course I also hope they'll find something more, a challenge to some of our ideas about animals, a sense of how humans might be seen by an intelligent creature other than themselves, and something of the feel of Britain in the Eighteenth Century. And a pleasant afternoon too, of course!

You are the editor of The Arctic Book Review and the author of Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875 (2007): what began your fascination with Arctic exploration?

I've always had a sort of 'exploration bug' -- growing up at the peak of the "space race," it was hard not to. But what first drew me to the Arctic was the sad tale of Sir John Franklin, an explorer who departed at the very pinnacle of Victorian optimism in 1845, only to have his journey end with his ships hopelessly icebound, and his men resorting to cannibalism. The tale of pride coming before a fall has rarely been more dramatic, and as a Victorianist I was fascinated by the way writers as diverse as Dickens and Conrad were drawn to this dark tale. I'm still doing Arctic research, including a book on early Arctic films, Before Nanook, which I hope will be completed within the next year.

Aside from Arctic exploration, you also wrote 1995's Spectacular Vernaculars, in which you explored the role of hip-hop in the African American experience. Would you consider writing a follow up examining how this role might have changed in the time that has passed since 1995?

The short answer: no. Like many longtime Hip-hop fans, I feel that the music has, for the most part, become the very commercial pabulum that it once rebelled against. There was a golden age of sorts for a time, from '89 to around '05, when artists such as Queen Latifah, Public Enemy, and A Tribe Called Quest pushed the boundaries in every direction. So while I still scan the horizon for artists I can respect -- and there are a few, such as Sage Francis, Brother Ali, and Lady Sovereign that I quite like -- I don't see another book on the subject.

Is it more challenging extensively researching a non-fiction text or conjuring up ideas for a novel like Pyg?

No, just a different challenge. When you're researching nonfiction, you have to cast very wide nets, and look for (as one of my old professors used to say) the diamonds among the lumps of coal. But with fiction, you never know what it is you might need until quite late in the process, and it's often a complete surprise. For the kind of historical fiction that Pyg is, it was mostly a very long and gentle "soak" in the Eighteenth Century, with some bits and pieces coming from years back in my reading, which mattered most.

Lastly, is there anything else you wish to discuss in terms of new projects or ideas?

Although Pyg is my first published novel, I have a couple of others in that metaphorical "drawer" that one hears of -- I'd be delighted if they might see the light of day. My book on early Arctic films is well along, and I'm also working with the New Bedford Whaling museum on a planned exhibition of theirs. I also have an essay in the works on early daguerreotypes of Poe taken in Providence. Rhode Island is a great crossroads for all kinds of histories and ideas, and if I'm lucky, I'll have a chance to tackle a few more of them.

If you would like to purchase Pyg go online, here.

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