SOURCE: “Hoffman Opens His Door: Author Discusses Writing, New Short Story Collection,” in Farmville Herald, June 4, 1999, pp. 1, 10.

[In the following interview, Hoffman discusses his approach to writing, his short story collection Doors,and the thematic concerns of his fiction.]

Editor’s Note: The following interview took place at the home of Bill and Susan Hoffman at their home, Wynyard, in Charlotte Court House, on Monday, May 24. The occasion was the publication of Mr. Hoffman’s fifteenth book and fourth short story collection, Doors. … The interview was conducted on behalf of the Farmville Herald by Bill Frank, Professor Emeritus of English, Longwood College.

[William L. Frank:] Most of our readers are familiar with your work, but for readers new to the area would you tell us when you began writing, and why did you decide that writing fiction was to be your principal life’s work?

[William Hoffman:] I started writing fiction when I was at Washington and Lee University and took a writing class there. I really entered my intense and sustained period of writing in 1952, when I went to teach at Hampden-Sydney College. I wrote my first four or five novels while I lived in Farmville. I chose fiction because it chose me, I guess. I love to read fiction because I believe fiction is a lot more than entertaining. I think the greatest fiction conveys truths that can be gotten in no other way. It speaks to the heart and the brain simultaneously.

Aside from stories written for classes at W&L or the University of Iowa Writing Workshop, your earlier published work consisted of novels. Many writers I’ve known—Doris Betts, George Garrett, Lee Smith, Allen Wier all spring to mind—started out as short story writers and then “graduated” to novels. You seem to have reversed the process. What were the circumstances that led to the publication of your first published novel, The Trumpet Unblown?

You’re absolutely correct about my writing. I wrote and published many novels before selling my first short story, but I got plenty of rejection slips along the way. The first short story I sold was to the Gentlemen’s Quarterly, and it was pretty slight. The first novel I completed was postwar novel whose characters were chiefly casualties of World War II wounded in spirit or mind as much as in body. I was in my first year at H-S and while that novel, Days In The Yellow Leaf, was making the rounds at New York publishing houses I started work on my second novel, The Trumpet Unblown.

I was living in Farmville up on High Street and teaching at H-S. My good friend and the President of H-S, Dr. Gannon, told me he couldn’t hire me to teach again unless I got a graduate degree. I filled out an application for the graduate school at UVA and almost at the same time completed Trumpet and sent it to my agent in New York.

That Christmas I went home to visit my grandmother in Charleston and came back early to hunt birds. I went out on New Year’s Day by myself to hunt. It was one of the best days I’d ever had. I had two good dogs, shot well, and went home to find a telegram under the door; Doubleday, the first publisher Trumpet had been sent to, wanted to buy it. With the success of The Trumpet Unblown I was able to sell the first novel I wrote, Days In The Yellow Leaf.

You’ve told me in the past that you’re a very disciplined writer. How do you spend a typical writer’s work day?

When I taught full-time at H-S I had to do my writing before my 8:30 class in the morning, so I started writing at 5:00 a.m. For the most part I wrote six days a week starting around five in the morning from 1952 to 1998. I felt a responsibility to write every day, and when I didn’t or couldn’t I felt uneasy; I felt I had not been honest …

I feel like I’m two people—the person you see on the street and talk to, and the writer in a kind of trance. After an hour or two of writing I have to take a break. Writing physically wears me out. After a break, I return to writing, novels in the morning and short stories in the afternoon. When I’m at my desk I’m in another world.

The term inspiration is probably an over-worked word with poets, short story writers and novelists, but where do your ideas come from?

Writers write—writing is a job. You can’t wait for inspiration. I use what’s at hand … I believe there’s at least one story in every person. Facing the empty page is a fearful moment—a scary thing, but that’s how one has to begin. I don’t always know a novel’s outline in advance. It grows on me, like planting a seed. Thus, I grow the story, consciously or unconsciously—sometimes when I’m asleep.

Doors, just published by the University of Missouri Press, is your fifteenth book, fourth collection of short stories. Do your novels generally begin as a short story and you expand them, or are your novels drawn up in your mind as a novel before you begin to write?

I’ve never consciously expanded a short story into a novel. I won’t say it hasn’t happened, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I think of short stories and novels as two very different ways of approaching a subject. They are very separate ways of going about writing.

When you put together a collection of short stories how do you choose which stories to include? In other words, how did you decide which ten stories to include in Doors?

Obviously I pick the stories I think are the best. With Doors one of the reader-reviewers for the Press had reservations about one of the original ten stories, so I withdrew that story and replaced it with another which seemed to satisfy the reader.

I try to get some balance in the stories that make up a collection. Everyone who knows me knows I have a tragic streak in me, so I try to balance the stories in a collection. Let’s say there are ten stories, so I try to write two or three stories lighter and two or three of a more serious nature. Of ten stories in a collection I try to have three or four that are lighter, maybe more humorous than the others to get some balance and contrast.

How did you select the title for this collection? I know one of the stories is also called “Doors,” but other story titles in the collection would also seem appropriate, such as “Winter Wheat,” or “Landings,” or “Roll Call.” Why Doors?

I wanted to start this collection with a story most readers would probably like. I didn’t want to scare readers off with a story that might startle too much. Also, in every one of these stories doors occur. So the reader is looking through ten different doors and at the people who live inside that particular structure … I wanted readers to see these places as a series of doors and a series of people living beyond the threshold.

One of the reviewers points out that the majority of the stories in Doors takes place in a town called Tobaccoton, your version of Farmville. Wouldn’t Tobaccoton as a setting for all of the stories in this collection provide a unifying or thematic device?

You’re right about Tobaccoton being patented on Farmville where I lived for a number of years, a place I consider my second home. I can only say that I put stories in Doors set elsewhere simply because I wanted them in the collection. I couldn’t imagine, for example, not having the story “Landings” in this particular collection.

There are few “winners” among the characters in these stories. Most are either losers or survivors. Would you say these stories constitute a metaphor for the lives of most people living today?

I have a tragic view of life, I think largely the result of my experiences in the army in WW II. But to me tragedy is not necessarily sad—I think tragedy is the highest form of art or fiction or literature. Remember, I’m a Presbyterian, an old Calvinist, a person brought up to believe in total depravity. Life is serious, tragic—the only thing that can resolve it is something that happens in the spiritual world. Tragedy may cast you down temporarily but it will also allow you to move out of yourself and see people in a universal condition …

I’ve already spoken of the contrast that humor provides with tragedy. I’ve just finished “Wit,” the play that won the Pulitzer Prize this year. It’s a tragedy, but one that lifts the reader up. Humor marries tragedy, and the result is a universal truly that only literature can express.

Most parents are accused of having a favorite child or grandchild, although they usually deny it. Do you have a favorite among the ten stories in Doors?

My stories are all my children and I always try to treat my children and my grandchildren equally. I really can’t pick a favorite among the ten stories, and I think if I did my judgment would be flawed. So I’d just rather duck that one.

Are any of the stories in Doors autobiographical? I’m thinking especially of “Blood.”

As I’ve already said, I use what’s at hand. Things I’ve done in my life—hunting, sailing, farming, fox hunting—end up in my stories. “Blood” does have some autobiographical connections. When my father married my mother her family believed my father didn’t really belong—he wasn’t worthy or good enough for my mother. After my sister and I were born the marriage broke up, and I didn’t see my father again until twenty-five or so years later … But my father was a good man, a smart man, and he was good to my sister and to me.

The subject matter in the ten stories in Doors includes social snobbery, racism, loneliness, dishonest ministers, alcoholism, adultery, murder, poverty and suicide. Obviously these stories reflect life in contemporary America. Do you think the 90’s are worse than earlier decades in the twentieth century as far as moral values are concerned?

All of those things you mention are universal and have always been with us. I definitely think the ’90’s are much less moral than previous decades. We’re now seeing the growth of the seeds that were planted back in the 60’s. I don’t understand how a novel can be written today which doesn’t deal with religion … I’ve always tried to have some suggestion of moral content in what I write. It’s not always obvious—sometimes it’s symbolic. We’re on a down skid morally, and we’re going to pay for it somehow. If there’s one thing I believe, God is not mocked.

A colleague of mine and one of your former students, Dr. Gordon Van Ness, theorizes that he could show your progression as a writer and your developing philosophy and estimation of a changing twentieth century society by analyzing in order—in sequence—your four short story collections. Do you think such a study would support Gordon’s thesis?

Yes, I do. I’m constantly changing. I’m a different person now than I was in 1955 when my first novel came out. I think in many ways the same development could be shown by studying the novels. In most cases I was writing the novels and stories simultaneously so they would reflect each other. I certainly do think you could trace the changes in me, my writing, my outlook by studying my fiction.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hoffman, for being so generous with your time and so honest with your answers. I understand that you are completing the revisions on your sequel to Tidewater Blood. We shall certainly be looking forward to that novel, as well as to many of your short stories in the near future.