Online with Homer Hickam
Interview by Barry D. Gilfry © 2003
WCP:
Your style of writing in The Keeper's Son is impeccable; flawless in structure, fluid in delivery. You manage to be "cinematic" without butchering the English language. Does this precision come from your background as a scientific writer?
Homer Hickam:
It is a definite misperception to consider me a scientific writer. I have NEVER been a scientific writer. All my novels and memoirs (I call them novel-memoirs or "novoirs") have been about people, life, conflict, dreams, hopes, small towns, philosophy, and the struggle for dignity. Rocket Boys (aka October Sky), The Coalwood Way, and Sky of Stone, my three memoirs, were about growing up in the small coal company town of Coalwood, West Virginia. The rockets I built and described in the first two of those were used only as metaphors to tell the larger story of Coalwood. Sky of Stone is at its heart a mystery story of a death in the coal mine and a trial my father endured. The only novel I have ever written that one might say had a technical background was Back to the Moon but even in that book, it was the people involved that I was interested in. My readers fell in love with the protagonists, Jack Medaris and Penny High Eagle, and have asked me repeatedly to write another novel about them. I doubt that I will any time soon. My interest in rockets and space these days is quite low. There is so much else to explore in my writing! If I have precision in my writing, it's because I care enough to revise, rewrite, and work my material until it has the flow that I like and think my readers will like, too. It's like writing a symphony. It should play through the reader's head as if it were a melody, at times dramatic, at times moody, and always surprising.
WCP:
You first wrote Torpedo Junction, a military history, in 1989. How did you make the transition to the different style of writing required by your memoirs and two novels?
Homer Hickam:
Torpedo Junction grew out of a series of magazine articles I wrote after diving and studying the scores of wrecks discovered off the Outer Banks of North Carolina during the 1970's and 1980's. There were sunken U-boats out there and also hundreds of tankers, freighters, and warships with torpedo holes in their sides. I had uncovered a vast unreported battle and researched it for over a decade, interviewing hundreds of men on both sides of the battle. When I realized I had enough for a book, I approached the Naval Institute Press about a book. They demanded a rigorous pedantic approach to the structure of the book with plenty of footnotes and references. Still, I wrote it such a way that it was the people involved who were highlighted and especially the crew of the small Coast Guard cutter Dione. They were my touchstone and their heroism and tragedies kept the book fast-paced and dramatic. Of course, writing any book is good preparation for writing another. I meant to write more about naval history but got side-tracked by the story of Rocket Boys. The Keeper's Son is a novel of the Outer Banks and is set in the same era as Torpedo Junction.
WCP:
Can you tell us about your love of SCUBA diving and how it relates to your writing of The Keeper's Son?
Homer Hickam:
I have always loved the sea. After I came back from Vietnam (where I served as a first lieutenant in the 4th Infantry Division), I was assigned to Puerto Rico. There I learned to scuba dive. When I got out of the army and moved to Huntsville, Alabama, I became a scuba instructor and also began to free-lance magazine articles about diving. This led directly to diving on the wrecks off North Carolina, the uncovering of a huge and secret World War II battle along our coasts, and the writing of Torpedo Junction. The research I did for that book provides the background for my "story of love in a time of war," The Keeper's Son.
WCP:
In the '70s, you were a SCUBA instructor and a free-lance writer. Which paid more money? What were you writing in those days?
Homer Hickam:
My day job was as an engineer for the federal government in Huntsville, Alabama, and later in Germany. The money a scuba instructor gets isn't much, barely more than expenses, but the pay comes in other ways, such as the fun of teaching someone to explore the sea. Free-lance writing for magazines also didn't pay that much and ranged from a nickel a word to (rarely) a thousand dollars or so. I was honing my craft, however, and that was the important thing. My articles back then were almost exclusively about scuba diving or the U-boat battle along the American east coast.
WCP:
By page 26 of The Keeper's Son, wasting no time at all, you have us literally smelling the U-560 captained by Otto von Krebs. This is not a pretty picture of life aboard a German submarine in 1942. Can you tell us something of the dimensions of the ship and the living conditions aboard?
Homer Hickam:
The conditions were absolutely abysmal. The Type VII U-boat, the kind Otto Krebs captains in my novel, was 220 feet long and so narrow that a crewman could usually reach out and touch instrumentation on both sides of the corridor. There were 32 men packed inside this slender tube which was also filled with torpedoes, diesel engines, electric engines, food (usually spoiling rapidly), batteries, bilges, two toilets (one was usually inoperable), open cans for sewage, cockroaches, mildewed clothing, rotting leather, and so forth. The men aboard were often seasick and tossed up their meals into buckets which sometimes overturned in foul weather. It was a tough place to simply exist, much less fight a battle.
WCP:
In touring for The Keeper's Son, have you found that the average reader today is completely unaware there was ever a threat to our Atlantic seaboard and our Merchant Marine fleet from German U-boats during World War II?
Homer Hickam:
Most Americans have never heard of this huge battle in 1942 where over 400 allied ships were sunk and eight U-boats. It was one of the largest battles of World War II, happened within sight of our shores, yet was kept so secret it remains very much unknown. It is my hope that The Keeper's Son will help change that. Also, I'd like to see a reissue of Torpedo Junction in hardcover. Right now, it is available in paperback and has never gone out of print.
WCP:
In The Keeper's Son, you humanize the Germans, make them seem almost sympathetic. Have you received any negative feedback about this since the book was released?
Homer Hickam:
I haven't received any negative feedback yet. Of course, the Germans WERE human so it wasn't difficult to humanize them. However, I make certain in the book that the reader knows that these very human (and often sympathetic) U-boat crew members were working for a hideous and outlaw regime.
WCP:
From the foreword of Torpedo Junction: "...there were never more than a dozen U-boats...on the American station at any time. That such a small force could inflict such damage was a damning indictment of both our readiness and our priorities." In your opinion, what was the intrinsic problem with our military leadership in 1941 and 1942?
Homer Hickam:
The problem was that the American people had gotten a bad taste of war during World War I, wanted no part of another one, and elected leaders pledged to keep us peaceful. There was also a huge "America First" movement dedicated to keeping us out of the war. Interestingly enough, John Kennedy's father, Joe, was in the forefront of this movement. This tied President Roosevelt's hands. There was also little money available to build up our defenses as we were still dealing with the Great Depression. Once the war began, we had to use what we had which, fortunately and because of heroic sacrifice, was barely enough until our huge production capacity was geared up. During these early months, Admiral King, chief of the navy, decided to depend on small coast guard cutters and old World War I destroyers to fight the U-boats along our coast. There were not nearly enough to go around and the Germans quickly devastated our merchant marine.
WCP:
By June of 1942, we had lost more tonnage in the Atlantic than in all the battles fought in the Pacific, including Pearl Harbor. If Hitler had continued to send U-boats, is it conceivable that we could have lost the war against Germany?
Homer Hickam:
Conceivable but not likely. Once anti-submarine aircraft began to be used and the convoy system was implemented along our coasts, the U-boats were doomed. The Royal Navy had already defeated the U-boats using the same techniques. It just took us a long time to pull it all together.
WCP:
Do you envision a movie being made from The Keeper's Son?
Homer Hickam:
It is quite possible. We have been in intense discussions with a very well-known Hollywood producer who loves the novel.
WCP:
I understand that you had some concerns when you first read the screenplay for October Sky -- excessive profanity, inaccuracies and character changes. Will you demand greater control over future screenplay adaptations of your books, perhaps write them yourself?
Homer Hickam:
The reason I had concerns with the screenplay of Rocket Boys (which became October Sky) was because it was a memoir about my family and my home town and I didn't want to see anyone defamed or misrepresented. But a writer must recognize that the requirements for a Hollywood movie and a novel are very different. I do recognize it so I'll keep my opinions to myself but my fingers crossed. I am usually hired on to consult on the screenplay, in any case. Sky of Stone, the sequel novoir of OCTOBER SKY, is presently under development by Hallmark for a quality television-movie.
WCP:
How long did it take you to write The Keeper's Son and how many rewrites did you do along the way?
Homer Hickam:
One year including all revisions. I rewrite as I go along and when I turn in my manuscript to the publisher, it's all polished and ready to go!
WCP:
What kind of writer are you: Do you sit down and write a chapter straight through, or do you work on several at a time as ideas strike you?
Homer Hickam:
Sometimes I write a chapter straight through, let it cool, go back and look at it and love it just the way it is. The usual case is I write a partial chapter, revise it a number of times, then finish it and continue the revision process until I'm satisfied. I often drop back to earlier chapters and continue to polish them until the last day of writing.
WCP:
In the very last paragraph of your book you write: "The Keeper's Son is the first in a series." Can you tell us what you envision?
Homer Hickam:
Josh Thurlow, Eureka Phimble, the Maudie Janes, Dosie Crossan, and other characters from The Keeper's Son will appear in subsequent books. The next in the series is set in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. It should be published in the fall of 2004.
Want to learn more about Homer Hickam and his interests? Check out these links:
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