For the past few issues of Invasive Thoughts, we’ve published chapters from author Bob Ross’s serial novel, The Scarred Woman. As the characters have begun to grow on me over these past few issues, I’ve developed a few questions for Ross regarding his novel. Below we’ve published this Q & A with our contributing author about The Scarred Woman.
IT: How did this story come to be? How did you first "meet" these characters? Why did Jonas capture your mind as a protagonist?
This story has been bothering me most of my adult life. I first began writing it as a novel when I was in the MFA program at Missoula, starting in the fall of 1980. However, some characters existed in primitive form in a short story I wrote as long ago as the early 1970s. Some of the minor characters are based on people I knew at the University of Nebraska, but the major characters are invented. I was peripherally involved in the antiwar movement and experienced a degree of culture shock. I also had a love affair that was both ludicrous and heartbreaking. I suppose I felt the need to deal with all these diverse experiences, but it took a long time before anything came of it.
IT: What was your overall process for writing this novel? When did you start it and when did you finish it and what happened in between?
I finished the novel in February of 1999, but it was considerably longer then. Because I couldn’t face revising such a monster all at once, I cut two different series of flashbacks—Jonas as a child and Jonas in Viet Nam—and rewrote those separately. (Each of them has turned out to be a novel in its own right.) That took a long time. I finally got the opportunity to publish the original book in its reduced form, and having that chance gave me the incentive to work on it again, though I haven’t changed much. As for when I started it, I can’t really be sure. If I said 1981, that would be 16 years previous to when I finished, but there were lots of times in between when I was working on other projects, and there were times when I wasn’t writing at all.
IT: What do you see as Jonas's personal strengths and weaknesses? Why do you care about him?
I like Jonas because he has guts, a quality I feel the lack of in my own character. He is physically robust and a fighter, though not a particularly good one. Weaknesses? His attitude toward women needs some adjustment. He drinks too much and behaves in a macho way that is really not true to his inner self. Jonas is a creature of his era (he grew up in the 50s) who is trying to adapt to the changes of the late 60s and early 70s. He is not quite able to pull it off, and the result is not good.
IT: Why was the connection to the Vietnam War [Jonas had been in the war] important to you as a non-veteran writer?
I am not exactly not a veteran, though I did not see combat. The Viet Nam war affected everyone of a certain age, not only veterans. It was a huge embarrassment to anyone of left-leaning principles. Johnson’s troop buildup was based on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which was based on a misrepresentation (a fancy word meaning “a lie.”) American ships in Vietnamese territorial waters were fired upon; the Johnson administration claimed they were in international waters, knowing this to be contrary to fact. Does this sound familiar? Anyway, many thousands of young men were faced with a dilemma: would they support a war they felt to be unjustified and foolish, risking their lives by going into the military, or would they run, dodge, evade, or fake a disability in order to weasel out of doing so? Most solutions were not morally satisfactory. Further, there was the anti-war movement, which was not so noble or romantic as it is usually portrayed (or so devious and anti-American as it is portrayed by conservatives). It is not so easy to go against the beliefs and values of the people who have raised and guided you.
Then, our side lost. Those who were anti-war protesters have been blamed for it ever since. America is not supposed to lose any wars, since God likes us best.
IT: What compelled you to write so many long, graphic sex scenes? Why are they important to the book as a whole?
I was a sexually inhibited young man and missed out on the sexual revolution that was going on around me. I suppose this is my revenge. Their importance to the book is—? Well, I decided I would have either a sex scene or a fight in every “book” or chapter. Partly this was to keep the reader reading; partly it was for my own entertainment. If you notice, though, the sex scenes usually have elements of violence. I would say that if the novel has a message, it is that violence is not always the best strategy.
IT: Why did you decide that publishing this book as a serial novel would be a good route?
I jumped at the chance to publish in this venue because I had given up on publishing the book in any venue. No publisher wants to tackle a thousand-page novel by an unknown author. Self-publishing was not an option, at least not in print form; I didn’t want to end up with a warehouse full of five-pound books with no way to distribute them. Publishing it in serial form gives me a chance to go through it one more time, making a few small changes and eliminating bloopers and stupidities.
IT: How does The Scarred Woman compare to other works you've written (and published)?
It’s longer. Well, it’s a lot longer. I have published a book of poems and a book of essays. I have a book of short stories that I’ve been working on off and on for years. I have finished two shorter novels based on pieces that have fallen off of this one, but all of that together does not add up to the number of pages that are in this book.
Another difference is in the number of drafts. I seem to have found Jonas’s young-man voice and fallen into it rather easily. I haven’t labored over sentences and paragraphs, so the writing is looser and maybe not as crafted. Maybe not as good. The focus is on the sequence of imaginary events, not so much on language.
Also, there are all those sex scenes. If I were to write it today, I would leave a lot of that stuff out. But, hey, what the fuck.
IT: For those of us that have made it to book 6 and await the remainder of the novel, do you have any hints you might want to share about what lies ahead?
It doesn’t get any nicer.
Click here to read books 1-8 of Ross’s 29-book serial novel, The Scarred Woman
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