The Punch of a Story: José B. González Interviews Antonio Farias

Antonio Farias is the author of In the Company of Wolves. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert. His work has been published in Sudden Fiction Latino (W. W. Norton, 2010), Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul, Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature, Urban Latino Magazine, Tilde and Bilingual Review. He lives, works, and plays in Denver, Colorado. Follow him on Instagram @nyscribbler. Find out more about him at antoniofarias.com.

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González: Your novel has these impressive details that make the reader feel the setting in a physical and spiritual way. How has living in the East and West Coasts influenced your writing? 

Farias: There definitely was some intentionality to blending the world of spirit and physical world into the narrative, particularly as the characters move westward. Having lived a bi-coastal life, place is certainly an influence, especially as it pertains to being more open about the unseen world. There is something to be said about nature—big wide open nature—doing something to our psyche that opens us up to larger questions of being. The flip side is that the highly built environment, such as cities, does narrow our connection to the physical world, and that’s something that plays out in the novel as it does in my personal life.

There is something to be said about nature—big wide open nature—doing something to our psyche that opens us up to larger questions of being.

Antonio Farias

González: You have published flash fiction and short stories in the past. How did that experience prepare you to write a novel? 

Farias: So like many BIPOC writers, I suffer from imposter syndrome. I’ve been told my writing is good for the past 35 years and yet it has taken me late life ah-ha moments to come to realization that yeah, I can write and tell a good story, one that touches those inner strings we have that vibrate and make us more willing to rethink the world as we find it, make us feel deeper than what we’ve been taught is permissible—especially for men. So for me, the short story is both a safe playground in which to experiment and it tightens up my craft because you have to get to the punch of the story in as few words as possible, particularly these days when attention spans are so scattered for us all. In the Company of Wolves began as a short story in first person, ten years ago, the first person part something I always shied away from by which two of my writing faculty, Mary Yukari Waters and Mary Otis, pushed me to try, and I’m super grateful to both for seeing something in my craft that I didn’t.

González: When I read your work, I feel like I’m reading a Latine Jack London at times. Which fiction do you admire most?

Farias: That’s an interesting observation, Jack London being one of my early favorite writers. I would also say there is a good amount of influence from Rudolfo Anaya for the same reasons—wide open spaces where the natural world and creatures we’ve relegated to zoos, come into close proximity to humans and we learn to communicate in ways we’ve long forgotten. Most recently, Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance and Peter Heller’s Dog Star come to mind for nature fiction, but most definitely the non-fiction work of Barry Lopez who wrote amazing landscapes into being. More on the dystopic side of nature, Lily Brooks-Dalton’s The Light Pirate and Trashlands by Alison Stine are also ones I’d recommend.

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González: The pacing in your novel is just right. How much of that is a result of revision versus instinct? 

Farias: Pacing for me is tied to voice and setting. The languid pace of the novel has to do with both the coming of age place the main character is in, the retrospective structure of the novel that every now and then makes itself visible, which of course is tinged with the nostalgia we all experience as we relive the past in that hazy, semi grainy way the air and beat slow down. I wanted the reader to experience the pulsing beat of NYC, the frenetic push that leads to an ever slowing tempo as the characters head west, to include the changing density of the landscape they see through the Greyhound bus window as they move away from NYC to the expansive horizons of New Mexico. 

González: What other projects are you working on right now?

Farias: So I’ve taken my drawer novel, The Temple of the Jaguar, the one I can’t let go of because still think it has a home out there somewhere, which traces the redemptive journey of a mercenary as he returns to Ecuador to bury his estranged father only to be confronted with a 500 year-old family curse he can’t outrun.  And I’m going through first draft edits of a novel that ties AI, the Vatican, and the Knights of St. John—think William Gibson meets Dan Brown, meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Also, I’m trying to figure out this writer’s life now that I have a published novel, doing appearances, workshops, and trying not to get into a funk because it’s not that much different on this side of publishing than when I was unpublished: dirty inside baseball few authors are willing to say aloud..

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