CHAIN INTERVIEW : Tucker Leighty-Phillips by Abigail Stewart
Discovering, and more so recommending new writers is one of the very best parts of our lives here at The Racket. There’s nothing more exciting then stumbling across some fresh faced short story writer or poet or essayist and immediately telling all of your friends about it.
That said, as hard as we try, we aren’t always going to be hip to what’s good. To help us expand our knowledge, and yours, we’ve started what we refer to as a “Chain Interview”, in which the author who is interviewed will select and interview the next author in the chain and so on and so forth, potentially, forever and ever until we’re all living in stylishly appointed bunkers under the Earth.
Today, Abigail Stewart (interviewed by Kathleen J. Woods) interviews Tucker Leighty-Phillips.
Maybe This Is What I Deserve
Tucker Leighty-Phillips
Split/Lip Press
Interview by
Abigail Stewart
I met Tucker Leighty-Phillips in a virtual workshop with Longleaf Review, where I was a reader at the time. We strung together words in isolation and eventually met in person at last year’s AWP. Already a fan of his style, I was thrilled to see that Maybe This is What I Deserve won SplitLip Press’s 2022 Fiction Chapbook Contest, selected by Isle McElroy, author of The Atmospherians.
I particularly enjoy books that possess a heady sense of place and I believe Leighty-Phillips’s chapbook meets the brief in this regard. The stories contained within this flash collection reflect back the nostalgia of childhood, the tangible sense of living in rural Appalachia, and, occasionally, the surprising magic of a child’s imagination filtered through the lens of adulthood.
I was excited to speak with Tucker about his debut chapbook, Maybe This is What I Deserve, out June 20, 2023 from Split/Lip Press. We sat down over a shared Google Doc, separated by a couple of timezones, to discuss topics ranging from nostalgia, to titling a work, to establishing a sense of place, to Cary Grant.
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Abigail Stewart: There is an almost painful nostalgia that permeates this collection, an ache of recognition after the deep descent into adulthood. Can you briefly discuss your inspiration for Maybe This is What I Deserve?
Tucker Leighty-Phillips: “Painful nostalgia” is a good way of putting it! I think that’s part of why I chose the epigraphs I did–especially the Jose Mourinho quote (“If I speak, I am in big trouble”). Sometimes it feels hapless to reflect on the past, especially a troubled past. But I also really wanted to reflect–to place the good and bad into context, to give myself the gift of hindsight as I examined my childhood and the life I’ve lived so far. I’ve had a great life, don’t get me wrong, but there are so many things I look back on and am like “whoa, that wasn’t normal at all,” and it feels good to sift through those emotions on the page.
AS: In “Toddy’s Got Lice Again,” the second story in your collection, the reader comes across the titular line: “That’s what we do as humans, right? We find ways to turn our consequences into comforts, to say maybe this is good enough, maybe this is what I deserve.” Is the implication that humans get comfortable in the inherent discomfort of living or is there an element of martyrdom at play?
TLP: That line was born out of some feelings I’d been dealing with for a long time. I think, in my deepest throes of poverty, entrapment in the service industry, and binge-drinking, I started feeling like I was kind of predestined to fail. There was always this voice in my head saying, “you’re a loser, and you’re always going to be one.” I think I listened to that voice a lot, and started to believe it. I was dealing with housing insecurity, food insecurity, losing jobs and getting dumped, and I just bought into a belief that I was kind of meant to live that way. I think that’s what capitalism does–makes you think your own scarcity is a direct failing of yourself rather than the systems you’ve inherited. Fortunately, I’m much more stable nowadays, and I take my frustration out on the bigger picture rather than myself.
AS: Authors have said that short story collections should have a title that mirrors one of the story’s titles in the collection. I am not of that mindset, myself, but can we talk about why you chose that particular line as the title?
TLP: I think, for the most part, every story in the collection feels like it’s reflected by the title. Characters who are trapped in ruts who only find themselves to blame. It’s kind of like Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, where he claims the title comes from many of the characters he plays, who are often creating the problems in a given situation. I think Maybe This Is What I Deserve is like that. All of my characters are kind of reduced to feeling like everything is all their fault.
AS: In several of your stories, most notably “Catfish Wishing Well” and “Mother’s Blessing,” you make reference to human character’s intimate connections to objects of capitalism. One character’s desire is to become a Dollar General, another is dating a Royal Crown Cola Vending Machine. In fact, many of your stories mention particular brands: Aldi’s, Kool-Aid, A&W, Hollister. What was your approach to this carefully peppered ‘name-dropping’ in your stories?
TLP: You know, I think about this a lot, and I don’t really know how to answer it. I think sometimes, I lean on brands because they’re class signifiers. There’s the kid who has Pop-Tarts and the kid who has Frosted Toaster Pastries, and there’s also the kid who has neither. When I was in school, Bosco sticks were the class signifier. They were literally just breadsticks, but they cost two dollars, whereas school lunch was a buck, and Bosco Sticks couldn’t be charged to your account, unlike school lunch, so kids would get the breadsticks to show they had money. There were daily spells where I watched the breadstick line with a sense of hunger, even if the lunch I had was the one that tasted better and filled me up (and was free!). Brands are heavily associated with yearning in my stories; my characters want to feel like Hollister is a store they’re accepted in. They want to make money by returning carts for quarter deposits at Aldi. Other times, I think a brand can be a cultural signifier, it can speak to a time and place. I think I find myself writing about Dollar Stores and RC Cola and Save-A-Lots because they remind me of Kentucky, and I like to write about home, even if it's not the version you often see in stories.
AS: Some of your stories take leaps into what would appear to be the surrealism of a child’s imagination. In “The Whirlpool,” kids are creating a spiraling whirlpool in the swimming pool that ends up sucking down one of their friends. “We didn’t want to leave him there, but shit,” one kid comments while another licks her popsicle with perfect nonchalance. Why did you choose to manifest the ambivalence of children in this way?
TLP: I don’t know if it's ambivalence. Helplessness, maybe? Or maybe it’s something else. I like to write about kids' games with the gravitas that kids place upon them–so I try to hold the suspension of disbelief whenever possible, even if some of my characters aren’t.
AS: Throughout the collection there is often an overlapping of childhood and adulthood. In “The Toddlers are Playing Airport Again,” the children seem almost too adept at becoming a cog in the airport’s machine, lugging imaginary baggage down the slides. When one of the parents asks, “don’t you kids want to fly,” they’re shot down by the toddler’s strict adherence to reality. Is this a commentary on lost childhood or growing up too fast or something else entirely?
TLP: To be honest, one of the first things I tried to unlearn as a writer was the need to make a commentary. It puts so much pressure on your shit! Instead, I try to explore questions and feelings, and whatever comes out usually feels symbolic or meaningful to me. I never want to force an idea–because I think so much of what you care about and put value in will implicitly exist within your work. That doesn’t mean you can’t be intentional, but I have found my work to be much more impactful when I’m not trying to force it. That being said–the day you asked this question, I had just watched Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman, and I was moved by how this movie placed childhood earnestness and adult stoicism into conversation. It reminds me of how people will ask “what would ten-year-old you think about who you are now?” and I believe the most interesting part of the question is knowing ten-year-old me would be willing to express it.
AS: Your collection sings with a tangible understanding of place, how does setting impact your writing at large and how did you approach it in this collection?
TLP: Thank you!! That’s something I wanted to accomplish, but wasn’t sure if I was pulling it off. I kind of mentioned this above, but I wanted to write about Kentucky in a way that was familiar to me. I live in Appalachia now, but really, I grew up just off the Interstate, so Kentucky to me was fast food chains and dollar stores. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the mountains, but even still, the place I grew up in was a place, and a place that I wanted to write about. I wanted to find a way to channel Kentucky public schools, friend’s houses, and strange little livelihoods that I saw growing up. I hope this version of Kentucky, or rural life in general, is familiar to folks.
AS: I’d also like to know more about your experimentation with form. Though most of your stories are flash, “The Rumpelstiltskin Understudies (play)” is an exploration of a play and I was fascinated by the switch-up. What was your approach to the marriage of different forms? What did you feel was the most difficult part of organizing this collection?
TLP: It’s corny to say, but I think Maybe This Is What I Deserve is a collection in puberty. It was written across a three year span where I was really learning who I was as a writer. I was experimenting; not just with form, but with themes. I was figuring out the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. I think you can feel those growing pains in this collection. There are things that kind of nestle in, like the story you reference, because they are part of a larger narrative of understanding. Making sense of who I am as a writer. Sequencing the collection was tough for that reason–it was hard to make sense of how to place things. It was Split/Lip’s Fiction Editor, Pedro Ramirez, who suggested that “The Rumpelstiltskin Understudies (play)” be the scaffolding, right in the middle. And I think it makes sense.
AS: What are you working on now?
TLP: I guess I’ve been trying to watch every Cary Grant film. The writing comes and goes, but Cary is forever.
