Interview with TJ Price about The Disappearance of Tom Nero

TJ Price...according to legend, it is a name that doesn’t make any good anagrams. And yet, TJ Price has given us the innovative novelette The Disappearance of Tom Nero, a tale full of wordplay and hidden meanings. This is a fascinating short tale you'll read over and over again to try to catch the clues and solve the ancient mystery. Although TJ is theoretically my friend, he has refused to reveal the meaning of this book to me, or even tell me if I was on the right track. Fortunately, I have the opportunity to interview him here to corner him into making some revelations.

Pre-order The Disappearance of Tom Nero here (out next week on May 16th!), and once you've read it, send me your theories and anagram lists. Please!

1. This is a story of puzzles and riddles, including wordplay and hints from other languages and apparent errors that actually contribute to the meaning. Did the story come first for you and then the riddles, or the other way around? Or did they come to you at the same time?

None of this was intentional. I don't really even remember writing it, to be honest. Nothing was planted, but it all grew anyway. At some point, though—during the drafting process—I started realizing that what I was writing had to do with rearrangement as much as it did with vanishing. I have always believed that there's power in names and in naming, though. Is a name a mask, or is it something that we hold much closer to us, to obscure some greater void—and what happens when we notice that void?

I imagine it notices us, too.

2. Tom Nero. Who is this guy, and why should we care that he's disappeared?

In many ways, Tom Nero is a younger version of myself. Pretentious, unsure of himself and his place in life, eager to explore and discover and interpret and understand. Here is someone who wants desperately to communicate, to understand as well as be understood, but who wears their naïveté like a suit of armor. In the very first pages, Tom expresses a desire for a sort of immortality. I imagine him as the kind of person who has dreams about the apocalypse—surviving it, of course (what hero doesn't?)—and becomes the prototypical Scribe by default, chronicling what happens to humanity after the unthinkable occurs. Like all writers, Tom is convinced that his words will survive through history, and probably has a pile of old notebooks and journals kept in a box in his closet. I think it's this desire that makes Tom sympathetic, and it's this which makes his disappearance all the more tragic, especially when SCREB

3. When Tom Nero first learns about the "screb" from his old friend Asa (Asa D. Piper, that is), Asa tells him that the screb is a "demon of contagion" or "cognition." What kinds of ideas do you think might be contagious demons?

All ideas are contagious. Only some of them are demons. The difficulty is learning to recognize which ones. For this, I refer you to The Field Guide to Syntactical Demonology, by SCREB

4. Tom falls in love with Silas Monson. Can we trust this guy? Is he a good guy?

I would not advise trusting anyone you've just met. Trust is something that must accrue over a period of time—through evidence and repeated action. Those who trust blindly are those who end up being taken advantage of. I would caution wariness upon initial encounters of any kind, be they written or be they face-to-face with another living, thinking human being.

That being said, Silas does appear to have all the traits of a good guy when we meet him. He is warm, friendly, genuine and generous. But how many times has a so-called "good guy" removed their mask to show a leering, hidden face? I'm not suggesting that Silas is one of these, of course. That's up to the reader to decide, given the evidence on the page.

5. This has a really innovative layout, including some great doodles that provide us with more clues as to what we're reading (and what a screb might be). What are some of your favorite doodles?

I truly could not be happier with the interior illustrations in this book. The extremely talented artist Alexis Macaluso is the renderer of those doodles. Many of them were written directly into the original story, to provide a sort of visual context for Tom's mental state as the plot progresses, but many of them were also drawn out of the text by Alexis herself. The one I am the most fond of, of course, is the one on page SCREB I'm also quite fond of the formatting in the second part of the book, which was my idea late in the process and one which—as a writer who submits to various publications myself—rather makes me giggle.

6. What stories/texts provided inspiration for Tom Nero?

The forebear that looms with the longest shadow over this book is—obviously—House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. I will always remain in awe of this creation. It has the distinction of being one of the only written works which has actually inspired genuine terror in my brain. It is immersive, beautiful, and bizarre, unfolding in slow loops around the reader, who does not notice that said loops are inexorably tightening . . . until it's too late.

Some other influences I can list, most in the realm of post-modern literature or so-called "ergodic" fiction: Hopscotch, by Julio Cortazar; (elements of) The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larson; if on a winter's night a traveler, by Italo Calvino; Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov, many stories from the work of Jorge Luis Borges ("Tlön, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius" first among them), and The Nomenos Omen, by Dr. Chris Revere.

7. It would be dangerous to speak of the devil. But what is the devil?

The devil is what listens when you speak and keeps careful note of every word you say. If your life is a labyrinth, the devil is Theseus, and the only defense you have is shifting your walls to confuse his progress.

It is worth noting here that the genre title of "ergodic" fiction springs from professor Espen J. Aarseth, who coined the neologism in 1997 from two Greek words: ergon, meaning "work," and hodos, meaning "path." Ergodic fiction, then, is that which requires straying from the normal path of reading, into the untrammeled woods surrounding the text on the page.

As they say, the devil's in the details.

8. In addition to everything else I learned from this novelette, I learned about a cocktail called a Skinny Pirate - Captain Morgan and Diet Coke. What drink do you recommend for pairing with this book?

The "Skinny Pirate" is not my invention. In another life, I used to work at a neighborhood bar in a harbor town and one of the regulars who came in only ever drank this cocktail. He drank it by the pint glass, one after the other, night after night, and only with a lemon, never a lime. He was married to a man named Lucky, but the woman who gave the drink its name was a close friend of mine—after I moved away, she disappeared, along with Jim Kennedy. I keep photographs of their faces close to my heart.

The drink I recommend pairing with The Disappearance of Tom Nero is called the Zmizet (pron. ZMI-zet), for thematic reasons, though—frustratingly—I cannot seem to find any mention of this cocktail anywhere. I had it once in a bar in the city of Kutná Hora, in the Czech Republic, while visiting the famous Sedlec Ossuary. The bartender had a long, pale face and mournful eyes. It was a local recipe, I think, and tasted strongly of sour cherries, rather like a lambic.

I should like to return there, someday.

9. Should we study up on our Roman emperors?

No. Too much time is spent looking back for the past. There should be a balance between what has happened and what is yet to come, and that balance lives in what is happening right now. There is, however, a great deal of interesting observation in the Latin "sententiae" that Tom Nero talks about in the book. These are most often used as mottoes or slogans, for companies or clubs or states—some have even worked their way into colloquial usage, despite the passage of centuries, such as "Carpe diem!" or "Tempus fugit!" But there are others, less common, that are interesting—in this regard, Tom and I share a curiosity. There's a kind of poetry in them. Here's a favorite, from Horace:

              Quid rides? Mutatio nomine de te, fabula narratur.

(Loose) translation: "Why do you laugh? Change the name, and the story is about you."

10. Which season is most violent?

All seasons are equally violent in their own way, have the capacity of violence. There is never a gentle transition between them—it is always marked by tumult in the skies, in the trees, in the ground beneath. From thaw to scorch, doldrum to hurricane, there is no escape from the seasons, either during their reign or at their abdications.

11. Is anything worse than disappearing?

To those who are left behind, no. To those who have disappeared—who can say?

12. Anything else you'd like to say?

I would like to thank Ivy Grimes for selecting such interesting questions. Answering them has been a joy.

I would like to say, too, that publishing a book is nothing like I thought it would be and everything at the same time. Being able to tell people I know that I am about to have a book in the world has been one of the great joys of my life. When I was a little kid—first grade, maybe—they went around the circle and asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. When they got to me, I said, proudly, "Author!" and I remember Eric, the kid with his index finger constantly jammed up his left nostril—made a face, and said:

"What's that?"

Eric, this one's for you.

Thanks to TJ for these intricate answers/puzzles!