Ask the Author: Tom Noyes
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Tom Noyes
As is readily apparent, the 19th century writer, preacher, and Oneida Commune leader John Humphrey Noyes and I share a surname, and I was always aware of him and his story lurking there, seemingly waiting for me. I think I knew, ever since I started to write seriously, that I was on a collision course with this novel. John Humphrey's views on communal marriage and Perfectionism, along with his belief that he was divinely chosen to usher in God's kingdom in rural Central New York State, fascinated me.
My fascination with John Humphrey deepened after I started reading his substantial publications and private correspondence. He was such a conflicted personality, a man of such extremes, that I soon realized that I would need help in figuring him out, and that’s when I started meeting the other citizens of his community. In discovering them through their diaries and memoirs, as well as in my own pages as I watched them begin to connect and conflict with John Humphrey and each other, I thought I might be onto something.
Also, I visited the Oneida Mansion House and Museum on a couple occasions. I spent a few nights in one of the mansion house rooms, worked on the novel for a few days in the restored mansion house library, roamed around the grounds, hiked around the lake, was stung by a bee outside John Humphrey's bedroom, even dozed off for a few minutes in this gazebo-like structure Oneidans called the Summer House. I don’t consider myself a superstitious writer, but I can’t deny these visits helped prepare me, in a kind of spiritual, uncanny way, for the writing I had to do, the voices I needed to access.
And then the character of Charles Guiteau showed up and transformed the project completely. The more I read about him before, during, and after his stint with the Oneidans—his arc from would-be Perfectionist to presidential assassin—the more I realized this wasn’t only John Humphrey Noyes’s book, this was going to have to be Charles Guiteau’s book, too.
My fascination with John Humphrey deepened after I started reading his substantial publications and private correspondence. He was such a conflicted personality, a man of such extremes, that I soon realized that I would need help in figuring him out, and that’s when I started meeting the other citizens of his community. In discovering them through their diaries and memoirs, as well as in my own pages as I watched them begin to connect and conflict with John Humphrey and each other, I thought I might be onto something.
Also, I visited the Oneida Mansion House and Museum on a couple occasions. I spent a few nights in one of the mansion house rooms, worked on the novel for a few days in the restored mansion house library, roamed around the grounds, hiked around the lake, was stung by a bee outside John Humphrey's bedroom, even dozed off for a few minutes in this gazebo-like structure Oneidans called the Summer House. I don’t consider myself a superstitious writer, but I can’t deny these visits helped prepare me, in a kind of spiritual, uncanny way, for the writing I had to do, the voices I needed to access.
And then the character of Charles Guiteau showed up and transformed the project completely. The more I read about him before, during, and after his stint with the Oneidans—his arc from would-be Perfectionist to presidential assassin—the more I realized this wasn’t only John Humphrey Noyes’s book, this was going to have to be Charles Guiteau’s book, too.
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