It’s been a long time since I conducted a BB10-Q interview and almost as long since I wrote anything on the blog front. I’m sure you all missed me terribly! You did miss me, right!?

Anyway, let’s get on with our latest BB10-Q interview, this time asking questions of a man who is situated not so far from me geographically. Jeremiah Dutch, welcome to BB10-Q!

Hello Jerry. Where are you now and how are you doing?

I am in my apartment in Yokohama. I am doing well, enjoying a bit of free time with my wife and kids before the school year starts at my university job.

What brought you to Japan?

 The short answer is adventure.  The longer story is I was looking for work after graduation from college and was curious about teaching overseas. I had been interested in the Czech Republic, but then the economy supposedly went bad there, plus I didn’t know anyone there. However, I did have a friend living in Japan. I called him up and asked him how life was here. He said a lot of positive things. So, I applied at a couple of eikaiwa (English conversation school) chains and landed a job with one of them which brought me over here.

What were you writing before you came here?

Mostly I was writing screenplays, many of which I never finished.

Are there any of those screenplays that you yearn to pick up again and finish?

Not really. Most were not exciting enough. I should say I did finish two feature-length romantic comedies (they were the rage in the 1990s) and one short script was turned into a student film, Silent Partner. Although it wasn’t much like the thriller I wrote. After I got tired of screenwriting, I started writing short horror stories and occasionally short non-fiction pieces, some of which got published.

Tell us about your releases and current project(s).

I am about to finish the rough draft of what will hopefully be my first full-length novel, Gaijin House, about foreigners living in Japan.

An adapted excerpt from the first chapter entitled Zen Failure in Kyoto won an honorable mention in the Writers in Kyoto competition last year. Of course I don’t live in Kyoto, but the first chapter is set there.

Seventh Writing Competition Results: Honorable Mentions (Jeremiah Dutch)

I have also started another longer piece of fiction. The working title is Still in Contention. It’s a nostalgic bittersweet story about a recently divorced man reflecting on his life and the ‘86 Boston Red Sox.  

One could certainly write a few books on the “gaijin” experience in Japan! Can you relate to us an uplifting or memorable episode of your life here as a foreigner?

One episode that comes to mind is a random Japanese woman asking me for directions in the middle of a crowded plaza in front of my home station. I am not sure why she asked someone who is obviously not Japanese for directions, but I found it amusing. I took it as a compliment. So many Japanese people are shy and reluctant to talk to foreigners, mostly due to the language barrier, I think. Anyway, I must’ve looked like I knew the area and was trustworthy. It might have helped that I was with my kids at the time and therefore appeared safe and approachable.

Being asked for directions at a station would be fine. Being asked for directions at the place below might be a good start for one of Jerry’s horror shorts…

Who would you say influences your writing?

Good question! Lots of writers. Still in Contention is influenced by W.D. Wetherell. When I was younger, I tried to imitate J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King and John Irving at various points in my life. I like Tom Wolfe’s style, though not necessarily his attitude. Nick Hornby, Haruki Murakami are influences and so is the hardboiled style of Robert B. Parker.

I’m currently reading The Shining myself. It’s quite different to what I remember from the Kubrick film adaptation. Keeping spoilers to a minimum, what important elements were missing from the film in your opinion?

I enjoyed both the book and movie, but they are very different. The Kubrick film is very cold compared to the book (typical of Kubrick) and the novel warmer, but much more tragic. Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the main character is also different from he is in the novel, especially in the beginning. A side character, Dick Halloran, is more important in the book. Also, and this is minor, but in the novel, he is described as having an afro; in the movie he is portrayed by Scatman Crothers, who is bald.

Can you put your finger on what makes Murakami’s works so compelling? I personally find he has a way to make the mundane somehow more interesting and then throwing something surreal into that now interesting life.

I am actually more familiar with his more mainstream books than his more surreal stuff. In the case of Norwegian Wood, there was a tragic comic tone I found very interesting and made the characters seem very human.

Has COVID affected your writing in any way aside from the obvious practical issues?

The isolation almost certainly has. I suppose it kept me inside and writing a bit more than normal, but otherwise I am glad we seem to be getting past it.

You’re self-published. What has surprised you, disheartened you and encouraged you about the process?

My novella, Natalie and Her Lovers is self-published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I was surprised as to how easy a process it is. I am not disheartened by anything with publishing through KDP, but understand Amazon’s controversial impact on publishing. I think when I could finally hold the hardcover version in my hands, it encouraged me to write more.  

Is there any particular reason you chose this tale to tell? Has it been swirling in your head for a long time?

The central conflict of the story had been swirling in my head for a very long time. I think it takes about twenty years from the experiences I draw on in life for me to have enough emotional distance and emotional truth, and enough of a clear idea of what I want to write, to produce something effective. This is probably why I couldn’t complete a lot of the screenplays and only wrote two feature-length ones. For example, writing about Japan, in one of my scripts, which might be okay for a comedy, but not okay if you want to get more serious. That is why in Gaijin House, I am only now writing about young foreigners relatively new to Japan. It is also why Natalie concerns college kids in the 1990s; it draws on my college experience over 25 years ago. Damn, that makes me feel old! As for why I chose to write it, without giving away too much of the plot, although it is set in the past, I think it deals with a subject matter that is still sadly very relevant today and probably more so than we realised in the 1990s.

What are you hoping to achieve in the next ten years in terms of writing?

Hopefully, to have written more books! I am in the process of writing two right now, and I have vague ideas for a couple more that ideally will become clearer in my head as time passes. I will also need to do some research.

Best of luck with it all! And finally, how has living in Japan affected/influenced your writing?

There’s no way I could be writing Gaijin House without the experience of living in Japan. It’s not just in the details, but in certain aspects of the plot and the perspective of living outside of your country, but even with my writing set in the US, where I was born and raised, I think has given me a certain objective distance I might not have had otherwise.

And now for the BB10-Q questions, a list of ten light questions I ask each guest.

Q1) What book are you reading now? OR What was the last book you read?

I am reading Light in August by William Faulkner and The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth. I also just finished reading a rough draft of a Christian novel by David Roderick, a good friend of mine. The working title is All Things Work Out for You. I think it is quite good and I wish him every success with it.

Q2) What genre of books do you usually read?

Just about everything!

Q3) What was the last book that made you cry or laugh out loud or gave you pause for thought?

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. I don’t know why I waited so long to read that book.

My uncle recommended Slaughterhosue Five to me years ago and I read it. I feel I didn’t really appreciate it and need to revisit. Any thoughts so far?

Murakami and Irving were both influenced by Vonnegut and you see it in their dark humor. His novel takes a very unheroic look at World War Two with almost with the same kind of black comedy you see in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, but instead, he focuses on the individual experiences of soldiers. That very intimate view of combat is like Tim O’Brien’s semi-autobiographical Vietnam War novel, The Things They Carried.   O’Brien is another favorite writer of mine, although he doesn’t have the black humor nor the sci-fiction element Vonnegut has. I think the sci-fi element represents PTSD. Slaughterhouse Five is interesting when you take into account his own experience, especially as a POW.

Q4) What book do you remember fondly from your childhood?

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, sort of Walden for the elementary school crowd. 

Who is Walden? I’m British and have no idea!

Walden is a book by the American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. He wrote about self-reliance, living alone in a cabin by Walden Pond in Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century. 

Q5) Apart from reading, what hobbies do you have?

I love watching baseball, and I am trying to get back into running. I also love to ski when I can.

Q6) Where is your favourite place to read? (Ex. In bed, on the sofa, in a park, in a coffee shop etc.)

On the train and on the sofa.

Q7) What book would you like to see made into a TV show and who would you like to play the lead character?

I hear there are plans to turn The World According to Garp, my favorite novel, into a mini-series. Robin Williams played the main character in the movie, I could imagine Rami Malek or maybe Daniel Radcliffe (with an American accent) in the lead.

Q8) If you could meet a fictional character in real life, who would it be and why?

Maybe Sherlock Holmes. I don’t think I would like him much in real life, but it would be interesting to see how his mind worked. I have read all the books and short stories and have seen the 1980s tv series with Jeremy Brett and the recent reimaging with Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s not just some weird dude with magnifying glass, deerstalker cap and Inverness cape, nor is Dr. Watson some bumbling idiot as he was sometimes portrayed in earlier movies. Watson is a skilled doctor and writer and he’s good with a gun, and brave. I consider him an equal partner in their adventures and he has far better social graces than Holmes. He is also incredibly patient with Holmes’ condescension. If I had to keep hearing about how I “see, but don’t observe” I think I would eventually snap. Come to think of it, I think I would rather meet Watson!    

Any favourite tales? I have a soft spot for The Hound of the Baskervilles, as it really stirs up images of misty English moors and isolated manors.

It’s hard to say, maybe A Scandal in Bohemia. “To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman,” what a great beginning! Who is she? Why is she always the woman? The reader immediately wants to know and is drawn in. This story shows a human side to him. 

Q9) What literary world would you like to experience/live in?

Tough question! Maybe the 1960s Japan as described by Murakami in Norwegian Wood. I wouldn’t care for the extremism and unrest, but it seems so different from the Japan of today.

Q10) If you could say something to the entire world today, what would it be?

Be kind to each other.

Hear, hear! The fact that more than one BB10-Q interviewee has said this gives me hope, and also makes me hope that one day we won’t need to say this as a reaction to the world.

My thanks to Jeremiah Dutch for a thoughtful and wide-ranging interview! Please check out his debut novella, Natalie and her Lovers, and if you read it, please consider a rating and/or review, as these are so important to us indie authors.

I really do enjoy the BB10-Q interviews with authors and readers. My horizons are always broadened that bit more! I hope you too find them entertaining, enlightening and perhaps even motivating! Now go and write/read that book!

The images used above are either my own or taken from the internet and used in the sense of fair play. If any are used unfairly, please inform me and I will remove them. Thank you for your patience.