Few short story writers can write authoritatively on such wide-ranging subjects as WWII Berlin, or the High Sierra during the Wild West days, or Popeye the Sailorman. Jim Ruland does all this and then some in his debut collection of short stories titled Big Lonesome. Ruland has been quietly publishing his absurdist brand of realism for years now in such well-known and well-respected publications as McSweeney’s, garnering a devout following and a sizeable NEA grant, to boot. A self-professed punk and anti-establishmentarian, Ruland nevertheless holds down a day job at a Los Angeles advertising firm, takes long walks on the beach and, these days at least, prefers curling up with a good book to the violent exigencies of the mosh pit.

Steve Hansen: Owing to your punk background, what made you turn to writing instead of playing in a band? Or were you in a band and it just didn't work out?

Jim Ruland: I've been in two bands and then only briefly. One was a punk rock/speed metal outfit that some of my shipmates put together but the other members got kicked out of the Navy for drug use and they went on without me. I also played tin whistle in an Irish jam band that had an accordion and conga drums. We played one gig on St. Patrick's Day and called it quits. We had the longest version of "Dirty Old Town" you've ever heard. I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid, but the Navy had me pretty well convinced that was never going to happen, but once I got to college my English composition instructor was very encouraging. He lit the fire.

SH: It's common to hear how one uncommon teacher can influence the rest of one of their student's lives. You teach a junior college writing course, right? What are some of the ways you strive to make just such an impact?

JR: Yes, I teach a variety of entry-level composition courses. I love teaching community college because I'm a huge believer in second chances, being a product of one myself. I try to let my students know -- not on the first day or even the second or third -- that I'd joined the Navy out of high school and got a late start on my college education. In other words, I was just like them. Community college is all about desire and accountability, things that most students who go to college right after high school are stridently trying to avoid. Most community college students work full-time and many have a family to support. They know all about accountability. So I try very hard to make them understand that I'm not in the business of handing out frivolous assignments, that we do things for a reason, and that each assignment builds on the next. I get a lot students who feel they can't write, but because their experience is so different from that of your typical first-year college student, they have amazing stories to tell. When I arrived in my first freshman English class, I'd literally been around the world, but I lacked the confidence to tell my stories. My English teacher, Tim Poland, changed that and I incorporate many of the same strategies he used in his class. For example, I have the students interview and introduce each other on the first day of class to create an atmosphere where anyone can say anything at any time. I also make sure that when I leave the first day, I know everyone's name.

SH: It's clear the Navy wasn't good for your confidence, but it has also been the source of much of your material. There's some kind of riddle wrapped in an enigma here, don't you think? And if you hadn't had that Navy experience, would your competency as a writer be better right now, or not as good?

JR: Excuse me, Dr. Hansen. This couch is getting awfully uncomfortable. No, you're right, my adventure in the Navy was awash in contradictions. Ultimately it was good for my confidence, but it was one of those lessons you don't realize you learned until much later, and I emerged from the great gray womb that is the Navy with no earthly idea what I wanted to do with my life other than not ever have anything to do with the Navy ever again. Of course, I still had six years of reserves to get through. Here's the rub: I basically bombed out of Catholic prep school so when I enlisted it was very much a step down. I learned a great deal from my shipmates, but I got in a lot of trouble on the beach and had been told so many times what I a fuck-up I was that I started to believe it.

SH: I’m not really a doctor, I just play one on the Internet. But enough about that… and thank goodness for Poland! Thanks to him and your own perseverance, you recovered enough confidence to secure a weighty NEA grant; publish your first collection of short fiction; teach junior college; and you’ve even started your own reading series in LA’s Chinatown. What motivates you to be so prolific?

JR: Two words: clean living. I think it's a lot of things: circumstance, compulsion, necessity, but it boils down to the belief that there are many kinds of luck in this world, and the only kind you can count on is that which you make on your own.

SH: Writing is certainly something one does on one’s own, and the stories that make up Big Lonesome are so strikingly disparate in subject matter and point of view. I mean, how do you go from a parody like "The Previous [Adventures] of Popeye the Sailor" to a form of storytelling you pinched from a 14th century monk in "Kessler Has No Lucky Pants" to a serious historical/psychological first person narrative of the Chicago slaughterhouses in "A Terrible Thing in a Place Like This"? I mean, geez, what kind of LexisNexis database are you channeling up there?

JR: Well if your looking for similarities, the stories are dark, modular and deal with crime and punishment across a number of genres. The collection reflects different interests and obsessions of mine over the years. For a while, the only kind of fiction I was interested in was genre fiction, namely crime stories of the soft-boiled variety promulgated by Barry Gifford. Then I became intensely interested in historical fiction via Andrea Barrett and Thomas Mallon. Recently, I went through a period where I was obsessed with spaghetti westerns, which is kind of a blend of crime and history, when you get right down to it, so it was hardly an ideological leap. While I didn't set out to compose a collection with such a wide range, once I realized that's where the collection was headed I didn't back away from it. In fact, I very much like how the collection bucks the trend toward linked stories, which I see as nothing more than another symptom of mainstream publishing's aversion to the short story as a commercially lucrative mode of storytelling, to say nothing of its gutlessness. That's the appeal of publishing with an indie press: they'll keep you in print and won't ask you to pass off an episodic novel as a story collection -- at least Gorsky won’t.

SH: That being said, are you still writing stories, or have you graduated to the novel? Or do you keep yourself extra busy by doing both? And thirdly, when do you make time for the fairer sex?

JR: Yes to both. I recently finished my first novel and have been researching the second for some time now, but I haven't given up on short stories. There are still quite a few I want to get down, including some political protest stories you will undoubtedly loathe. The problem for me is that the shorter the story, the less satisfying the results. It's always been this way. The place where I'm really having a lot of fun is narrative long form nonfiction. I'm working on some stuff right now for The Believer that's really exciting. As for the fairer sex, my girlfriend lives out of town, which is a blessing and a curse as anyone who is or has been in a long-distance relationship knows. The silver lining: when I go to see my girlfriend in San Diego I take the train, which allows me to get in an extra 2.5 hours of work each way.

SH: I remember reading a story of yours in which the sailor protagonist came under the influence of absinthe in, I think it was, Hong Kong. Have you ever had absinthe? And, if so, did you hallucinate about Ernest Hemingway, or hallucinate at all?

JR: Yes it was in Yokosuka, Japan. I was hanging out with a Cajun skinhead and nearly ended up getting in a fight with a pair of Marines. The tale made bold and explicit use of the pun “absinthe makes the heart grow fonder,” which goes a long way toward explaining why my Navy memoir was never published. That, and no one cared to read about a peacetime sailor in Reagan’s Navy while we were building up for the aerial bombing and occupation of Iraq.

SH: Occupation my eye! What kind of fighting style would have employed against two Marines, anyhow? Are you fairly handy with your dukes?

JR: I don't think we would have had a chance that night. Those Marines were severely pissed off. If memory serves I was sitting on a curb on the pier and threw a corndog stick and it landed on one of the jarhead's boots. He challenged me to a fight. I declined. He questioned my sexuality. I questioned whether he was in possession of all of his chromosomes. He became enraged, which attracted the attention of base security. It all seems so ridiculous now. I'm not particularly handy with my dukes. I lost my last fight a long time ago.

SH: Ah well, it’s better to have fought and lost, rather than never to have fought at all. Or is that loved? No matter. It works either way. You sidestepped that invitation of mine (Occupation my eye!) to engage in political histrionics. Which is fine by me. Arguing politics these days is like banging your head up against a brick wall. What do you say to the premise that the best literature is apolitical? That people in their real lives are never absolutely red or blue/black and white?

JR: I don't think that's the case at all. Take my story "A Terrible Thing in a Place Like This," which is set at the tale end of the Gilded Age in the city of Chicago. When I became interested in that story it was because of the Haymarket Riot where a dozen policemen were taken out by an anarchist. I thought I was getting into a story about heroic Irish cops who'd made the ultimate sacrifice. Well I was wrong. They weren't the least bit heroic. They were thugs. But that's neither here nor there but my reading of the Chicago Tribune was quite educational. Its seems that the propertied classes freaked out, arrested every suspected anarchist in the vicinity, and executed seven men by hanging for the death of the policemen, even though not a shred of evidence tied them to the crime, which is still unsolved. The mood of the propertied classes was "Make the arrests and look up the law later" and this anti-anarchist sentiment was reflected in the newspapers of the day. All of which, of course, invites comparisons to the situation here in the states after 9-11. I know you're going to disagree with that, so I'll just paraphrase Herber Marcuse: "If you don't realize we are continually at war, it's because you haven't been counted among the victims."

Small Spiral Notebook reviews Big Lonesome