The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #26: Evan Dalton Smith
"Writing a book is a crazy idea. It will always be intimidating."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the twenty-sixth installment, featuring , author of Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father’s Journey. -Sari Botton
A native of North Carolina, Evan Dalton Smith attended North Carolina’s public schools and university, then moved to New York City where he lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for the better part of two decades, graduating from Columbia University with an MFA in Writing, working on the fringes of the publishing industry, and raising a family. Evan now lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts in the historic town of Ipswich and serves on the town’s cultural council.
Evan Dalton Smith’s culture reporting and creative work has appeared in the LA Times, LA Review of Books, New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Salon, Slate, Washington Post, and elsewhere. His first book, Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father’s Journey was published on May 28, 2024 by University of North Carolina Press, and was awarded the 2024 Outstanding Southeastern Author (Non-Fiction) by the Southeastern Library Association.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’m 55 years old and have been writing most of my adult life. I turned to creative nonfiction and culture reporting about 13 years ago, and sold my first book about 10 years ago, Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father’s Journey, which is just now published.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father’s Journey, May 28, 2024, in hardback, ebook, and audiobook.
What number book is this for you?
Number 1!
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
It’s creative nonfiction. The writer Rebecca Donner, who generously blurbed my book, called it a “gorgeous collision” of memoir and biography.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
Looking for Andy Griffith is a cultural biography of the actor Andy Griffith, what he meant to fans and the world—and especially to me—a fatherless boy with a mom addicted to narcotics—and investigates how his career intersected with all the cultural machinery at play. I wrote the book for people who have fathers and people who do not have fathers.
Looking for Andy Griffith is a cultural biography of the actor Andy Griffith, what he meant to fans and the world—and especially to me—a fatherless boy with a mom addicted to narcotics—and investigates how his career intersected with all the cultural machinery at play. I wrote the book for people who have fathers and people who do not have fathers.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
One of the many reasons I began this book is that when Andy Griffith died in 2012, I was working as an editor, living in lower Manhattan, and trying to launch a career as a freelance writer. After Andy died, I realized I was grieving for someone I never met, and that was because Andy was a surrogate father figure. Initially, I set out to investigate this and pitched an essay to The LA Review of Books. I became fascinated by the machinations around The Andy Griffith Show and its super fans.
The more I learned the more I wanted to expand the narrative. I was struck by how Andy wanted to escape the poverty and the small town where he was abused as a child, and then ultimately created a character on The Andy Griffith Show, in Andy Taylor, that in many ways trapped him there in Mayberry. I also began the writing of this book just as my marriage fell apart, and my long-established happy life in New York City imploded. Trying to pull myself out of that abyss and build a new life with my kids in New England became part of the story of Looking for Andy Griffith.
This is my first book, at age 55, and since it’s a memoir as well as a biography of the actor Andy Griffith, who I have loved since I was a child, in some ways I worked on this book all my life.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
My agent kindly said it was a weird little book and that I could build a career writing a bunch of weird little books, and by little, I mean esoteric—not broad—nonfiction. (My next book will be a big subject, but also discrete in the approach to the material.) Looking for Andy Griffith was a hard book to sell, I think because Andy Griffith is not perceived as an international star, but he is. The Andy Griffith Show is aired worldwide, including the Middle East, and Australia. His first starring role, the Elia Kazan film, A Face in the Crowd (1957) is still screened today. It was prescient. Spike Lee has said it was one of three films everyone should see. Yet I felt pressure early on to write something very different and more broad, but luckily University of North Carolina Press swooped in and bought the proposal for the trade, and my talented and brave editor Lucas stood behind it.
The hardest thing in shaping the narrative was listening to my gut and attempting to write something that interested me, that has an atypical or lyrical narrative, to use a term from poetry.
It was also scary for me to reveal painful things about my parents, and my childhood. I did talk to my family before the book came out. And have spoken to them about my next book, which will face my mom’s long addiction to a prescription narcotic.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
I did change a few names in the memoir components, mainly to protect people from discovering something that was sad or unfortunate where they played a minor role. (For instance, the girlfriend who put out a cigarette on my arm was not named Lynn.) I spoke to my kids and my sister Logan about the fact that I was revealing mom’s addiction and made sure they were OK with it. My sister did suggest I got one detail wrong, but the detail was from my mom. So I guess my mom lied. Yet it was true for me for decades.
I decided not to focus on Andy Griffith’s peccadilloes but was far more interested in the mythology surrounding his career.
I was struck by how Andy wanted to escape the poverty and the small town where he was abused as a child, and then ultimately created a character on The Andy Griffith Show, in Andy Taylor, that in many ways trapped him there in Mayberry. I also began the writing of this book just as my marriage fell apart, and my long-established happy life in New York City imploded. Trying to pull myself out of that abyss and build a new life with my kids in New England became part of the story of Looking for Andy Griffith.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
I’ve mentioned Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage a few times. They were models. But also Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, and Fred Chappell’s I am One of You Forever, which I gave to my oldest a year or two ago, and my mom gave to me when I was the same age. (I’ll gift a copy to my youngest next year.) Fred, who died this year, is often mistakenly put in the regionalist camp of writers, or the Southern Gothic camp. He was a master stylist, and his work crosses genres. There’s poetry and science fiction in his Southern fiction. We can all be more than one thing.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
In general, across industries, decision-makers respond to your positive energy and belief in your project, as long as it’s underpinned by hard work and talent. My advice about the publishing industry, in general, is to develop the patience and generosity of a saint, as it is molasses slow. And have faith; you need to convince one or two brilliant, driven people of your merits, and then let them help you do your best work. It’s a collaborative effort and creates a richer artistic firmament than working in isolation.
Writing a book is a crazy idea. It will always be intimidating. Again, I am 55 and have met many writers, starting in my 20s. No one I’ve met enjoys writing much at all, but everyone loves having written.
What do you love about writing?
Having written, I also love meeting people, interviewing, traveling, and researching. Sometimes, this is fun as hell, yet simultaneously anxiety-producing, as I'm not too fond of airlines and making that first cold call. With writing, I enjoy those rare moments when you’re thick in the narrative and know what is coming next. That is magical. I only feel like that any other time when playing basketball.
What frustrates you about writing?
The demands of social media. Social media can be a useful tool, a way to connect with others, and a way to help level the playing field, but I would also love to burn it down and walk away from it forever, as it has made all of us more fractured and lonely than ever before in history.
What about writing surprises you?
I’m constantly surprised by connections my mind makes that I’m not entirely conscious of as if there is a ghost in my head pointing the way.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
Fuck no. It changes. I wake up and work my day job until about 5 or 6 pm, then hopefully go running, write, or do other book-related work. But the demands of family and domestic life, including the desire to be in the world with my significant other, often preclude this. So, I steal time when I can. Commuting helps. I love to write on the train. (I applied for that Amtrak residency years ago and didn’t get it, and I am still sore about it.) Yet I have been fortunate to go to a few residencies in my life, most long ago before my children were born, and that is terrifying, to be presented with what you’ve always wanted—time and space to write. In those instances, I tend to write in the morning, read or research in the late afternoon, and write a few more hours in the evening. For much of the time I wrote Looking for Andy Griffith, I worked multiple low-paying jobs and was forced to learn to write anyplace, anytime.
My advice about the publishing industry, in general, is to develop the patience and generosity of a saint, as it is molasses slow. And have faith; you need to convince one or two brilliant, driven people of your merits, and then let them help you do your best work. It’s a collaborative effort and creates a richer artistic firmament than working in isolation.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
Everything is part of the process. I often work on my phone, so no matter what it looks like I’m doing, I am working on my book. Scrolling Amazon for pocket knives or backpacks, that’s working on my book. So is watching YouTube videos of car restorations or Seiko mods. It will all be used one day. I also love hiking, running, and playing basketball. There is as much poetry in basketball as in any art. (If you write about basketball I’d love to buy you a beer.) Lately, my partner and I are enjoying cooking together. She’s supremely talented in all things, and it’s been nice exploring food and enjoying life with her. “Yes, chef.”
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I’m excitedly finalizing a proposal for my next book of creative nonfiction, which examines my single mom’s narcotics addiction, which began in the early 1970s when I was three, and lasted until I was in college in the 1990s—and the storm of corporate and legislative forces whorling all around it. Writing Looking for Andy Griffith gave me permission and a method to examine it, and I intend to complete the manuscript in a year, then focus on the one after that, and then the one after that. A career of weird little books, as my agent suggested. The following books may be about the ill-fated 1984 Pontiac Fiero, the Hotel Lobby Bars of Earth, or a World History of North Carolina Barbecue. I have a wealth of ideas to explore.
Really authentic and relatable interview! Many of us are writing books that don't "fit" in some standard slot. Glad that he found a way to get the book into the world. Sounds like a book I want to read!
Absolutely love the idea of a career of weird little books! As a big fan of the memoir + biography combo, can't wait to read this one.