The American psychiatric system has figured prominently in the work of writer Victor LaValle ’94, whose family has long struggled with mental illness. His first novel, The Ecstatic, followed an obese Cornell dropout with a family history of schizophrenia. His latest, The Devil in Silver, is set in a Queens mental hospital, where the beleaguered staff treat patients under conditions that range from unpleasant (constant boredom) to inhumane (the illegal use of restraints). Its protagonist, a fortyish mover named Pepper, has a short temper but isn’t mentally ill—though the institution could drive anyone around the bend. And what’s worse: a giant, shaggy, man-eating monster is wandering the halls. Or is it? “With The Devil in Silver, LaValle performs a dizzying high-wire act,” said the Washington Post. “He balances social satire, horror, and mordant humor, but never jettisons genuine affection and empathy for even the most damaged of his characters.”
A native of Queens, LaValle was raised by his mother and grandmother, both immigrants from Uganda; he majored in English on the Hill and teaches graduate fiction writing at Columbia. Much of The Devil in Silver was written at two Washington Heights donut shops, whose customers inspired numerous supporting characters. “If I’d worked on it someplace secluded and serene,” he writes in the author’s note, “I might’ve forgotten how bonkers and beautiful people can be.”
Cornell Alumni Magazine: Last fall you snagged what NPR junkies would call the ultimate coup: an appearance on “Fresh Air.” As is often the case with Terry Gross’s interviews, the segment was as much about your inner life—specifically, your family history of mental illness—as about your work. What was that like?
Victor LaValle: The deal you’re making is that you’re coming on to talk, you have a book—but the whole point is that you’re revealing yourself. If you fight against that, you’re not going to be on. I had a half-hour pre-interview with a producer where we talked about the book for two minutes. That was when I realized if you want to be on “Fresh Air”—if you want to talk to Terry—this is the price. But I had a great time talking with her; it was a real treat.
CAM: As you mentioned on the show, your first book got you into hot water with your relatives. How did you avoid that this time around?
VL: I promised them I wouldn’t show a one-for-one inspiration from our family stories. I told them the main character was going to be a white dude in his forties, and they said, “OK, I’m sure he’s not related to us.” In subtle ways things are based on real experiences, but I buried them in characters that are clearly not my family members. That was the deal I had to make. The Ecstatic was pretty autobiographical, and it really hurt and embarrassed my mom and sister. It would have embarrassed my grandmother too, but she had died by that point.
Andy Freidman
CAM: In your author’s note, you express fury at the psych unit of a Manhattan hospital for its treatment of a relative. But in researching the book, you interviewed two psychiatrists. Were you striving for balance?
VL: I didn’t want to rely purely on personal experience. I wanted the book to feel like more of an objective argument, if not a dispassionate one, about what’s wrong with these places—and what’s wrong is not just for the patients, it’s also for the staff. To do that I had to make people believe that this is how things run. If you include a few details that sound jargony or procedural, people think you know what you’re talking about.
CAM: The patient population in your fictional hospital is a veritable United Nations of colors and creeds. What role does race play in the book?
VL: One great thing about growing up in Queens was that I was friends with people of just about every race and ethnicity. But we didn’t pretend those differences didn’t exist. In fact, we were the most racist-sounding kids; the ways we insulted each other would scandalize a Klan meeting. There’s a scene in the book where the patients leave the hospital briefly and notice ethnic differences again; out in the world these things matter, but inside they have bigger concerns. And, frankly, I wanted to show I can write these kinds of people—a white dude, a Chinese lady—and not be limited to characters that look like me. If I can invest them with humanity and specificity, then I have a right to write about everybody.
CAM: One character at the margins of the novel is President Obama. He’s on TV in the lounge; the “birther” theory is mentioned; one patient constantly calls the White House. Why put him in the book?
VL: His whole pitch in 2008 was hope and change, and I wanted to wrestle with the idea that change takes time, and hope isn’t always rewarded. I wanted him to be there not as a messiah or villain, but as someone who, like most powerful people, doesn’t affect our day-to-day lives terribly much.
CAM: A surprise character is a sentient rat named LeClair—who, we learn, is alone because he’s such a jerk that all the other rats ditched him. Where did that come from?
VL: I got a very lousy, tiny, mean-spirited review of my last book by a guy at the New York Times named Tom LeClair. And I thought, How can I get my reÂvenge? So I said, “I’m gonna name the rat after him.”
CAM: But even the rat does something heroic, right?
VL: Throughout the book, I tried to show that every character helps somebody. Because I have family members who’ve suffered with mental illness and I’ve managed to avoid it, I feel a great deal of survivor’s guilt. So I’m obsessed with the idea that you can help people—even if you can’t save them.
CAM: Another autobiographical element in The Ecstatic was the protagonist’s struggle with obesity. You weighed nearly 400 pounds as a student but have been at a healthy weight for more than a decade.
VL: Actually, my wife and I each put on about twenty-five pounds when she was pregnant—but she lost it and I didn’t. Now that she’s pregnant again, my natural tendency would be to gain another twenty-five. But I’m working on it. I’m back on the Jenny Craig.
CAM: One theme in the book is that the hospital food is horrible; even the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are disgusting.
VL: I will say this: Jenny Craig is better.
From The Devil in Silver
No nurse appeared, and for fifteen minutes Pepper just repeated the same words to himself: seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours. You can stand anything for seventy-two hours.
The loud voices playing from a TV somewhere down the hall, deeper inside the unit, had changed to loud explosions. Maybe someone had switched the channel, or the show had come to a moment when the world starts blowing up. Pepper knew it was just a television show, but the sounds seemed to grow as they traveled from wherever the TV sat to where Pepper still stood in the long, empty hall of closed doors. The howl of human beings, the victims of those crashing sounds, played louder and louder. Like the people themselves were about to come flooding into view. Maybe not even people, but people’s parts. A wave of blood. Dismembered limbs breaking the surface of that wave like sharks’ fins.
Pepper knew this couldn’t happen, but his chest felt tight.
He looked to his right and focused on that secure ward door. What if Dr. Anand hadn’t locked it behind the cops? What if all Pepper had to do was give a little push?
Seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours.
He couldn’t stand this for that long. He couldn’t even make it twenty minutes before he tried to escape. Pepper lurched toward the big door.
Excerpted from THE DEVIL IN SILVER by Victor LaValle, Copyright © 2012 by Victor LaValle. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.