Thomas Calder’s debut novel The Wind Under the Door (Unsolicited Press, 2021) follows Ford Carson, a forty-year-old divorced artist living in Asheville, NC, as he struggles to mend past relationships and forge new ones. Like a collage, the medium Ford works in, the novel cleverly functions through the juxtaposition of its various images and scenes, interweaving past and present in a way that involves the reader in Ford’s own practice of meaning making and fractured sense of self, and raises the question at the heart of any collage project: will Ford be able to unify these disparate elements into a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk of his own life, or will the work only end in further fracture and fragmentation?
When Ford realizes that a collage he is working on for Grace, a woman he is beginning to fall in love with, is based on an album itself based on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the various pieces of the novel begin fitting together in surprising ways. Readers familiar with Eliot’s poem might already have recognized that poem’s influence on the novel’s title, but Calder draws on the poem in deeper ways as well. Most significantly, by associating Ford with the sea (the novel opens with Ford dressed as a pirate, for instance) he – or is it his estranged son, Bailey, a burgeoning surfing megastar – is metaphorically recast as the Phoenician sailor from Eliot’s poem, a character whose death in the poem’s fourth section brings about the potential revitalization of the Waste Land hinted at in the poem’s fifth and final section. Of course, whether or not the Phoenician sailor’s sacrifice succeeds in dispelling the spiritual torpor of the Waste Land depends on how you read the poem’s ending. The same is true here.
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EVAN FACKLER: Thanks for talking with storySouth, and congrats on the novel. A central motif of The Wind Under the Door is this concept of collage. Most notably, of course, Ford is a collage artist. But there’s also something collage-like about, for instance, the opening scene at the Halloween party, which is this patchwork of different pop culture references all intermingling. You’ve written elsewhere about how you use collage work as part of your creative process. I’m wondering if your interest in collage preceded the novel or emerged as a response to it?
THOMAS CALDER: I dabbled in collage on occasion, prior to writing The Wind Under the Door. But it was never anything I did consistently. Usually, I’d approach it in between drafts of stories — when I needed to step away from the writing but still wanted to feel that creative flow. I’ve always wished I could paint. But I’m no good with a brush. So, I’d collage.
With that said, I definitely got more into the form after I began work on The Wind. Especially right before my book came out. This was during covid. So there wasn’t much a writer could do to promote their work outside of online readings and Zoom interviews. In between these events, I began creating collages. Fifteen, to be exact: Each was inspired by a single line from my book’s fourteen chapters as well as its epilogue. It was a fun project to undertake and an exciting way to promote the book on social media.
FACKLER: One of the collages Ford is working on as the novel opens is a piece based on a fictional album by a group called White Elephant entitled he do the police in different voices which Ford discovers was T.S. Eliot’s original title for The Waste Land. The novel’s title, The Wind Under the Door, is taken from the poem as well.
‘My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think.’
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
‘What is that noise?’
The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
Nothing again nothing.
There’s a real sense of foreboding in that line. Why did you choose it for the title?
CALDER: Titles are a real pain in the ass, aren’t they? I had a few of them for this novel. And none felt right. It wasn’t until many, many drafts in that the story even found its way to T.S. Eliot’s poem. That felt like a really big moment in the process and helped me see the story in a different way and understand my characters better as well.
I won’t pretend that I understand even half of what’s going on in Eliot’s poem, but I love the feeling it creates for me as a reader. The first time I read it was in undergrad at the University of Florida, and I remember being overwhelmed and terrified by it.
None of that answers your question though. For me, that line within that section of the poem captured something essential to the characters in my novel. Part of it is this inability to communicate. Another part of it is this inability to live in the moment. The past lingers.
There’s this scene early on in the novel where Ford is sitting alone in his room in the middle of the night, convinced someone is inside his home, standing on the other side of his bedroom door. No one is there of course. It’s all in his head. But that fear is very real. He, and many of the other characters, are always anticipating something dreadful, it seems. And that sense of dread kind of hangs over the story.
FACKLER: It’s hardly an idle fear of dread, either. I mean, there are some pretty devastating moments here. But it’s interesting to me that The Waste Land came to the novel late. You said it felt like a big moment in the process. How did it happen? And how did it change things for you?
CALDER: The big moment wasn’t initially identifying The Waste Land as part of the story, but realizing the collage that Ford was working on for Grace, one of the story’s other main characters, had to play a larger role in the story. In previous drafts, the collage wasn’t based on The Waste Land and its significance within the overall story was minor. The collage was kind of just a plot point. A way to keep Ford and Grace interacting with one another.
I’m not sure how to discuss this more without getting too far into things that might not interest or make sense to those who haven’t read the book. But basically, it took me a long time to understand the novel’s pressure points. It also took me a long time to figure out how, where and when the book’s various pressure points needed to intersect. Understanding the role the collage could play in all this propelled the novel into a whole new direction. And once The Waste Land presented itself, it introduced a whole new depth to Grace’s character that I wasn’t previously aware of.
FACKLER: And that collage… Well, at the risk of being one of those mid-thirties guys who quotes The Big Lebowski too much: It really ties the story together. I’m not quite sure how to ask this next question without, as you say, “getting too far into things that might not interest or make sense to those who haven’t read the book,” but I’m going to give it a shot. The band whose album the collage is based on – White Elephant – that band name ends up being as prophetic as anything Madame Sosostris might divine in Eliot’s poem. Thinking about collage and about white elephant objects, there’s this sense in the novel, I guess, of a kind of transferable or translative power that is maybe inherent in the art object? This idea that it can be borrowed and repurposed and only grow – rather than diminish – in meaning. “These fragments I have shored against my ruins,” etcetera. I apologize, that’s not a very clear question. Maybe it’s more of an open-ended observation hoping to inspire a response.
CALDER: The dude abides. And I will see your Lebowski quote and take it one step further, as far as mid-thirties go-to references: The Sopranos. I love the way the show’s creator, David Chase, weaves all sorts of cinematic, religious and musical references throughout the series. Some of them are a nod to works that were major influences on the series — Tony Soprano, for example, is drinking orange juice when he is shot at in the first season, which is a Godfather reference. Others are just kind of cool and creative approaches to dialogue, which adds some depth, but at the end of the day is also just a fun writing exercise: I’m thinking specifically here where Chase uses lyrics from The Rolling Stone’s song “Sympathy for the Devil” throughout the episode “Whoever Did This.”
The same goes for some of my favorite musicians. Bands like The Walkmen, for example: You can hear echoes of say, Leonard Cohen, in certain songs — in some instances lyrically and in other instances musically. But it’s there.
I think that’s what we all do to some degree as artists. We want to recognize those who came before us and influenced us. And often the way you do that is folding aspects of their creations within your own.
It feels strange to quote my own book, but I’ll do it here because it ties into your question. This is from the eleventh chapter of The Wind Under the Door, shortly after Ford has discovered the connection between the White Elephant album and T.S. Eliot’s poem. It’s worth noting that once Ford realizes the connection, his own project — creating a collage for the White Elephant album — takes off.
The good works always made him arrogant, even though he knew his images never would have existed without their guidance. But he also understood that his renditions extended original works, creating a new ripple. That’s what he loved about the process—how a poem written in 1922 and first published in London could inspire a five-track album composed in 2011 by an indie-rock band based in Houston could lead to a visual rendering in 2015 by a lone man in Asheville. There was something beautiful and deathless about it.
FACKLER: We’re talking about influence and the importance of influence to the artist, and the novel explores this both through Ford’s creative process (as that quote demonstrates) but also structurally with how the novel itself interacts with Eliot’s poem (I’m thinking about how right from the beginning there’s this connection drawn between Ford and the Phoenician sailor). But I think I’m also trying to ask about a mystical quality that I see hinted at here, something that happens at the level of audience rather than creator. So: a collage Ford creates can signify one thing for him, something else to Grace, and yet another thing entirely to Ford’s son, Bailey. There are at least two separate places in the novel where an art object is passed between characters with similar effect. It’s not just a question of meaning or intention being passed between characters through the object – there’s a lot more static in the signal than that. It’s more true to say that the object means something entirely new (both to that character, and to the reader) as it passes hands. I think you said it so well earlier: “I won’t pretend that I understand even half of what’s going on in Eliot’s poem, but I love the feeling it creates for me as a reader.” That’s what I’m trying to home in on and understand. Less artistic influence, and more audience reception. Like, what’s happening with this collage in these moments?
CALDER: I think this anecdote will be useful in addressing your question. Or at least I hope it is.
I’ve been reading a lot of Michael Hettich’s poetry lately. He’ll be our guest for an upcoming Punch Bucket Lit podcast episode. I’ll be discussing with him his latest collection, The Halo of Bees: New & Selected Poems 1990-2022. Often, when reading his work, it’s like being in a dream. There’s that kind of acceptance and embrace of experiencing without concerning yourself too much with assigning meaning. Which isn’t to say it’s meaningless. But rather the meaning comes, in part, through that surrender.
For me that’s what I aspire to as a writer. There’s thought and intention and purpose behind the decisions we make, regardless of the medium, but there’s also this humbling knowledge that a lot of what we do might not translate or connect with others in the way we intended it to. That if you’re lucky enough to find an audience — be that a reader, a viewer, a listener, whatever — at that stage in the project, it’s for them to process. Best case scenario, you make them feel something; worst case scenario (to really no fault of the artist or the participant), they don’t connect with the project and put it down.
I don’t know if Ford is a good artist, in that I don’t trust that his work is for the work itself. I think he has moments where it is. But I think he’s also too aware of his audience. And he’s too preoccupied by how their response to a given collage will make him feel. He’s selfish. And fragile. And that’s a dangerous combination. He doesn’t want to be either, but so much of the tension in the novel is a result of these traits. And I think that tension is often revealed through his creative process and his interactions with the works themselves and the people they are intended for.
I’m not sure if I answered your question.
FACKLER: I think that’s a beautiful answer. I’m tempted to spend the rest of the interview talking about art and reception and the novel’s structural and thematic connections with The Waste Land, but I do have a couple other questions I’d like to ask.
First, I wanted to circle back briefly to your answer to my question about collage work. You said that one thing collage let you do was it gave you a fun, visual way to promote the book on social media. You also curated a playlist on your website, with a song to coincide with each chapter of the novel. Music is a big part of Ford’s artistic practice. Is it a big part of your writing process as well?
CALDER: Yeah, I’d say it is. Music was my entry into writing. When I was in elementary school, I remember poring over lyrics from Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Bush — all the mid-90s grunge, punk bands. Later, I started playing guitar and writing songs throughout my teens and early twenties.
And now, I’ve got a pair of projects — a new novel and a collection of short stories — that both have ties to music. The former is set in Asheville, 1936, and several of the characters are professional or aspiring musicians. And the latter is a collection of fourteen stories with a pretty direct link to some music that I love.
I never listen to music when I write. But it’s an influence, for sure.
FACKLER: As you mentioned, The Wind Under the Door was published in 2021 when everything was shut down from covid. Given publishing timelines, I’m assuming it was written before 2020. I’m wondering if the pandemic has changed anything significant about your writing or about your productivity or focus as a writer?
CALDER: The novel began as a short story that I wrote around 2014 while in grad school at the University of Houston. It was a very different story back then. Unrecognizable, in fact, to what it became. But my professor, Robert Boswell, offered some encouraging words about the early version of the Grace and Ford characters and suggested that they weren’t done with each other just yet. A year or so later, I began on the first draft of the novel. I’m not sure how many drafts I ended up writing, but Unsolicited Press picked it up in 2019.
I’ve always been a pretty disciplined writer. So I can’t say the pandemic changed my habits all that much. But time in general and aging has certainly impacted it. In my 20s, I’d sit down for hours each day and write. I’m 38 now with a pretty amazing five-year-old daughter. Between her and professional obligations, time is limited. But I still write 1-2 hours on weeknights. The sessions fly by, but I usually feel pretty good about them.
FACKLER: Last question, and I guess I’m going to come back to The Waste Land one final time. Without giving away too much, I wonder if you might talk briefly about the novel’s ending, which is absolutely devastating. The Waste Land ends on this note that strikes me as a kind of magical thinking – “Shantih Shantih Shantih” – and that always left me wondering, is this supposed to be hopeful or foolish? Where do you think this novel leaves Ford?
CALDER: Hmm … in thinking about this question, my mind ended up at an earlier scene in the novel. It’s a flashback involving Grace’s upbringing and her devastating relationship to her father. There’s this dramatic and life-threatening moment within this scene. And in that instant Grace recognizes that her father simply isn’t a good father and that some people just aren’t cut out to be parents. That realization does something to her. It makes his behavior less personal. It doesn’t excuse it. The pain is still real. But she’s able to release some of the things that had previously preoccupied her.
Much of The Wind Under the Door is interested in examining dynamics between parents and children. Like with his art, I think there are moments of true connection between Ford and Bailey. But I think both characters feel genuinely hurt by the other. And the book’s ending doesn’t offer anything close to a resolution. It offers a moment. But I think there’s a lot within that moment that might leave readers (and Ford) unsure how to feel beyond it. There’s a certain release within the scene, I’d say, but of what exactly and for how long? I’m not sure.
THOMAS CALDER