1--What is the title of your latest release?
THE LONGITUDE OF GRIEF
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A boy trying to understand the fractured relationship with his father seeks comfort in various small-town connections, including one with an older gentleman who is part intellectual mentor and part charlatan, setting up a series of consequences that distorts his worldview.
Fun, right?
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
It takes place in a small town, much like the one I grew up in. Some readers will say my exact town, but that’s not quite true. But its setting is in my bones. I think I’m obsessed with small towns from a philosophical perspective, the way some are obsessed with racecars or race horsing.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. He’s a conglomerate of many friends I’ve had in real life, including me. Though I wouldn’t be friends with myself.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Sensitive, creative, mournful
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
How to get myself out of a corner. Because I didn’t draft this novel, I spent a lot of time driving into corners and dead-ends and blindly reversing my way out of them. They showed me that’s okay to get stuck and that small discoveries abound. Corners are great insofar as you can get out of them, and if you can’t just blast through a wall.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Light editing. I’m more interested in getting the words on the page, the track laid, etc. (So many driving metaphors). I believe in a flow state and flow is impossible to achieve if I’m tinkering with words and phrases and whether a character has blue hair or brown. I was an editor for many years, so I believe a lot of those nuances will be solved, by me, at a later time. Best to focus on the writing, stress on the -ing.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I hate the word foodie, but I love the word indulgence. So maybe cigarettes?
9--Describe your writing space/office!
It’s always changing. Sometimes it’s a desk in my studio devoid of distractions except for the occasional poetry book and sometimes it’s a shared table at a coffee shop and sometimes it’s a bar (I stop writing after two beers—the writing becomes sloppy and bloviated after that point). I don’t like writing on public transit like some writers—too many bumps—though I love to read on it. I used to write in banks. No joke. I’d go to the bank to make a deposit and then sit in one of their sterile lobbies. I did this because there’s nothing aesthetically fascinating about a bank, so less of a chance of getting distracted. Banks provide good writing material, however. Lots of talk about weather.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Carson McCullers
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
The Savage Detectives
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It was an e-mail from my publisher, Jill McCabe Johnson, who runs Wandering Aengus Press. They’d done my poetry collection and told me they wanted to publish the novel. It’s a sort-of complicated novel (steeped in deep character study, not a lot of plot, and perspective shifts), so I was delighted to hear they wanted to take a chance. More publishers should take chances.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
literary fiction, philosophy, poetry, and travel narratives.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
The Apartment. If you like classic movies, this is the prototype, in my opinion, of the modern rom-com, or certainly the David O. Russell kind.
15--What is your favorite season?
Fall.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
By running away from celebrations. I like to hike, so I’ll go find a mountain. But the occasional bar meetup is fun. It’s only once a year anyhow.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Neil Strauss’ podcast To Die For.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Mexican. Latin cuisine. Lime juice. Spice. Fresh vegetables.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I volunteer as a firefighter. I work at an oyster shack. I help my dad out with is irrigation business. I’m allergic to sitting around, but when I do have idle-idle time, I love to hike, play sports, read, and write of course.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
Something very different from THE LONGITUDE OF GRIEF. A very “Hollywood” novel if you will, but one that also takes detours and roundabouts in the service of language and absurdism. Since I’m still writing it, I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it. Though this is getting me excited to get back into writing it. Thank you!
Henry Manero wants to grow up. But growing up is seldom the same as moving on. In this poetic and at times philosophical coming-of-age novel, Henry must learn to navigate his inherited guilt and trauma alongside several generations of dispirited loners-among them his absent father, suffering mother, three wild cousins, and bumbling stepfather. When Henry befriends an elderly man, Josef, whose sagaciousness presents new possibilities in life, he wonders if he can escape the trappings of his small town, and of his own mind. Will Henry achieve a newfound sense of self with the help of Josef, or is Josef yet another false star in a constellation of malevolent men with which Henry is surrounded?
Combining the lyricism of Justin Torres' We the Animals with the kaleidoscopic visions of boyhood in David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, Matthew Daddona's debut novel The Longitude of Grief is a tender rumination on the familial bonds that entangle and entrance us all.
Fiction [Wandering Aengus Press, On Sale: June 17, 2024, e-Book, / ]
Matthew Daddona is a writer and editor from New York whose fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have been published in outlets such as The New York Times, Outside, Fast Company, UPROXX, Amtrak’s The National, Guernica, Tin House, Slice Magazine, and Grammy. His debut poetry collection, House of Sound, was published by Trail to Table Press in 2020. Matthew is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize for poetry, was a runner-up in The Blue Earth Review’s 2017 flash fiction contest, and was longlisted in River Styx' 2021 flash fiction contest. His debut novel, The Longitude of Grief, will be published by Wandering Aengus Press in 2024. He has received grants and fellowships from Craigardan (Elizabethtown, NY), NES (Skagaströnd, Iceland) and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, NE). He is currently working on his second novel and a collection of short stories.
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