Michael Thomas, Author
Michael Thomas was born and raised in Boston. He received his B.A. from Hunter College and his MFA from WARREN Wilson College. He teaches at Hunter College and he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their three children.
If you've ever been sure that 2 + 2 = 4 then have a conversation with Michael Thomas.
One of the most interesting and lively conversations that I have recently had was my conversation, over coffee, with Michael. I am a talker and I was out-talked. I consider myself to be a pretty good listener and I was appreciative of the questions Michael asked about the things that I said.
He is as cautious as he is engaging. Funny and serious, complicated and yet pretty much down to earth -
Michael + Thomas = unpredictable
DR: Tell me about your life.
MT: Well...
I teach at Hunter College. I coach soccer. I have three kids and a wife. I have a "work in progress" townhouse that I hope to complete before it starts disintegrating and -
I write.
I happen to be writing quite a bit now. I just had a novel come out and I am working on two more books...
DR: What is it that you are happiest about right now?
MT: My oldest boy broke his soccer ball juggling record. He had an excellent report card. My second child is embracing piano and I thought he would struggle with it and my daughter seems to be somewhat fearless. Some of my friends seem to be having a good turn in their lives...As for what makes me happy -
my kids and my wife.
AMERICAN DREAM DEFERRED
The New York Times Sunday Book Reviewby KAIAMA L. GLOVER
February 4, 2007
Call him Ishmael. It’s one of a few placeholders the protagonist of Michael Thomas’s first novel, “Man Gone Down,” offers up as a clue to his identity. It doesn’t matter if that’s really his name, though, because like Melville’s enlightened nonhero, this man does not expect to survive the journey. He has long known himself lost to this world.
Thomas gives him his story to tell in the first person, allowing his hero more than 400 pages to narrate the events of four days and the troubled lifetime that’s led up to them. A Boston-bred black man living in Brooklyn and struggling to write while supporting his blue-blooded white wife and their three children, Thomas’s narrator is on the verge of losing it all. Completely broke and temporarily residing in the bedroom of a friend’s child, he must come up with more than $12,000 in these four days — enough money to rent an apartment, pay tuition at his children’s private school and rescue his motley crew from their Brahmin grandmother’s New England home, where they’ve been exiled for the summer. “Man Gone Down” is the story of this and other near impossibilities.
Though the novel ostensibly recounts the events of four desperate days in New York, it extends far beyond these boundaries of time and space. In seamlessly integrated flashbacks, the narrator recalls the trauma of his 1970s childhood as a “social experiment,” bused to the affluent suburbs of Boston from the city. He then uses these forays into the too-present past as springboards from which to investigate the fragmented histories of his abusive mother and perpetually absent father — so much “collateral damage of the diaspora.” From there, flash forward to the tragedies of his more recent history: debilitating alcoholism, outbursts of violence while at Harvard, dreams deferred, if not extinguished altogether.
One of the bigger questions posed by the novel is how to pursue the American and other dreams when the realities of race stand so mightily in the way. Indeed, just how does one negotiate a color line that runs smack through the middle of a family? The narrator’s semi-ironic refrain, borrowed from Lorraine Hansberry, “Look what the new world hath wrought,” wears a bit thin, but his less self-conscious reflections on the so-called race question — as it affects his kids — are powerful and moving. Going a step beyond the normal parental fascination with their children’s genotype and phenotype, he acknowledges his heightened attention to the provenance of specific features: his younger son looks “exactly like” him “except he’s white. He has bright blue-gray eyes that at times fade to green. ... In the summer he’s blond and bronze — colored. He looks like a tan elf on steroids.” Barely named products of his transgressive partnership (his sons are called “C” and “X,” his daughter referred to only as “my girl”), the children are preposterous hybrids — “the wreckage of miscegenation” — at war with a nation’s desired purity. His well-founded fears for them expose the lie of America’s melting-pot fantasy.
Here he is on his older son: “I thought, when he was born, that his eyes would be closed. I didn’t know if he’d be sleeping or screaming, but that his eyes would be closed. They weren’t. They were big, almond shaped and copper — almost like mine. He stared at me. I gave him a knuckle and he gummed it — still staring. He saw everything about me: the chicken pox scar on my forehead, the keloid scar beside it, the absent-minded boozy cigarette burn my father had given me on my stomach. Insults and epithets that had been thrown like bricks out of car windows or spat like poison darts from junior high locker rows. Words and threats, which at the time they’d been uttered, hadn’t seemed to cause me any injury because they’d not been strong enough or because they’d simply missed. But holding him, the long skinny boy with the shock of dark hair and the dusky newborn skin, I realized that I had been hit by all of them and that they still hurt. My boy was silent, but I shushed him anyway — long and soft — and I promised him that I would never let them do to him what had been done to me. He would be safe with me.”
In his critique of American society, Thomas leans heavily on “Invisible Man,” of course, but also on T. S. Eliot, in ways both acknowledged and unacknowledged. There is more than a touch of Prufrock’s nihilism: the profound isolation of an elevated spirit ill suited to the baseness of the wider world; the despair of the hobbled stallion obliged to run the rat race. Fighting a fate preordained as much by his genes as by his country, Thomas’s narrator is a man perpetually at risk. His tormented psyche subtly reveals how such ostensibly innocent American pastimes as baseball and golf can become vicious backdrops to the disillusionment of the marginal, and how kindness can be poison to those on whom it is imposed — to the point where the refusal of gifts carelessly offered becomes a question of self-preservation. Whether or not capitalism is conducive to happiness, Thomas is adamant that the rich are truly better off than the poor — not because they have more stuff, but because they are spared the indignity of perpetually having a hand out. Of always asking.
But while in many ways pessimistic, “Man Gone Down” also relies on the Eliot of “Four Quartets.” There are flashes of hope throughout, and the narrator is ultimately kept buoyant by love’s promise. Indeed, he finds love even where it shouldn’t be; for example, in the calm after a particularly vicious beating (with an extension cord) at his mother’s hands: “And the places on my body where she’d whipped buzzed and seemed to rise with heat. It didn’t hurt. And I knew from her face, the crazy, random face gone soft and quiet that there was, shot through the both of us and through the air, love. There was light in that little room. It moved through me, warmer than my blood. It was in her. It was all around us — the sink, the table, the counter. Her face seemed to glow from a place I couldn’t discern. Love. And it wasn’t so particular as her love for me or mine for her; it seemed to have always been there, and through our rawness we both felt it — balm on wounds.” In a world of total dysfunction, healing plucked from the ether seems to be enough.
Thomas takes a risk in his choice of first-person narration. The “I” is necessarily solipsistic, and this “I” has a massive chip on his shoulder. He has a right to carry it, yes, as he bears the weight of what seems like absolutely everything without buckling. But he indulges at times in an arrogant self-pity that can undermine sympathy for his plight. Ashamed almost of joy, he tightropes the line between dignified abnegation and masochism — he refuses free food though he’s starving, revels in the denial of simple pleasures, takes sullen pride in being disliked by those in a position to help him. That said, this “I” also makes himself vulnerable. He is a hero — a writer — constantly in dialogue with himself, admitting his fear of the machine as he feeds it. While often showing self-righteous disdain for the mediocre world that ignores his worth, he consistently puts himself out there to be judged as well — exposing his own pettiness, his own limitations as a father, husband, son, friend, man.
“Man Gone Down” might have been shorter. The scope of Thomas’s project is prodigious, though, and the end result is an impressive success. He has an exceptional eye for detail, and the poetry of his descriptive digressions — “the heaving surface of the water is what the night sky should be — moving and wild, wavering reflections of buildings on both sides, dark and bright, like thin, shimmering clouds” — provides some respite from the knowledge that the city he loves can truly crush a man’s spirit. A Boston-bred African-American writer who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their three children, Thomas seems to have fully embraced the “write what you know” ethos. And what he knows is how the odds are stacked in America. He knows the unlikelihood of successful black fatherhood. He knows that things are set up to keep the Other poor and the poor in their place. More than anything else, he knows how little but also — fortunately — how much it can take to bring a man down.
DR: When you think about your life, how do you see it in relation to the rest of the world?
MT: Most times? Absurd.
I don't mean that in a negative way. Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus talks about "the absurd condition". It's that moment when the actor realizes that he is divorced from the stage, or when man realizes that he is divorced from his life. Those terms are loaded. I never thought that I would be a father or a husband and I am and allegedly an "O.K." one.
I never thought that I would be alive at this point and I am...
DR: How come?
MT: I was a bit reckless as a boy. As a young man and there didn't seem to be much to live for.
In the face of that absurdity, most of the people that I admired, they died pretty young. Either for a cause - Gandhi, or King or Christ or Medgar Evers or Malcolm X or Jimi Hendrix...people like that or characters in books or in plays or in films...There just didn't seem to be any space in the world for me. There was no group to belong to. And the causes that charged my young life like Civil Rights or ERA or emancipation or redemption of the marginalized or oppressed groups, seemed to be appropriated by many.
I was kind of groomed to be of the next generation of leaders but I didn't take myself seriously.
An interviewer asked me awhile ago
"What did you see yourself as?"
People saw me as being the next Andrew Young but I saw myself as being the next Boxcar Willie. There's always been that struggle...never being able to reconcile who I was or "where" I was and I think that may have to do with who I modeled myself after or maybe just the way I perceived the world.
One of my early heroes is Achilles who is not at home in the world...dead men and women; the heroes and the anti-heroes. You know, it's problematic when you start modeling your life after characters, really believing it...
Now, I am still pretty much the same person that I was when I was seven or twelve or fifteen. Environments have changed but they haven't really and there's this toggling between being at odds with my environment and in harmony with my environment...usually when I feel at home with my environment its in the absence of any kind of structure or people. It's usually a private moment or a very intimate moment with another person.
With my wife or with my kids...
Being at a soccer field or just listening to my boy play piano or sometimes my daughter lines up all of her stuffed animals and strums her guitar and sings to them - in those moments I feel right in my skin. In those moments I don't even notice who I am. Then there is the struggle to perpetuate that moment.
DR: Would you consider yourself to be someone who is satisfied?
MT: No. No. No...
DR: What would it take for you to feel that?
MT: Morbidly? Probably death...
I think that at the center of things is a kind of longing - longing for wholeness which I know intellectually probably doesn't exist...
There is that Muddy Waters song I Can't Be Satisfied. I'm in trouble. I know that sounds dark or gloomy or like maybe I need some Prozac...
DR: Which do you like better questions or answers?
MT: I think that I would like answers. In fact, I think that I demand answers for behavior or the way things are, but there seems to always be questions.
I don't know if I like answers better, it just seems that questions are more honest. Because I don't know, I am always suspicious when people do - know - and have a prescribed behavior or a course of action rather than a question.
I have a lot of questions about the way things work. I like to think that questions point to a kind of optimism but of course -
that depends on the question.
DR: What is the kindest thing that you have done for someone lately?
MT: I don't know. Not be mean?
I don't really think about doing things for people. I kind of just do things or don't do things. Not eviscerate people or not get angry with people because I do have a temper.
Maybe it's just getting my kid a pair of cleats when I can't afford it or holding my daughter's hand when we cross the street. That to me doesn't seem kind it just seems like what you do or don't do.
What do you think?
DR: I think that there are some people who are on mission to rack up gestures of kindness for reasons that have more to do with them than the other person...
MT: Yeah. The action has more to do with themselves rather than the other person...
DR: Yeah. On the other hand I think that there are people who are just more kind than they are in touch with...
MT: I think that I am more in touch with my cruelty and my capacity to be cruel, because -
I have been cruel to people.
I have been cruel to myself.
I operate out of a sense of damage control - trying not to hurt someone's feelings or diminish them in any way.
DR: What is the kindest thing that anyone has ever done for you?
MT: My son went with me on a tour to Boston.
DR: Do you consider yourself an optimist?
MT: Yeah, in the most basic sense of the word, I do.
I am hopeful or I would have put a bullet in my head a long time ago. I got married. I have children. I am dreaming of the world that my children will belong to...
DR: What do you want people to see when they look at you?
MT: I don't know.
I don't have a very fixed sense of self. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am. But also, I don't know who they are or what they want or what their agenda is or even if they have agendas.
So for them to have a fixed sense of who I am, becomes limiting. I mean I have tried to think that way. Maybe I have A.D.D. and my head just won't sit still long enough to come up with any fixed idea of self. I guess I am human. That's about it...
I am pretty sure I am male. I am pretty sure I'm straight. I am pretty sure of those things. What that means, I don't know.
Different people see different things and perhaps I am those things.
I want people to withhold judgment because, to see those things is one thing. To see that you are black or brown or white or whatever it is; short or tall or gay or straight, is one thing. But to then come to some kind of prescribed judgment or assessment based on what you think that they see, is strange. I find that oppressive. I find it reductive and I find it negating.
The Elliot line in Prufrock:
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
If you have already assessed me then what's the point of me even being here? If you already know who I am then "you already have my proxy there" -
then deal with that.
DR: I like the idea of being discovered; of being able to unfold. I like being able to experience someone especially when I think that I "know".
I do a lot of judging though.
MT: Of course. I do it too. I am probably one of the most judgmental people around. But the practice I attempt in that judgment is that there is perhaps room or time; that there is a delay in the act. At least keep the poker face long enough so as not to oppress people with my judgments...
DR: What do you want?
MT: What do I want?
DR: Yeah. Your BIG want.
MT: I want to be Ishmael and I want to go to sea and I want to blow it all off. I want to walk around the island and smell the salt air and be a more crude person and watch. But I seek the whale. That whale vexes me. (I'd strike the sun if I thought it insulted me).
Part of me wants world peace but part of me realizes that in order for the world to align itself to my aesthetic or political or social vision, I may have to become a fascist. You know,
"We're going to do things my way."
Somewhere between Machiavelli and Christ, things get confused.
I want to watch Seinfeld but I want to re-read Don Quixote. I want to be left alone but...I want my kids to grow up undamaged and I know that in trying to protect them I am doing a substantial amount of damage.
I want to make things.
DR: A hundred years from now what do you want to be remembered for?
MT: I have a compulsion to be a social figure, much in the vain of a King or a Dante. One part of me wants to be public and wants to be a civic leader and someone who galvanizes people because I think that I can. I come from disparate places.
I just want to make beautiful things. A beautiful society -that would be great.
It'd be great to have my great grand kids be forced to read my literature in a college course one day...
In a hundred years I want to be remembered as a philanthropist. I'd like to make a lot of money and go knock down every housing project in the Northeast and rebuild them with humane dwellings.
I'd like to completely re-imagine and reconstruct the public school systems in America. That is what I would love to do.
Do you have a couple million dollars so that I can get started?
Thanks Michael!
Man Gone Down: A Novel
A beautifully written, insightful, and devastating first novel, Man Gone Down is about a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream he has bargained on since youth.
On the eve of the unnamed narrator’s thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend’s six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his family afloat, four days to try to make some sense of his life. He’s been getting by working construction jobs though he’s known on the streets as “the professor,” as he was expected to make something out of his life.
Alternating between his past—as a child in inner-city Boston, he was bussed to the suburbs as part of the doomed attempts at integration in the 1970s—and the present in New York City where he is trying mightily to keep his children in private schools, we learn of his mother’s abuses, his father’s abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America.
This is an extraordinary debut. It is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it’s like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life—and the urge to escape that sentence.
Michael Thomas’s writing recalls some of the great American masters, including Ralph Ellison, but his debut is wholly and distinctly an original. Man Gone Down is a dazzling addition to the literature of and about America today.
Click here to buy Man Gone Down online.
