In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Marc Nieson

Your story “American Standards” involves a man balancing his daily corporate job, his aging mother, and his newish relationship. What sparked the creation of this story?

Aptly, this story’s ‘spark’ began in a public bathroom when I took note of the manufacturer’s stamp on the toilet’s ceramic rim—American Standard. What a great title, I thought. I keep a list of such possible titles, that sit around waiting for their respective stories. Most never get developed. Then, years later while on an airplane flight, I happened on an article in its airline magazine about an engineer who was working on toilet designs. At that point a main character started to emerge, but a story typically won’t engage for me until three things bump into one another. This third element arrived one morning when I pictured him in the bathroom of his mother’s rest home, standing before the mirror crying.

Harit’s dream is to do more than simply create self-cleaning toilets, but his path forward is blocked, so to speak; partly because he feels beholden to being near his mother, and partly because he’s fallen into a pattern. How did you create and develop the character of Harit?

Love your double entendre with ‘blocked.’ Harit’s pattern/rut was key to both his character and the overall tale. Starting out, I knew I wanted to explore certain aspects of what’s not only ‘standardized’ in America, but what we’ve also exported globally, for better &/or worse. The given elements of toilets and waste also offered me a vehicle to weigh in on the economic, ecological, and moral consequences of our rampant consumerism and proliferation of products (not to mention armaments).  

As well, I pictured the main character as a recent immigrant—someone who’d have an outside perspective and initially be drawn to the mythos of the American Dream. For some reason, Indian felt right. I also keep a list of potential character names, which included Hazmat. Then it became a matter of finding an Indian name that approximated it, and Harit won.

The character of Drew is a lovely addition of levity with his puns. Can you talk a bit about this character and how he acts as a foil to Harit? Was he an original part of the story or a later addition? Can you talk about how you use and weave comedy into your writing?

While humor is instinctual in my day-to-day life, it doesn’t naturally enter my writings. Since Harit is very serious, I figured I needed some comic relief. Plus, toilets are funny, or at least there’s that tendency toward bathroom humor to consider. I also needed someone who might use ‘Hazmat’ as a nickname. Drew grew out of all that. And puns strike me as the worst kind of humor, something that could further frustrate Harit. Drew is harmless and innocent, yet also complicit. As Harit says at one point, “Drew the jokester…the jester…the company man.”

At the end of the story, Nareen has started to change Harit’s mind about the static nature of things. How did this ending come about? Did you always end the story like this?

Nareen emerged as the story developed. I sensed Harit’s domestic life should be dealing with more than just his mother’s cognitive deterioration. Another character with whom he’d actually interact and who’d challenge him. She adds complication and complexity, as well as an element that didn’t only relate to his past and present situation, but also the potential of a future. Nareen, too, is smarter than Harit. She can see further and wider than he can, and calls him out regarding his rut, his righteousness. Ultimately, I don’t think he’d be capable of making the change without her.  

Nareen also offered the opportunity to bring another culture and immigrant into the mix. Her motives for coming to the U.S. differ from Harit’s, and while he’s directly bullied as a boy in England, the discrimination she’s faced within the U.S. is more nuanced. It’s not specified whether the company is withholding her promotion because of her ethnicity or gender. 

As far as the ending, Harit seeing the “Royal Flush” port-a-san always played a part. A bookend for Drew’s opening dialogue reference. And then it became natural that Nareen was present, too.

What was your editing process for this piece like?

The older I get, the more I enjoy revising. The initial conception and drafting of stories are still intriguing, but the real reward comes through making sentences work. As Andre Dubus said, “Success and failure come to a writer each day, a word or a sentence at a time.” The first iteration of this story was well over ten years ago. I wait a long time before sharing work. One of my last revisions was changing the title from American Standard to American Standards.

What themes do you return to in your writing?

‘Theme’ always feels like such an academic term—that thing your high school teacher once asked alongside “What’s the story about?” We do all have our leanings, though. Our given lives and subject matters, our obsessions, our questions. And these, too, can change over time. For me, it’s increasingly become a question of what’s worth saying today. What’s worth putting out there in a world that’s so overrun with media, words, imagery. A world that most probably won’t read this little tale, and yet . . .

I knew I wanted to say something regarding climate change. But how to do so without it feeling like agenda? How to keep it about humans bumping into one another? Again, strangely toilets offered me an organic entry point. And as far as broaching the question of standards in the United States, clearly the story’s elements regarding waste and profit and corporate influence; immigration, refugees, and displacement; political division and partitions, even health care have all become far more crucial than when I first put pen to paper on this tale.

Who are some authors who inspire you? What are some of your favorite texts?

So, so many authors are influences on my writings, my days. Often who I’ll read and re-read depends on what I’m working on. Of late, I’m studying works by Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Salman Rushdie, Juan Rulfo . . . as well as biographies on Harry Houdini. Yet mainstays on the shelf are Antoine de St. Exupéry’s The Little Prince and Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and The Sneetches. Alessandro Baricco’s Silk, James Galvin’s The Meadow, James Lord’s A Giacometti Portrait, Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping.

What are you currently working on?

A novel called Houdini’s Heirs. Steeped in magical realism, its parable revolves around the lives of the cast of a Coney Island sideshow, who are physical marvels and possess rare abilities. Set during the last summer of the 20th Century, they’re desperately struggling to make ends meet for at least one more season. The tale also circles back to the early 1900’s and a particular ‘water torture cell’ performance of Houdini himself. As we come to learn, Houdini’s connections to the founding of this sideshow play a mysterious and crucial role in whether it will survive into the next millennium.

Meanwhile, recently an article appeared in the New York Times business section about these Japanese bidets ‘flooding’ the U.S. market. First designed back in 1982, they offered a small wand that extended from the back of the rim to spray water upwards. Succeeding models added automatic lid opening and flushing, and of course now there are smart toilets with heated seats, motion detected flushing, voice activation . . . 

So, perhaps there’s an American Standards sequel?

Marc Nieson is the author of the memoir SCHOOLHOUSE: Lessons on Love & Landscape (Ice Cube Press). He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and NYU Film School and his background also includes children’s theater, cattle chores, and a season with a one-ring circus. He’s received a Raymond Carver Short Story Award and Pushcart Prize nominations and has been noted in Best American Essays. He teaches at Chatham University, edits The Fourth River, and is at work on the novel Houdini’s Heirs. See more at marcnieson.com.