Obviously, I find Scott’s collection, Idiot Men, hilarious.
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview fellow author Scott Gould about his newest collection, Idiot Men, at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Idiot Men includes 11 stories about hapless, hilarious—and occasionally —heroic men. Scott is the author of five books, including a memoir, two story collections, and two novels.
Scott read some excerpts from Idiot Men that cracked up the audience [he specializes in dark humor] and then talked about his mentors. As a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, his teachers included the storied poet James Dickey and the Southern raconteaur William Price Fox. [We have that in common; I had the opportunity to study with Dickey and Fox, too, in their last year at USC.]
Scott started writing stories under the mentorship of William Price Fox, and shared some of the best writing advice his teacher, Bill Fox, offered:
“If you can tell a joke, you can write a story.”
“Dig a decent hole and toss your character in. Let her try to crawl out. When she gets close to the surface, bang her on the head with the shovel and knock her back in the hole. Repeat process.”
These days, Scott offers his own advice to his students: “You know that old creative writing workshop cliché, ‘Write what you know?’ I don’t really buy into that a hundred percent. Instead, I tell students something else. I tell them to write what they know well enough to lie about. And that’s what I do in my work.“