Dead-on Writing
Local author David Oppegaard’s debut novel takes a suicide epidemic as far as it will go—to the survival of the human race.
Nathan Jorgenson
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Call David Oppegaard a science-fiction writer and he will shake his head say, “I don’t do science.” He does apocalypse. The Suicide Collectors is about an unexplained suicide outbreak that kills 90 percent of the U.S. population, and three survivors who are on the run from the strange hooded beings called The Collectors, who take away the dead. Norman, our hero, has murdered a Collector for stealing his wife’s body before he could bury it himself. The premise may be like M. Night Shyamalan’s Marky Mark movie The Happening, but the book is more darkly psychological, with ruminations on the spirit and the weight of our free will. It is “slipstream fiction”—slipping between genres, and though out for less than a month it has already picked up critical raves. Oppegaard, 29, a self-deprecating and amiable St. Paul writer, periodically slips into a plush purple alien space suit and walks around town as Tellon The Curious. Decider caught up with him on his lunch break from his temp job, where he was presumably dressed in business casual. Oppegaard will read from his new book at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 22 at Common Good Books in St. Paul with friend and fellow suicide-themed novelist Geoff Herbach (The Miracle Letters Of T. Rimberg). After the reading, they'll host a cocktail hour across the street at W.A. Frost.
Decider: How’s it going?
David Oppegaard: I’m working as a full-time temp at the U of M, so it’s surreal. I’ll get interview requests, and then I’ll have to go change the fax machine paper. You’re the second actual reporter of any kind that I’ve talked to.
D: You had a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and a great write-up in The Washington Post’s sci-fi roundup last week.
DO: It’s funny because a little earlier in the Post a different reviewer did a two-sentence review and gave my book a D. So now I don’t trust them at all. [Laughs.] The other book they reviewed that day was some kind of chick-lit book about martinis and girls in Manhattan or something, and that got a D-, so I felt like I was doing pretty good that week.
D: Why do novelists have this fascination with suicide, especially Midwestern novelists, and especially during the past two years?
DO: We live in a world that seems bent on decay, especially if you’ve been paying attention the last eight years during George Bush’s presidency. There’s a Pearl Jam song, “World Wide Suicide,” that describes it well. In a weird way, I think suicide gets you through your bad days because you think, “Well, I could always kill myself.” At least you can choose to end your life. But it’s kind of a double-edged sword because you can only do it once. You can’t come back. I imagine there are a lot of suicides that regret it.
D: The Suicide Collectors is really about the people who survive suicide. Not—as you describe in your book—people who survive their own suicide attempts, but rather the loved ones that people leave behind.
DO: In the world of the novel, they call themselves The Last Ten Percent and they are the people who would survive five years of watching their loved ones die. Most of them are stubborn. They are like the people that work at the D.M.V. And my main character, Norman, he is The One because he is the most stubborn of them all. He is the one who stands up and says, “I don’t know what’s going on, but it is wrong.”
D: In other post-apocalyptic fiction, heroes emerge out of a Darwinian need for survival, or self-righteousness, like in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, or through the divine purpose of an all-knowing God, like in Stephen King’s The Stand. Neither is the case in The Suicide Collectors. What is it that you’re saying about heroes, and life, in this book?
DO: I’m basically saying that living is better than dying. If you’re still kicking, things could get better. And that this has a snowball effect with other people. It’s really up to you. What if there is no heaven beyond? It’s not about being self-righteous. It’s about people in this world just trying to survive. They still get something out of it, for whatever reason. That’s why the character Pops is still around. He still has a passion that gets him through—modifying a golf cart, building a plane. It was important in the book that it isn’t a mass suicide outbreak. It was important that it is clear that it is a personal choice by each person to live or die.
D: And the people who survive are stubborn, but they aren’t crazy.
DO: In a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction the survivors are all kind of crazy—like in Mad Max. But a lot of regular people would survive the apocalypse. And nature is thriving in my book. The Earth is actually doing much better.
D: People are often hesitant to talk about suicide as a theme. Why is that?
DO: There have been suicide epidemics throughout history. Sometimes, they are called copycat suicides. Donna Gaines wrote about it in the book Teenage Wasteland. People are afraid of that. It is still so taboo. No one has asked me if I’ve tried to kill myself, or if I knew anyone who has. I haven’t, by the way. I have known people, but not a family member.
D: Do you think that matters for this book?
DO: I’m not into the whole memoir thing where you say you have had to live it to write it. If this book was about a human who pirates a space ship, would you ask me, “Have you ever pirated a space ship?”
D: No.
DO: See? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is how it’s created on the page.
D: Speaking of pages, you’re rather prolific, aren’t you?
DO: Well, when I was seven and eight I wrote a series of books about ALF, from the TV show—ALF Saves the Tooth Fairy and things like that. I wrote a long short story in high school when I was 15 and it became a 400-page book. At St. Olaf I had written a bad literary novel about divorce. By the time I got to Hamline [for my MFA] I was finishing up my fourth book about a Vietnam vet who escapes from a mental institution, and that’s how I got my agent. The Suicide Collectors is my fifth book. My sixth book was my thesis at Hamline, which is about a guy who inherits a castle.
D: And your seventh book?
DO: Comes out from St. Martin’s Press in the fall: Wormwood, Nevada. It’s about a young married couple that moves to a small town in Nevada, and then a meteorite lands in the center of town and the whole place starts to unravel.
D: Is it 400 pages long?
DO: No. I don’t think I will ever write a book that’s more than 350 pages... maybe when I am older and more puffed up. I like to keep it short because it gives me less opportunity to suck.
Decider: How’s it going?
David Oppegaard: I’m working as a full-time temp at the U of M, so it’s surreal. I’ll get interview requests, and then I’ll have to go change the fax machine paper. You’re the second actual reporter of any kind that I’ve talked to.
D: You had a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and a great write-up in The Washington Post’s sci-fi roundup last week.
DO: It’s funny because a little earlier in the Post a different reviewer did a two-sentence review and gave my book a D. So now I don’t trust them at all. [Laughs.] The other book they reviewed that day was some kind of chick-lit book about martinis and girls in Manhattan or something, and that got a D-, so I felt like I was doing pretty good that week.
D: Why do novelists have this fascination with suicide, especially Midwestern novelists, and especially during the past two years?
DO: We live in a world that seems bent on decay, especially if you’ve been paying attention the last eight years during George Bush’s presidency. There’s a Pearl Jam song, “World Wide Suicide,” that describes it well. In a weird way, I think suicide gets you through your bad days because you think, “Well, I could always kill myself.” At least you can choose to end your life. But it’s kind of a double-edged sword because you can only do it once. You can’t come back. I imagine there are a lot of suicides that regret it.
D: The Suicide Collectors is really about the people who survive suicide. Not—as you describe in your book—people who survive their own suicide attempts, but rather the loved ones that people leave behind.
DO: In the world of the novel, they call themselves The Last Ten Percent and they are the people who would survive five years of watching their loved ones die. Most of them are stubborn. They are like the people that work at the D.M.V. And my main character, Norman, he is The One because he is the most stubborn of them all. He is the one who stands up and says, “I don’t know what’s going on, but it is wrong.”
D: In other post-apocalyptic fiction, heroes emerge out of a Darwinian need for survival, or self-righteousness, like in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, or through the divine purpose of an all-knowing God, like in Stephen King’s The Stand. Neither is the case in The Suicide Collectors. What is it that you’re saying about heroes, and life, in this book?
DO: I’m basically saying that living is better than dying. If you’re still kicking, things could get better. And that this has a snowball effect with other people. It’s really up to you. What if there is no heaven beyond? It’s not about being self-righteous. It’s about people in this world just trying to survive. They still get something out of it, for whatever reason. That’s why the character Pops is still around. He still has a passion that gets him through—modifying a golf cart, building a plane. It was important in the book that it isn’t a mass suicide outbreak. It was important that it is clear that it is a personal choice by each person to live or die.
D: And the people who survive are stubborn, but they aren’t crazy.
DO: In a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction the survivors are all kind of crazy—like in Mad Max. But a lot of regular people would survive the apocalypse. And nature is thriving in my book. The Earth is actually doing much better.
D: People are often hesitant to talk about suicide as a theme. Why is that?
DO: There have been suicide epidemics throughout history. Sometimes, they are called copycat suicides. Donna Gaines wrote about it in the book Teenage Wasteland. People are afraid of that. It is still so taboo. No one has asked me if I’ve tried to kill myself, or if I knew anyone who has. I haven’t, by the way. I have known people, but not a family member.
D: Do you think that matters for this book?
DO: I’m not into the whole memoir thing where you say you have had to live it to write it. If this book was about a human who pirates a space ship, would you ask me, “Have you ever pirated a space ship?”
D: No.
DO: See? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is how it’s created on the page.
D: Speaking of pages, you’re rather prolific, aren’t you?
DO: Well, when I was seven and eight I wrote a series of books about ALF, from the TV show—ALF Saves the Tooth Fairy and things like that. I wrote a long short story in high school when I was 15 and it became a 400-page book. At St. Olaf I had written a bad literary novel about divorce. By the time I got to Hamline [for my MFA] I was finishing up my fourth book about a Vietnam vet who escapes from a mental institution, and that’s how I got my agent. The Suicide Collectors is my fifth book. My sixth book was my thesis at Hamline, which is about a guy who inherits a castle.
D: And your seventh book?
DO: Comes out from St. Martin’s Press in the fall: Wormwood, Nevada. It’s about a young married couple that moves to a small town in Nevada, and then a meteorite lands in the center of town and the whole place starts to unravel.
D: Is it 400 pages long?
DO: No. I don’t think I will ever write a book that’s more than 350 pages... maybe when I am older and more puffed up. I like to keep it short because it gives me less opportunity to suck.
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