Guest Post: William Claypool

When you sit back and think about my book, Windfall Nights, it has a number of interrelated parts that make it move. On one level, the novel is a simple story of friendship. On another level, it is a story of family loss and of family found. There is also a strong component of disappointment and guilt and a component of redemption. I wanted to capture all of these themes.

I wrote my book in the first person, with the narrator looking back to a period of his life when events suddenly forced him to view the world differently. The primary venues of the book are Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam; a town in northern Indiana; and a Midwest farm. The narrator reflects back on those venues as he tells of the time he encountered a gifted individual named Thomas. This new friend and his problems make the relationship a challenging one, but Thomas would forever change the narrator’s life.

My favorite character, though, is Margery, Thomas’ mother. I like her balance, her faith and her support of Thomas. She was a wonderful mother and a pillar of strength for the rest of the characters.

People ask me if the book is autobiographical. My answer is that, as I suspect is true for a lot of books, it was all real, and some of it actually happened. I was a night bellman at the LaSalle Hotel in South Bend. For better or for worse, I spent a lot of time during college in places similar to the way the Algonquin is described in the novel. I’ve been to Saigon – after the war. And yes, I did spend four years at that medium- sized university in northern Indiana with a strong interest and tradition in football. I didn’t have to make up every detail.

We’re only young once, and writing a book is great way to re-live parts of it. I always enjoyed “coming of age” or “initiation” novels growing up. Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace and even The Great Gatsby are in this genre, and they were my favorites growing up.

The book takes place in the ’60s and ’70s, interesting times to come of age; there was never a dull moment. That generation grew up with the Civil Rights Movement and then slid right in to the Vietnam Era, with Free Love and Drugs thrown in for some spice. As a reality check, the hedonistic overlay was clouded by the existence of a conscripting army. Everyone knew someone who was drafted. Everyone knew people who were killed. More than 58,000 American troops died in Vietnam. Can you imagine our involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan with those kinds of losses?

I don’t know that ‘America’ today has an opinion of the Vietnam war. I think the people who do have opinions about the war have emotions that range from continued outrage for the intervention, to satisfaction for protesting, to guilt for having stood up against it, to pride for military service during that time. I think many young people today find it difficult to put that war and those times in a social context. I think it’s more difficult with the Vietnam War than for a number of events in U.S. history.

Now, I am working on another project that I am excited about. It’s very different from Windfall Nights, but I think it will be considered good read. I’m still writing, but we’ll have to see where the word processor takes me. Check in with me in about six months!

Make sure to check out the Facebook page for Windfall Nights : https://www.facebook.com/pages/Windfall-Nights-by-William-Claypool/174719169261289