Books: Night Watch by Mathew Goldberg

Blog Editor Chase Isbell interviews Shenandoah contributor Mathew Goldberg about his book Night Watch, a short story collection about the violence of ordinary life. In this interview, Goldberg explains his book’s interest in social disharmony and how his collection meets our current political and cultural milieu. In addition, Goldberg discusses music, Jewish identity, gender, and the usage of tropes. His short story “Graceland,” featured in this collection, was published in the 2008 fall issue of Shenandoah in print.

Your collection articulates the violence that underscores contemporary middle-class American life. Each story articulates how intergenerational trauma, mental illness, sexual abuse, and physical violence contour our everyday lives. What is it about this underbelly of American life that fascinates you so much? How did you conceive of this collection as illustrating these violences and their relationship to “ordinary” life?

First of all, thank you for this interview and the chance to discuss the book. You’ve clearly done a thorough, thoughtful read, and these are excellent questions. I was just talking to a colleague about the dark nature of these stories, and he said, “We live in dark times.” Yes, this is a cliché, but it’s also true, especially now. Since I’ve become a parent, I’ve become extremely cognizant of the violence you mention. There’s a constant feed of stories bombarding us, so we become horrified and desensitized all at once. My son just began fifth grade, and I’ve recently had to talk to him about the shootings and other disasters we’ve experienced this year. I find this heart-breaking, like the narrator does in “Bad,” terrified of sending his son out into the dangerous, cold world after an incident that shuts down his son’s preschool. Like this character, we constantly anticipate and fear violence.

I don’t see writing as therapy but as a way to explore these topics. My hope is to add humanity and even some humor to the stories as the Coen brothers and David Lynch do with theirs. Take Gabe in the title story. As a teenager, he notices the hypocrisy of the middle-class life that’s presented to him. It feels like everyone knows a secret they refuse to share with him, so he goes to extremes in spying on his neighbors. Of course, he’s also dealing with his burgeoning sexuality, which, back in the 90s, was not something anyone openly talked about. Sex was associated with shame and danger after the AIDS crisis. Gabe is hoping to make sense of things, just like we all are. Unfortunately, there aren’t any good answers, and that absurdity is what I find compelling. The assault in the story is based on the victims of an actual serial killer who terrorized the D.C. area in the 90s but wasn’t caught until recently (through DNA ancestry services). Back in the 90s, the killer was a phantom, someone stalking everyday life who kids wove into ghost stories. So Gabe, like me as a teenager (and me as an adult), struggles to make sense of it all.

In a similar vein, your writing foregrounds failed social situations, highlighting characters who fundamentally are at odds with the world around them and who fail to pursue socially acceptable expressions of their desires. While not exactly as obvious as the violence alluded to in my previous question, the stakes of social failure seem no less life or death for characters like Gabe, Max, and Friedman. What role does both social harmony and disharmony play in the world of these characters and in the themes readers of this collection encounter? How does social dysfunction have a relationship to your interest in violence?

I’m interested in characters at decision points, and I try to place them in the situations they’d least like to be in. I believe that conflict comes from character rather than merely from external machinations, so if a character would not normally leave their house, like Friedman, he needs a push, and after that push, he has to figure out how to behave. I agree that these are disconnected characters, and in trying for connection, they act in uncomfortable ways. They desire connection and understanding, but they don’t know how to achieve this, and they feel that the world thwarts their efforts.

I think disconnection has only increased post-COVID with people turning to unconventional methods to connect (chatbot therapists and companions, etc.), which are, unfortunately, becoming more conventional. Everyday social interactions often feel like fraught and stressful exchanges, especially when real-life exchanges become rarer.

With characters, I’m always drawn to unreliable protagonists who are vulnerable; we hopefully understand them even as we don’t condone them. I want my characters to make mistakes. Josh, in “Entropy,” turns the government on his favorite teacher so as not to lose him, not realizing the enormity of the action, an act that will probably drive this father figure away. Friedman self-harms and blames his mother, an act he imagines saves him and Marlowe from his mother’s toxic influence. But with this action, he’s physically and emotionally harming himself, just as his mother habitually did with her own illness, an illness that Friedman always feared he’d inherit.

This idea that these characters, most of whom are men, are plagued by social failure made me think a lot about the “male loneliness crisis” and the discourse surrounding it in contemporary cultural criticism. Do you think of your collection as being in dialogue with anxieties around this idea that men are uniquely suffering the consequences of social ineptitude in this current political moment? What does this collection have to say about masculinity more broadly, especially when discussing male characters who are themselves both victims of and perpetrators of violence?

My characters deal with loneliness just like we all do. I’m interested in characters who want relief but don’t know where to find it. But I don’t think loneliness is anything new. What feels new is the media that promotes the loudest, angriest, most extreme voices. And with less in-person contact, people are trying to connect online to solve loneliness. That said, I don’t think loneliness or boredom are problems to solve. It’s part of being human, and something you’re supposed to feel (but not drown in). If loneliness didn’t hurt, we’d have less of a reason to change. Just as if boredom didn’t hurt, we’d have less reason to create.

My characters definitely have trouble dealing with this pain. Both Deborah in “Live at Slugs’” and Barbara in “With a Mighty Hand and Outstretched Arm” are lonely characters who commit violence after being exposed to violence. But I’m not sure it’s a directly causal relationship. They are trapped in enclosed spaces and face enormous pressure. Barbara begins her story in solitude with an empty nest, her husband away, when the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002 occur—a pre-social media event when no one knew what was going on, who was responsible, or where the next shooting would happen. It was risky even going out to get gas, and you couldn’t connect with people online the way we can today (for better or worse). All of this fuels her anxiety and pushes her to suspect and confront her neighbor with his aggressive brand of masculinity.

While we are on the topic of gender, I’m especially interested in the character Marlowe. You write explicitly that “Marlowe [is] not the manic pixie dream girl,” but her characterization—a free-spirited young woman dating a much older troubled man—fits very much into this trope. What is your interest in the archetype of the manic pixie dream girl? How are you so sure Marlowe is or isn’t a manic pixie dream girl, and should the answer to that question change how we understand her as readers? Also, could you speak about the fine line between perpetuating and deconstructing tropes?

We live in tropes and use them both consciously and unconsciously. I’m a big fan of Joseph Campbell and how he traces the progression and convergence of myths through cultures and religions. It’s no coincidence that we keep returning to Greek mythology, especially with the tragic folly of mortals transgressing against uncaring institutions. We see the magical chosen-one story of the boy navigating adolescence in texts I’m reading with my son: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson. I teach noir at Missouri S&T where, in class, we talk about the femme fatale. The question for a writer is how they make the trope their own. I want a character to be human, not merely a symbol.

The term “manic pixie dream girl” came from Nathan Rabin’s A.V. Club review of Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown, a static character who only serves to break the male protagonist out of his shell. So I’m playing off that with Marlowe. Unlike Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown and Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State, Marlowe covers her own anxiety with a mask of confidence, using flirtation and impulsive action to hide her own insecurities. Her concern is that Friedman sees her as a cliché while she uses this cliché to hide part of herself. Something drives her to date an older, lonely man; for one, his age and financial stability is a balm for her. She thinks she’s equipped to handle Friedman’s mentally ill mother, but in “Woman with Dog,” when Friedman’s mother grabs Marlowe’s arm, the mask is lowered, and for a minute, we see how terrified and out of her depth Marlowe actually is. A similar moment occurs in “Friedman in the Dark” after Friedman’s mother escapes her facility and she smacks Marlowe’s hand and criticizes both Marlowe and her relationship with Friedman.

I’ve enjoyed seeing Marlowe evolve over the Friedman stories. I just published a fourth installment, “Friedman at the Reins,” in Pangyrus where Friedman and Marlowe visit Greece only for Friedman to learn of the death of his mother. He keeps this news from Marlowe so he can continue their trip, and this decision becomes a breaking point for Marlowe to evaluate their relationship.

Continuing with Marlowe, I am likewise interested in her lover, Friedman. First, could you tell us a little bit about the character and why you were drawn to write about him? Secondly, why is it that you chose to tell his story across several short stories (“Bruxing,” “Woman with Dog,” and “Friedman in the Dark”) rather than as one long piece of writing? How did you settle on this structure, and how does it affect his narrative overall?

Friedman is a character I keep coming back to. When I wrote “Bruxing,” I didn’t plan on a larger project, but I stayed interested in Friedman and his story, so I wrote another installment, and then another. The passage of time helps me return. I didn’t plan on it as a novel, but maybe it could have been one. I think the short story construction helps me enter the narrative at distinct periods in his new life. And the scarcity of space that short stories present is both a challenge and opportunity. I love the resonant pauses that short stories offer—the ringing notes they end on even as the reader closes the page.

Friedman himself is based on my post-undergrad experience working at IBM in Austin. I was an Electrical/Biomedical engineer, and when I moved to Austin, I took creative writing classes at UT. I was at IBM when Mike Judge filmed Office Space, and I’m in the background of the traffic scene which was filmed in front of my building. The movie aptly summed up my work experience, and I had a friend who retired from the office in his late forties only to live in a small apartment and day-trade. I feel for Friedman and want the best for him. He has artistic inclinations and social anxiety, and he masks his awkwardness with comedy. As much as he wants to begin a new relationship and avoid the past, the past keeps rearing its head.

Music is another motif across these stories, one featured prominently in “Live at Slugs’” and “Graceland.” What role do you see music playing in this collection? And how do you approach writing about music in a literary medium?

I’m glad you noticed this. When I write, I listen to jazz, usually Charles Mingus or Art Blakey, something percussive and unsteady and without lyrics. A few years ago, I began collecting vinyl, and I gave this hobby to some of my characters. I like the tactile nature of records just as I do with physical books. Plus, I played in bands and orchestras through college, so music has always been a big part of my life socially. For disconnected characters seeking connection, music is something they gravitate to. And as a writer, I like describing the feel of a song, especially how the song would appeal to a specific character in their particular space and time.

For “Live at Slugs’,” where Deborah hears her father’s shocking recording of Lee Morgan’s final concert (including the moment Morgan is shot by his wife), I researched the artist, the venue, the jazz of the era, the bootlegging process, and more. And this research was really enjoyable. I consulted Ted Gioia, the music writer, who was insightful and generous with his time. Deborah grew up with a jazz pianist for a father, so I wanted her experience with this world to read authentically. My grandfather was a big band pianist, and I remember marveling at how magically his hands moved the keys.

In “Graceland,” Herschel is a young ethnomusicologist living in Memphis, at odds with his father over his career choice. In grad school at the University of Arkansas, I visited Memphis quite a bit, and for the story, I spent time with the helpful staff of the Center for Southern Folklore. This story provided me the chance to dive into blues and soul music, and I love that B.B. King makes an appearance.

In the title story, Gabe is a high school conductor who becomes enraptured by his classmate, Mei’s, violin playing. This detail is based on a neighbor of mine in elementary school who played violin. I always imagined something magical about her playing. Through Mei, Gabe discovers Bach, and he seeks truth through the sublime after he discovers a dead body in the park. For this story, I listened to a lot of Hilary Hahn. Now, when I think back, my favorite class in undergrad was my classical music theory class, maybe because it involved both the right and left sides of the brain.

The presence of Jewish ethnic and religious identity runs throughout this collection, be it in the foreground or the background. As a touchstone for many characters, Judaism, as an institution and a way of life, comes to represent both social cohesion and also an avenue for harm, the same kinds of harm I mentioned in my first two questions. Can you unpack for us how you are approaching Jewish American life in this collection?

In “Teshuvah,” Fishbein deals with the return of a disgraced rabbi to the community, a rabbi from his past who harmed people close to him. The rabbi could be a priest, and the plot would be the same, but it made sense to leverage the connection between Judaism and debate. I appreciate the need to debate and ask questions in Judaism—that there are no set answers, no heaven or hell, no Devil, and no physical form of God. When I was younger and went to synagogue, I liked hearing the prayers in Hebrew, which made everything sound more mystical, musical, and meditative. And with a harsh, Old Testament god, you have to embrace comedy and the absurd. You’ll never get answers for the violence we talked about earlier. “Teshuvah” is based on a real incident where a local rabbi tried to join a synagogue after committing a terrible crime and spending time in jail. This led to much debate about community, law, and forgiveness.

One of my favorite movies is the Coen’s A Serious Man. Larry Gopnik, facing divorce and professional ruin, seeks answers everywhere only to hear riddles. At the end, does accepting a bribe prompt the call from the doctor with the bad news, or is this just coincidence? There’s a legacy of violence and absurdity in Jewish identity, a legacy of disconnection, of living in a literal and cultural diaspora, which soaks into the individual. Many of them are worried about what they’ll inherit or pass down, whether it’s Friedman and his mother’s mental illness, or the narrator in “Bad” and his childhood transgression against his friend Bobby, or Fishbein and his headaches. Because no one will listen to Fishbein, including his current, liberal rabbi, he takes a sort of Old Testament action himself. Deborah, in “Live at Slugs’” is caring for her father after a stroke, and she has to battle the local Orthodox community who are literally drawing lines on the property. I think the sense of cultural dislocation can cause individual dislocation when one doesn’t find purchase in the group.

I’m interested in this collection’s approach to work and to labor. Many of these characters work as professionals in government, in tech, and in security—fields which have rose to further public scrutiny during President Trump’s second term. In many ways, I’d argue that the mundanity of the lives of these characters, contrasted with the high-stakes nature of their professional careers, subtly underscores your interest in the normalized violences of everyday life. What is your interest in these industries? And do you see this collection as commenting on the type of work more and more Americans find themselves doing in their professional careers?

Before going to grad school in English, I worked a number of years as an engineer, and I found the tech world both compelling and infuriating. Like Fishbein in “Teshuvah,” I was offered a job where the manager asked if I had any issues designing something that would “lead to the loss of human life.” Both the phrasing and the reality of the concept were so disturbing. But people work these jobs, and tech, especially now AI, drives our economy. I have college friends who design microprocessors, and now their work is being used for AI data centers (something they’re not thrilled about). So now, seemingly benign coding can seriously impact the environment (among many other aspects of human life). The high-stakes nature of many of these jobs gets cloaked in the mundane, which is what makes it dangerous and adds a degree of cognitive dissonance.

In “Entropy,” Josh, a high school hacker, is recruited by every defense agency. He’s a neurodivergent, open-hearted kid who makes a Faustian bargain. And in “Perfect Practice Makes Perfect,” Max seems to like some aspects of his job at the D.C. transit authority, though he’s fired at the very beginning of the story for spending all his time on a baseball treatise. Max is bipolar, and he’s another character who behaves objectionably. It’s probably not a coincidence that he has to lose his work before he calms down and finds a measure of clarity. I think about Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, and I hope my characters can take a breath and smile as they watch the boulder they’ve labored over fall back down the mountain before they begin the climb back down to retrieve it.

I thought often of Parul Sehgal’s famous 2021 essay about the trauma plot while reading your collection. Put simply, if Sehgal makes an argument against the trauma plot, I see your collection defending trauma as a narrative device. Indeed, your collection reminds us that, in fact, trauma, or more broadly the social, cultural, and material harms from our past, do actually shape our everyday lives in the present. These characters are proof of it. Do you have thoughts on the trauma plot, one way or the other? You’ve already spoken about how violence contours our lives, but how does this collection approach thinking about life after violence? Is this a book about trauma—as loaded a term as it may be?

I don’t think trauma is a narrative or plot device. Sehgal mentions Ted Lasso, who, I agree, is caught in a rut after the initial season. After season one, he’s in therapy sorting through his childhood trauma, and he has little agency in the narrative. It’s one thing for characters to have trauma in their past (which many of us do), but they have to be dynamic characters able to make choices. I think that’s why many people who suffer trauma would rather be called survivors than victims.

Sehgal also mentions Reservation Dogs, a series I love, where the characters are severely impacted by Daniel’s death, and this death does inform their stories, but it’s usually there in the background—it’s not who they are. So I wouldn’t say that show is about trauma. It’s a show about community. And it’s damn funny at times. In the same fashion, I’m inclined to say my book is about loneliness or disconnection, though I’d rather leave that discussion to the reader. My stories deal with mental illness, but my characters are not their illnesses. Friedman’s past has shaped his fears and tendencies, but his choices have to be his own. Like all of us, he has wants and needs, and he’s going to make mistakes as he pursues them. It’s not just Barbara’s anxiety that leads her to confront her neighbor; it’s all her choices leading up to that moment.

I’m really honored that the amazing Deesha Philyaw sent me a letter after she read Night Watch saying, “You know what makes people tick.” Jumping off her comment, many of my characters do tick until they go off, which probably brings trauma and violence to mind, but I want the reader to explore the connections between a character at the beginning of their story to the story’s end, to live in the non-knowing and debate the absurdity, because, like Larry Gopnik, I can fill walls with equations, but I can’t claim to know the answers.