Seattlest Book Club: An Interview with the Author of Red Weather

This month Seattlest Book Club is reading Seattle-born and -raised Pauls Toutonghi's debut novel Red Weather, just out in paperback from Random House. You'll get a discount if you buy it at Bailey-Coy or Santoro's.

We emailed questions, he emailed us back answers.

Red Weather is set in Milwaukee, but are there any aspects of your experience growing up in Seattle that make their way into the book?

Many of them, absolutely. Well, "Alexander Hamilton High School" is just a re-named version of James A. Garfield High, on 23rd and Cherry, where I went to school. Although, now that Garfield is being remodeled, I guess that space will be totally different -- not the same crumbling school that I knew and loved.

The struggles with girls -- as my high-school friends will attest -- are also mine. Woe is the dorky, shy kid who gives poems to the girls he likes.

Also, there's a car accident in the book that is modeled after a car accident I had north of Seattle in my father's midnight-blue, 1992 Ford Probe.

Some novels with teenage protagonists are intended to be read by teenagers, some--like yours--are for adults. Is there something you thought you could say through a teenager that you couldn't through an adult?

Great question. Mainly -- mainly -- I wanted to work with the innocence, audacity, and sort of self-centeredness that kids possess. That feeling of being at the center of the world, sort of, that marks the teenage experience.

I also love the sense of discovering things for the first time. This is one of the primary joys in life, I think -- finding something, or someone, that we are passionate about... So -- in Yuri Balodis -- I could have him find this intense, confusing first love. And I could have him encounter socialism for the first time, too.

It was a little limiting, at times. But I used the device of him looking back on the past and writing about it -- so that made it a bit easier.

You've done a tremendous job capturing the awkward indecisiveness of a teenage boy. What were your high-school years like?

My high school years were frustrating. I think it's tough not quite fitting in -- and I didn't quite fit in. I was teased a lot in school and it kind of made me miserable. Looking back on it now, I realize that -- though it was tough -- I did end up making five life-long friends, though -- which isn't something that happens to everyone, so, in that respect, I was lucky.

My home life seemed difficult. But every teenager believes that their homelife is difficult. Honestly, find me the person who says: Well, high school was wonderful. I think that the struggling makes the potential future satisfaction all the more alluring.

I wrote [in high school] because I wanted to prove my worth. I could do something -- really well -- that everyone else couldn't. So that made me retreat to my computer every night, and write -- at first -- really bad love poems.

It's been a good year for Garfield grads in the NBA--Brandon Roy will win rookie of the year, and, at the other end of the spectrum, Will Conroy played in a handful of games. If Red Weather was an NBA rookie year, give me its per game statistical averages.

I think about this all the time. But I tend to not think in terms of basketball, rather baseball. I'm not familiar enough with basketball to really say. But... hazarding a guess... I think that it's sort of like finally breaking into the NBA, but being the scrappy player who's eighth in the rotation, struggling to get the minutes, making most of the chance.

In baseball terms, I think it's like getting called up to the majors -- and holding down your position for the whole year, hitting .260, doing some decent field work. It's great, but all it did was get me a contract for next year. In spring training, I'll still have to struggle for my job, and there's no guarantee for the future.

Think: John Mabry.

Thanks, Pauls. Monday our crack book club staff, James Callan and Matt Silvie, will post a little point/counter point about Red Weather. Join us then!