Connor Coyne novel "Urbantasm" Set in Deindustrialized Flint

0:20 All right, this is Arthur Bush. You're listening to Radio Free Flint today's episode, and its guest is Connor Coyne. He's an author. Uh, welcome to Radio Free Flint, Connor. Thanks for having me. I invited you on Radio Free Flint to talk about your books, especially the one that's coming out, Urban TASM. Is that it? That's it. Okay. Your background is quite interesting. You have published several books actually, and your publishing experience also includes some blog articles and so forth, including some well-known national publications, such as at fox.com, uh Belt Magazine, which is a magazine dedicated to the working class.

1:02 Your book, Urban Tasm, is part of a four-part series. Tell us the trailer version of this book. Sure. Well, it's a serial novel, so they have to be read in order in order to make sense. So kicking off the first one, uh, you have a 13-year-old boy named John Bridge, and he's about to start junior high, and he's really excited. He wants, he's got a plan to become one of the most popular kids in uh seventh grade uh in his uh new junior high school in uh Kaway, Michigan, which is based on Flint. But on the first day of school, he steals a pair of strange sunglasses from a homeless person. And this kind of plunges him into this conflict involving uh involving, you know, different different gangs and feuding families across the city, and a magical drug that has the ability to distort space and basically just sort of the floor falls out from beneath him.

1:59 So that's sort of how the story launches. And then how does it end? No, you don't have to tell me that this series of books is set in Flint, Michigan. And it's set in the town that you grew up. Yes, yes, it takes place during the 1990s. Were you born in Flint? I lived in the city until I was 11 years old, over by uh kind of like the Franklin Longway area. About when I was 12, my parents moved out to flushing, where my grandma lived, and I went to flushing schools from there until uh you know, through the rest of high school. You're from a the Flint area. The book informs life in the city itself. Yes.

2:39 Yeah, you're not writing about flushing or some other place. It's a flint book for sure. Although, you know, you do have a few scattered chapters that take place in the suburbs here and there, and their characters were based based in the suburbs. Yeah, it's it's definitely it's a it's a flint book. Who is your intended audience? That's where things get gnarly with the fine print. So we have marketed this in part to young adults because these days the way the publishing industry is structured is if you've got protagonists who are uh young adults who are teenagers, uh, the assumption is that that is the audience for it. And I do think that, you know, this is this is a book that that young people have read and have enjoyed.

3:22 But from a genre perspective, I would also just say it would be described as magical realism, which is basically like a story where supernatural or extraordinary events happen that are incidental to the setting. So they're not seen as being uh completely bizarre and fantastical, they're just part of the reality where the books take place. When I wrote these books, I did not have an age in mind for them. I wanted to tell a story that was romantic and compelling, dynamic and complex. And my goal is that anybody who would enjoy it would pick it up and read it.

4:04 The Arson Ring in Flint in uh, you know, I think it was uh 2009, 2010, uh, when you had the serial stabber, when you had the Flint Water Crisis. Um, I was working on this book as all of those contemporary events were happening, and I wanted to incorporate them. And because it's a fictional setting, I was able to do that. So that's despite its temporal setting, there are a lot of references that are much more contemporary. But I also think that people have an expectation when they read historical fiction for a certain amount of um either like um nostalgia or an emphasis upon the trappings of the time.

4:44 And I don't think these books really have that emphasis. Like there are reasons that it's clear they're in the 1990s, you know, payphones keep popping up and nobody can just like, you know, hop on their computer and and look up anything. But at the same time, I think that the questions and the conflicts are much more universal and not not anything that would need to be sp rooted in a particular decade. I think people that picked it up looking for 1990s nostalgia would would probably come away disappointed. That's just not really something it offers a lot of. What makes your book unique? Well, I think the problem I had when I went to try to get it published is that it's a little bit too unique.

5:27 And I'm not saying that to boast that's that's just uh a double-edged sword. Taken together, it's 2,000 pages. It's got a uh a you know, Victor Hugo sort of romantic sweep to it. There are these junior high kids who are trying to figure out their romantic lives and try to figure out their desires for the future while this city is essentially like imploding around them. It makes use of like a lot of history, uh a lot of like magical, almost hallucinogenic dream sequences. You know, whether people like it or dislike it, nobody I think has ever read anything like it.

6:08 Drugs are very significant in the plot of the story. And, you know, part of the reason is because I drafted this as a 17-year-old. And at the time, you know, a lot of my friends, their lives were very defined by drugs. Either they were developing addictions of their own, or their parents were on drugs, or there were people in their in their neighborhoods or in their families that were selling drugs. So drugs were everywhere, and drugs are definitely a visible presence in this. I also think, you know, when I talked about hallucinogenic passages, what I also meant, this is kind of like modeled on a strain of romantic literature going all the way back to Frankenstein and before.

6:52 And part of part of what part of that is the idea that these sensory experiences can be uh can be really, really intense. For example, in the second book, you know, there's a scene where the main character uh gets very sick, he's got the flu, and he starts kind of imagining the history of the city all the way back, you know, from going back to when, you know, it was an Ojibwa settlement, and then back even before that. You know, that whole sequence is very trippy, even though you know there really aren't any drugs involved at all. He's just awake and sick in the middle of the night and imagining what this place was like before he was there.

7:32 What is it about this book that makes it work? I think the thing that makes it work to stand out to me compared to other things that I've written is the really real depth of like characterization. I think that these are very fully realized characters, different writers of different strong suits. Uh, I'm a rhythm guy, I can I can like write great sentences, I think. And you know, I'm usually pretty good at coming up with like nuanced themes and settings, but uh I would not say I'm generally like a great character writer. And yet, uh, because this one is so personal and it comes from experiences that I had and that my friends had at a very intense time in our lives, I feel like all the characters in this, even you know, those that just have like a few lines here or there, have really uh rich inner lives, and readers come to care about these characters and truly believe that they know them.

8:30 That is what I think makes this book work more than than anything else. I think that's what makes the more esoteric choices have meaning. Otherwise, it seems like you're just showing off because you can. But if you are able to use those choices to reveal a character or a relationship that somebody will care about, then those creative choices have some have to Flint a great place to find these characters. Oh, it's it's completely unparalleled. In my life, I've I've lived in Chicago for many years. I went to grad school in New York, you know. I I spent those years in flushing and uh spent a summer in Romania.

9:11 All really, really great places, but I've never seen a place with like characters like Flint Scott characters. Having the book set in Flint, even the cover of your books feature Flint. They're uh they're illustrations. There's uh one feature in all four covers that's actually from Flint. This radio tower right here is is sort of a replication of a tower uh on the south side, it's just south of 69. Uh, I want to say, like between Grand Traver Street and Fenton Road. Uh so that's an actual actual radio tower. I think it's been decommissioned. But my cover designer, Sam Perkins Harbin, uh, he's a Flint Central alum.

9:51 So when we were designing the covers together, you know, when we were talking about the different images, uh, we both had a strong picture of Flint in our mind. But these are also meant to be suggestive. Like, you know, I would like to think that, you know, somebody picks up this book and, you know, their city that they're familiar with is, I don't know, maybe it's maybe it's Toledo, maybe it's even Richmond, California, or, you know, some other place with an industrial history, and there would be points of recognition. And the covers are kind of kind of also meant to suggest that. You seem to focus in some of your interviews from previous works on deindustrialization, and that makes its way into this book. How does that how does that fit?

10:33 I'd like to take a bird's eye view of it, and of course, I I guess I'm somewhat limited by it my own experience, but I was born in 1978 and you know, was was in the in Flint or the Flint area, you know, all the way basically through 2000 practically. So I think that was an era when Flint was de-industrializing. You know, I moved back in 2010, well, 2011, Flint is de-industrialized now. You know, you still have an industrial presence here, but I think, you know, the largest sectors of the economy are just about as much like uh the municipal government, education, and healthcare, you know, are almost almost up there with industry.

11:14 And if you go back before my time, Flint was an industrial city. I mean, I think, I think actually, like GM employment maxed out in 1978, the year I was born, it was about 80,000. My experience growing up in a in a city, it was a city that still had factories, but was constantly in a in a process of shedding them. I think that, you know, that question about what's next, where is this going? Where are these jobs going? Where is this revenue going? I do think that that, you know, comes into my writing a lot because that was, you know, the city when I was coming of age. That was the soundtrack of your life. Yeah. I listened to something you told another reporter about your family explaining to you the rules of the road when it could be getting a job in a General Motors factory.

12:00 Could I get you to repeat that story? Oh wow. I think it was uh not to count on one because uh it it wasn't it wasn't going to be there. At least that that's the conversation I mostly remember. What did they have to say about that? That your future with General Motors. Yeah, I think there was one week where I was aspiring to go into the shop. They put the lid on that pretty tight. It was not the future they wanted for me. I think they uh hoped that by getting uh getting my brother and sister and me a good education, we'd have, you know, lots of options available to us. But I mean, also I think they were aware that those jobs were going away, that they simply were not going to be there in the numbers, uh, which was completely correct.

12:40 Well, you know, we've had a couple guys come out of Flint. One, Ben Hamper, who wrote The Rivet Head, which is actually a nonfiction book, although it reads like fiction at times. We had uh Christopher Paul Curtis, one of the world's uh top children's books authors, one of the most sold authors on the on the planet, who grew up in the south end of and actually worked at Fisher Body Plant Number One, and said he couldn't take it anymore. He left, and there he is. He became unbelievably successful. So it is possible. So there's hope, right? There's hope for your books. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope so. Have you tried any other mediums like film or broadcasting or you know, some of the other things like poetry, or uh, or is this just your game?

13:28 Just writing is your game? I'd say fiction and essays are the two forms I do the most, the two that I'm I'm most comfortable in. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, at least, you know, where writing is concerned. I don't like doing things poorly. And part of the problem is that all of those mediums are extremely challenging to do well. It's it's I guess easy to do some of those things poorly, but I think with my passion is for fiction, I enjoy writing essays and sort of like that personal nonfiction. You tried poetry? Oh, yeah, I've I've tried poetry. I was never particularly impressed with the poetry I could write. I thought it was pretty pedestrian. I've uh done journalism here and there, and I feel like that's one of the most rigorous and demanding forms of writing there is out there.

14:17 So um I have so much respect for anybody that can like sit down and and write an article. Um, but I don't think it's for me. Now, this book took you a long time to write. 27. 27 years to write. Now, in 27 years, a lot of life can go by. Yeah. And so there's a lot of changes in Akaway, such as uh crime, crack cocaine epidemic, kids getting shot and killed in schools, uh, guns on the street, bad water, and factories closing seemingly one year after the next. How did that affect your book? Do these historical events that occurred in the community actually make their way into the book?

14:58 Or do they it's hard? They do. I'd say most of the major events that I'm aware of in Flint from the mid-1980s until the last several years have made it in in some form or another. So in the very first book, there's a reference to a failed theme park, you know, downtown, and you know, the land that was cleared for that and its ultimate fate. And that's obviously Ottawa World. And, you know, the characters are are talking about it and kind of like noticing, you know, this huge grassy field where you'd expect to see uh, you know, uh infrastructure and buildings and commerce that close to the heart of a city.

15:40 And then, you know, going forward to the third book, you know, there is a water crisis in that book, and it takes place with the situations and the deterioration of the schools and the city being under receivership by the state and other things surrounding that. But I think, other than the fact that they're included, it's almost like I had to approach each of them differently because this is a story about these characters trying to kind of survive in their own situations. So the way that they're going to engage each of those different things is going to be more personal in some cases and less personal in others.

16:23 Um they're shaped, they're shaped by history. Yeah. You've kind of broke a rule that is sort of an old axiom. And that old axiom is once you've left, you can't go home. You've kind of followed that path. You left Flint, you came back to Flint. What you discovered when you came back to Flint was a much different city than when you left. I think you made reference to that earlier. How does that work? How does that work? And how does that how does that get into this book? I think that part of it has to do with the age of the characters. Going back to what you just said, yeah, I I agree. Like, you know, I came home, I came back to Flint, Michigan. Uh, you know, I didn't stay in Chicago or go to some other place.

17:04 And in that sense, you know, you do have the opportunity to connect with what's familiar, but the city is is a is a fundamentally different place. It it changes, every city changes. That's just in the nature of what a city is. In terms of the book, the main character starts it when he's 13 years old, and he's 16 when he leaves. I don't know of any 13-year-old who is the same exact person when they're 16. Like those are years, three years of incredible growth and transformation. So, in a way, it was kind of uh appropriate. Like, I don't know that I plan it out this way exactly, but as the city is changing very rapidly throughout these four books, the characters are also growing and maturing at a very quick rate, too.

17:50 And I think, yeah, that people who get to the end of the fourth book go back and like reread the first 10 pages of the first book would think, wow, this city is very different. And wow, these characters are very different. Back to the real world. Do you think people understand that their city has changed once they've left? I don't think people are really great at recognizing that. At least it's taken me like four decades to feel like I recognize that. I think that we have memories and experiences that we think is being fundamental to our sense not only of ourselves, but of a place. If you walk up to me and just say the words Flint, Michigan, I'm probably going to imagine the Atlas Coney Island on Corona Road, circa like 1997 or 1998.

18:37 At about two o'clock in the morning. Exactly. Yes. Two o'clock in the morning, the best time to be there then. Yeah, well, that's 25 years ago. Anyone who is less than 25 years old living in Flint, that Flint does not exist anymore. Like it has never existed for those people. I think that, you know, however good our intentions are, we have a tendency to view places as being more fixed as we encountered them than they actually are. And they're always going to be different from person to person, and they're always going to be different from time to time. The city really is not a static entity. In fact, the older I get, the better my old neighborhood looks.

19:20 You know, I don't remember the smoke going across the the Pengali Road and Browning Street and Milton of Black smoke for your bodies. Yeah. I don't remember the traffic amps. I don't remember. Do you have some of those moments in your book? Although you're you're really a generation or two generations apart from um do you have moments like that today where you look at your city and you say, Wow my god, what's that um do you mean like where where I'm like nostalgic for the past, or yeah, where you look at it and you're kind of startled by what you see. There are specific things that I definitely miss. You know, we we talked about going to the atlas at At two in the morning.

20:01 And actually, that's like a very specific one. I'm not as interested in hearing the answer to that story because we can find that on Facebook. What we can't find on Facebook is what we see today. And for those expatriates like myself, we can't there are things that are happening there today that we don't see. And that's a lot more interesting than you know the US 23 drive-in in the 1970s. Tell me a couple things that you see today that might not have existed even in the 90s. I'm not asking you to put shade on plant. I just want to see what whatever the reality is. I think at one point you describe this confusing picture where you see people who live this life where they have to navigate some unimaginable things.

20:51 And at the same time, they navigate a city as if it wouldn't be any different any other place, perhaps. I think uh a a couple things that I've seen in the last few years. One of them actually I feel like it began back in '95 when Rhonda Sanders came out with her book, Bronze Pillars. Now that book has been out for a while, but I see people going back to it over and over again to the point where, you know, it's it's in it's in reading groups today. Some of the, I think the Flint Public Library had a reading group that was reading uh Rhonda Sanders' book. And then you know, the Flint Color Lines project came out. I think that one thing that is happening now is especially in the last couple years with uh, you know, the rise of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests, is there the uh civil rights era of Flint from the 1960s going forward, you know, has gotten a refreshing second look and is being taught and understood in a deeper way, you know, than perhaps it has been in the past.

21:54 So that is something that I would say I think has has changed in the city, you know, since the 1990s, that I think is a is a very positive development. Another weird thing that I think is it's difficult to pin down, but those years that I was in flushing, there were maybe like flushing high school at 1,300 students, there were maybe like a couple dozen non-white students in um in all of Flushing High School. And that would have been, you know, a similar experience throughout most of Flint's mid-suburbs. Part of what has happened is that as uh Flint has continued to contract by about 2,000 people a year for the last 30 years, is uh most families stay within Genesee County.

22:37 They leave Flint, but they've moved out to Flint Township, to Burton, to Flushing, Davison, Stuart Street. And as a result, these suburbs uh, you know, which were all white, you know, not that long ago, are now much more integrated and diverse than they've been in the past. And I think that paradoxically, even as that has you know resulted from Flint contracting, I think that there are closer connections between city residents and some suburbanites than there have ever been in the past. And I'd say that that is also something which was not which was not the case, you know, when I lived in flushing, all my friends lived in Flint, I drove into Flint for my social life, you know, they didn't come out and visit me.

23:21 I I think that the ground is shifting a bit on that. So those would be those would be two things that I think are are new and at least from my perspective, unanticipated. You're a young father, uh you're educated, you live in the college and cultural area, and you've decided to put your stake down in Flint. Is that right? Yep. What is it about Flint that makes you hopeful? It's it's the people, really. And I mean, I I don't know that I could have said answered that question with any confidence, you know, even like five years ago. Um I think I was still like kind of guilty of like magical thinking, looking for the next downtown redevelopment to get us over, or you know, the next U of M expansion to get us over.

24:04 Um and partly like those always feel like miragas. They they are always like further away you you approach them and they recede before you. But I mean, really what it comes down to is you know, this is a community I know intimately well because I have involved so much of my life here. And so I know the people here and I care about them and I see what they have to offer, and hopefully, you know, they see what I have to offer. It could sound cynical to say, why flint? And my answer would be like, well, why not? But that's kind of what it comes down to. You know, I care about this place, so why would I go someplace that I don't have that intimacy and that familiarity when I can help out here and where I can be part of this community?

24:49 Honor Coyne, thank you for appearing on Radio Free Clint. I really enjoyed talking to you, and I wish you every success on your book. Please show the book again one last time if you put this up on YouTube. There we go. Urbantism. It's the third in the series of four. Yep, actually, it's the last one, and it'll be published on May 1st. Okay, very good. And you'll be around town with it, and we'll put a link to Connor's website by the end of this podcast. Thank you for joining us, everybody out there. We'll see you down next time. Goodbye. Well, the water was brown, smelled like chlorine. Still, the city officials said the water was clean.

25:31 People broke out in rashes, somewhere losing their hair. They complained to the mare, but he just didn't care. He said river water. Well, it's yeah, he said don't you worry, people I drink it all the time. Doctor Mona knew that the water was bad. She gathered all the research that she had. She released a study. That study said, All your little children have been poisoned with lead.

26:17 Tast like turpentine tie. Tast like turpentine.

27:07 That just knows what the system will do. It'll poison your children and lie to you. You can tell them the facts, they'll still say they're right. They deny a truth. Well, it's in flame type. Oh and out about the water. Now people are shaking down.