How I ended up writing these novels

As I wrote about in my last two posts, I’ve been keenly interested in generations since my twenties.

It was my intent for several years to write five plays focused on the five generations from the Jazz Generation (born 1883 to 1901) to my own Generation X (born 1961 to 1981). But in Summer 2019 I reached the conclusion that novels would make much better vehicles than plays, and I began writing my first novel in August 2019. This became Renaissance Radio, which I brought out last September and which was my focus my first few months here on Substack.

The six main characters appeared quickly in my imagination. While I first thought the story would extend across their lifetimes, within a year I’d settled on the story taking place in 1928 and 1929, with flashbacks to World War I. And this became the pattern for the other novels, where the characters are in their thirties and in the throes of fresh discoveries.

I decided that the main, extended family would extend across all five novels. They would be Quakers, because it’s a contemplative, meditative faith with a centuries-long tradition of honoring the equality of all races and both genders. (And it would annoying to have characters who didn’t.) They would be Rocky Mountain Westerners because I am and, well, you write best what you know.

So there is Riis Evans, the cowboyish investor (also the narrator) who gets drawn by the other five into creating a national radio show. There is the saintly Francis Calderon and his warm and wise sister Carmen, a psychotherapist, who is married to Riis. There is Riis’s sister Gwen, the one secular character, a psychology professor. And there are their African-American friends, the extroverted Troy and talented Mary Edwards, who launch their own jazz radio station in Chicago.

It quickly became clear that all five novels would revolve around the extended family of the Welsh-American Evanses and the Latino Calderons and their friends.

In 2019 and 2020, I looked at 200 famed historical figures from the Jazz Generation from all over the world. I settled in pretty quickly on Louis Armstrong as the outstanding cultural figure of the generation. But it was near the end of this process that I settled on Otto Rank as the Jazz-Generation thinker who most merits our attention in the 21st Century. (I’ll devote a separate post to each of them next weekend.)

I had not set out to write five novels focused heavily on psychology, but once I realized that psychology would be the main focus of the first novel, I realized it would make the best focus of all five novels. And so in each generation some of the main characters will gravitate into the field of psychology, and try to use the best psychology available in their time and generation.

While I wasn’t familiar at the outset with what a “novel of ideas” is, I was comfortable with writing five novels that are dominated by discussion. Which is basically what novels of ideas have in common. The characters discuss things. And in a novel of ideas, there is more conversation than there is a plot primarily driven by physical action and emotions, often loaded with conflict, as with most novels (and stories).

Not every historical novel has historical figures as characters, but I decided Louis Armstrong and Otto Rank wouldn’t just be discussed but would be characters. And near the end of the novel, I took the creative leap of putting Armstrong and Rank, who never met, together for a joint interview in the radio studio with some of my fictional characters.

I’m not done with the Jazz Generation. Riis, Carmen, and Gwen reappear in the second novel and Riis and Carmen reappear in the third novel. And J.R.R. Tolkien and Roberto Assagioli are characters in the third novel. The first novel is the only nearly-one-generational story, while the other four are multi-generational and all five generations appear in the third novel.

So this is what where this endeavor ended up. Five novels of ideas with five generations (and some young Millennials in the fifth novel) of one extended Welsh-American-and-Latino family from the 1890s to the 2010s. A family made up primarily of Quakers who gravitate to the best psychology and culture accessible to them while aspiring to lives of pure-motived spirituality, Renaissance excellence, American optimism, American Western adventure and courage, and all the spontaneous creativity of jazz and swing music.

This is not only idealistic but a bit audacious as has been my aim from the beginning: to draw from each generation what I believe most merits our attention as we move forward toward the 2030s and beyond. From World War I to about 2007, what matters most from the experience and culture and thinking of the Jazz, Big Band, Folk, Boom, and X generations?

I brought out Renaissance Radio last September. My second novel, about the Big Band Generation and set in 1958 and 1959, will appear next month — and provide fodder for many of my Substack posts this Fall and Winter. And the third novel, about the Folk Generation and set from 1969 to 1976, will appear next Spring or Summer (I’m three chapters away from a first draft.)

That’s my journey surrounding these five novels. Along the way, I’ll be posting plenty of nonfiction articles around many of the same topics. Thanks for joining me on this journey.