Read the Tim Johnston Interview

It’s old Jimmy Day who finds it, digging away on a tract of greasy earth that two days ago was an auto salvage lot. (Where
those dripping wrecks ended up we don’t ask: our focus has been on leveling the land so that pavement can get in there and lid the whole toxic stretch with two feet of concrete, pronto.) I was about twenty yards away on my skidloader, pushing around a green goulash of mud and batteries and hubcaps, looking right at Jimmy when he did something you almost never see Jimmy do: he stopped digging. …

Tim Johnston is going places—figuratively and literally, or should I say literary? Back in town to promote his award-winning collection of short stories, “Irish Girl,” the author has been riding on a wave of good news that is putting him on the up and up around the country. But it’s not just by luck that Johnston should meet such success—talent and a little determination are the key ingredients here. I first met the amiable author back in December when I covered one of his readings at Book Soup in Hollywood. Admittedly, I wasn’t familiar with Johnston’s work until about a week prior to the reading when I realized I would be covering it, and hence did my best to educate myself on his fiction. Needless to say, I was blown away by my findings.

The prom was off to a bad start, thought Dennis. His sweaty palms were making a mess of his pristine uniform, and a hush had fallen over the gym as soon as he walked in, leaving only the sound of Dennis’s labored breathing and the angsty crooning of the Kings of Leon. He quickly realized that he must have misheard his friend Bacon, who had told him the theme of the prom was “Tarts and Hitlers.”

I fell three feet and into a puddle of grape-flavored Juicy Juice. Not too much juice, it was probably just from one carton. But this was no ordinary puddle; there was something different about it. I knew that because it told me. “Hey you! I’m no ordinary puddle!” it said.

It was the same old conundrum: how to build what he saw in his mind’s eye, how to raise a thing of beauty from the earth so that people would look at it and marvel for a century to come, without first raising the money to see it to fruition. Money. It was always a question of money. He’d borrowed from Sullivan to buy the lot for the Oak Park place all those years ago, and while he couldn’t very well sell it out from under Catherine, he’d already hit on the expedient of remodeling the place so she could rent out half of it and at least have a reliable income. He would provide for her and the children too, that was his responsibility and he would meet it—no one could say he was neglectful there, though they might whip him over Mamah all they wanted, pinching their noses and crossing the street to avoid him as if he were a leper. And he’d just have to find a means of raising money, not only for the remodeling, but for the new house that was already taking shape in his dreams and his waking hours too, a place away from all this confusion, a place where he could live and work in peace till it all blew over.