by Tony Abbott (March 19, 2019)
How did you come to know Jeff?
When a writer visits a school, one of the questions is invariably, “Where do you get your ideas?” It’s very difficult to answer this without seeming trite, but one answer is another question: “What is not an idea?” In fact, creative people of all kinds—visual artists, composers, choreographers, and the rest—are really distinguished (it seems to me) because they hone their imaginations to see everything around them as useful to their art. A deep-dish way of saying that ideas are everywhere and you only have to observe what’s happening to see a story (or a picture, dance, or oratorio). So. One day I was in my local public library and saw a boy at a table alone, reading. He may have gotten up and replaced the book on the shelf. But you know: the brain. It occurred to me, why put the book back, why not check it out? The answer came: because he didn’t have anywhere to bring the book. At that moment, or pretty near it, I recognized the boy as Jeff Hicks, a character from my novel of a decade before. He was in some kind of trouble, couldn’t check out the book for some reason, and was trying to keep it all a secret. From here, the story began to crawl along. He wasn’t really living anywhere where the book would be safe. He has no regular home. Naturally, the story developed far beyond this point, in various versions and drafts, once from his friend Tom’s point of view, and finally with Jeff himself telling the story, but this is how it began. A chance sighting.
What do you think is Jeff's most admirable quality?
What I love about Jeff, and love deeply, is that—although we hear the painful steps he is forced to take until he has no real home to go to—he never loses his essential Jeff-ness, his core, his self. There is such strength in his persistence of himself, and you know that he was once very, very loved, and that this, despite all the environmental and physical evidence pressing in on him, survives through everything.
Is there anything you wish Jeff would have changed or done differently in his story?
He might have been more receptive to the friends that reach out to him, I suppose, but that wouldn’t have been Jeff-like—so I guess the answer to your question is No. I think the heart of the story is in his resistance to help and his denial of his essential worth, until he really has nothing and comes, I guess, to know that when everything else is gone, and he’s abandoned or been abandoned by his friends, he himself is still there. He hates that early on, dislikes himself intensely, but comes around finally to a place where he sees himself as the one true thing that he has.
What do you think Jeff can offer to other children that are experiencing similar situations to what he went through?
On the surface, I might say that people keep secrets—right or wrong—because they fear embarrassment or recrimination or punishment, and it’s often difficult to go beyond our own lives to see that others are suffering. Maybe we should always assume that the other person is suffering far more than we are. That might be a good attitude to take. Another thing is to point out that weirdness we all have in some degree that puts us off another’s difficulties, as if we might catch them. In other words, it’s so easy for us to preserve ourselves and pull back from unpleasantness that might drag us too deep from our comfort zone. Some people have no comfort zone left.
How did you research Jeff and the circumstances he found himself in?
Jeff becomes, in the shorthand term, homeless. His mother loses their house, they go to a hotel, a friend’s attic, another hotel, their car, a shelter, and finally, briefly, he is on the street. Most of the story is Jeff coping with their slow downfall with humor and anger, then the real stuff happens, and its about that. I visited and toured a shelter in the town where the story takes place, I interviewed the head of the shelter, as well as the dean of students and a counselor at the middle school Jeff attends. There are a lot of safety nets in place, but even with them, there are some children and families who fall through the holes. Jeff and his mother are among them.
Do you and Jeff share any similarities?
The hardest question of all, I think. I suppose, in my own way, I’m not a big fan of the author of The Great Jeff, but probably only a little more so than others are self critical.
What was the hardest scene to write about Jeff?
The scene when he and Tom Bender are on the street during a snow storm. What happens during this storm is, I think, so anticipated, and therefore hard to get right. I wrote and rewrote their troubled conversation many times over.
Who do you think was Jeff biggest supporter and why?
Well, himself, first of all. Then his mother, who he suspected didn’t love him all that much, but more deeply knew that she did and did everything she could for him.
Why do you think young people, like Jeff, are so resilient to difficult life situations?
Age and experience probably combine to give older people the real horrors—all the things that could happen, the very real possibility that the worst is coming, that doom, even as we say it, is barreling toward us at an ungodly speed. Jeff feels this instinctually, he feels it, but he may not fully believe that it can happen? I don’t know. I don’t like this answer. Jeff is resilient because he has that essential core, his defining heart. I might be tempted to jump off a cliff, but Jeff wouldn’t. I don’t think I can really answer why.
What do you think Jeff is doing as the present time?
He’s still putting things together, tentatively. It being the school year still, he’s in school with a couple of people close to him, he has a room, and has that to help him get through the days. Uncertainty looms, but maybe not every moment of the day, so that’s an improvement. After everything, he’s still Jeff, which may end up being the most comforting thing for me.
