Timothy Taylor: The Monday Interview

Some of the best fiction takes things that haven’t happened and makes them so plausible that for one horrifying second you wonder if you maybe missed the news for a couple of weeks. Such is the case with Timothy Taylor’s third novel, The Blue Light Project. Set in the  “not-too-distant future,” it is the story of a four-day hostage crisis at “Kiddie Fame,” a televised children’s talent show where, when contestants are voted off, it is referred to as a “kill.” Brought into the orbit of this event are three people: former Olympic gold medalist Eve Latour, disgraced journalist Thom Pegg, and street artist Rabbit.

Their stories intersect in inventive and yet natural ways, and these intersections allow Taylor to deftly comment on myriad topics, including the state of fame in our society and our connections with (and isolation from) others.

A situation that at first seems only the stuff of fiction quickly becomes entirely plausible, and Taylor uses it to draw many parallels, both back and forth within the book and in the larger sense to situations occurring in our world. Terrorism (and the lengths we go to fight it), people’s pursuit of fame, our collective numbing at the hands of mass media… it’s all here.

Always in the background, and occasionally in the foreground, are two things:  the “blue light project” itself, a fascinating work pursued by one of the characters, and a quote from the filmmaker Werner Herzog: “We need adequate images or we’ll go the way of the dinosaurs.” These are woven in with the street art that runs as a thread throughout the book, which is itself a captivating strand. Having read this book, I’ll never again look at street art the same way.

Taylor is the author of the novels Stanley Park and Story House, and the short story collection Silent Cruise. He lives in Vancouver.

TIRBD: The quote from Herzog is obviously central to the story. When you first heard and/or read it, did it immediately spark an idea, or was it something that you held onto, knowing it might be useful someday?

I first heard Herzog say it in his film “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe:” “We need adequate images or we’ll go the way of the dinosaurs.” Later I learned that Herzog had said this dozens of times, so it’s clearly a central idea in his work. I was writing The Blue Light Project around that time, and it occurred to me that Herzog’s comment might be exactly the kind of thing that would inspire my street artist character, Rabbit. So that’s how Herzog’s idea was used: his “adequate images” became the key inspiration for Rabbit’s own work in the novel.

As far as what Herzog really means, I have to interpret, so maybe he’d disagree. But by calling for “adequate” images, Herzog seems to be drawing our attention to the shortcomings of other images, especially television and advertising. And based on my research into the street art community in Vancouver where I live, I’d say that’s very much in tune with what my street artist friends were doing. They were reacting to the commercial and profit-driven with this more impulsive and illicit work.

In addition to the other themes, this is really a meditation on the varieties of fame. Everyone comes at it from a different angle, for a different reason and with different results. Are we spiraling toward a Warholian 15 minutes for everyone and if so, what does that mean for our society?

I think what’s interesting about Warhol’s famous comment is that it jokingly assumed the future would accommodate a bit of true fame for everyone. But that’s exactly what our culture seems not to accommodate. Everybody may be hunting fame, infected by its appeal – and social media makes us all fame hunters in a way, as we lobby the world to follow and friend and retweet us – but the distribution of fame is still the same. Some people get famous. Most don’t.

What are we spiraling towards, then, if not Warhol’s prediction? I think one thing we can say about a culture obsessed with fame, where people very commonly believe that they can/should/will be famous (“American Idol,” anyone?), is that the love of celebrities is twinned with resentment. We really see that when a celebrity has a public misstep. We take them down hard. Charlie Sheen may have had it coming (and may well rise again) but the feeding frenzy around his decline speaks volumes.

What led you to bring together these three main characters in Eve, Rabbit and Pegg? Did you try different tacks to get to this story before settling on these three, or did you perhaps start with these three and let them lead you to the story?

Eve and Pegg were the first characters on the page. I started with that image of Pegg seeing her and admiring her beauty, while the city was obviously in turmoil around them. And I knew she would be the one who handles fame well while not really wanting it, and Pegg would be the one who really wanted fame and messed it up completely. Rabbit came a little later, although I knew all along I wanted street art to weave its way through the book, a strand of hope in dark times. And a source of hope that really blossoms into a transforming thing at the end of the novel, which Eve and Pegg witness together.

It seems that reality television and terrorism serve two roles in the book: to comment on the larger themes and also to generate action. Is that a fair assessment? Was that your intent from the outset?

A fair assessment, absolutely. Reality television is an emblem of our desire for fame as well as for our desire to see a famous person fail once in a while. “Jersey Shore” is no different than “Top Chef” in that regard. But from the standpoint of action, the reality television show in the novel is where it all really begins when an armed man storms the studio and takes a bunch of people hostage. Terrorism is what follows, I guess you could say. The fact of the hostage crisis is what creates tension in the story since we all know at least one thing about hostage situations: they tend to turn out badly for one party or the other. But the terrorist act in this case is also motivated in a mysterious way. And when that is revealed, there is a kind of folding over, with the story doubling back on itself.