In Victor LaValle’s third novel, “The Devil in Silver,” a man called Pepper is taken to a psychiatric hospital in Queens by three cops who don’t want to be bothered with putting him in jail for assault. He’s told he will be there for 72 hours of observation, but the days stretch to months. Mr. LaValle is known for an approach that mixes various literary influences and tones, from humor to horror. While Pepper struggles to get decent treatment from an indifferent staff, he also forges alliances — some shakier than others — with his fellow patients and marshals them to fight a beast that has the withered body of an old man and the large head of a bison. In a recent e-mail interview, Mr. LaValle discussed “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the art of making a monster, van Gogh’s kinship with his characters and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:
Is Pepper mentally ill? And how deeply troubled is he, even if he doesn’t belong in this setting?
Pepper isn’t mentally ill; he’s just a guy with a temper and a hero complex. I think everyone knows a person like Pepper, someone who acts before he thinks and causes trouble though he has good intentions. It may be a flaw in his character, but I see him as a generally decent guy who gets thrown into a place that makes it difficult to stay decent.
What kind of research about hospitals did you do for the book?
I spoke to a few professionals, two doctors in particular, working in the public health care system now. I’ve also had a lot of personal experience with psychiatric units. I’ve spent my life visiting a handful of people who are very close to me when they’ve been committed to one hospital or another in New York.
Did you have a particular inspiration for the monster’s attributes? Put another way, what do you look for in a monster?
The best monsters are our anxieties given form. They make sense on the level of a dream, or a nightmare. Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” was a story about the fear of immigration; the bad old bloodsucker swooping in from Eastern Europe and also preying upon “our” vulnerable women. The American zombie (from George Romero on) bubbled up because our country has no culture of ancestor worship. In America, when you’re dead you’re gone. Who else would find it so terrifying that the dead have returned?
My devil, I realize now, is my nightmare embodiment of our country as we suffer the convulsions of terrifying change. The bison is a fabled beast of our romanticized past. The withered, livid body bears a resemblance to our current moment. The creature is beautiful and horrifying. I’m afraid you could say the same about us.
E. RobateauVictor LaValleWere you interested in consciously echoing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” or did you try to avoid those echoes?
You can’t write a story about a mental hospital in the United States without facing the grand example of “Cuckoo’s Nest.” I was very aware of this as I wrote the book. So much so that I had the patients talk about the book, briefly, within my own book. But they do so to make an important distinction: that book isn’t really about mentally ill people or even the health care system. It’s about how Ken Kesey’s generation feared the lobotomizing effects of the culture their parents had created. The book and film have lasted because they both capture that era, and its essence, so well.
But I don’t really write about my generation like that. I write about my class. The class I grew up in, at least. This class has long understood what some only began to grasp around 2008: many of us are trapped in a system that is killing us. But I didn’t want to write a novel of mere despair. So my characters find they can fight back against the forces trying to destroy them.
Do you think the book is scary in a jump-out-of-your-seat way? There are many humorous moments as well. How do you balance humor with trying to scare people?
The reactions of readers so far have been interesting. Most people have been frightened by the chilling stuff and they appreciate — even need — the humor to help modulate the tone of the book. But there have been a small subset of people who don’t seem to want humor mixing in with their horror. It’s like the old Reese’s commercial but played backward. They want the peanut butter without the chocolate. Didn’t they learn anything from the ads in the ’80s? You’ve got to have both.
The book’s epigraph comes from Vincent van Gogh; a museum devoted to his work plays a small role; and one chapter moves away from the hospital setting to tell the story of his life. How did you decide to feature him?
My wife and I lived in Amsterdam for about six months in 2010. We made trips to many amazing museums, including the Van Gogh Museum. Of course I loved his paintings, but the museum is set up so you might also become interested in the trajectory of his life, how he tried and failed, tried and failed, until he finally stumbled onto his particular greatness toward the end of his too-short life.
He was a man who wanted to do good but whose hot temper and strident ideas consistently got in the way. He was someone who hoped to help others, but regularly drove people away from him. He suffered moods that made him seem irrational, even insane. He was committed to mental hospitals. He died with no understanding of how much his efforts and his art would mean someday. That trajectory could summarize the lives of nearly everyone in my novel. He became the patron saint of the book.
What scares you most?
I’ve got a young son, 15 months, so these days all my fears are about some kind of harm coming to him. He, on the other hand, seems to have no fear at all. So far he’s still breathing and generally unscratched, so my worst fears haven’t come true.
What’s next, and will it maintain the blend of humor and fright?
I’m working on a short novel and something much meatier. The short novel is about warring book dealers who spiral into a kind of competitive madness. The long novel is still in the earliest stages, but I’m thinking of it as “Anna Karenina” in Queens. Neither one seems overtly supernatural, but knowing myself there will be lots of jokes and plenty of chills.
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