"Do you have any questions? What can I do for you?"
My meeting with English Prof. John Casey began much like any other meeting with a professor. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. Then, I took a seat in the black chair next to his desk.
But this was not a typical office hour run-in, and certainly no typical professor. I was interviewing Professor Casey about his latest novel, Compass Rose, the sequel to Spartina, his critically acclaimed novel that received the prestigious National Book Award in 1989. Compass Rose begins where Spartina left off, with the aftermath of the affair between Elsie, a strong-willed natural resources warden, and Dick, the archetype of the self-made, solitary fisherman. Compass Rose, which explores the nuances of life in a small Rhode Island fishing town, already has proved to be a critic-pleaser. It welcomed favorable reviews from both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
"One of the many lessons I learned from my father," said Prof. Casey, "is don't believe your press clippings." He lounged in his chair, face tilted in his palm.
Casey's father was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. John Casey graduated from Harvard Law School before deciding to become a writer, eventually making his way to the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Despite this background, Compass Rose avoids the political, or even the contemporary. The novel's time period is vague, with no references to cell phones, laptops or other trappings of the contemporary era.
"I had to invent a wedge of Rhode Island," Casey said. But South County, the fictional town he creates, didn't spring out from nowhere. After graduating from Iowa, Casey spent four years living on a small, four-acre island off the coast of Rhode Island, interacting with local fishermen and immersing himself in coastal life. "Every time it stormed, I was wet for three days," he said. "I didn't have to do any research for Spartina. Not after four years on the island. The salt marshes and the rocky coasts became one of the dream landscapes I see all the time."
Indeed, one of the many strengths of the novel is the intimacy with which the salt marshes of Rhode Island are described. The novel transcends mere description, however, moving toward the heart of the relationship between nature and man. As Elsie realizes, it is impossible to be an "unobserved observer. Any patch of ground was web upon web of awareness."
Casey moves between moments of delicate beauty and human awareness with clarity and grace, which is perhaps a reflection of the many years he spent with the book - more than 20 years have passed since Spartina was published.
In the meantime, Casey has written other novels, embarked on translations of two Italian novels and presided over a highly regarded Master's of Fine Arts program here at the University. But the world of South County was always in the back of his mind.
Casey penned the first draft of Compass Rose before Spartina was published. But after spending time away from the draft - and receiving a few sharp words from his editor - he felt compelled to rewrite it "about six or seven times," he said, cracking a smile. "It was so messy I couldn't even sort it out. I started it all over again, but it went like a shot because I knew the people - Elsie, Dick, May. And what happened was that the rhythm got clearer and clearer every time I rewrote."
Casey describes a specific moment in which the rhythm of his characters spoke clearly to him, allowing him to calibrate a difficult moment when Elsie's friend tries to comfort her after the death of a loved one. Rather than writing the dialogue between them,
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