“The idea of an American Dream feels warped to me”: An Interview with Janet Dale and Allison Renner

I am no stranger when it comes to small-town life. I grew up in a small town of fewer than two thousand people, in a place that could be debatedly called Upstate New York, with parents who always pushed me to do better and achieve more than they had the opportunity to. I was fortunate enough to be able to take those opportunities and run with them. I was the first in my immediate family to go to college, receiving a bachelor’s degree at a college away from home, settling back into small-town life to receive my master’s degree at a local SUNY.  Growing up in that town and living in an adjacent one these days has had me looking at my family roots and breaking generational curses. 

Janet Dale’s and Allison Renner’s Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle uncovers such familial cycles, the reality of a modern American Dream, and explores the collaborative process. This collaboration takes inspiration from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 American classic, The Great Gatsby, bringing forth big themes into modern culture in poetic and prosaic form. 

As a past contributor of Pine Hills Review, I have had the pleasure of previously reading Janet Dale’s poem, “I Go Back to October 2018.” Janet Dale is a writer, reader, and teacher who holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Georgia College and is currently an assistant professor for the Department of English at Georgia Southern University. Dale is the author of ghosts passing through (Alien Buddha Press 2022). Her poetry, essays, and stories have been published in The Boiler, HAD, Zone 3, and other places. Her poetry has been previously nominated for the Pushcart Prize and inclusion in Best of the Net. 

Allison Renner is a person of many hats. She is a librarian, writer, editor, photographer, ghostwriter, and blogger. She has a passion for fiction writing and is an editor for Interpidus Ink. She is the author of an information book, Library Volunteers: A Practical Guide for Librarians (Rowman and Littlefield 2019), and Won’t Be By Your Side (Alien Buddha Press 2022). Allison’s work can be found in Rejection Letters, Atlas and Alice, Misery Tourism, the Daily Drunk, Six Sentences, Discretionary Love, MicroLit Almanac, and other places.

In this interview, Janet Dale, Allison Renner, and I discuss writing from the inspiration of an American classic that depicts the downfall of the American Dream, the modern American Dream, small-town cycles, and the collaborative process of this hybrid collection. 

The first question that I have is one that I ask all of the writers that I interview: Where are you right now? Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually? Somewhere longing for a green light of your own like Gatsby?

Janet: To borrow from Gatsby, “borne back ceaselessly into the past” is my permanent state of being. Maybe I like to analyze (overanalyze) the past, or maybe the present is too much right now. 

Allison: I can’t even imagine what a green light would look like anymore, but I’m hanging in there.

The idea of collaborating on a book influenced by an American classic sounds intimidating enough, but collaborating and writing in two genres, composed of found poetry and fiction, is something I have never seen before! How were these genres chosen? Was this a means of craft, or what was best suited for the subject matter of the original novel?

Janet: I hadn’t seen these two genres put together this way, either. When I started the project, I was interested in exploring the craft of found poetry—so that’s what I challenged myself to do. Fitzgerald is a beautiful writer, his words on the page jumped out in different combinations, and I got to play with them.

Allison: I don’t think we were consciously influenced by the classic beyond using words from the book. I started writing the flash stories because Janet recommended using something from the first page of each chapter as a writing prompt, as she had already done with the found poetry. At the time, I was mostly writing flash fiction, so when sentences jumped out to me, I knew I’d use them as the starting point for flash fiction stories.

So let’s talk about the collaboration. Can you describe to me your collaborative process? What other major decisions besides genre came up regarding collaboration?

Janet: It’s all about trust. Allison and I have known each other for more than 15 years—we met in a fiction class during undergrad. Back then, we would read each other’s work and physically meet over coffee (or pizza or beer) to do so. Now we live in different states and meet up over Google Docs to take on writing prompts. 

Allison: The funny thing is, we didn’t really “collaborate” on this compared to how we often write together in our online “gurkshops.” We each compiled our work separately—and at different times. Janet’s poems were already found while I was writing my flash stories over 9 days in Summer 2021.

Janet: We were able to put the two forms together easily. They fit. 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is an American classic touching on the topic of classism within the upper class, the disintegration of the traditional understanding of the American Dream, love vs. materialism, and so much more. What does your collaborative piece say/express that the novel doesn’t? What does the novel establish that the found poetry and flash fiction may not?

Janet: I think the linked flash Allison wrote really hits on classism and the American Dream in a more realistic way—instead of looking up, she looks down. We see struggle without a fairy tale ending. That is to say, in this country, is there an equal opportunity to be successful regardless of background? Does hard work and determination mean upward social mobility? 

Jay Gatsby thinks he has achieved it all by reinventing himself and becoming rich, but he is lonely, still yearning for the past, and after he is murdered, no one wants to attend his funeral.

Allison: My dad said our book was “depressing,” and all I could do was nod. I feel like that’s just a common state of being right now. My narrator is graduating high school and trying to figure out what to do next when all paths seem to lead to nowhere. In the novel, however, there seems to be plenty of opportunity, everyone is employed, many are wealthy, and they’re all living it up. 

Maybe they’re living beyond their means and pretending to party to portray a certain image to society, but they still have the will to do so, whereas in the flash pieces, there’s just… nothing.

I’ve noticed that the flash fiction written in this book isn’t fictitious in a generic fantastical way, but more so generalized scenarios and images. One idea touched on is getting trapped in a small-town/ small-town cycle. Are these cycles something we can compare to Gatsby’s and Nick’s experiences of lavishness?

Allison: I think my narrator is striving for more just like Gatsby was—it just looks different for both of them, though the final result could be the same… (I left it more open-ended than Fitzgerald.)

Two lines of poetry that stuck out to me are from Chapter IV, “honey, pour me/ down on the empty spaces of time.” To me, these read like song lyrics of wasted time or blind time. How are we meant to read these lines? What do they mean?

Janet: That was one of the first pages/chapters I focused on during revision. It begins after the first big Gatsby party Nick attends, so it’s reflective and very ‘morning after.’ I was motivated by the idea of looking back in a drunken haze–maybe back at that green light when it represents youth and possibility. 

Speaking of the found poetry, what was the process here? I know that these words can be found on the first page of each chapter of the novel, as mentioned in the opening description of the book. How were these words chosen, and lines come to be?

Janet: For me, found poetry really depends on your mood or mindset. What ‘strikes you’ or ‘stands out’ in the moment. I was looking at the words while wearing my “Gatsby longing for Daisy fantasy” glasses. That’s what I was looking for when working with the first page of each chapter. 

The line“ I wonder what’s inside me waiting to be released” in Chapter V relates to this idea of ashes and the Valley of Ashes referenced in the original novel. It touches on the topic of the previously mentioned sociological patterns. 

In a world where social media heavily discusses the idea of breaking generational curses, does the main protagonist in the flash fiction have a desire to break curses? What are your views on these familial cycles? Do we have control over these cycles and the things that may lurk inside of us?

Allison: The narrator is aware of generational curses and knows he’s more likely to be like his dad and grandpa – alcoholics that keep “their women” down and then leave it all behind. He’s trying to break the cycle by leaving and forging his own path, but ends up continuing the cycle in a different way than he expected. He’s not leaving behind a wife and kid like his dad did, but he’s still a man leaving, a man without dreams, just like his dad. 

He’s haunted by the town lore that the ashes are part of you and bring you back, even if you manage to leave. But he still tries to leave, and, in a way, I think that’s brave of him.

Between the found poetry and the flash fiction, we can see similar themes of fleeing, desire for something more, melancholy, and leaping into something unknown. How are we meant to read this book? What connections are we meant to make and take away?

Janet: Choose your own adventure! I think you can only read the found poetry and have one experience, then you can only read the flash fiction and have a different experience, and finally, you can read it as formatted (alternating each part), and the poetry informs/prepares or supports the fiction.

Allison: I second what Janet said. We worked on these individually, and I definitely had things in mind I was trying to convey with the flash fiction. But even that is left up to the reader once it leaves my hands, and I love hearing interpretations of any of my stories because it’s often so different from how I intended it. It makes the work feel more alive in a way, knowing others will take from it what they want or need. 

But going back to this chapbook, once we put the poems and flashes together, it blew my mind how well they worked together, considering we didn’t have an overarching theme in mind.

Does your book express the loss of the American Dream or one of its own? How does this idea of the American Dream compare to that of Fitzgerald’s understanding of it? Do you find living the American Dream possible in the current world climate?

Janet: The American Dream has never really been possible for everyone. It’s a fantasy we tell ourselves to feel better and to keep going. It’s that green light, so to speak, a guide in the darkness of circumstance. I think the found poetry in our book can function like that green light in a completely capital R romantic sense. 

Allison: I think it’s easy to look back in history and think everything was better then and more was possible. And I’m sure it was, in ways. But the idea of an American Dream feels warped to me. It’s a joke. I didn’t have the American Dream in mind when I wrote the flash pieces, though—I was more narrowly focused on just this dead-end town and, more specifically, on this boy desperate to not turn out like his dad. That’s his dream. And whether it’s possible or not is kind of up to the reader to decide in the end.

What other projects do you have forthcoming? Do you see yourselves doing more collaborative work in the future?

Janet: For more than a year, my writing has stalled, but recently, I revised a cycle of poems based on constellations and am working to find it a home. Together, we have a couple other found pieces and work where we have written alternating lines. I hope we find time to revise and collaborate more, of course.  

Allison: I have several novellas-in-flash in various stages, ranging from ideas to complete but not out on submission yet. I love flash fiction, but a lot of my ideas have been demanding more words lately, possibly novel-length. 

But even then, I’ve found that writing flash fiction from prompts, and collaborating or workshopping with writer friends, helps keep me in the groove of creating, whatever the final outcome may be.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.