Robert Raasch has always been an author, yet architecture and visual arts were his primary academic path. Poems, phrases, and words are integrated within most of his work. To boot, he wrote a column for the local newspaper as a teenager, and consistently enrolled in writing classes as an undergraduate and graduate student.
A few years ago, Robert began a series of short stories that he later shared with friends and colleagues. The feedback he received encouraged him to continue until those short stories formed a larger narrative, the framework for a novel. He printed the opus, weighing in at over 500 pages, and asked a trusted writer to browse and see if it had any merit. Their reassurance provided the boost he needed to edit and craft the novel as it stands.
His path to publication took quite a bit of research and self-education. The thought of the first clumsy query he sent to a literary agent now makes him cringe. Robert will celebrate the publication of his debut novel, "The Summer Between," in September.
Raised in Northern New Jersey, Rasch is an active participant in 24 Pearl Street and the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He divides his time between Florida, New York, and Copenhagen, where he is working on his second novel.
The bittersweet, unsparingly honest coming-of-age saga of Andrew Jackson Pollock brilliantly relates the confining emotions, confusion, panic, heartache, and joy of a young person's coming to terms with their sexuality and defining their identity.
Michele Karlsberg: What is the importance of writing a coming-of-age novel in these times?
Robert Raasch: "The Summer Between" is set in New York City, 1978. Coming-of-age themes remain popular. The concept for the story is inspired by the classic novel "Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse, in which during a distinct period of time, the primary character encounters a multitude of characters and lessons that shape his character.
Through the book's development as historical fiction in first-person narrative, new generations of readers can understand what life was like close to 50 years ago, before mobile phones, the internet, social media; technology as we know it. Seasoned readers can relish and reminisce in the era.
My primary goal with "The Summer Between" is to tell the story of the struggles and triumphs of one character, Andy Pollock, coming to terms with his sexuality. What I found fascinating while researching the novel was that fluidity was as natural an exploration in 1978 as it is now. Even though many, many more people were 'in the closet' fifty years ago, due to the common themes of a coming-of-age story, the novel reads as contemporary.
How much of Andrew Pollack's story reflects yours?
The framework of the novel; the environment, the emotion, mirrors some of own experiences. I used this to build a fictional narrative. The characters and most of the scenarios are either composites, or in most instances, completely from my imagination.
Do the characters Andy and Elena reflect an important friendship in your own life?
Only in that I've always had good friendships with women. Elena's unique character and storyline is totally fiction.
Greenwich Village, New York City in 1978 was a lot different than the Greenwich Village of today. Why was it important to set the historical aspect up of the novel?
I wanted to parallel Andy's coming-of-age journey with the youth of the Gay Liberation Movement, as it was called in the 1970s. Greenwich Village has long been a bastion of creative, marginalized, mighty people. The history of the community is epic. The architecture and scale, with wandering cobbled streets, hold mystery, tell stories. It seemed compelling to set the story in this often-forgotten era, before the devastation the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
Why was writing about the unconventional family of women so important?
I view women as strong and loving with common sense. I wanted to explore a character, Andy, who was raised without a father by this disparate trio: his mother, his Aunt and his grandmother. I was raised with a distant natural father and a step-father. Some of Andy's emotion ring true, but through fiction I was able to shift the narrative and explore the type of young man this cadre of women might raise.
Critics noted that the scene where Andy comes out to his mother was so intense, and Andy's reactions and thoughts to it, really hits a nerve. Was this one of the hardest scenes to write?
Yes and no. This scene happens late in the story. At the point I reached this pivot, I grew to know Andy and Lia so well that the dialogue practically wrote itself. The difficulty came with pushing myself to dig deeper and deeper. I very much wanted to get to the heart of their relationship, and the inevitable separation of mother and child as Lia prepares to set Andy free. Coming out to his mother, at his young age, introduced an unexpected curveball to this already ripe transition.
What are you working on next?
A novel about a woman in her 80s who's lived in one co-op on lower Fifth Avenue for 60 odd years, and the revolution of characters in her life as she's stayed in place. An unfulfilled lifelong love, who also has a gay son and the relationship that develops between the two sons, is woven into the storyline; two-plus generations, set in contemporary New York and Copenhagen.
www.greenleafbookgroup.com
www.robertraasch.com
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