Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, The Shadow Year, The Twilight Pariah, Ahab’s Return, and Out of Body. His short story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, A Natural History of Hell, The Best of Jeffrey Ford, and Big Dark Hole. Ford’s fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies from Tor.com to Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to McSweeney’s to The Oxford Book of American Short Storiesand been widely translated. It has garnered World Fantasy, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Nebula awards and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. “The Pandemonium Waltz” is his first appearance in Uncanny, a dark and dreamlike tale of dancing, unsettling gardens, and the stories people tell.
Uncanny Magazine: “The Pandemonium Waltz” begins with a seemingly innocuous description of a dance experience, told second-hand from the perspective of an inquisitive neighbor—and then gets darker as the reader is drawn into the story. What did you know about the story when you started writing? What did you discover as you went along?
Jeffrey Ford: I usually don’t know much about where the stories are going when I start. I begin with an image, a vague premonition of a character, a mood, and from that I start writing. I do not plan them out. I let the story show me the way to go. As I push into the fiction, it reveals more and more of itself. This one began with me catching part of the film, The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles, while eating lunch. In it there’s a scene at a kind of cotillion in which all these people are filling the dance floor of a ballroom and turning seemingly in unison. Or, at least that’s what I recalled a few days later. That imagery got me started and then things just came to me, and I wrote them down. One idea that bubbled up from it was whether a story told to you becomes your story or belongs to the person who told it to you. Once you then tell the story yourself, ownership becomes nebulous. And what of those who read or listen to the story when you tell it?
Uncanny Magazine: The story lists some the songs that couples waltzed to—did you play any of them while you worked on the story? More generally, do you listen to music while you write?
Jeffrey Ford: Yes, I listened to all of the music mentioned in here. When I write I listen to what I call “head music.” It can’t have words and cannot be too cacophonous. My go-to artist is Harold Budd. Not the kind of music I’d listen to while I have a few drinks on the porch, but great to immerse myself in while dreaming awake.
Uncanny Magazine: You’re a prolific author of short stories—what draws you to this length? Are there themes or story elements that you find yourself returning to repeatedly?
Jeffrey Ford: Yes, themes, structures, techniques. I’m usually not aware of this until much later, maybe years after the story is finished and published. I know, to an extent, that I’ll go through a type of story for a while and then it evolves into a different type of story, mostly due to the structure/voice of the telling. These changes take place, not in the thinking or planning, but in the act of writing.
Uncanny Magazine: Do you know how to waltz?
Jeffrey Ford: No, I’m a terrible dancer. These feet ain’t got no rhythm. I did investigate the history and basics of the waltz so that I could have appropriate vocabulary in order to try to convince the reader.
Uncanny Magazine: There is wonderfully creepy imagery in this story—for instance, I loved the moonlit greenhouse with orchids in shades of human flesh. What are some of your influences in dark fantasy and horror (in visual media or otherwise)?
Jeffrey Ford: Here are five pieces of fiction and five movies of Dark Fantasy/Horror that made an impression on me.
Books/Stories
The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf
“Viy” by Nikolai Gogol
Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders
Wild Nights! by Joyce Carol Oates
Strangers by Taichi Yamada
Movies
Nope by Jordan Peele
The Thing by John Carpenter
The City of Lost Children by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper
Don’t Look Now by Nicolas Roeg
*These and about a million more.
Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?
Jeffrey Ford: Working on a piece about my time clamming on the Great South Bay.
Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!
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