An Interview with Gardner Landry

Gardner Landry graduated from the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, magna cum laude. He spent many years in branding and marketing communications before his novel, Merlin of the Magnolias, was published in 2021. Songs of My Father and Other Essays is his first nonfiction collection. Gardner is a native Houstonian.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

I settled on the title for the book several years ago, after I had written most of the collection. There is heavy irony in the title, as it evokes high-minded lyricism, while the subject of Fred (my father) is anything but high-minded or lyrical in the remotest way. I like using florid language to describe the banal, and the title Songs of My Father works in this respect. Additionally, there is an essay in the collection about my father’s fascination with his flatulence that I titled “The Song of Songs,” turning, I think, the tone and subject matter of the original Song of Songs in the Bible on its head.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

I was thrilled. I had a clear vision for the design of the cover at the outset of this project and Ronaldo and his team got exactly what I was after. I knew I wanted the Goya painting Saturno Devorando a Su Hijo as the background image, and I asked that a disjunctive, whimsical, maybe even a bit wild or savage, font style be used for the title and my name that would be superimposed over the image of this iconic painting. The designer, Matthew Fielderno, nailed it – the font you see on the cover gave exactly the aesthetic sense I wanted. Additionally, and the designer didn’t know this, the font looks strikingly similar to the way I print with a pen or pencil – so this takes the cover to another level, and drops a little author branding right into the cover art. In my branding and marketing business, I collaborated for years with many designers; working with Ronaldo on the cover reminded me of the best of the collaborations from those years of my life.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I have wanted to write since I was young. I think I really developed an interest in my mid-teens. Additionally, my second-grade teacher predicted that I would write someday – kind of funny, but I guess her vision has borne fruit. As an English major at Vanderbilt, I was exposed to many writers from many eras, and a bevy of inspiring professors who brought their work to life. I am a special fan of Walker Percy, who I think was one of the greatest geniuses of Southern American literature. I also relish the work of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Cormac McCarthy is another favorite. And I can’t forget Ernest Hemingway – I like to fish, too. I’ve read and enjoyed the novels of Pynchon, DeLillo and Roth. On the other side of the pond, I am a fan of the comedy of Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse and Kingsley Amis. I very much enjoyed studying sixteenth-century poetry and earlier lyric work from both the British Isles and continental Europe. I greatly enjoy the works of Italo Calvino, and I am especially keen on the works of Albert Camus. I am an aficionado of lots of Latin American literature – Juan Rulfo, Octavio Paz, Álvaro Mutis, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda come to mind. I like the Russians – especially Dostoevsky and Bulgakov and I am a particular fan of the works of Vladimir Nabokov. I became a fan of C.S. Lewis’s work as a teenager and remain an admirer and reader of his oeuvre to this day. The phenomenal, seminal novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is the brightest light in my firmament when it comes to literary comedy – I don’t think there is a funnier literary novel from the United States.

My professors at Vanderbilt were big influences – Dan Young (Thomas Daniel Young) for Southern and American literature, Mary Jane Daugherty for sixteenth-century and earlier English lyric poetry, R. Chris Hassel for Shakespeare and Jack Aden for the very early stuff, including Beowulf. Top of my list for my adult years is my friend and mentor Emily Fox Gordon. She gets the essay as a genre and form better than anyone I know, and she is an accomplished and savvy novelist.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I have worked as an advertising and marketing copywriter and concept creator, and as a branding and marketing creative professional and consultant. (I developed a knack for coming up with names and taglines for clients.) I’ve also worked as an editor, and I’ve written a few magazine articles for clients over the years. I had my own virtual branding and marketing shop for several years.

Some of my readers might not know that I created a line of linen shirts with tie-dyed pockets. You can see them at www.gardnerlandryshirts.com.

I also like to fish and cook what I catch, when I have the opportunity.

I like foreign languages – especially Spanish and French.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

It’s great to hold the finished product in your hand and know that it is well-executed and as good of a version of itself as it can be from every standpoint – editing, design and layout. The editor Atmosphere Press assigned me, Jonathan Smith, was excellent and I enjoyed our collaboration. I also greatly enjoyed doing the audio version of the book, which I narrated myself with the help of a seasoned pro, Ray Schilens of Radio Lounge.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

I like classic jazz, and we have some jazz-oriented riffs as bumper music after each essay of the audiobook. Maybe, considering the subject matter and the fact that some of the essays recall happenings in the 1970s, “The Morning After” by Maureen McGovern from the soundtrack to the 1972 movie The Poseidon Adventure would be a good song to epitomize the book.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I hope I entertain people and make them laugh. On a deeper level, I hope I connect with people with a parent who was (or still is) a malignant narcissist. In addition to entertaining, I hope these essays reassure folks with that unfortunate background that they are not alone and that they can keep going despite how they grew up and what they have had to deal with as an adult child of a toxic narcissist.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

I am working on another collection of essays – also dealing with narcissism in my family, but emphasizing my maternal grandmother’s personality disorder, which some professionals have called covert Christian narcissism. Covert narcissism can be much more subtle and potentially devastating for targets than the overt variety, and although I revisit my father’s disorder in this new collection, I will be concentrating more intensely on the family dynamic my maternal grandmother set up. Additionally, I will include some essays about Houston and New Orleans, and the cities’ relationships to one another.

How was working with Atmosphere Press? What would you tell other writers who want to publish?

Working with Atmosphere Press was a delight. The staff is very professional, competent and thorough. My interactions with Ronaldo Alves, Atmosphere’s art director, and Jonathan Smith, my editor, were particularly rewarding. I also like Atmosphere’s approach to scheduling and timing key milestones in the publication process. The cold reader was excellent and the result of that phase of the process assured me that the manuscript would be solid before it went to print.

I would encourage other writers who have been sitting on a manuscript they believe is compelling to submit it to Atmosphere for review. If Atmosphere accepts it, the writer can look forward to an engaging and intellectually satisfying experience as they watch their book come to life and enter the world.

Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.