Chris Offutt: ‘90% of American writers don’t know what it’s like to enlist in the army at 17 just to get three meals a day’

He has a huge stone hanging from his neck, a grayish one with a hole. That’s the way he found it. “It already had the hole. The only thing I did was get a string to hang it around my neck. It’s been with me ever since. I must have been seven years old... Maybe eight. I’ve only changed the string a few times. It’s like I’ve got the hills with me all the time,” he said. The man talking is American writer Chris Offutt of Lexington, Kentucky. He’s the king of “grit lit,” tales from the “hills and hollers,” the violent and desperate rural noir stories about the working class who live in small, painfully impoverished towns, shamelessly marginalized, light years away from any kind of dream, including the American one. “I always wondered why there weren’t any books about people like me. Where were we? Did we even exist? I like to think that I’m writing for people who are just like me, looking to see themselves reflected and feeling like they belong,” said Offutt as he tucks the stone back inside his shirt and buttons up.

In Spain, we first heard about Offutt — a man with a striking mane and an air of curiosity mingled with occasional bewilderment — from My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir (February 2016). In this book, he tells the story of growing up with his father, Andrew Offutt, a larger-than-life and eccentric character, an unsung writer of 400 novels who shared living quarters with at least 18 other authors amid a clutter of pornography, both physical and abstract. Offutt embarked on his literary journey telling stories about desolate and forsaken places, like his debut novel, Kentucky Straight (1992). Years later, he created a character — Mick Hardin — to explore these settings, its injustices and enigmatic allure, and delve into his own self-discovery. “Yes — I’m Mick. He doesn’t represent the people who live there. He’s someone who’s moved away but still has a foot in the door, seeing things from both inside and out,” said Offutt. It’s no coincidence that Mick Hardin is a military veteran. “Sometimes, a military career is the only way out for a kid from a certain part of America. I enlisted at 17 with three other friends.. None of us got very far — I didn’t even pass the physical.”

He isn’t in Appalachia on this February day; instead, he’s seated at a table in a Barcelona hotel. He says that Barcelona is a “sophisticated and beautiful city that knows who it is. You know, it’s funny, folks around here are pretty clear about their roots. Everyone’s got a story about a relative who came from a town just like mine. But in the U.S., it’s different. People tend to escape their pasts and focus only on social status. It’s like once you reach the top, you try to erase where you started from. You don’t want anything to drag you down.” He thinks that the image we, out of the U.S., hold of his country stems from its middle-class writers, specifically the upper middle class. These people have connections and the assurance that if needed, they can easily get financial help and carry on with life, regardless of setbacks. “Ninety percent of American writers are that type of people. They don’t know what it’s like to enlist in the army at 17 just to get three meals a day and a bed.”

Code of the Hills (2023) is the most recent of the Mick Hardin series, which can be properly called noir novels. ”They really are,” said Offutt. “But it’s funny that they’re called noir, because nothing’s ever that simple, nothing’s just black and white. I like to think my novels delve into the grays.” The third novel in the series forces Mick to face up to the way of life he thought he’d escaped. Back in the hills of Kentucky after a two-year absence, he’d planned to touch down briefly before heading to Corsica, marking the end of his 20-year Army career. Mick visits his sister Linda, the county sheriff. “I kind of like the idea of them being siblings. Usually, the main cop has a sidekick or a junior partner, but it’s never his sister. It’s more like someone he can easily ditch if things go south. But what if you have to work with family, right?” he asks. Hardin is a version of Offutt, and if Hardin is alone it’s because Offutt is too. “Writers spend 80% of our lives in front of a page, completely alone.”

And yet, Offutt doesn’t want it any other way. “I love the feeling that when I write, it’s like opening a door and stepping right back into that place. All my problems just vanish when I start writing. And I keep going back there, every single time. It’s like going back to my idea of the hills.” That’s what he calls his hometown in Kentucky — the hills. He still visits the house where he grew up from time to time. The last time, he ran into a friend who had just gotten out of prison. “That sort of stuff happens there.” Offutt shouted out to his friend: “I thought your father was back from the dead! You two are identical!” What about his obsession with forests? Mick Hardin likes to lie down in the middle of the forest and just go to sleep. “I do it too,” said Offutt. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone,” he says, swallowing. “I go to the forest and I lie down on the ground and wait to fall asleep, and I sleep, for a while, to wake up and observe the miracle, the trees, the birds...”

He gets emotional talking about it and wipes away a tear. “The world just feels so magical to me. We’re here, surrounded by all this beauty. Picture waking up in the forest, right? You’re still kind of groggy, trying to figure things out, and then you feel that warm sunlight on your face... Hear the trees rustling, and the birds singing...” Offutt loves birds and says he has a special relationship with them. Sometimes he just walks through the forest looking for birds. That would be in Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he now lives. Far from the Kentucky hills but still close to the forest. “I feel at peace there,” said the guy who became a writer after reading Harriet the Spy, the children’s classic by the indefatigable Louise Fitzhugh. “Oh, yeah, I read it and then I started carrying a notebook with me, just like the protagonist, to jot things down.” He smiles and takes a small notebook and pen out of his pocket. “I still do it.”

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