The Wasp Eater by William Lychack

Deeply moving . . . In Lychacks hands, the Cusslers plight is poignant . . . He portrays Daniel with such
exquisite precision that the book succeeds not only as a story but also as a perfect window into a boys
troubled heart. USA Today

About the Book


Set in an old Connecticut mill town in 1979, The Wasp Eater is William Lychacks freshly original, heart-
rending debut novel about a boys quest to reunite his estranged parents. Daniels father is forbidden to
visit, but the man returns frequently to his sons window at night, where they secretly maintain their
relationship. Their contact encourages ten-year-old-Daniel, an only child, to attempt an extraordinary
act in a desperate bid to mend his family.


Gentle, lyrical, and deeply felt, The Wasp Eater presents the reader with a dreamlike world, where
haunting images and telling details hint at raw emotional undercurrents. Published to great acclaim, this
tender journey into the world of a child will have certain appeal for fans of Dan Chaon and Kent Haruf.


This spare, meticulous novel opens out like a poem, its deceptively casual images bearing a universe of
weight. New York Times Book Review


Poignant . . . Lychack finds new ways to describe feelings too achingly familiar to anyone whose parents
ever delivered similar news. San Diego Union-Tribune


A heart-stopping first novel . . . Its tempting to call this a small gem, except theres nothing small about
a work that glows with such tenderness. Kirkus Reviews (starred)


Lychack never overdoes the meaning or the melodrama here; instead, his aim is small, so small that
only a writer with a measured and very precise command of language could attempt to achieve it . . .
Lychack simply makes a reader feel the sadness inherent in this whole business of trying to connect with
other human beings. Maureen Corrigan, National Public Radios Fresh Air

About the Author



William Lychack is the author of a novel, The Wasp Eater, and a forthcoming collection of stories, The
Architect of Flowers, both published by Houghton Mifflin. His work has appeared in The Best American
Short Stories, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Witness, and on National Public Radios This American Life. A
graduate of the writing program at the University of Michigan, he currently teaches at Connecticut
College and in Lesley Universitys low-residency MFA program.

Questions for Discussion


1. What is the meaning of the title of the novel? What emotions do the wasp scene in the book conjure
for you? How does the author use this image to suggest what Daniel is feeling about his home life?


2. After his parents separate, Daniel grapples with a range of shifting loyalties and emotions. At one
point, Lychack writes, he missed his father and wished he could just come home. It was like a thread
through everything, this feeling, and yet, in an odd way, he missed his mother even more, as if she were
the one who needed to come back home (p. 57). What does this say about Daniels understanding of
the separation? What are some of the other internal, often contradictory, emotions with which Daniel
must cope?


3. What are Bobs strengths and weaknesses as a man and as a father? Do you find him more or less
sympathetic than Anna? What is your sense of Anna as a mother? How do Daniels relationships with his
mother and his father differ, and how do they evolve over the course of the book?


4. Lychack writes that Daniel felt he barely existed anymore, felt himself insubstantial as a ghost (p.
117). To what do you attribute his waning sense of self? Is there evidence that either of his parents has
neglected him?


5. Thinking back to her acceptance of Bobs proposal, Anna remembers that she didnt want to think
that was the problem she wanted to feel for once (p. 26). Does Lychack offer many clues about what
the Cusslers early marriage must have been like? Do you believe that they were happy once, or that
they were ill matched from the beginning? Were their personalities incompatible, or did their actions
alone lead to their separation?


6. How does Joelyns presence complicate the Cusslers relationship? Anna recalls that when the girl first
came to stay with them, Joelyn was somehow the thin end of a wedge between herself and Bob (p.
43). How does Anna respond when the girl returns to help out?


7. On their road trip, Bob mentions to Daniel that it is always easier to get forgiveness than permission
anyway, right? (p. 130). How is this ironic? Why is forgiveness so hard for Anna and so easy for Bob?
What do you think of Bobs attempts at reconciliation?


8. What does the ring represent to Anna, Bob, Daniel, and Joelyn? How does this contribute to our
understanding of the characters and their values and motivations?


9. What instances of betrayal do you find in The Wasp Eater, and how do they differ in degree and
intention? Are some betrayals more forgivable than others?


10. What is the emotional effect of ending the novel with an epilogue set more than a decade later?
Based on the events of the epilogue, do you believe Bob ultimately does receive forgiveness from Anna
or from Daniel? Has the conflict between the parents been resolved? What seems to be the lasting
impact on Daniel?

A Conversation with William Lychack


The Wasp Eater is your first novel. How did the idea for the book originate, and how long were you at
work on it?


I never knew my father I met him twice before he died so I imagine a part of me wanted to
somehow spend some time with him. The novel grew into a kind of search for him, but it started out as
an attempt to understand all of my mothers unresolved feelings for my father, as well as to tell and
honor her story. I eventually came to understand that I had my own deprivations that were compelling
me to write.


Surely it must be true, as someone has said, that the longer you work on something, the less likely you
are to finish it. Off and on, The Wasp Eater took about twelve years to complete. I should add that this
isnt something Im terribly proud to tell people, nor is it something Id ever wish on anyone, but I did
seem to care an awful lot about the people in the book. I suppose I still do.


The fictional family has a rather unusual surname, Cussler. How did you choose it?


For as long as I can remember, Clive Cussler has been my mothers favorite writer. His hero Dirk Pitt is
still a kind of gold standard for her, a male ideal that exists somehow beyond the pages. In fact, the
night before my wife and I got married, my mother delivered the most memorable line of the weekend.
Every woman, she said, needs a Dirk Pitt in her life. As a kind of wink to her, when it came time to
name our family in my novel, I gave them the last name Cussler, as if giving her the Dirk Pitt she
deserved.


Now, this is what I tried to explain to Clive Cussler when he called one day and asked where Id gotten
the name his name for the family in my book. It was a completely unguarded five or ten minutes
on the phone to Arizona. We talked a little about shipwrecks and seasickness and perhaps meeting for
coffee one day as we said goodbye.


I called my wife, my editor, my agent, my editor again. And then, of course, I called my mother. Hey,
Mom, I said, youll never guess who called this afternoon he wanted to know where I got the name
Cussler from.


My, oh my! she said, her voice tilting high.


I dont believe my mother ever once said something like that in her life, but there it was, her voice so
unhinged in a wonderful and strange way: My, oh my!


About an hour later, the phone rang again. And what did he sound like?


Like a gentleman, I told her, his voice kind of soft and patient, a little like Burl Ives.


Have any authors or literary works in particular influenced your writing?


William Maxwell was a great model for me as I wrote this book, especially two of his novels: So Long,
See You Tomorrow and They Came Like Swallows. The first was a touchstone for language and tone, the
second for emotion. I always kept Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse and Marilynne Robinsons
Housekeeping and pieces of Larry Woiwodes Beyond the Bedroom Wall and James Agees A Death in the
Family close at hand, just as I always had a handful of short pieces around me: Barn Burning by
Faulkner, First Love by Nabokov, and Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt by William Goyen. But to be
honest, the only real rival to Maxwell was a film, My Life As a Dog, which captures the same tone and
feeling perfectly.


I was obviously affected by stories that were prefigured by early death and loss. It was unconscious, but
I suppose I found models whose tone spoke to me and helped me find my own voice. I could never say
my own work is comparable to any of these, but on my better days Im hopeful. Theyre the stars Ive
hitched my wagon to, so to speak.

The Story Behind the Book


BORROWED FATHERS


I never really knew my father. He left my mother when I was a year old and died when I was ten. I
remember meeting him only twice, both times at his family farm. A piebald horse stepped on me the
first visit, and this man I knew only from photographs handed me an Indian hatchet in hopes of
distracting me and stopping my crying. Funny the things you dont forget: a whole world of streaming
shadows and all I see is a six- or seven-year-old boy alone on that farmhouse porch with an old
tomahawk. His mother and father have gone back into the house together, and this boys unwrapping
the long rawhide tassels and feathers from the wooden handle. Somewhere along the line, the kid has
gotten it into his head that the more you use a blade, the sharper itll become.


And of all the possible moments in my fathers life, the only one I have is this: the man returning to the
screen door and shuffling back out onto the porch. (One of his legs had been fused straight after a car
accident a year to the day he left my mother, apparently and I remember holding my breath in fear
of that Frankenstein shoe of his, that thick, black, seven-inch sole all worn and crude and dragging
behind him.) He stands there, my father, and asks if he can get that strip of leather back for a minute. He
must have needed it for something, but Id already made quick work of it, the rawhide chopped into a
hundred pieces, which I hold up to him in the cup of my palm.


Just that wince on my fathers face part disbelief, part disgust, part exasperation he doesnt say a
word to me before turning and going back into the house. Our second visit doesnt go much better. The
beagle puppy we brought with us fell between the bales of hay in the barn. My father had to break
down the entire hayloft, bale by bale it was an afternoon of work to rescue the whimpering dog. We
never saw my father again after that.


What a testament to my mother that I never missed him. Not once do I recall wishing for my father, or
hoping hed come home, or even talking about him to anyone, except to excuse his absence. He died, I
told people, in Vietnam, or in a car accident, or of a heart attack. In my entire childhood I dont recall
ever feeling deprived by his absence.


The truth is I would borrow fathers. A guidance counselor, a teacher, a coach, there were men who
seemed more like a father to me than my own father. These men were more father to me than my own
father, who was nothing but a few snapshots in a picture album, an occasional holiday card (or, rather,
the lack of a card), a newspaper clipping of his obituary in my mothers jewelry box:


William S. Lycheck [sic] of Holton Road, North Franklin, died Sunday evening unexpectedly. He was born
July 1, 1925, son of the late William and Rosie (Palamar) Lycheck. He operated a window cleaning
service in Putnam for several years prior to retirement. He was a veteran of World War Two, served in
the Marine Corps from 1943-46. Surviving are one son, William J., of Putnam; one brother, Daniel, of
North Franklin; two sisters, several aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. [Reprinted courtesy of the
Norwich Bulletin, Norwich, Conn.]


A set of keys, a Mercury-head dime he carried for luck, and his wallet. Thats my inheritance, the effects
that would remind me of my fathers absence, along with the cast-aside stories that my mother rolled
out for holidays. Like the story of their pet raccoon, Basil, who bit him on the back of the neck and was
put to sleep. Or the night he dangled me, a baby seven months old, over the edge of the patio until my
mother gave him back his car keys. Or how he held her by the wrists and said, Ill kiss you in your coffin,
Alice, my mother apparently spitting in his face. And she told me or did I just imagine this? that
she could bring him back to life with a whiff of Mennen after-shave. She never spoke of him without
emotion in her voice, her chin trembling as she remembered a shaving-cream fight, a summer evening
they slept out in the orchard, the winter they sold sandwiches from a truck in Greenpoint. And there
were those visits to the farm, my mother casually tossing out this one detail to me, so many years later:
she and my father would make love while I was outside playing.


Now what on earth was I supposed to do with that? How is a sentence like that supposed to lie still? Or
the fact that my father died, of all days, on my mothers birthday? Id always imagined my mother and
father having a contentious relationship, to say the least, the kind of marriage in which one always had
to get in the last word, but taking her birthday from her seems a bit much to me, a little too perfect, so
over the top it almost makes me smile.


As I grew up, everyone I met in town seemed to have a word about my father. The window washer,
right? A real shirt-off-his-back kind of guy, your old man. Wed hide his cleaning equipment on him.
Theyd squint and say they saw his face in my face, while my mother would practically spit the mans
name at me if I unwittingly revived some habit of his. You never even knew him, shed tell me, and
youre just like the damned man!


How could such scraps not whet my appetite for him? How could I not have worried and wondered
about this man I never knew? How could I not try to conjure the magic ifs? What if my father didnt
want to leave us? What if we had one last hurrah together?


Just what the world needs, another story about an absent father. But for a long time it seemed like life
or death to me, the struggle to write this story, to recover something that was, ultimately,
unrecoverable. In what must have been a fit of despair over the novel, I unloaded all the accumulated
doubts and worries I had about the book (and my life) on one of the many fathers I borrowed (or tried
to borrow) over the years, William Maxwell. In a letter back to me, amid snippets of advice and news, he
wrote:


Probably the reason your novel disappears on you is that there is really no model for it, and this makes
you lose confidence. Possibly you are thinking that you dont know enough about your father about
the facts of his life. This is not true, or if true, beside the point. There is so much that we know that we
dont know we know. Try to listen to your feelings as you would to the sound in a seashell, and then put
them down on paper.


For six, seven, ten years I had that letter on the wall in front of my desk and tried to dowse my fathers
feelings, only to realize that they were my own feelings, that it was my own dream to bring him back to
life, to undo everything, to lay him to rest finally. In the end, I tried to write the book that I needed most
to read, the record of a time my father and I never had together.

For Further Reading


The following titles may be of interest to readers of The Wasp Eater:

The Every Boy by Dana Shapiro

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Esther Stories by Peter Orner

Dream Me Home Safely edited by Marian Wright Edelman