W H E R E A L L LI G HT TEN D S TO GO

READIN G G R OUP G UID E

D A V I D J O YA U T H O R

D AV I D - J O Y. C O M
D AV I D J O Y _ A U T H O R

D AV I D J O Y _ A U T H O R

WHERE ALL LIGHT TENDS TO GO

discussion guide

According to David Joy, part of the inspiration for the novel was exploring the idea of
manhood. He says: All young men are faced with discerning what exactly it means to
be a man, but for many, what is illuminated, and even glorified, is volatile. Do you agree?
What does manhood mean for Jacob? What about his father?

1.

Though the novel contains much darkness and violence, there are many scenes
where humor and tenderness shine through. Which moments in the book did you find
the funniest? The most poignant?

2.
3.

David Joy brings to the novel a strong sense of place. What role does the setting play in
the story?

4.

Consider the characters of Jacobs mother and father. What kind of legacy have they left
for him? Is either of them at all sympathetic?

Jacob and Maggie have conflicting ideas about the power of personal agency versus the
inevitability of fate. Why are their viewpoints so different? Which perspective do you
identify with more?

5.

Once they rekindle their relationship, it takes quite some time for Maggie and Jacob to be
comfortable with each other again and figure out how they want to move forward together.
Why, despite all the years theyve known each other and been close, is this process so difficult?
What conflicts have gotten in the way?

6.

7.

As the violence continues to escalate, why does Jacob make the choices he does?
Are there any alternatives he could pursue?

8.

Were you surprised by the ending? Why, or why not?

The books last lines, say that Jacob finally understood that
thered never been any difference between here or there. Only
the middle ground of this wicked world mattered, the vast gap
that stretched between, and those who were born with enough grit
to brave it. What do you think this means?

9.

10.

What is the significance of the title?

The author describes the novel as Appalachian noir. Does that

description resonate with you? What elements does the book
share with classic noir stories? Where does it diverge?

11.

WHAT IS YOUR DEBUT NOVEL,

WHE RE ALL LIGHT TE NDS TO GO, ABOUT?
I think Ron Rash was right in saying that the story is about an
eighteen-year-old boy trying to transcend a family legacy of
violence. For me, its about the futility of fate, in a lot of ways a
sort of elegy for circumstance. All young men are faced with
discerning what exactly it means to be a man, but for many, what
is illuminated, and even glorified, is volatile. For some, character
is conditioned and dreaming is just an unrelenting reminder that
when morning comes you have to wake up.

JACOB IS AN UNFORGETTABLE PROTAGONIST.

HOW DID YOU FIND HIS VOICE?
As with a lot of writers, I start with character, so there was less an
emergence of narrative than there was the birth of an image. I was
with a friend at his hog pen and was watching this big boar hog
root around in the dirt when the image of Jacob McNeely lit in my
mind. This friend of mine, Sam Jennings, hunts and traps hogs in
the area where I live, and he was explaining to me how they kill

ALL YOUNG MEN ARE FACED WITH

DISCERNING WHAT EXACTLY IT MEANS
TO BE A MAN, BUT, FOR MANY, WHAT IS
ILLUMINATED, AND EVEN GLORIFIED,
IS VOLATILE.
these hogs with a knife. It was in the middle of Sams explaining
this to me that this very vivid image of a young boy kneeling over
a hog and watching the last bit of light draw back in the hogs eyes
came to me. I was haunted by that image for a very long time, and
then one day he spoke. I knew that he was realizing what he was
capable of, fully grasping that if he could do that to an animal he
could do that to a person, and there was just this tremendous
sense of power created by that understanding.

of

Theres a scene late in the novel where the image of a young Jacob
killing a hog with his father plays out, and I actually wrote that
scene first. I was haunted by that image and by that character, but
it took a long time to get his story right. I actually burned around
60,000 words after realizing Id gotten the story entirely wrong.
Luckily, on the next go Jacobs voice was quite clear, and then it
was just a matter of trying to keep up.

FIRST NOVELS ARE OFTEN SEMIAUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. DID ANY ELEMENTS

FROM YOUR LIFE CREEP INTO THE NARRATIVE?
There are definitely things in this book that are me, just as much
as there are things in this book that are deeply rooted in where I
come from. When I first finished the novel I was unable to see just
how much of myself had found its way into the book, but as time
moved on and I gained more and more distance, it became very
clear that in a lot of ways I am Jacob. His voice is very similar to
mine. His hesitancy to hope and dream and to put his faith in other
people are all things that I see in myself, just as his vulnerability
and ill-preparedness for the violence that surrounds him is
undoubtedly me.
Likewise, I think that a lot of what Jacob is surrounded by is
coming out of where I grew up in North Carolina. I first encountered
drugs when I was in elementary school. I had a gun put to my
head when I was in eighth grade. My best friend in high school
sold crack cocaine, and I picked him up each morning from a dope
house where addicts wandered the streets and police officers sat
in cruisers with their eyes always
watching. I grew up in a very violent
place, where the ends had already
been decided. The bottom line is
that most of the people around
me were headed for prisons or
caskets. Those circumstances and
certainty are the same things that
are bearing down on Jacob.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

AL AN RHE W

D AV I D J O Y a u t h o r
WHERE ALL LIGHT TENDS TO GO

a c o n v e r s at i o n w i t h

YOU LIVE IN THE REGION YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT

THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS OF NORTH CAROLINA.
HOW MUCH, IF ANY, OF THIS DARKER SIDE OF THE
COMMUNITYS REALITY HAVE YOU WITNESSED
FIRSTHAND?
The two biggest drug epidemics in Appalachia are methamphetamine and
prescription drugs. It doesnt take anything more than reading a paper or
watching the nightly news to see this. I dont really think that Appalachia
is any darker than any other place in America, but when things happen
in the mountains its close. Violence is almost always familial here and
the communities are so small and tight-knit that you always know the
people in handcuffs. I think in larger areas and particularly cities there
are so many people that separation is inevitable, and it just becomes
easier to distance yourself from what you read about and see on TV. In
the mountains, when someone is arrested you typically know them
and if you dont know them firsthand you know someone in their family.
There arent that many last names. Lots of times a deputy puts the cuffs
on his own cousin, and medics arrive on scene to the bodies of their
brothers and sisters. The balance between good and bad is no different
from anywhere else, but because of the closeness, and because of the
impossibility for separation, the balance seems starker.

SOME PARALLELS MIGHT BE DRAWN TO THE AWARDWINNING TV SERIES BRE AKING BAD, AS WELL AS
THE BESTSELLING BOOK AND OSCAR-NOMINATED
FILM VERSION OF WINTE RS BONE . WERE THESE
OTHER WORKS INFLUENTIAL, OR IS THE CONNECTION
COINCIDENTAL?
The comparisons to Breaking Bad are entirely coincidental. I might
have been the only person in America who wasnt watching, but then
again Im not very fashionable. Afterward I went back and watched the
series, and there are definitely similarities. I actually like what a sales
representative told me once when he explained that he thought the novel
was like Breaking Bad if that series had been told from Jesse Pinkmans
perspective. Regardless, I think Breaking Bad is an incredible narrative
and one of the things it does well is to humanize criminality. That might be
whats overlooked most when we hear about crime in America is that we
forget the humanity of those committing the crime. We separate ourselves
from it. We think ourselves better than those in the mugshots. We imagine
that we could never do anything like that. But Breaking Bad does a fine job
of forcing the audience to recognize the humanity, forcing us to realize that
circumstances can dictate our actions, and hopefully thats something my
novel does as well.
As for comparisons to Winters Bone, its more just a parallel to Daniel
Woodrell altogether. Hes the father of much of what Im trying to do in the

novel. Personally, I see closer connections to his novels Tomato Red and
The Death of Sweet Mister, particularly Tomato Red. The first time I read
that novel I remember thinking it had one of the finest opening chapters
Id ever read, and I spent an entire day trying to figure out what exactly
it was that he was doing. Ultimately it was his pacing, what Ive come to
call a Molotov-cocktail opening where it doesnt much matter if what you
throw finds its target, just so long as something catches fire. That pacing
is one of the biggest influences on my work, and thats also why Daniels
approval means so much. Hes a master and Im a student of his, so to
speak. Im just sort of stumbling in his footsteps.

YOUR PREVIOUS BOOK IS AN AWARD-WINNING WORK

OF CREATIVE NONFICTION ABOUT FLY FISHING. HOW
IMPORTANT IS NATURE TO THE STORY YOU ARE
TELLING IN WH E RE ALL LIGHT TE NDS TO GO?
A brilliant friend often comments that landscape is destiny, and so
this novel is very much a product of place. Most folks who come to the
mountains where I live do so on vacations where they might hike to a
waterfall or drive the Blue Ridge Parkway to see the leaves change.
What they come for and what they find is the wonder that exists in
Appalachia. There is a beauty and grace to these mountains that is
simply unavoidable. But what visitors typically dont get to see, or what
they simply avoid, is the darkness.

A MOLOTOV-COCKTAIL OPENING:
IT DOESNT MUCH MATTER IF WHAT
YOU THROW FINDS ITS TARGET, JUST
SO LONG AS SOMETHING CATCHES FIRE.

One of the rivers and forests near me is named Nantahala, and in

Cherokee that means the land of the noonday sun. In other words, its
a place where the sun shines only when its directly above. I think that
metaphor is not only indicative of the place, but indicative of the people.
Only those who live here watch winter kill everything from field grass to
dreams. The visitors are long gone when the woodpile is dwindling and
the fire is almost out. What you end up with is a place constantly shifting
between beauty and grace and an unrelenting bleakness. Its raw but
beautiful, graceful but violent. Light and dark, life and death, are always
intertwined. Thats something thats true of every place, something thats
simply true of the human condition, but Appalachia is a place where that
contrast of light and dark seems starker. That contrast is the ground in
which we are rooted.

YOU HAVE SAID THAT THE MUSIC OF TOWNES VAN ZANDT BECAME THE SOUND TRACK OF
JACOBS LIFE. CAN YOU TALK A BIT ABOUT HOW AND WHY THIS MUSIC WAS AN IMPORTANT
PART OF WRITING THIS BOOK?
Like Ive said, I saw Jacob McNeely before I heard him, but when he finally spoke, when his voice woke me up out of a dream, there
was a song that accompanied him. There was music and, more specifically, a musician who defined him. The musician was Townes Van
Zandt. The song was Rexs Blues. Looking back, I think its the circumstance of that song, the inevitability of ruin, the hope of whom its
happening to, and the futility of that hope that envelops Jacob McNeely. He was born into and of that song.

WHOM DO YOU COUNT AS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT

LITERARY INFLUENCES?
My literary influences are the usual suspects for Southern writers as Twain, Faulkner,
OConnor, Gay, Crews, McCarthy, The Bible. I wholeheartedly agree with Flannery OConnor
in that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.
As for the two novels that stick to my ribs, Faulkners As I Lay Dying and McCarthys
Suttree. All of that is undoubtedly the bedrock of what I do. Above that, though, the
writers making up the topsoil, the ones who have most influenced me stylistically, are
Ron Rash and Daniel Woodrell. I study those two men to the syllable. Then there are
folks like Breece DJ Pancake, George Singleton, Donald Ray Pollock, Tony Earley, Silas
House, Mark Powell, Ron Houchin. More and more I find myself going back to poets like

H.D., Whitman, Eliot, and Seamus

Heaney. And as far as folks who might surprise you,
Im really drawn to Jeanette Winterson and Jose Saramago. It all boils down to a good
sentence. I want words that leave me dumbfounded. Really, I just love language.

WHATS NEXT FOR YOU? ARE YOU WORKING ON ANOTHER

APPALACHIAN NOIR OR SOMETHING DIFFERENT?
Im currently working on a novel tentatively titled Waiting on the end of the World, and,
yes, I think it falls into a similar vein. The catalyst behind the story is that these two
addicts go to buy methamphetamine and while the dealer is showing off firearms that
he took in from customers as payment for drugs he accidentally kills himself. In an
instant, two very ill-equipped people have a pile of guns and money and drugs at their
disposal, and what ultimately ensues is a meth-fueled race toward disaster. More than
that, though, the novel seems to be about the pasts that paint our futures. It seems to
be about the ghosts that follow us through our lives and the impact those ghosts have
on the decisions we make. Its about the burdens we carry with us as we make our way
through this world.

DAVID JOYS

STORIES AND CREATIVE NONFICTION HAVE APPEARED IN DRAFTHORS E

LIT E RARY JOURNAL, SMOKY MOUNTAIN LIVING, WILD E RN E SS HOUS E LIT E RARY R E VI E W, PISGAH
RE VI E W, AND FLYCATCH E R. HE IS THE AUTHOR OF THE MEMOIR GROWING GILLS: A FLY FISHE RMANS
JOURN E Y. HE LIVES IN WEBSTER, NORTH CAROLINA. WH E R E ALL LIGHT T E NDS TO GO IS HIS FIRST
NOVEL.

ACCORDING TO DAVID
JOY, THE ONLY WAY
TO PROPERLY DRINK
BOURBON

INGREDIENTS
QUALITY AGED BOURBON,
BRAND OF YOUR CHOICE
EQUIPMENT
ROCKS GLASS, JIGGER, ICE
STEPS
1. FILL ROCKS GLASS
WITH ICE.
2. USING THE JIGGER,
MEASURE 50ML OF
BOURBON INTO THE
GLASS. AND SERVE.