James Magruder’s fourth book of fiction, Vamp Until Ready, recounts the experiences of a troupe of irresistible residents of Ithaca, New York, as they search for love, success, and fulfillment. This engaging novel has the upbeat pacing and energy of a comedy, but underlining the humor is loss and the fear of loss. AIDS is an ever-present antagonist, and carefree romps with chorus boys are tempered by the realities of a deadly disease.
Spanning the years between 1980 and 1992 and divided into five parts, Vamp Until Ready begins and ends with Cary Dunkler. A gay townie who works at the army surplus store, Cary is twenty years old when we meet him in Part 1. His foster brother, Dave, is graduating from Cornell, but Cary has no clear direction. His life takes a dramatic turn, literally, when he is cast in the chorus of Damn Yankees for summer stock at the Hangar Theater.
Each of the ensuing four parts focuses on other characters who, in various ways, connect to and through the Hangar. Readers travel from Ithaca to Entebbe, where once again the theater provides purpose, intrigue, and joy. Back in Ithaca for the final two sections, the novel ends as it begins, in the voice of Cary.
Magruder comes by his knowledge of the theater first-hand. Like Cary, he performed in the Hangar Theater himself, and he attended the Yale School of Drama where he earned a doctorate in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism. He wrote the book for the musical Triumph of Love and adapted the book for Head over Heels, an adaptation of a sixteenth century pastoral romance, set to the music of The Go-Gos.
An award-winning translator, Magruder has been involved in productions of Molière and many others. For fifteen years he was the dramaturg for Baltimore’s Center Stage. He has published a collection of short stories and two other novels.
We caught up with him recently to discuss Vamp Until Ready, which was published on September 21 by Rattling Good Yarns Press.
Baltimore Fishbowl: You structure the book in five distinct sections, almost like acts in a play. How did you decide on that format?
James Magruder: I wrote the first section, about Cary and Dave, as a novella-length story, very swiftly in June of 2013 in Kampala, Uganda, where my husband and I were staying for a year. After beginning the next section, about Kristy and Isa, which took forever to write, because they’re straight women, I began to envision a book of linked novellas about how the power of creating theater, backstage or onstage, creates community and can change your life when you least expect it.
Initially I planned on four sections, but when I gave the manuscript to my friend, Kennie Pressman, he commented that he thought he was going to hear from Cary again. That led instantly to Cary returning in Part Five, which I hope ties everything and everyone together. I think it became a novel slightly against its will, and took much longer than planned because other, more pressing projects intervened.
BFB: What projects?
I was brought on in 2016 to adapt Head Over Heels for Broadway; that process required workshops, an out-of-town tryout in San Francisco, and constant rewriting (in blank verse) until we froze the show for critics in July 2018. I was also interviewing 125 subjects for a chronicle of the first fifty years of Yale Repertory Theatre.
BFB: The primary setting for the novel is Ithaca. Could you talk about why you chose to set the story there and how place informs character in your writing?
JM: I am a proud Cornell University graduate, Class of ’82, and I spent three post-graduate summers in the eighties working at the Hangar Theater as a chorus boy, a house manager, and as the writer of an impossibly arty musical version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I loved the sprouty, communitarian ethos of Ithaca. It’s one of the great college towns, like Athens, GA or Madison or Berkeley or Austin. Students graduate from Cornell or Ithaca College and never leave, it’s so appealing. I wanted to honor it through recollection. The cloggers on the Commons, the Farmer’s Market, Purity Ice Cream, Harold’s Army-Navy, the Moosewood, the House of Shalimar.
BFB: Part Three takes place in Uganda when Judy Gabelson, Cary’s foster sister, goes to Uganda on a grant to write and stage a musical.
JM: In 2013, went with my husband, Steve, who led HIV-related clinical trials in Uganda until he retired this July, to spend a year in Kampala.. Like my character Judy, I wrote a musical in Kampala called Mango Roses with two high school girls and their English teacher, a starstruck South African. Through this challenging and sometimes irritating experience, I learned (or re-learned) that the power of live performance and the need to perform is global. And inspiring.
On a more personal level, the year in Uganda ended very badly for me. We left ten weeks early in March 2014, because the government passed a “Kill the Gays” bill. Hopkins swiftly airlifted us out of Kampala. Despite the thrilling surroundings and amazing people, I felt like I had spent ten months in an isolation tank. Writing a positive ending for Judy was a way of reclaiming at least a portion of my time there.
BFB: As a gay man, what was it like writing women and a straight guy?
JM: A cardinal rule for writers today–especially old white guys like me–is “stay in your lane.” I’d written unabashedly gay male narrators in my other, more autobiographical books, and I knew and wanted to expand my narrative range. Starting out on Part Two, I was uneasy claiming headspace for Isa and Kristy, and Kristy’s three daughters. But the women in my writing group reassured me, with a couple of lapses, that I wasn’t a mansplaining misogynist and told me to keep going. Eventually the events of the story take over any self-consciousness I might have felt.
BFB: How much of the story and characters are drawn from your own experience?
JM: Parts of me and my past are naturally chopped up and sprinkled all over the book. Like Cary, I did dance in the Hangar chorus of Damn Yankees and never dropped my bat in the soft-shoe reprise of “Heart,” but I wasn’t a townie. Like Judy, I did write the insane Mango Roses in Uganda, but I have nowhere near Judy’s courage.
After my Hangar years, I became a scholar/critic/dramaturg/playwright/librettist in the theater. Vamp Until Ready, in its composition and revision, reminded me of my pre-professional beginnings in the theater, when waking up in the morning knowing you’d be dancing in the chorus that night was an utter joy. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I was twenty-two and had my entire life ahead of me.
BFB: So what are you working on now?
I’m currently working on two musicals, one an adaptation of my friend Amy Bloom’s novel, Lucky Us. The other I can’t talk about until we sew up the rights. I’m also finishing a book of short stories, No One is Looking at You, a reference to the position of old white men in contemporary America.
See Jim and friends at these events:
October 26, 7 pm Writers LIVE! Jen Michalski & James Magruder – Enoch Pratt Free Library Calendar (prattlibrary.org)
November 2, 6 pm Reading and Q + A with Kathy Flann at the Ivy Bookshop
