Perhaps best beloved in the LGBT community for his in-depth depiction of The Andrews Sisters, anthropologist author Harry Nimmo is back in the forefront with a new work of fiction called Before Summer ( Prairie Avenue Productions ).
Before Summer is described as a collection of 16 interrelated short stories about a gay youth's coming of age in small town Iowa during the 1940s and 1950s. The book is an affectionate and sometimes sorrowful portrait of a bygone way of life in a small Iowa farming town and what it was like growing up gay in such a community. In some stories, Lach is the central character, but in others he is an observer of other people and the events of their lives. Each story explores Lach's youth as he realizes and comes to terms with his sexuality and the restrictions as well as the possibilities of his life. Not to be outdone, Nimmo has an extensive history involved within the timeline of his own personal life as well.
"First of all, I'm an anthropologist. Professionally, that's my calling card," Nimmo said. "I've done most of my field research in the Philippines and I've written a couple of other volumes of short stories which are pretty much based on my Philippine experience. But the reason I wrote those stories and I was attracted to fiction was because I felt through anthropological writing, the sort of "scientific" writing we try to do within anthropology, I was just unable to explore some of the experiences and some of the places I'd been in a more personal way."
"In some ways [Before Summer] is a documentation or description of way of life in small Iowa towns -which is gone. I've always wanted to write about that, that particular thing. And then in addition of course, it's about a young gay man who's growing up in such a town," Nimmo added.
To be crystal-clear, Nimmo's new book is a work of fiction. "It's not a memoir or autobiography, but nonetheless, it was also selfishly inspired by my experience and my background," the author said.
Walking the fine line between fact and fiction is something Nimmo understands and implements well.
"I don't find that [to be] a problem. Each of the stories is fiction and all of the characters in those stories are fiction also. But at the same time, they are composites—every one of those people is a composite of various people that I've known. And that's the case with the events, too," said Nimmo.
Some of the author and character comparisons are straightforward enough for dedicated readers to figure out.
"The character's somewhat older than I would be if I were being honest. Also the town, although it's somewhat inspired by a little town I've grown up in, is a composite of towns that I've known in Iowa and other places. I was from a large family—there were seven siblings in my family—the narrator of the story has only one—two siblings, a brother and a sister," he shared.
Something shifted when Nimmo picked up the proverbial feather pen.
"When I first wrote the book I wrote it in the third person, but it just wasn't working for me. And so I switched to first person and it just flowed so much easier," he said.
Writing streams through the author's blood like water on a vine.
"I've written since I was very small, very young. I remember when I was in seventh grade, I wrote what I thought was a novel, and I guess it was—it was about 400 pages," Nimmo said. "Handwritten pages!"
The desire to pinpoint one's own history and geographical experiences underlined Nimmo's passion to promote the written word.
"I suppose that we write to communicate, to share with others," Nimmo said. "I've written my entire life, and in later years after I finished my doctorate in anthropology, most of my writings, of course, were anthropological. But I always felt that after I had published monographs and the articles I wrote that there was a dimension of that experience doing anthropological research among this group of nomadic boat-dwelling people in the Philippines, I simply wasn't conveying."
Still, something was eating away at Nimmo: the urge to write fiction.
"Fiction allows me to say things which I cannot say through anthropology. I think if I wrote about my own life at that period, I don't think it would be a very interesting book. And I started, in fact, writing a memoir, and then I decided that if I wrote fiction, I could write about the things and say the things I wanted to say, and make it clear that it is fiction," Nimmo added.
Returning to the memoir mentality, would Nimmo ever consider writing one of his own— a real-life memoir?
"I doubt it," he said. "You know, in a way, my fiction has been a memoir. For example, these stories are my very early years up through college and my undergraduate days. And then the stories that I wrote about the Philippine experience, those essentially are stories about my professional years when I was writing and doing research as an anthropologist. And then I'm working currently on another collection [based upon] traveling quite a bit around the world. These stories are, for the most part, the latter part of my life. When you put them all together, I feel in a real sense that they are memoirs, even though they're fiction."
What does Nimmo think about his life as a whole?
"I don't think it's been that exciting or maybe that meaningful or insightful. But when I put those experiences together and rework them slightly and say the things I want to say, then to me it becomes more meaningful and more me in many ways," he said.
A definitive departure from writing fiction, Nimmo's star rose significantly following the release of his biography on The AndrReturning to theews Sisters.
"Why did I write that book? I always liked The Andrews Sisters. Throughout my life I've enjoyed their music. I still play it even though my true musical love is classical music. I'm quite proud of that book. I think also, that period of my life when they were popular my family lived on an army base in upstate New York during World War II. That was a very exciting time for me as a child, partly because I was away from Iowa and experiencing all sorts of new things and people. But also, it was when I sort of became aware of the world around me including music and pop culture. And they were extremely popular at that time on the army base. So they've always brought back a happy time in my life," he said.
How did the opportunity arise?
"I had just finished a rather extensive anthropological monograph and I started looking around for something else to do," Nimmo said. "I had always kind of toyed with the idea of writing something about The Andrews Sisters, and so I did an article and the article eventually grew into this rather expensive book."
Before Summer may be a work of fiction, but it is also "an affectionate look at that period of my life," Nimmo said.
"Small towns were characteristic certainly of much of the Middle West—they're still there today, but the poor things, some of them are in very, very bad shape. The family structures, the social organizations, the things like that which were there when I was growing up, much of that is gone. Of course those small family farms—which were typical of my relatives—are mostly gone too, and corporate farms have taken over. Everything in Iowa, anyway, is either corn or soybeans," said Nimmo.
Certainly the simple lifestyle may be easily missed in today's fast-paced society and way of existing.
"I suppose [this story] will come across as somewhat sad, too, because it is gone. For some people living in those small towns, it was a beautiful life. They lived very fulfilling and meaningful lives," Nimmo said. "Others felt restricted and pained by those lives, and I hope I've conveyed that, too, with the characters I've chosen to write about."
Purchase Harry Nimmo's latest book, Before Summer, on Amazon and CreateSpace.
