Slow burn

ATTIC SABBATICAL Hazlegrove hangs out in Hem’s house.

A poet once told us that if we wanted to know good writing, we had to read Chicago authors Stuart Dybek and James McManus. Surprisingly, at the time both were out of print: two full decades of writing only attainable via eBay. Since then, of course, they’ve gone on to become icons in Chicago literature, proof that despite the fleeting nature of trends, good writing survives. For this reason, Bill Hazelgrove has more than survived.

In 1992, Hazelgrove published his first novel, Ripples, to critical acclaim and followed it up with two more novels, Tobacco Sticks and Mica Highways. But then he hit a speed bump, unable to finish another book, and Ripples fell out of print. “You have to write badly for a long time before you write well,” says Hazelgrove, 48. “I went on a ten-year streak of writing badly. It really sucked.”

But finally, after cranking out three novels that never saw the light of day, Hazelgrove has hit pay dirt with his new novel, Rocket Man (Pantonne Press, $19.95). Tracing a week in the life of writer and sometime mortgage broker Dale Hammer, Rocket Man highlights changes in suburbia, as the characters wind through the crazy times of economic woe. Hammer endures a writer’s slump while confronting the societal norms of a neighborhood that offers “large lawns but empty minds.” He stands accused of cutting down the subdivision sign, avoids the divorce papers from his wife sitting quietly in the oversized kitchen next to the property-tax bills, and winces under the omnipresence of his Southern father. But Hammer keeps reaching for the heart of the ancient command: Know thyself.

“One day, maybe three years ago, I started out with this guy,” Hazelgrove says. “He was an asshole, sarcastic, witty, but he had something to say about the American Dream. Little did I know [the economy] would implode and Rocket Man would be this novel where the story becomes our reality.”

Hazelgrove has a unique perch from which to cast his gimlet eye on the middle class. As the writer-in-residence at Ernest Hemingway’s Birthplace Home in Oak Park, he occupies the great American novelist’s attic. A former Oak Park resident, Hazelgrove was walking the neighborhood one day in the 1990s when he “just strolled in” and asked if he could start writing.

“It is strange to be up in Hem’s attic,” he says. “It seemed like the place called for it, having a writer pounding away on keys. It gets cold and it gets way too hot, but the net of it is a great place to hide and try and pump out some prose.”

Though settled into a writer’s dream locale, after the 1998 publication of Mica Highways, Hazelgrove found himself the victim of midlist author syndrome. Publishers pegged him as a Southern novelist with moderate sales, and he felt confined. The fact that he’d bought a new home in St. Charles just added to the pressure. It turned out to be both a blessing and curse.

“I did what a lot of people did during the real-estate boom, a big house in the far ’burbs,” he says. “I had no idea what I was getting into or where I was getting into it. You think you’re just changing a house, but I was changing a way of life. That’s when Dale came to me.”

Rocket Man’s story unfolds naturally, and Hazeglrove skillfully gives voice to the numbness and fear inherent in a man trying to save his house and family. That said, it’s the funniest serious novel we’ve read since Richard Russo’s Straight Man. And now Hazelgrove finds himself back in print. Once again, good writing prevails.

“I went through a lot trying to write this novel,” he says. “I hadn’t become the person I needed to be to write it.”

Rocket Man has officially launched.