What it takes to write a ‘Hell of a Book’

Many years later, Mott was gripped by the news of rioting in Baltimore following the Freddie Gray incident in which a handcuffed Black man was placed without a seatbelt in the back of a police van and given a “rough ride” that caused his death. The backlash in Baltimore and themes of grief, loss and disillusionment surrounding life as a Black man combined to inspire the writing of a separate story about Soot, a 10 year old growing up in North Carolina, whose nickname referred pejoratively to the darkness of his skin tone. Mott interwove the comic story of the unnamed author with the sad, realistic plot about Soot to produce a novel that has garnered acclaim for being simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking.

Mott dedicated “Hell of a Book” to “All the Other Mad Kids.” Mott said he hated high school, explaining that he was bullied and did not fit in. Addressing students in the SHS audience who may have felt the same way, Mott offered reasons for optimism: “High school ends, thank God,” and at some point after that, “You will meet your tribe.” He elaborated that in adulthood, all the drama of high school cliques will soon fade away and you can forge new lifelong meaningful relationships with people who share your values and interests.

Older generations of students had the pleasure of seeing Mott in a day/evening Scarsdale Adult School double header. In the afternoon, SAS students were able to speak directly with Mott and discuss his book in a bespoke event that was limited to 25 registrants. In a free-flowing conversation, Mott fielded questions about the metaphors and symbolism in his book, he discussed his passion for mythology, and he amused students by describing his multiyear employment at a Verizon call center assigned to the New York region. While at Verizon, he became adept at de-escalating angry customers and he learned not to take personally the barrage of disrespectful, demeaning and cruel insults that callers inflicted on a regular basis. Yet those interactions, he said, inspired some of the characters in the book, as did other experiences from his actual life — Onyx peacocks feature in the novel because his uncle raised them, Kelly is the girlfriend character because Mott once dated someone by that name, and the character Renny, a wealthy Harvard graduate, retired from a Wall Street career, spending his days as a driver for the car service, is a fairly close approximation to a limo driver that shuttled Mott on his first book tour.

Purposefully, Mott’s characters are nuanced. Even the so-called villains of the book such as the white cop are humanized. Mott elaborated that he does not hate the police. Instead, he allows for the possibility that police officers and others make genuine mistakes that ruin lives. Turning the police character into a trope, in Mott’s opinion, would have been hypocritical, when Mott was not reducing other characters to group stereotypes.

During the evening webinar, cultural historian Lori Rotskoff served as the moderator, asking pointed questions about Mott’s literary choices and influences. Drawing out the meaning of the references to the unnamed author’s “condition.” The protagonist has trouble distinguishing reality from figments of his overactive imagination — a condition sometimes labeled maladaptive daydreaming disorder. However, as Mott explained, that is not his only “condition” to which the term could refer. The protagonist also suffers from a drinking problem, the financial condition of poverty and the state of being Black.

Rotskoff inquired about the genesis of Mott’s satirical and unflattering depiction of the world of publishing. Mott described feeling pigeon-holed as the “Black author.” When his first novel was published, he was often called upon to provide the “Black author” perspective even though his novel had nothing to do with race. He observed that Black writers are too often steered into writing about race, civil rights or urban youth coming of age. Black absurdist humor novels simply did not exist — until now, he said.

High imagination authors, the myth of Sisyphus and an unlikely mix of popular culture sources also provided inspiration for Mott’s fiction. Film noir, Mickey Spillane storytelling and the movie “Casablanca” loom large for him. He is also a huge fan of Nicholas Cage and movies made by the Coen brothers. This odd blend of influences gives “Hell of a Book” its characteristic quirkiness.

Mott thought “Hell of a Book,” the title chosen by his publisher over his own suggestions, sounded arrogant and too readily manipulated into insults in the event that the book failed — a prospect he felt certain would occur. He wrote the book as a cathartic labor of love, he noted, never expecting it to become a life-changing success, let alone a National Book Award winner. In the words of Scarsdale Adult School director Jill Serling, however, readers should “run, not walk” to secure a copy and see for themselves why “Hell of a Book” is true to its word.