Today we are talking to Ivan Fox, author of “Blood Pudding: Confessions of an Immigrant Boy, Pittsburgh 1920”.
Gerry Yukevich (pen name Ivan Cox) grew up near Pittsburgh in Steubenville, Ohio. He went to Kiski School, Princeton University, and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He finished his medical training in Boston at the N.E. Deaconess Hospital and received his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. For twenty years, he practiced emergency medicine at Boston area hospitals and pursued literary and theatrical interests in the city.
Gerry was the publisher of Alpha-Bête, a free-form art sheet, and he founded The Buster-Scimitar Garden and Grotto Theater, which specialized in performing European farce and original American plays. During this period he served intermittently as a ship's doctor in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
He moved with his wife Martha and their daughter Anna to Martha's Vineyard in 1995. He has practiced medicine on the island ever since, while writing novels, farces, and screenplays. He is a longtime supporter of the MV Playhouse, and every June 16 he acts in Arts and Society's "Bloomsday Pageant." Gerry/Ivan's essays, reviews and doggerel appear periodically in the Vineyard Gazette and the MV Times.
What inspired you to write "Blood Pudding: Confessions of an Immigrant Boy Pittsburgh 1920”?
"Blood Pudding" simmered steadily in my soul from early in my youth as I listened to my father’s gritty stories about his childhood as an immigrant boy in a coal mining and zinc smelting town in western Pennsylvania. As a literature major at Princeton, I realized that the gruesome scenes my father experienced with his violent father and his colorful siblings could easily blend into the pages of fiction I was studying by Dickens, Dostoevsky, Dos Passos, and Tolstoy. I vowed that one day, once I had honed my skills as a writer, I would render a fictive vision true to my father’s childhood suffering and his eventual personal triumph.
Can you tell us about the main character and his journey throughout the book?
At age 9, Tad Malinowski witnesses his mother die from a self-inflicted botched abortion using bark slivers from a slippery elm tree. "Blood Pudding" starts there, flashes back to Tad’s tender early memories of his mother, and then follows Tad as he deals with his drunken ogre father Jumbo, his six bewildered siblings, and his own disability as a polio victim with a foreshortened leg. The story concludes with Tad’s dramatic escape from this paralytic “blood pudding” of a dysfunctional family, ultimately finding his way to personal redemption and understanding.
How much of the book is based on true events or personal experiences?
The essence of the story is derived from hundreds of long conversations I had with my physician father during our many long walks together over the years. He spoke with an uncanny and accurate memory, a wry, ironic humor, a mystical vision of his family’s Polish traditions, and a steadfast reverence for the profession of medicine, which he practiced with passion and which helped bootstrap him out of his impoverished and tormented childhood.
What kind of research did you do to accurately portray Pittsburgh in the 1920s?
I pored through old newspapers and photographs of Pittsburgh, from a time when the city and the greater Ohio Valley were the smoky, industrious muscle of America. Newly arrived immigrants shouldered the load of making our country economically powerful. In the process, the American dream became an enriched fusion of the sustaining visions of many peoples from around the world.
What themes or messages do you hope readers take away from your book?
"Blood Pudding" conveys that a bright and sensitive young boy embodies the shared American dream, imperfect in many ways. Tad’s will, patience, and brilliance, combined with his enduring love, ennoble his family, himself, and our society.
Did you face any challenges while writing this book, particularly in depicting the immigrant experience?
Growing up in Steubenville, Ohio, a smoky steel town on the river with a lively downtown and a huge immigrant population of Poles, Greeks, Italians, Serbs, Croats, and many African American migrants from the Deep South, the immigrant experience was visible on every street corner of my hometown. My only challenge was to report it fairly and inoffensively.
How did you develop the title "Blood Pudding," and what significance does it hold in the story?
"Blood Pudding," though a Polish pig blood sausage specialty, serves as a metaphor for the paralytic force Tad’s family places on him. It was also used as a code word for the aborted fetus that Tad’s mother Vera told him to bury in the woods an hour after her botched abortion. The book itself, with a blood-red cover and an icon of Poland's patron saint on the back, is a bit of a blood pudding: at times bitter, tough to chew on, but ultimately satisfying for a reader with an appetite for pathos.
Can you share any interesting anecdotes or behind-the-scenes details from the writing process?
I halted my practice of medicine for four months to focus on concocting the actual plot for the book. I knew exactly what I wanted to put into it, but I needed time and space to focus on creating the artful construct, which good novels must manifest. Thus, I was not preoccupied with my usual medical professional obligations, and this freed me up to write every day until I had a draft I knew was solid.
What impact do you hope your book will have on readers, especially those with similar immigrant backgrounds?
Tad Malinowski’s experiences are common to most families who immigrated to America during those years, and in many cases, to this day: confusion, violence, maternal and child physical and sexual abuse, sneaking around the law at times, and the constant fear of being deported. The immigrant story is inherently pathetic and heroic, and "Blood Pudding" depicts it with vivid details that ring true, culminating in Tad’s victory and mainstreaming into American society.
How do you think the historical context of the 1920s affects the narrative and characters in your book?
"Blood Pudding" begins with a mother’s death due to a self-inflicted, botched abortion using slippery elm tree bark, a Polish folk abortifacient. Had Tad’s mother been allowed legally to have a proper and safe abortion, the Malinowski family’s story would have been much different, with fewer deep and painful scars on the children. But her tragic and final act creates the backdrop for all the family's actions from then on.
Back a hundred years ago, abortion was forbidden. Unfortunately, the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States now have deluded visions of their own wisdom. Thus, the 1920s and the 2020s are now running in a parallel moral direction, leading to the great injustice, malfunction, and cruelty of a government supposedly of and by the people, which callously deprives women and families of their personal rights.
Are there any upcoming projects or books you are currently working on that you can share with us?
I am currently writing the sequel to "Blood Pudding," entitled "Live Dancers," which depicts the next fifteen years of the Malinowski family’s adventures. "Live Dancers" focuses on Tad starting a medical practice and romancing a young woman, the daughter of Scottish immigrants. Meanwhile, his older brother Max, ever the charismatic rogue, operates a Dodge dealership while leading a wildly self-indulgent and colorful personal life. Again, Tad uses personal narration and interior monologue to share his challenge-filled experiences and his dealings with his father Jumbo and his other odd and remarkable siblings as they mature.
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