Horror and humour: Victor LaValle’s The Devil in Silver

I spoke to a few professionals,two doctors in particular,working in the public health care system. I’ve also had a lot of personal experience with psychiatric units. I’ve spent my life visiting a handful of people who are very close to me when they’ve been committed to one hospital or another in New York.

Q: Did you have a particular inspiration for the monster’s attributes? Put another way,what do you look for in a monster?

The best monsters are our anxieties given form. They make sense on the level of a dream,or a nightmare. My devil,I realise now,is my nightmare embodiment of our country as we suffer the convulsions of terrifying change. The bison is a fabled beast of our romanticised past. The withered body bears a resemblance to our current moment. The creature is beautiful and horrifying. I’m afraid you could say the same about us.

Q: Were you interested in consciously echoing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,or did you try to avoid those echoes?

You can’t write a story about a mental hospital in US without facing the grand example of Cuckoo’s Nest. I even had the patients talk about the book,briefly,within my own book. But they do so to make an important distinction: That book isn’t really about mentally ill people. It’s about how Ken Kesey’s generation feared the lobotomising effects of the culture their parents had created.

Q: The book’s epigraph comes from Vincent van Gogh. A museum devoted to his work plays a small role. How did you decide to feature him?

My wife and I lived in Amsterdam for about six months in 2010. We made trips to the Van Gogh Museum. Of course I loved his paintings,but the museum is set up so you also become interested in the trajectory of his life,how he tried and failed,until he finally stumbled onto his particular greatness toward the end of his too-short life.

That trajectory could summarise the lives of nearly everyone in my novel. He became the patron saint of the book.