Life poses challenges for the young adults in Zach Wyner’s “What We Never Had.”
Zach Wyner’s ‘What We Never Had’ distills the deep angst of youth
Writing about the anxiety of young adults is an American literary tradition dating back generations. With his debut novel, “What We Never Had” (Rare Bird/ Vireo, $17.95, 222 pages), Zach Wyner suggests that the tradition is alive and well.
The book tells the story of Josh, a twentysomething guy living in Hollywood during the tense, post-Iraq invasion days of 2003. Josh, whose ambitions as an actor have come to naught, has found a job supervising privileged teens in a high school “Homework Club.” His friends Bill and Amare aren’t so lucky. Chronically unemployed, they spend their days railing against the state of the world and their nights crashing on the couch of Josh’s one-bedroom apartment.
Wyner, 39, knows the territory well. He grew up in Hollywood, a place he calls “the myth factory,” where the book is set. And he understands youthful despair. Since moving to the Bay Area, he’s established a writing-coaching practice to help incarcerated kids and young adults in juvenile detention centers, Alameda County schools and San Quentin State Prison tell their stories.
On a recent afternoon near the Oakland home he shares with his wife, writer and editor Nora BarrowsFriedman, and their two children, Wyner said that his day job didn’t have a direct influence on the new novel. “But it’s helped me become a better listener, and it’s definitely clarified for me who I think needs to be paid attention to most right now.”
The book began as a short story, part of a story cycle that he’d been working on for some time. “I’d written about Josh before, and he was central to the cycle,” says Wyner. “But some of the other characters in the story wanted more time on the page.”
Setting the book in 2003 was key, says Wyner; although it’s not a war novel per se, the U.S. involvement in Iraq casts a dark shadow on his characters’ lives.
“That’s the moment they’re in, and it’s pretty devastating,” he says. “It’s hard enough to be a young person transitioning to adult life with a whole different set of expectations, to not feel any different but suddenly to be treated differently. These guys are all disheartened by the reality — and the way it contradicts the myth.”
Josh, whom Wyner calls “an earlier incarnation of myself,” is the most secure — his work with kids gives him a kind of respect and authority.
Things are tougher for Bill and Amare. “They’re a little more adrift,” he says. “But they’re all confounded by the reality of this war that millions of people tried to stop.”
Adding to the mix is Josh’s sometime girlfriend, June, who struggles with mentalhealth issues and occasional homelessness. When she resurfaces, she tells Josh that she’s in a new relationship with an abusive boyfriend.
For Wyner, June’s character took the story up a notch. “It was important that there be high stakes – that this didn’t exist in a world that had bumpers on it,” he said. “Because of her struggles, her condition, she was going to be vulnerable. It’s real-world violence, and it’s incredibly common.”
Gritty and captivating, with well-timed flashes of humor, “What We Never Had” paints a realistic picture of young adults struggling to cope with contemporary issues. Josh is the central character, but Wyner made the deliberate choice to write the book in the second person. “The perspective is from someone who’s gained wisdom that the character doesn’t have in the moment,” he says. “It’s a way of explaining how things got off track.”
Now that the book is out, Wyner says he’s finished with these characters for now. He’s working on a new novel, one he describes as a departure. “It’s a fable,” he says, “set in a country that resembles this one. It takes place in a detention center, where a young man is detained and a bunch of his family members work there. It’s a bizarre kind of home, and the story is his journey to realize this other dream.”
Still, Wyner says he’ll likely find himself drawn back the Southern California milieu he describes so well in “What We Never Had.”
“I might have to,” he says. “It still seems to warrant further exploration.”