Local writer Jeff Kohmstedt has published a novel. It’s called The Fifth Kraut and is about a tight-knit group of four high school boys of German ancestry in suburban Chicago in 1990. The clique allows a new boy — the “fifth kraut” — to start hanging out with them, and from there, lives and events go in unexpected directions over the course of senior year. I spoke with Kohmstedt recently about his novel, getting published, and the craft of writing fiction in general. Kohmstedt himself has documented some of the trials and tribulations of the writing life in Smile Politely articles that you can access here and here.
Autobiographical elements and creating characters
Kohmstedt has a lot in common with Ike, the protagonist of The Fifth Kraut. Like his character, Kohmstedt went to high school in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, and ran on the cross country team. I asked him how much of the novel on the whole is autobiographical. He replied: “Some of the characters are based on real people, like my coach. A lot of the characters are kind of composites of people I’ve known, mostly from high school. Not anyone from around here really.”
Kohmstedt added that the character of the misfit “fifth kraut” was put together from real people in his own past:
Wally was also a composite of a couple of people. There was a kid who kind of bullied me in middle school, so I was thinking of him. Eventually, it came out that he was abused by a teacher. Then there was this other kid in my high school who killed himself, and he was bullied. So Wally is kind of a mix of the bully and the bullied.
In any event, the fictional Wally is a pretty weird guy. He dresses differently (without seeming to intend to), overreacts in a violent manner to everyday events, and does things in his backyard that most people do in private. But beyond the obvious that he’s odd, as a reader I felt that I didn’t get to know him all that well. Was he just a catalyst — a plot device? Kohmstedt explained:
When I wrote the book I knew who Wally was, what his family background was, and I felt like he did the things that he did for a reason. So, Wally is a catalyst for sure, and the story probably wouldn’t have developed the way it did without him. But because we don’t get to see him firsthand, but rather through another character’s eyes, in a way the book isn’t really about him.
The central characters of the novel are male. However, there are important female characters as well. Since the story is told through the eyes of the protagonist, Ike, we get to know the female characters from his perspective — just as we get to know Wally from his perspective. Ike is romantically involved with two different high school girls over the course of the novel, one who I’d describe as stable and the other as troubled. I asked which girlfriend was easier to create. He said:
I think Kate [the stable girlfriend] was probably easier because I see Kate in a lot of people, whereas it’s not that I don’t see Julie, it’s just that she has a kind of hidden persona. The story is not necessarily autobiographical. I lived in Elk Grove. It’s where I grew up. So in Julie [the troubled girlfriend], there are elements of people that I knew from school that kind of make her up. But Kate was definitely easier. In a way, it’s a love story, so it was easier to put myself in Ike’s mindset and write about love that way.
In the early chapters of the novel, Ike isn’t especially nice to either girl. But by the end of the book he is — despite being dumped by one of them. I wondered if I just got to know the protagonist better or if events had matured him. Kohmstedt said:
It’s my hope that Ike matures. And it’s part of the growing process that I’m attempting to show with the characters. When Wally comes into their group, he kind of changes the characters. So I think that Ike did change — that’s how I intended it to be.
What’s in a YA label?
When I read the novel, I didn’t get the sense that it was written for teenagers, even though it’s about them. It seemed to me that it’s a book by an adult for adults that happens to be about teenagers. So is this a Young Adult book? Kohmstedt told me:
I hadn’t really intended to write a YA novel — I had seen it more in terms of being for adult readers. But I wrote it, and I was talking to a friend of mine who is a professor at EIU in creative writing, and she said, “It’s YA. — this is what YA is.” I thought, there’s all the swearing in it, drug use, alcohol, but she said, “It doesn’t matter, the YA market today is more — you can get away with more now.”
Look at The Hunger Games, with all the violence. I was basically in denial, but I’ve come to accept that’s what it is.
While its author may not see The Fifth Kraut as a Young Adult book per se, it does deal with one subject often explored in that genre — peer pressure. At a certain point, in the novel, Ike realizes that for his own good he needs to distance himself from one of his old friends in the clique who is headed in some illegal directions. Everyone is telling him to, and he knows they’re right, but he’s torn between self-preservation and wanting to go along with an old friend on capers that don’t feel right.
Another adolescent theme that comes up is the uncertainty and lack of direction that teenagers often feel. The end of the novel finds one major character in an improved place psychologically from the beginning, but we’re not sure what his plans are now that he’s graduated high school. Is he going to college in the fall? To work? The character himself doesn’t seem to know. I asked Kohmstedt if he has plans to pick up the narrative again at some point in the character’s future. He replied:
I had not really thought of picking him back up. A couple of weeks ago I had kind of a lightning strike idea come to me when I was in the shower. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be a neat thing to tell the story from a different angle or character,” but I probably won’t pick the story back up.
I think of the character as kind of being unsure of what he’s doing, so if you’re not sure of where you’re going or what you’re doing, you’re not going to really move. He does change as a person, but he doesn’t know which direction to go.
That’s unreal, man
Kohmstedt warns on the homepage for his book: “This novel contains coarse language, legal and illegal drug use, and at least one stripper. Parental guidance is advised.”
True enough, but beyond that, even, there are some scenes that are, well — extreme. With two scenes in particular — one that takes place in a bathtub and another that describes a bloodbath — I found myself asking how likely events were to have happened in real life. But then again, truth can be stranger than fiction and none of the violence in the The Fifth Kraut comes close to the level of the real life violence at Columbine. I asked Kohmstedt how he approached the line between writing a novel in which nothing exciting happens and a novel that’s unrealistic. He told me:
I struggled with that a lot. With the shooting scene, I was not concerned that people would think it is real or not. So much weird shit happens in real life. But the bathtub scene, in the original version it was much different, much more graphic. A couple of people gave me feedback on it and that helped. Like any writer, I feel like when I write something, it must be good, but you need to have someone look at it and say ,“This doesn’t make any sense.” One of my friends read an early draft and said, “Could this really happen? Isn’t it pretty extreme?”
A self-published book
Kohmstedt said that he wrote the first draft of the novel relatively quickly, but did four years of revisions after that. So, understandably, he was frustrated when he didn’t find a publisher once he felt the book was ready. Finally, Kohmstedt said, he wound up self-publishing.
There’s no getting around that there’s a stigma to self-publishing, although probably less than in the past as the world becomes increasingly DIY. At the same time — not to judge a book by its cover — this particular self-published book looks beautiful, with cover art from a photo Kohmstedt took in the fall at Allerton park.
I asked Kohmstedt how he felt about the whole self-publishing thing. He replied:
I’m torn, since there is a stigma that if you’re self-published you’re not really serious, or people don’t take you seriously. Part of that comes from what some people publish. I’ve seen a lot of self-published books that really shouldn’t have been published. At least not yet, anyway. I spent years revising this book. I also paid someone local to proofread it.
I originally wanted to go the more traditional route, find an agent, get a publisher, etc. I sent the book out to 18 agents, and it got rejected. It’s like applying for a job when there isn’t a job opening. I just didn’t think that this book had a real niche in terms of YA marketing — it’s not vampires; it’s not dystopia. On another level, I wanted to be done with it. I wanted to stop messing around with it and get it published. I wanted to stop telling my wife, “Oh, I revised another chapter.”
The publisher is CreateSpace, and they print on demand. So when anyone orders off Amazon or any other online store, they print it and ship it. They have templates that you can use for the cover and those kind of things. I wanted it to look like a quality book, and I think it does.
More importantly, though, is that the publishing world is changing. Authors have to do more of the work of marketing their books now than they have in the past. At least that’s what I’ve heard. A friend of mine has published five novels through traditional means and recently got dropped by her publisher. Now she’s waiting to see where the market goes before seeking new representation. Yes, you might find it easier to sell books when you’ve got an agent and a publisher, but there are no guarantees of success.
In conclusion
For me, The Fifth Kraut is a highly readable and intriguing novel. It struck chords with me because, like the main character, I was a long distance runner in high school during about the same time period the novel takes place. Also, I’d never met Kohmstedt before the interview for this article, and it was cool for me to read a book I liked and then get to ask the author whatever I wanted about it.
The Fifth Kraut is a good novel for anyone who’s ever looked back at anything they did with their friends in their high school years and thought, “My God, why did we do that?”