tenderness and brutality, Hiram wields
magic. He has an ability called Conduc-
tion (capitalized throughout the book),
wherein he can bend, fold, time and
space. This is a proper novel, an abrupt
departure from what overbearing, messy
fame demands of Coates. And because of
that, he is nervous too.
Part of the reason Coates returned
to the pastry shop is because he felt it
allowed him to take on the trappings of
the novelist throughout the 10 years it
took him to complete the book. His son
went to a school nearby, and it was, first,
convenient. “I imagined that this was a
place where a writer could just work.”
Here he motions to the other dark cor-
ner in the back of the café. “There was
a woman who used to sit, who does still
sit, in that corner seat right there. She
looked so serious. And I knew she was a
writer right away, just by how she worked.She never socialized. We ended up being
friends!” They worked in silent kinship
over the years, and he’d look over at her as
he was wandering through the wilderness
of writing his debut novel and thought,
That’s what I want to be.
The writer was—is—Julie Otsuka, who
wrote, among other novels, a haunting,
boundary-expanding, award-winning
book in 2011 about a group of Japanese
wives sent from Japan to marry Japanese
American husbands called The Buddha in
the Attic. The women collectively narrate
their journey in language that is lyrical
and heartbreaking. When I ask him if he
asked her to read The Water Dancer, he
says he didn’t. He was intimidated by her
and didn’t want to bother her.
He’s made an effort to surround him-
self with other fiction writers. “I sent the
first chapter off to Michael Chabon—
we’d struck up this friendship—and he
just blasted it. ‘This is not fiction, bro,’
he said.” At this, Coates laughs. “He
wrote this long-ass note. It was great. It
was really great. I was totally depressed.
But it helped. I said, ‘Okay, this is whereHERO’S JOURNEY
Clockwise from top left: Coates in Baltimore
at about three years old; in center foreground
with siblings, clockwise from left, John, Kris,
Kelly, Damani, and Malik, early ’80s; greeting
Senator Cory Booker before testifying
about slavery reparations at the Capitol in June.