VINCE VAWTER Q & A with
Paperboy was our Stuttering Foundation Summer Book Club pick for 2020. Author, Vince Vawter, graciously joined Sara MacIntyre, M.A., CCC-SLP for a Live Q&A in August. A recording of the full video interview is available on our Streaming Video Library (
StutteringHelp.org/Streaming).
SARA: We had tremendous feedback from readers, so many great questions submitted, so thank you so much for joining us today. One of the most common questions, and maybe a great place to start would be, what inspired you to write Paperboy?
VINCE: Somehow I knew I was always going to write this book. That goes way back 20 or 30 years. I knew I had a story to tell, and I kept waiting for somebody else to tell it like it should be told. I could never find that. When I retired from newspapers, I said, "Well, I'm going to write this book. I don't know if anybody is going to read it, publish it. But if I can make one person feel less lonely with what they are going through with their stutter, I think my book will be a success."
I had no idea it would receive the reception it did. I couldn't imagine it. I'm thankful every day that I got a chance to tell my story the way I wanted to tell it. I don't want to seem haughty about this, but I'm not sure anybody else could have told this kind of story. Much of the book is autobiographical, especially in Paperboy. In Copyboy, it draws a little bit more on the fiction, but the story is the story of my childhood. I still can't answer the question, how my younger years are with me so closely. The only thing I can figure out is that it was such a traumatic time in my life, that it affected me, and it stuck with me.
While I can't tell you what I had for lunch yesterday, I can tell you about certain days in 1959 when I had some trouble saying my name or whatever. I'm so thankful that I got a chance to tell my story the way I wanted to.
S: And we're all so thankful that you were able to. We received countless emails this summer from readers reflecting on how impactful this book and this story was for them—from parents, people who stutter of all ages, as well as a large number of speech- language pathologists. You really had an unbelievable way of bringing the experience of stuttering to life.
V: I think one of the things I'm proudest of is I know a lot of speech-tlanguage pathologists are using this in conjunction with their clients. I've got to tell you, SLP's are my heroes. My approach to stuttering (if I were an SLP) would be to treat or take into account the whole person, not just the stuttering person. I think that this book that might help an SLP do that.
S: Another question that was frequently asked relates to what was true in the book based on your personal experience. Could you reflect a little bit on what key aspects within your experience as a person who stutters really were weaved through into the story?
V: Right. Well, one easy way to answer that is that everything in the book which had to do with stuttering, was factual. I had trouble saying my name, and on more than one occasion, I would pass out because I held my breath too long trying to say my name. If you remember the scene where the boy is in the restaurant with some of his parents’ friends, and he gets embarrassed, and it all just starts coming onto him and he loses his spaghetti all over the table and everybody? That actually happened to me. Jane will know the restaurant, it's Grisanti's Restaurant.
JANE FRASER: Oh, yes. And having lived the same years as Vince, reading that book took me back to so many memories. You just grasp the years, the situation, the streets, the feeling in the streets, riding your bicycle, everything about that book was...I couldn't put it down, I stayed up until four in the morning. Everything about it brought those years back.
V: And then I mentioned in there how I would keep a thumbtack in my pocket, and any time I had to speak in class, read aloud in class, I would jam that thumbtack into the palm of my hand, wanting the pain of that to take away the pain of stuttering. And of course, it never did. Everything in the book that had to do with my speech impediment, was real.
Now, all the characters, except for one character were right out of my childhood. That's about the only way I could write it, I found out. I think in my newspaper background, I think I have trouble
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