Mark I Wallace

Daniel Wallace, born in 1959 in Birmingham, Alabama, is an American author celebrated for his 1998 novel, 'Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions'. His literary career began after a period working for his father's import/export business in Japan, a venture that proved unsatisfactory. Wallace's early writing attempts were numerous and largely unpublished, characterized by a youthful overconfidence in invention without a strong grasp of narrative craft. He eventually found his voice, leading to the breakthrough success of 'Big Fish', which was later adapted into a film by Tim Burton. His works often delve into mythic and imaginative realms, with a recurring motif of glass eyes, a subject he collects. Wallace holds a 'left of center' political stance and identifies as agnostic, viewing inexplicable events and creative acts through a lens of inherent human wiring rather than divine intervention. He believes art is a distillation of experience and that writing, by its accessible nature, is something anyone can pursue.

Wallace's academic journey included studies in English and philosophy at Emory University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, though he did not graduate until 2008. Prior to achieving literary recognition, he worked for thirteen years in a bookstore and as an illustrator. He currently resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife and son. He has received accolades, including the Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer of the Year in 2019. Wallace also holds a position as a professor and lecturer in the English Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he aims to foster an appreciation for the art of writing among his students.

Daniel Wallace's literary output, notably 'Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions', frequently engages with themes of myth, the nature of storytelling, and the distillation of experience into art. He posits that art is fundamentally a concentrated form of lived experience. Wallace's personal philosophy touches on the human inclination to find meaning or agency in inexplicable events, comparing the perceived magic of writing to how people interpret fortunate coincidences, like a pet surviving a tornado. He identifies as agnostic, viewing these interpretations as ingrained human behaviors rather than evidence of supernatural forces. His creative process, particularly in his early career, was marked by a pure joy in invention, though he later recognized the distinction between generating ideas and effectively conveying them. This self-awareness, coupled with a desire to write what he truly wanted, became a catalyst for his breakthrough work.

Wallace's journey into writing was not linear. After initial rejections, his breakthrough came with 'Big Fish', a novel that, paradoxically to him, was chosen for film adaptation over his other works with more conventional structures. He has expressed surprise at this, noting that he writes novels and screenplays, aiming to explore diverse narrative forms. His early writing was characterized by a focus on the pleasure of creation itself, sometimes at the expense of narrative coherence or reader engagement. He learned through trial and error, eventually realizing the importance of writing what he genuinely desired. His influences include literary giants such as Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino, Kurt Vonnegut, and William Faulkner, as well as Evan S. Connell's 'Mrs. Bridge' and 'Mr. Bridge'. A distinct personal motif in his work is the collection of glass eyes, which he has stated he collects.

Beyond his writing career, Daniel Wallace is an educator. He teaches in the English Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where his role involves cultivating students' appreciation for the craft of writing. He aims to reveal the underlying techniques of compelling storytelling. Wallace's personal background includes being born in Birmingham, Alabama, and having three sisters. His early life was described by him as 'completely average' and 'uneventful,' though he acknowledges family friction. He lived in Japan for a period, attempting to work in his father's business, but found it unfulfilling. He eventually returned to Chapel Hill, where he worked for thirteen years in a bookstore and as an illustrator before dedicating himself fully to writing. He is married to Laura, a social worker, and they have a son named Henry.

“I was completely average in every way. My childhood was the most uneventful part of my life, I think.”

“My father wanted me to work with him in his company, an import/export firm, and to that end I lived in Japan for a couple of years. But it didn’t work out. It didn’t make me happy and the truth is I wasn’t that good at it. I wouldn’t have been a good businessman. I tried. So I quit – or, if he were alive and you could ask him, fired – and started writing. He wasn’t for it but then it’s hard to support a child in an endeavor for which he has shown absolutely no promise. My mother loved the idea of it because being a writer is such a romantic idea and because it hurt my father, and if he was hurt she was happy.”

“It is fair to say that I'm left of center. Far left.”

“I think a lot of people default to Jesus when something inexplicable happens. I write things I didn’t know I were capable of writing, and sometimes that feels like magic. It isn’t; it’s just me. A similar thing happens when a tornado blows someone’s house away, but their cat is found unscathed in an oak tree: God must have been looking out for Pooky. We’re hard-wired to do this, I think, because we’ve been doing it since the beginning.”

“I thought I was a much better writer then than I do now. I loved the stories I was coming up with, and was really amazed I could put enough sentences together to make a paragraph. It was like magic, seeing the little black marks all come together. I sound like I’m making fun of myself but I’m not. If a writer writes I was a writer. I couldn’t see very far beyond that though. The pure pleasure of invention, of making stuff up, clouded over everything else. I couldn’t tell the difference between a good story and a good story told well. I wrote three hundred pages about a pair of billionaire twins, each weighing just over 500 pounds, who ‘rent’ the mistress of one of their friends. What did I think was going to come of that? Nothing much did. And I wrote a few other books equally as promising. As I wrote I was learning to write (having not gone to school) and I was learning what not to write as well. I also finally figured out that I was writing the kind of books I thought other people wanted to read, not the kind I wanted to write. That’s when Big Fish happened, and why it was a breakthrough for me.”