Kenneth M Kapp

Macrame: You are a multifaceted author with a rich personal and professional background and diverse interests outside of literature. What inspired you to begin writing and what place does writing occupy in your life today?

Kenneth M. Kapp: I always wanted to write but as a kid we were told “be a doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief.” The latter clearly wasn’t an option, and math was fun and easy so early on I decided to become a professor of mathematics without even knowing what it meant. But I do remember periodically writing a story, struggling with typing, and sending it off with a SASE (Self-addressed stamped envelope) Only rejections came back. My typing is still poor but with PCs & word processing it’s a lot easier and no more SASE!

I always liked to read and have fond memories of my parents reading, or trying to, with both my brother and me vying for attention. On Sundays, my father did his best to read in the red recliner in the corner of our living room. This found its way into a story “The Red Recliner,” October Hill Magazine, July 2022.

Macrame: How do you typically begin a new piece—does it start with an idea, an image, a question, or language itself?

Kenneth M. Kapp: All the above permeated with curiosity. Mathematics is an art of asking a good question – albeit mathematical. So often there’s a “what if” underlying the start or attempted start of a story. A type of epiphany may provide the itch. Since I’m still a lousy typist, I tend to let it bounce around my back brain, and to mix metaphors, when it’s brewed long enough, try getting it on paper or the screen. Then, if it’s working, I do my best to record where it’s going, trying not to interfere with what’s happening. (I was a homebrewer for more than fifty years.)

Macrame: What challenges do you encounter most often while writing, and how do you work through them?

Kenneth M. Kapp: Not knowing when to stop, recognizing a dud. I’m getting better at not forcing things. If I really believe in what I hope will be a readable story, I may put it aside for a while. Or finish the darn thing and just know not even to send it on to my editor. And there’s the delete key!

Macrame: Your stories and essays center around various facets of human experience, including tragic chapters of history such as the plight of Native Americans, the Holocaust, and the echoes of WWII. What drew you to explore these historical themes, and how has your Jewish identity influenced your voice, choices, and perspective?

Kenneth M. Kapp: I don’t think of myself as a Jewish writer. Though I find myself writing Jewish stories, but maybe less often than someone with a different ethnicity would write one about theirs, e.g., Joyce and Dublin Stories. But they are there like other questions and it was curiosity that started me on my first novel, The Slow and Painful Awakening of Herr Wilhelm Neimann.

I should add that I do like to have fun writing and that story did start with Johannes deciding that all of Germany (Europe, now that I think of it) would have become Jewish since the DNA in the ashes from the crematorium would have fallen on the soil and been incorporated in the food everyone ate. They’d be Jewish from the inside out. And then Neimann was the Nazi – time for my revenge. But as the story unfolded, he also suffered and that his story needed telling too.

I also try to write a fun peace or fractured fable to escape somber thoughts. My wife and I enjoy a giggle and sometimes these become stories or fractured fables such as “Lost and Found,” Molecule: A Tiny Little Mag, Fall, 2024.

Macrame: In your novel, Johnny’s Trail of Tears, the protagonist, a troubled teenager from post-war Illinois, sets off on his journey of discovery along sites that witnessed one of the most troubling chapters in American history. How did the idea for this story come about, and what was your motivation behind it?

Kenneth M. Kapp: I was victim of circumstances here. I was reading about the Death Marches from the Concentration Camps at the same time I came across articles about the Trail of Tears. Whether or not I ever knew about them earlier is debatable. But I was choked. Still am. And angry. I had to work it out. I had to force myself to learn more about what happened to the Native Americans and the Cherokee in particular. (more below)

Macrame: The story contains a mystical figure of a Jewish peddler, from whom Johnny purchases his army fatigues at the start of his journey, and who appears throughout the novel. What is the symbolic significance of this character?

Kenneth M. Kapp: Step by step! I forced myself as best I could to travel along the Trail of Tears. I recorded it in my novel. I needed help and the Sentinels and Lamed Vavniks (peddler and motel owner?? We never know who they are.) supported me and Johnny along the way. (Sometimes we all need help, even in a novel.)

Macrame: You often return to certain recurring ideas—memory, reflection, identity and belonging, a connection between past and present. What makes these themes meaningful to you and keeps drawing you back to them?

Kenneth M. Kapp: Worry. I’m 84. Getting older. I remember when I started college, the entry class all had to fill out a long questionnaire. One of the questions was did we have a good grasp on the world, a Weltanschauung. I answered, no, and then for the second part of the question, wrote that I was sure that by the time I was 25 I’d have a good idea. Yeh, still struggling with that one – and laughing at my naiveté. But I was sixteen when I started college. Still struggling and the stories are one way to throw questions out in front of me and explore various answers.

Macrame: As a Jewish author, are there specific Jewish texts, thinkers, or life experiences that have had a lasting impact on you and your writing?

Kenneth M. Kapp: As I answered above, I don’t consider myself a Jewish author. I’d like to think that Martin Buber and Elie Wiesel have helped in shaping my character. And most of all the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. They taught us all, Jew, and non-Jew alike, to be sensitive and kind to others. It’s explicit in my story “Acts of Kindness” which was posted in October Hill Magazine, November 2019.

Macrame: How does your lifelong passion for art, music, and exploration influence your writing? In what way do you think your personal experiences find their way onto pages?

Kenneth M. Kapp: I like to think that I’m sharing the better part of me when I write. For example, Bernard Leach, the British potter wrote that an artist, vis a vis, a craftsman is one who understands what his art is telling him. So too when I write, I try to let the story tell itself to me, to understand what the people are saying or not saying. Music is at the core of Mr. Samuelson Remembers where the words and melodies of Bach and Handel carry the story forward. Indeed, I only came across some of the music as I was writing.

And phrases I’ve heard, or a vista caught in a blink, may become an idea and then a story, reshaping themselves like clay in a potter’s hand.

Macrame: As a former professor of mathematics and a technology professional, what is your take on how humans interact with science and technology, and where the progress is taking us today.

Kenneth M. Kapp: Hmm. I haven’t given it much thought. We still must shop, cook, and clean house. And plant a small vegetable garden. But if things don’t work, I do tend to blame the computer. Hopefully, AI won’t take revenge and come after me! And I do remember some Sci Fi I read when I was a kid about basic principles hard-wired into computers. I hope loving kindness and compassion are part of the current chip set for AI.

Macrame: What projects or ideas are you currently exploring, and what can readers look forward to next?

Kenneth M. Kapp: One story at a time. I hope to stay curious. I do have enough short stories for several collections: one set in Wisconsin, another of Jewish content, and a third or fourth just general – however I’d rather write new ones. I’ve also restarted several times a novel about Johannes Klingerheim from the Wilhelm book about his “Inevitable Conversion.” And if my strength stays the course, pick up Johnny’s Trail in Tahlequah.

One final note, those that are curious can follow my writing or at least the successes on my website www.kmkbooks.com.