In the opening chapter of Vanessa Veselka’s debut novel, “Zazen,” the protagonist Della has a discussion with her brother Credence about whether a person is capable of sitting perfectly still while on fire. Credence says it’s impossible, but Della’s seen it done by Buddhist monks trained in the zen practice of zazen. Over the course of the book, Della, herself, must sit through the figurative flames of a whole world on fire and attempt to maintain her commitment to what’s right and beautiful.

A recent college grad with a degree in paleontology, Della inhabits an unnamed city where anonymous bombings fill the air with smoke, and police barricades block nearly every street. She works at a vegan-friendly diner where most of the employees won’t let the explosions distract them from an elaborate sex party they’ve planned. But Della is not so easily diverted. Disturbed by the graphic violence she’s witnessed, she begins calling in bomb threats and reveling in the chaos that ensues. Her new hobby ultimately forces her to question where her allegiances lie.

Like Della, Veselka has studied paleontology, has worked as a waitress, and has dabbled in activism and the counter-culture. She’s also a long-time musician who has opened for The Ramones and The White Stripes, and once ran her own indie record label. She drew on many of her own experiences while writing “Zazen,” including the real-life sex party scene in her home city of Portland, Ore.

“I’ve gone through many different social cultures and known many different people in many different places, and I’m not the kind of person who tends to sit back and watch in those situations,” she told The Wire recently.

Veselka will read from “Zazen” at RiverRun Bookstore on Wednesday, Aug. 17. She spoke to The Wire about the parallels between the events and conflicts that transpire in the book and those that take place in the real world. 

You can’t help noticing some of the similarities between Della’s background and your own. To what degree is this character based on you? I don’t feel that she really is. .... I take my experiences and I sort of pummel them into sand and I throw them wherever they need to be. What I mean to say is that writers can be very opportunistic. We can be really, really devious scavengers. So we can take a very emotional personal experience and instead of putting it in wholesale, we can just tear it up and throw it into something. It’s kind of a more callous experience. I used the language of geology throughout the book, so I certainly used my understanding of paleontology and extinction and geology. And I used my waitress experience and I used my union organizer experience, but I did not bring the storylines into that. The storylines and the agendas and the characters are not built on any of that. So Della is not built on me. The part that I would say is really me that I can feel is the same, and it’s part of what drew me to her as a character, is her sense of urgency, her sort of restless urgency that something has to be fixed or done or some conclusion has to be reached, some understanding has to be reached. That’s very much me. 

The nascent war that’s unfolding in this book—which seems especially relevant when you look at the riots happening in London—is this something you could realistically see happening in America? Yeah. I think, yes. All of the elements are there. ... Many of the things that I talk about in the book have happened. Out here recently there was a substation fire. There were sports riots up in Vancouver. I have a New York Times cover from when I was writing the book, because I’d already written the Wal-Mart scene when there was that Black Friday Wal-Mart crushing a few years ago. And then also there’s this great picture—I mean it’s amazing—a picture two or three years ago of this huge SUV on top of a church alter or dais with a preacher raising his hand above it and he was praying for the Detroit auto industry. There’s this black woman going up the steps toward him—I mean, it’s almost exactly a scene from the book. And then there was a wave of immolations through Tunisia. So these elements are there. They’re in the cultural zeitgeist, they’re in our experience. So, to me, they don’t feel far away. I wish they felt farther away, but I feel them all the time.

Can you talk about the concept in the book of the box-mall-church? I mean, have we turned mass consumerism into a religion, do you think? The short answer is yes. I really debated how literal to make the box-mall-church, whether it was something that was Della’s language or whether it was something that was actually an architectural construction to a certain degree. And it is, in part, an architectural construction. And I think the way the box-mall-church is constructed is sort of how I see it being constructed as an ideology, which is that there are these huge, constantly brand-new bigger malls, super-malls, right? So there’s a super-mall and it’s next to a big box church, and the traffic is so bad they decide to turn the road between them into a pedestrian walkway and build more parking lots. They’re moving toward connection. They’re connecting to each other. It’s driven by parking, it’s driven by car culture, it’s driven by the need to get easier shopping, and why not have a direct connection to the box church?... So the box-mall-church, to me, is a construction both literal and figurative of how our culture has lost its sense of boundaries.

Where does Della’s fascination with self-immolation stem from? I’m so conflicted about immolation, and it’s such a riveting image. ... Watching someone set themselves on fire is a horrifying and awe-inspiring—in the sublime sense—experience. It also kidnaps the viewer. I was talking to someone once who had been at the (University of Pennsylvania) when Kathy Change self-immolated, and the rage among the student populace. She had forced people to watch her do this act, just by essentially taking things to the public space. That’s an endless question. She was protesting things she felt people were asleep to. She felt like their right needed to be challenged to a sort of problem-free public space. I also equally understand people who go like, “I didn’t need that image in my head because you have these issues and this was the only creative way you could think to solve them. I didn’t need that image in my head until the day I die. I didn’t need to watch you burn.” Both of those things are true. So that’s why I think immolation is affecting. And, of course, when you see the discipline of some of the Buddhist monks who do it, I mean, you just can’t imagine that kind of mental discipline. 

Many of the characters in this book are these vegan, yoga practicing, socialist-leaning, BDSM people. They seem more enlightened than the masses, and yet you often poke fun at them, as well. Are you satirizing the counter-culture? Oh, extremely, extremely (laughs). The satirization of the counter-culture is not only my intention but is absolutely necessary. ... I mean, I tend to be closer to urban counter-culture, but I have a lot of deep criticisms of it, as well. And I’ve often wondered, particularly with certain kinds of groups, I’ve often wondered like, ‘I don’t think you’re good people.’ And, you know, you can have all these affiliations on paper to certain ideologies, but I would rather go out and talk to the person who’s in line at Wal-Mart sometimes. And I think that’s part of Della’s restlessness is that she doesn’t see a response to what’s happening that’s valid, but she sees the beauty in some of those responses. There’s a big sex party (laughs), and there are beautiful elements of it that are beautiful and feel like freedom. And yet, they’re very complicated. 

Throughout the book, Della is sort of grappling with how to deal with her feelings about how messed up the world is, and she’s indecisive. Do you think we, as individuals, have the ability to make a conscious decision about whether we love or hate the world, whether we see beauty or ugliness in it? I think we have some level of conscious decision with it, but that conscious decision, the way I mean it, is more opening up to that painful dilemma and recommitting to what’s worth saving, recommitting to beauty, and really fighting for it. For some people that’s not much of a fight, and for other people that’s a real fight. So I think the ultimate question for Della is, are you in or are you out? A lot of her struggle is, “I don’t want to belong to you.” So wanting to protect, but then wanting to be completely separate from. I think ultimately she has to ask the question, “Am I emotionally in or out?” ... To me, that’s not a peaceful state. That is a state of real torque. And choosing to stay in it, to me, gets back to the idea of, can you sit still on fire? That’s really the question for Della in some ways. I think that’s where the immolation obsession ends up is that question of can you sit still on fire? Can you sit there and burn?

Vanessa Veselka will read from “Zazen” at 7 p.m. on Aug. 17 at RiverRun Bookstore, 20 Congress St., Portsmouth, 603-431-2100.