Ask the Author: Matthew Thomas
Answered Questions (3)
Matthew Thomas
Hi Dalia. Thanks for such an interesting question. I'm tempted to say it was tea that got me going when I was down, because there's more than a little truth in that statement, but a less cheeky answer is that I tried to focus on whatever task was next--the next line, the next scene. It's easy to feel down when you're writing a book, because there's so much failure built into the job, even when things are going well. And when you're down, you're especially prone to thinking about the overwhelming task ahead of you and getting lost in a haunted wood. But if you focus on smaller parts of that task, you can work your way out into a little clearing. I guess I tried to put on blinders. If you only let yourself see this one small thing in front of you, you can quiet the voice that says that this larger task is going to fail. Work patiently on a little corner, day after day, and eventually the canvas fills up. (Though without tea, I wouldn't have finished anything.)
Matthew Thomas
Hi Patrick. Thanks for this great question. I had an idea of the sweep of the story, but I started in the middle. There's something useful about getting into the middle of something and looking around to see where you are. I realized fairly quickly that I would need to tell the story of Eileen’s early life if I wanted what happens to her later to resonate with the reader in the way that I wanted it to. If the reader had a window into Eileen’s somewhat unstable early childhood experiences and why she expends so much energy in pursuit of psychic equilibrium through upward mobility, then the reader would understand how hugely disrupting it would be for Eileen’s husband to get the particular disease he gets. So I went back in time, to when Eileen was a young girl.
Once I accepted that I would need to tell the whole story of my main character’s life, then certain opportunities opened up, because I would be writing about a wide sweep of time and taking the reader through a large chunk of history. And I saw that I could write, through Eileen, about one of the stories that I consider most central to the second half of the 20th century, namely the rise of women in greater numbers into positions of power in the workforce. I also saw that if I focused on the particulars of this one family, the Leary’s, I could tell some of the story of the experience of the middle class during this period. I could also write about race relations and the flight of whites to the suburbs in the 70's and 80's. And I could indirectly comment on the American Dream motif and the notion that life can always get a little better through the acquisition of material resources, and quietly draw attention to how we are always encouraged, in Western culture, to want and need more and not think about whether this accumulation, this ostensible betterment of our circumstances, actually makes us happier. Weaving in a storyline involving a degenerative disease with which I had experience in my family was a way to undercut a lot of the assumptions in that Dream.
I guess I waded into what was just a little body of water at first and saw that it would get deeper and lead out to larger bodies of water if I had the nerve to keep going. I think that’s probably how a lot of novels get written. There’s a sense of how much work you’ve signed up for, but only a sense, because if you knew what you were really in for, you might head back to the shore.
Once I accepted that I would need to tell the whole story of my main character’s life, then certain opportunities opened up, because I would be writing about a wide sweep of time and taking the reader through a large chunk of history. And I saw that I could write, through Eileen, about one of the stories that I consider most central to the second half of the 20th century, namely the rise of women in greater numbers into positions of power in the workforce. I also saw that if I focused on the particulars of this one family, the Leary’s, I could tell some of the story of the experience of the middle class during this period. I could also write about race relations and the flight of whites to the suburbs in the 70's and 80's. And I could indirectly comment on the American Dream motif and the notion that life can always get a little better through the acquisition of material resources, and quietly draw attention to how we are always encouraged, in Western culture, to want and need more and not think about whether this accumulation, this ostensible betterment of our circumstances, actually makes us happier. Weaving in a storyline involving a degenerative disease with which I had experience in my family was a way to undercut a lot of the assumptions in that Dream.
I guess I waded into what was just a little body of water at first and saw that it would get deeper and lead out to larger bodies of water if I had the nerve to keep going. I think that’s probably how a lot of novels get written. There’s a sense of how much work you’ve signed up for, but only a sense, because if you knew what you were really in for, you might head back to the shore.
Matthew Thomas
Thank you for the kind words, Annette, and I'm sorry I missed you in Austin. I loved Book People. What a terrific store. (And the restaurant across the street, 24 Diner--great food!) Part of what gave me insight into the nuances of Alzheimer's disease and its effects on a family was my experience with my own father's early-onset Alzheimer's. My father died over a decade ago. I also did some research into the practical realities of the disease--financial, legal, and otherwise. But I would say the biggest tools at my disposal were the things any writer uses: the imagination (combined with an attempt at empathetic understanding), which allows one to inhabit the consciousness of people other than oneself; and a sort of observational attention--keeping one's eyes and ears (and mind and heart) open. When the memory of sense impressions and the study of the psychologies and emotional lives of people are employed in the service of the imagination, the result, when things are working right, can sometimes be the accumulation of deliberately chosen details that do multiple duties in bringing a story more vividly to life.
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Oct 04, 2016 10:34AM · flag