Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 60
June 25, 2015
Svetlana Grobman talks about growing up in Cold War Russia, writing, and so much more
<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073711037 9 0 511 0;} @font-face {font-family:Wingdings; panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:2; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 268435456 0 0 -2147483648 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-alt:Cambria; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w39wJxilAC0..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w39wJxilAC0..." width="207" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rta6Nei_gkA..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rta6Nei_gkA..." width="319" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br /><br /><i>I love discovering great small presses. Musings Publishing is based in Missouri, and they sent me a book with the provocative title, THE EDUCATION OF A TRAITOR, complete with a haunting cover photo. Kirkus Reviews calls this "an intimate look at a young woman's struggle to find her own truth in a repressive society." Midwest Book Review calls the memoir, "Hard-hitting and involving." I'pm honored to have Svetlana, who grew up in Moscow during the Cold War, on my blog. Thank you, Svetlana.</i><br /><span id="goog_1585383985"></span><span id="goog_1585383986"></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">I always want to know what sparked a book. Why write a memoir now?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">It was my American husband who “sparked” my book. It happened five years ago. At the time, I was working on a book describing my coming to Columbia, Missouri, which for me, then a 39-year-old Jewish immigrant with no English and no knowledge of American life, was as disorienting as if I had landed on the Moon. I had a good time writing that book, because the most difficult period of my immigration was already over, and I could have fun describing my learning English -- mixing up words “desert” and “dessert,” “hair” and “hare,” and getting puzzled by expressions like “keep me posted” when no postage stamps were in sight.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">My husband, however, thought that my life in Russia was a more important subject to write about, and, eventually, I agreed with him -- not because I believed my past life to be exceptional, but because it was representative of other lives spent under an oppressive regime. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">Why now? For one thing, it took me a long time to improve my English, and it took me even longer to feel strong enough to relive my past. This does not mean that everything in my Russian life was painful. Some things were so absurd that they were actually funny.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love the title of the book. Can you tell me how that came about?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">I was born six years after WWII ended, and I grew up reading numerous books and watching movies about the war. Their main characters (Soviet soldiers and civilians, for we never cared about the allies) were divided into two categories: those who died for our country – we called them heroes, and those who didn’t – we called them traitors. Yet one thing always bothered me. The heroes, it seemed, had to die to prove their worth, while the traitors had no excuse for what they did – of did not do -- even if their only crime was being captured by the enemy. I was in awe of the heroes, and I hated the traitors. Still, I often wondered if I’d be able to die for my country if circumstances demanded it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">As it turned out I didn’t have to face death to become to a traitor. The first time I was called that was the time when I, then fifteen years old, tried to transfer to another – much better – school, and the person who called me a traitor was the principal of my current school.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">Later, when I applied for an exit visa to Israel, which was the only legal way Jews could leave the country in those days, and after I was stripped of my Soviet citizenship, many people called me a traitor – some out of hate and some out of jealousy, since that way out was closed to ethnic Russians.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">In any case, I wanted my book to depict the transformation of a naive girl into a young woman who realized that everything she had been told and believed was a lie, and she had to “betray” these false ideas in order to survive.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">It's fascinating to read about your time as a Young Pioneer. What do you wish you had known back then that might have helped you?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">The way I was then, nothing could have helped me, unless I had been a different person – less bookish, less impressionable and sensitive, less gullible about brainwashing, and, most of all, not Jewish, for in the Soviet Union anti-Semitism wasn’t just a private matter but also a government policy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">To make this policy work smoothly, all Jews had a line, “Nationality -- Jewish" written on all of their documents--school, work, library, and medical records, and, of course, on the most important document of all, our Soviet passports. Our "Nationality" was always on the fifth line, which made it easy to spot.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">When my daughter was born, the first question the nurse asked me after my (rather difficult) delivery was, “Nationality?”-- even before she asked if I had picked a name for my baby.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">From your memoir, Soviet Life seems very, very difficult. Do you think much has changed there? </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">Well, I never went through a war (my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles did). I wasn’t a victim of Stalin’s purges (many prominent Jews were). I was never arrested by the KGB and sent to a Siberian gulag (my grandfather was). Nothing that dramatic. Yet, I – and millions other people – lived under an oppressive, anti-Semitic, and corrupt regime, cut off from the rest of the world and constantly brainwashed about the superiority of our country. If I had to describe</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;"> my childhood, I would describe it as colorless. It was also stifling. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">As for Russia of today, I haven’t been back since 1990, the year I left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, accompanied by the hateful glances of its customs officers who had thoroughly searched our belongings but had not found any diamonds hidden in the double bottoms of our suitcases, foreign currency over the allowed amount of $60 per person, or valuable books and documents. (They did strip us of three of our gold-plated teaspoons, proclaiming that “according to government rules” we were allowed to take only one teaspoon per person.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">Yet from what I hear from people who do travel to Russia or from the things I read about my former Motherland, I get the impression that although some of Russian citizens have become much richer, the main traits of the country are, unfortunately, the same. It is still a country where brainwashing is a high art, it is still extremely nationalistic, and it still has no respect for international laws – or any laws for that matter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">What kind of writer are you? Do you outline or simply follow your pen? Do you write at the same time every day?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">I do not outline. I wouldn't say that I follow my pen either. I follow my stories, for things come to me as stories, which I later need to put together. Also, I am a night person, and no matter how much I’d like to change that, I am never productive before 7 or 8 pm (I have a full-time job, too</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Wingdings; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings;">J</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #3e003f; font-family: "Times New Roman";">What's obsessing you now and why?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: small;">Well, I’m obsessive by nature, so I always have a variety of things to obsess about. Yet if I must prioritize my obsessions, then my book – or its “fate," so to speak – is my number one concern. I spent five years writing this book, so it is important to me to share it with the reading public. And not just because of vanity or financial concerns. I believe that <i>The Education of a Traitor</i> is the most important work I have written or am likely to write in the future. Why? Because, to me, it has historical as well as personal significance. It does not describe the ravages of war or other horrendous events, but it does describe what everyday life was like, at that time, in that place, for millions of people like me who lived in the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. Also, I believe that to understand the Russia of today, people need to learn more about the Russia of yesterday.</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>
June 23, 2015
Annie Liontas talks about Let Me Explain You, hip-hop, titles, her third eye and writing, and so much more
<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:Times; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:Times; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Times; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Times;} p.MsoHeader, li.MsoHeader, div.MsoHeader {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-link:"Header Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Times; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Times;} p.MsoFooter, li.MsoFooter, div.MsoFooter {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-link:"Footer Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Times; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Times;} span.HeaderChar {mso-style-name:"Header Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Header; mso-ansi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Times; mso-ascii-font-family:Times; mso-hansi-font-family:Times; mso-bidi-font-family:Times;} span.FooterChar {mso-style-name:"Footer Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Footer; mso-ansi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Times; mso-ascii-font-family:Times; mso-hansi-font-family:Times; mso-bidi-font-family:Times;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.25in 1.0in 1.25in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-page-numbers:1; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1; mso-endnote-numbering-style:arabic;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i> I love big, wild, unruly books, which is why I fell for Let Me Explain You, which is an Indies Introduce Debut from ABA for 2015--another reason to snap this novel up! She is a recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial fund, and one of her stories, "Two Planes in Love" was a runner-up in Bomb Magazines 2013 Fiction Contest. I'm thrilled to have author Annie Liontas here. Thank you, Annie!</i><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><i><br /></i></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yoCZWI5UmyU..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yoCZWI5UmyU..." width="212" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qZ5VOYvAlXM..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qZ5VOYvAlXM..." width="320" /></a></div><br /><b>I always ask writers what the “spark” moment was for a book. What was haunting you that led to this story?</b><br /><br />1.5. By that, I mean, I’m a member of the 1.5 generation, not quite Greek, not entirely American. I was born in the U.S. but lived in Greece and assimilated at age five, learned English, figured out that ketchup wasn’t a condiment for spaghetti. I’ve always been confronted with the feeling of being foreign; I imagine it’s the obsession that will follow me for life. I’m OK with that. Someone once told me that writers belong to their own nation, and that feels right.<br />
I loved and deeply admired the multiple perspective of your novel and the big, brawling multigenerational feel. How difficult was that to do? Was there ever a moment when you wondered if you could pull it off--which you did, beautifully, by the way?<br /><br />You know something—everyone who read the book was like, “Why not just write the whole thing as Stavros Stavros Mavrakis?” He’s funny, ridiculous, a big noise on the page. I knew, though, that it couldn’t just be his story, and I kept returning to the daughters. I kept asking them, “What do you have to say about this?” It took a long time—and hundreds of trashed pages—to finally pick up their voices. They just kept getting drowned out by their father, so I had to really tune my ear.<br /><b><br />So much of this blindingly beautiful novel is about family--the ties that bind as well as throttle us, but it’s also about the stories we tell. Can you talk about this, please?</b><br />I guess this comes from my innate belief that everybody has a story to tell, even the tiny people. There are these big voices that emerge in literature, and often they’re men, and often they’re patriarchs. The story they tell is usually only one version of the story needing to be told—and as a result even their own lives become stripped down. The more stories we tell of ourselves and others, the richer the narrative becomes. And in family, every voice matters. Stories are also ways to explain to ourselves what’s happened to us, around us, before us, because of us. <br /><br /><b>I have to ask about the title (because I have such trouble titling my own work.) Where did it come from?</b><br /><br />The title was the last to come: it told me I was finished writing the novel. It’s part of Stavros Stavros Mavrakis’ refrain, “Let me explain you something.” (He was mansplaining before it became a thing). Once I inherited Let Me Explain You as the title, I was able to go back and reframe the entire novel, even at the sentence level. I was able to interrogate my characters: who is being explained? Who is doing the explaining? Who feels entitled to tell someone else what they are? Is there any truth to what’s been said? Is there any power in explaining yourself? <br /><br /><b>I always want to know about process. How do you write? Do you have rituals, use index cards, Scrivener, or do you not plan out at all?</b><br /><br />During Let Me Explain You, I wrote pretty feverishly at night, usually listening to a single song on repeat, usually hip-hop (Current track is “Every Day” by A$AP Rocky). My best writing time—when my third eye opens—is probably from 10 PM-2AM. This isn’t exactly conducive to having a job, so I’m trying to adjust, these days, to daylight. I also do a lot of mapping—my living room is covered in giant posters right now. But sometimes that gets overwhelming, and I convert down to a single sheet of paper. I guess process is whatever serves you in the moment, whatever tricks you to plow ahead. The one thing I absolutely need, though, is Microsoft Word 2010. No other version lets you go full-screen with a completely blacked out background. Don’t they know writers are particular and easily distracted?!<br /><br />The other thing I’d like to add is—I’ve always felt guilty about not being someone who writes every day. But, honestly, I’m not sure women are programmed that way. We work on an obvious cycle. I finally got sick of beating myself up and, for the last few years, I’ve been documenting my writing hours, noting when and how I work, and it’s helped me understand my own (changing) rhythms. I know to be patient if I haven’t purged something, it’ll come soon. That’s how I discovered Marina’s voice inaugurates Part III of the book. The waiting still feels miserable, of course, and you convince yourself you’ll never write again. But at least the track record serves as a reminder.<br /><br /><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b><br /><br />
I think I’m always keeping my ear to the ground for those tiny voices that need to be heard. At the moment, I’m trying to channel a gay teenager living in Newark who feels foreign in her own body. I’m also playing with some fabulist fiction, because I get claustrophobic in my writing self and need to shake it up.<br /><b>
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b><br /><br />What’s the best question in the book?<br /><br />“Do you want me to smell my fingers?”</div>
Bridget Foley talks about Hugo & Rose, why outlining is not a dirty word, radical fandom, and so much more
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I've never met Bridget Foley, but her emails, her website, and of course her writing, are all so effervescent and honest, well, Bridget--looks like you're stuck with me. I'm honored to host her on the blog to talk about Hugo & Rose, imaginary lives and outlines (Yay! I'm a story structure outline person myself!) Thank you, Bridget!</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uyxy82r0NB8..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uyxy82r0NB8..." width="213" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H1SGtu3kwTI..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H1SGtu3kwTI..." width="212" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><b> I always want to know what sparks a book--but you talk about that in the extraordinary acknowledgement pages of your novel. Please can you tell us about the grief, bravery and courage it took for Hugo & Rose to emerge, and how writing the book changed you? Was there anything in it that surprised you?</b><br /><br />Shortly after I finished the first draft of HUGO & ROSE, I became pregnant with identical twin girls. I edited the book on bed rest, my belly making the reach to the keyboard a bit more difficult each day. The plan had always been for the book to go to market in September because the girls were due in November, which meant that all book business would have been cleared by then. Best laid plans.<br /><br />On September 1st, the girls’ placenta abrupted which caused them to be born 10 weeks early. They were small but their prognosis was good. My agent called to see if we should put off the book sale; my husband and I talked about it. We were picturing ourselves trying to deal with two newborns at home while undergoing the stress of the sale… so we decided it would be best to do it on the timeline we had planned.<br /><br />Right after we pulled the trigger my daughter Giddy took a turn. She was transferred to a different hospital and suddenly we were spending our days talking about blood counts and liver numbers. Our life became shuttling between hospitals, talking to doctors and sitting by the beds of our girls. We got dispatches about the book, but they were like tiny voices in a loud room. I barely noticed.<br /><br />Giddy passed away when she was 19 days old. HUGO & ROSE sold three days later. My entire journey as a published author has also been that of a grieving parent.<br /><br />It was not easy. It still is not easy. It never will be.<br /><br />Oddly, HUGO & ROSE uses the premise of an alternate life lived in dreams to explore the ways humans deal with trauma. Without spoiling the ending, I think it is safe to say that Hugo and Rose are characters who got stuck in a moment that helped them deal with a particularly difficult event in their lives. But the thing that was meant to help them, also keeps them from appreciating the lives that they had after their trauma.<br /><br />For the past year and a half, like Rose, I have also been living an imagined life in parallel to my real one. Mine is one in which my dead daughter is in the bath tub next to her living sister, or on the swings, or at the breakfast table. There is a part of me that will never leave the room in which my daughter died.<br /><br />And that could absolutely keep me from appreciating my life, from being joyful about the children I still have, or happy about what an incredible privilege it is to have a book published. I have sorrow but it is my daily practice to try to keep it from preventing me from experiencing all the love and joy and happiness this world has to offer.<br /><br />With the book coming out I had to decide how open I was going to be about my daughter’s death. I decided to share, not because I want pity, or even sympathy, but because I’m not sure I know any another way to be at the moment. I have said elsewhere that while my daughter’s short life is not the book’s story, it is the story of the book. I can’t talk about one without talking about the other.<br /><br /><b>What does it really mean to be “the dream of yourself”? Can you talk about that please?</b><br /><br />
There’s this strange little line in the book that I’m kind of obsessed with. It surprised me when it appeared on the screen years ago and years later, it still gets at me:<br /><br /> She didn’t want to be who she was when she was who she was.<br /><br />It’s even weirder if you say it aloud, which I would recommend because it’s fun. I love playing with word repetition… but this line is like a little poem in the middle of the chapter about the misery of feeling like you’re performing your life instead of living it. I think everyone has a “dream self” that they can’t shake; the thinner, happier, more productive version of themselves. That person with the better job, bigger house and longer temper who if they just stepped in, everything would be easier. There are entire industries devoted to helping us become the people we dream we could be.<br />
Of course, in the book the fantasy of the better self is literalized. In their dreams Rose and Hugo are thin, beautiful and brave, while in real life they are aging, overweight and deeply fearful of a great many things. Their “other self” is a constant companion through their day, reminding them of all the things they are not.<br /><br /><b>What kind of writer are you? Do you outline or just follow your pen?</b><br /><br />I love outlines. I adore outlines. I preach outlines to any and every person who asks me for advice. This is because every work of fiction that I have ever failed to complete, or had to put through a brutal, traumatic reworking was written without an outline.<br /><br />I have read beautiful books that were ‘discovered along the way’ and I have many friends that write that way… it just doesn’t work for me. The gift of an outline is that it gives you something to hand to your most trusted reader before you have invested months and months on it. It is much easier to fix structural problems, or gaping plot holes when they are only a few sentences on a twenty page document rather than threaded through an entire 400 page manuscript.<br /><br />The outline also eliminates the dread that accompanies every morning of opening up your computer and asking yourself, “what next?” When you work from an outline, the question isn’t the “what” it’s the “how.” How do I tell this part of the story? This keeps your fingers moving, which is great because, at least for me, stagnation is death. If I wait for “inspiration” I could be waiting a really long time… Instead if I wake up and make myself write a scene because that is what is needed I’ve found that inspiration has a way of walking in the door.<br /><br />I think outlining gets a bad rap because people think doesn’t allow for discovery, that it leads to a rigid, unimaginative result. But I believe if that’s the case it says more about the writer than the process.<br /><b>
<br />What’s obsessing you now and why?</b><br /><br />
The thing that’s obsessing me right now is the idea of radical fandom, which is my term for a kind of cultural discipline I’m trying to apply to my own life. Charles Murray wrote a great book called, “Coming Apart” a few years ago in which he compared America in 1960 to 2010. He argued that in the past fifty years the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened not just for economic reasons but because we have stratified our culture. In 1960 people from every level of the social strata consumed the same things. They shopped at the same grocery stores, saw the same television shows, read the same books.<br /><br />That just isn’t what is happening today. White collar and blue collar people shop differently, watch differently, read differently. We’re talking the audience for Mad Men versus the people who watch Two and A Half Men. And we use social signaling to tell everyone in our tribe that we belong. It’s “Did you see Girls last night?” or “Twilight…ugh.” We have become a very critical culture. There are a lot of people today who are defined by the things they hate.<br /><br />(By the way, Murray says the sole remaining unifier of the classes is that they both still root for the same sports teams. I would argue that they are also probably consuming the same pornography. Sex and Violence… Kumbaya!)<br /><br />Whenever people express these hard line opinions there’s often something about it that demotes the people who do enjoy that particular bit of culture. I’m talking Kim Kardashian, NASCAR, the Bachelorette. Case in point, a few months ago when commenting on their feud, Jonathan Franzen stated that he had never read the books of Jennifer Weiner nor did he know anyone who had. If we leave out what this may or may not be saying about the ghettoization of women who write “domestic fiction” versus men who do the same, this is just incredibly sad. It speaks to a lack of diversity in his life. <br /><br />As a writer, I just don’t think these attitudes are particularly useful. If something is a phenomenon, it’s more helpful for me to seek to figure out what people are responding to about something than to dismiss it out of hand. Hence “radical fandom.” If something is having a ‘moment’ and I have the urge to dismiss it, I compel myself to lean into it; to see it, hear it or read it from the view of its fans not it detractors. I think it’s possible to be “smart” person and open to all forms of culture. Roxane Gay is a master of radical fandom. So is Camille Paglia.<br /><br />Thinking like this has gotten me on board with Flo Rida, Miranda Lambert, Owl City, EL James and Kim Kardashian. Emojis used to drive me crazy, then it occurred to me that I was cutting myself off from a whole different mode of communication. Now I embrace them so fully I’m actually irritated I don’t have them on my computer keyboard. Why limit yourself? Life’s too short to be defined by the things you hate.<br /><br /><b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b><br /><br />Well, it’s difficult to translate from the emoji… it’s something like depressed face, ice cream cone, lightning bolt, epiphany face, happy face. Of course that doesn’t capture the nuance, but you get the gist. And the answer is, all the time, my friend, all the time. (winky face)
Laura Dave talks about her sparkling new novel Eight Hundred Grapes, chocolate in lasagna, post-its, writing, and so much more
Glamour Magazine“Best Books of the Summer”*
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig...
*Glamour Magazine“Best Books of the Summer”*
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig...Who doesn't want to read a novel about wine making? Laura Dave's Eight Hundred Grapes is as sparkling as Prosecco and as satisfying as Pinot Noir. She also writes great, warm, funny emails, just so you know. She is the author of London Is The Best City In America, The Divorce Party and The First Husband, and I'm delighted to host her here. Thanks much, Laura!
Glamour Magazine“Best Books of the Summer”*
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig... I always want to know what sparks a book--what was the idea that haunted or grabbed you that wouldn't let go?
Great question. For Eight Hundred Grapes, I was playing with an image for a long time of a woman showing up at her hometown bar on what should have been her wedding day. I didn’t know who she was talking to, and I didn’t know why she had come home, but that woman stayed with me. During a trip to Napa Valley and Sonoma County, I started thinking about Wine Country. I thought it was potentially a lush backdrop for a novel. And when I started imagining that Wine Country was where the woman in the dress was going (where she had always been going), I thought I might be getting closer to the heart of a great story.
Glamour Magazine“Best Books of the Summer”*
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig...
Tell me about your research! I felt that I learned so much about wine. Did anything change the storyline as you were researching?
I'm thrilled to hear you feel that way! I spent a lot of time up in Sonoma County bending the ear of every winemaker that would talk to me and really immersing myself in the Sebastopol community. The more I learned about wine making - the patience and perseverance and faith it takes - the more it felt to me like a metaphor for trying to build a life with someone, trying to build a family. Wine making became a character in the storytelling and influenced how I thought of every other character - what they were struggling with, how they were going to find their way through it.
So much about the book is about the secrets we keep and how they impact our lives, but it's also about the families we are born into and the families we choose to make, too. Can you talk a bit about that please?
I like your distinction because I think it's an important one, especially in storytelling. Usually, in fiction and in movies, we see the families that we choose later in our lives depicted as the idealized version of family - almost like they are the reward for the tricky families we grew up with. I understand the reasons why. But I wanted to write about a family we are born into loving that deeply as well. And, with the Ford family, I was drawn to the fact that despite their poor decisions, their love for each other defined them - maybe more than any other characteristic.
Let's talk about craft. I loved the structure of the book, the shifting points of views and the rich inner life of all of your characters. What kind of writer are you? Do you outline, use post-its (my personal fave), or write in chunks?
I love a good post-it! And I've been known to hang a few - though usually I know very little about where a novel is going. I don't outline, I don't write toward a specific ending. I start with a question that is driving the narrative. A question like: how do we commit to someone over the course of a lifetime? In the case of Eight Hundred Grapes, the question started off simple and got slightly more complicated. Essentially though I wanted to figure out: how do we fight for what matters to us? How do we figure out what that thing is? I loved figuring out the different ways the Fords answered that question.
And I have to ask--chocolate in lasagna? Really? Did you try this? And should I?
It's delicious! I even have a video recipe for those interested in trying for themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78hrb...
If you try it, you'll have to tell me what you think!
What's obsessing you now and why?
Big Sur, California. After every novel, I start a novel that takes place in Big Sur - a place I absolutely love. Every time, I end up throwing out the novel (perhaps it's a place too close to my heart?), but it gives me a reason to go back there and sit at the Big Sur Bakery and eat ginger scones. I pretty much always want to be at the Big Sur Bakery eating ginger scones.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
I loved your questions! Especially because you didn't ask me what I'm working on next. I'm supposed to be knee-deep in a new novel, though it's slow going. I'm still setting this next thing in Big Sur and history has shown me where that goes. Though, who knows? Maybe this time, Big Sur will stay off the cutting room floor. I'm simultaneously working on the screenplay for Eight Hundred Grapes. I'm writing it for Fox 2000, which has been a fun experience - and it would be a dream come true to see a novel as a movie. Though I have to finish the script first!
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig...
*Glamour Magazine“Best Books of the Summer”*
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig...Who doesn't want to read a novel about wine making? Laura Dave's Eight Hundred Grapes is as sparkling as Prosecco and as satisfying as Pinot Noir. She also writes great, warm, funny emails, just so you know. She is the author of London Is The Best City In America, The Divorce Party and The First Husband, and I'm delighted to host her here. Thanks much, Laura!
Glamour Magazine“Best Books of the Summer”*
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig... I always want to know what sparks a book--what was the idea that haunted or grabbed you that wouldn't let go?
Great question. For Eight Hundred Grapes, I was playing with an image for a long time of a woman showing up at her hometown bar on what should have been her wedding day. I didn’t know who she was talking to, and I didn’t know why she had come home, but that woman stayed with me. During a trip to Napa Valley and Sonoma County, I started thinking about Wine Country. I thought it was potentially a lush backdrop for a novel. And when I started imagining that Wine Country was where the woman in the dress was going (where she had always been going), I thought I might be getting closer to the heart of a great story.
Glamour Magazine“Best Books of the Summer”*
*Cosmopolitan“30 Things to Do This Month”*
*Us Weekly“Hot Summer Reads”*
*MarieClaire.com “The 7 Books You Have to Read This Summer”*
*Popsugar.com “Best 2015 Summer Reads”*... - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Eig...
Tell me about your research! I felt that I learned so much about wine. Did anything change the storyline as you were researching?
I'm thrilled to hear you feel that way! I spent a lot of time up in Sonoma County bending the ear of every winemaker that would talk to me and really immersing myself in the Sebastopol community. The more I learned about wine making - the patience and perseverance and faith it takes - the more it felt to me like a metaphor for trying to build a life with someone, trying to build a family. Wine making became a character in the storytelling and influenced how I thought of every other character - what they were struggling with, how they were going to find their way through it.
So much about the book is about the secrets we keep and how they impact our lives, but it's also about the families we are born into and the families we choose to make, too. Can you talk a bit about that please?
I like your distinction because I think it's an important one, especially in storytelling. Usually, in fiction and in movies, we see the families that we choose later in our lives depicted as the idealized version of family - almost like they are the reward for the tricky families we grew up with. I understand the reasons why. But I wanted to write about a family we are born into loving that deeply as well. And, with the Ford family, I was drawn to the fact that despite their poor decisions, their love for each other defined them - maybe more than any other characteristic.
Let's talk about craft. I loved the structure of the book, the shifting points of views and the rich inner life of all of your characters. What kind of writer are you? Do you outline, use post-its (my personal fave), or write in chunks?
I love a good post-it! And I've been known to hang a few - though usually I know very little about where a novel is going. I don't outline, I don't write toward a specific ending. I start with a question that is driving the narrative. A question like: how do we commit to someone over the course of a lifetime? In the case of Eight Hundred Grapes, the question started off simple and got slightly more complicated. Essentially though I wanted to figure out: how do we fight for what matters to us? How do we figure out what that thing is? I loved figuring out the different ways the Fords answered that question.
And I have to ask--chocolate in lasagna? Really? Did you try this? And should I?
It's delicious! I even have a video recipe for those interested in trying for themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78hrb...
If you try it, you'll have to tell me what you think!
What's obsessing you now and why?
Big Sur, California. After every novel, I start a novel that takes place in Big Sur - a place I absolutely love. Every time, I end up throwing out the novel (perhaps it's a place too close to my heart?), but it gives me a reason to go back there and sit at the Big Sur Bakery and eat ginger scones. I pretty much always want to be at the Big Sur Bakery eating ginger scones.
What question didn't I ask that I should have?
I loved your questions! Especially because you didn't ask me what I'm working on next. I'm supposed to be knee-deep in a new novel, though it's slow going. I'm still setting this next thing in Big Sur and history has shown me where that goes. Though, who knows? Maybe this time, Big Sur will stay off the cutting room floor. I'm simultaneously working on the screenplay for Eight Hundred Grapes. I'm writing it for Fox 2000, which has been a fun experience - and it would be a dream come true to see a novel as a movie. Though I have to finish the script first!
June 2, 2015
Dzanc Prize winner Jen Grow talks about My Life as a Mermaid, swimming, underwear, writing and so much more
What's more exciting than a new exciting of short stories? Jen Grow is the fiction editor of Little Patuxent Review. Her writings have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Other Voices, The Sun Magazine, Indiana Review and many others including the anthology City Sages: Baltimore. She’s received two Individual Artist Award from Maryland State Arts. My Life As a Mermaid (great title, right?) is about what really lives under the seams of "happily ever after" and it's just plain brilliant. Thank you so much, Jen, for being here.
Now that you won the prestigious Dzanc prize (congratulations and so, so deserved!), what’s the impact on your new work?
Thanks, Caroline. The award has invigorated my writing and encouraged me to return to fiction. I’ve been writing nonfiction recently, finishing up a memoir and writing some personal essays about the death of my father. This award has given me the incentive to pick up my novel draft, dust it off, and revise. It’s also sparked a few new stories and has got me thinking about the direction for another story collection.
So much is about timing. “Is it too late to smile?” one character asks. In another story, a character remarks that the neighborhood “eventually gets better, years later, but we don’t know that yet.” Do you think that those who are trapped can ever manage to turn time to their advantage?
Yes, but when you’re in it, when you’re the one who is stuck, it feels like things will never change, that time is working against you. I just read the Bob Dylan interview in AARP and he said something that struck me, “Time has to be your partner… time is your soul mate." I think it’s an ongoing dance to learn how to make friends with time and get it to work for you. I get stuck from time to time, as we all do. A situation will come along and knock me off course for a little while. I get things I don’t want or fail to get things I want. There is a recalibration period that varies from situation to situation, from person to person. But there’s always something else coming, another idea, another mood, another insight. For me, being trapped is less about time and more a matter of perspective. The amount of time it takes to become unstuck is in proportion to how slowly or quickly I can shift my perspective. Of course, if you can’t make that shift, then you do stay trapped. So, yes, it’s possible to turn time to your advantage, but it’s not a given.
A lot of the stories have to do with water, which fascinated me. Even the cover, which is beautiful, shows two bodies under water. There’s that sense of floating through life, and not really being a part of it--at least for me. Could you comment?
I really like to swim. I turn into an eight year old kid when I’m near a body of water. Even now, forty years later, I still do this weird thing where I sort of plop headfirst into the pool so I can feel disoriented for a few seconds. I do it on the sly now, because let’s face it, I’m a middle-aged woman and it’s embarrassing when kids and adults ask me if I’m trying to teach myself to dive. And also, I swim where Michael Phelps and other Olympic athletes train. The pool is full of serious, vigorous swimmers, and then there’s me on the side, doing my head-plop into the water. Just so I can get dizzy and momentarily separate myself from the world. The muffling effect of water is such a great thing! That says way more about me than I probably should admit, but you’re right about my characters floating through life without being a part of it. That’s me, to some degree, a fish trying to describe water. Monet’s impressionism, I’ve heard, was born partially out of his nearsightedness. Maybe my writing is the same: I have blurry, aquatic vision and so I describe the world as I see it.
I really want to ask you about how you write, since these stories are all so brilliantly crafted. What sparks a story for you? How do you write? Do you have rituals? Do you outline?
My favorite part of writing is revision. Each pass through a story takes me deeper and deeper to mine for the rubies. That’s on the good days. Other days, I compare my process to sculpting. Years ago, I used to be a figure model in art classes, and I’d watch the students build clay sculptures on armatures. For hours, they’d add and subtract clay, sometimes to the same spot. They’d shave a little off, then re-add it, smooth it over, and then shave it off again. That that’s how I write. I start small, with just the bones, and build up. I go over each line again and again. Moving a word, putting it back. I’m a slow writer because of it, and perhaps and an obsessive writer, but that’s how it works for me.
Sometimes I wish I could outline my stories. Maybe I’d be a faster writer that way, able to produce, produce, produce! But my stories are intuitive constructions. I don’t always recognize the patterns and connections that my mind is creating. An early reader for my story “Camera Obscura: Light Seeps In” asked me, “What’s with all the underwear? You’ve got all these characters running around in their underwear.” I didn’t even see it. It wasn’t intentional, but it was right. I needed the characters to be exposed and vulnerable at an emotional level.
Also, I try to write a little bit everyday, even if it’s just ten minutes before I go to bed, even if it’s just to change one sentence. It keeps the piece alive in my head. These daily increments are punctuated by binge weekends where I go away and write for ten hours a day for a couple of days in a row. I actually prefer binge writing and would do it all the time if I could sustain it, but there’s always the rest of life that needs attention. The dogs need to be walked and somebody has to cook dinner.
What’s obsessing you now and why?
I’m afraid you’ve opened the floodgates with that question.
First, I want to finish my memoir. That’s definitely an obsession. I’ve been working on it for five years and I feel a need to be done with it. But the more I try to finish it quickly (I’ve officially finished it five times already) the more I realize that rushing doesn’t serve me well.
Also, I’ve been fascinated by the grief process. Unfortunately, it’s developed into a terrible knack for cornering friends at literary events and talking about the difficulty of losing parents and cleaning out their homes. I can’t stop myself. It’s like I have Tourette’s and keep blurting out the word ‘death’ at inappropriate times. I had to promise one friend that, next time, I’d talk about dogs instead.
I’m also obsessed by a homeless guy in my neighborhood named Danny. Danny used to live in a wooden shed behind a neighbor’s house, but he got mad at the neighbor and is now living in the woods in a tent. Actually two tents, one inside the other, covered by a tarp, surrounded by a wind proof fence, dug into the side of a hill. My husband and I have offered to let him stay in our basement when the weather is bitter cold or it’s snowing, but Danny doesn’t want to leave his cats, which I completely understand. (And since we’ve got two dogs and two cats of our own, we can’t accommodate three or four more animals.) Other people have invited him and his cats inside, but he doesn’t want to move. He’s stubborn but also resourceful, a hard-working, helpful guy who knows everything that’s going on in the neighborhood. So all of us, even the police, are looking out for him. We gave him kerosene and candles for Christmas. He gave me a bracelet that he found. There’s more to this that I need to write.
And West Virginia has been calling me. I read this beautiful and important book by Erik Reece called Lost Mountain about mountaintop removal. That has inspired me to set a novel or some stories in the coal country of West Virginia. Lost Mountain, the actual mountain, is in Kentucky, but since I’ve spent more time backpacking in West Virginia, I’m drawn to it as a setting. Now, of course, the decimation of mountaintop removal is coming to other communities across the country in the form of fracking. And that’s led me to think a lot about energy consumption, erosion, consumerism, mass extinction, elephants dying—you know, really light-hearted stuff.
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
How about this: What’s the most surprising thing this book taught you about yourself? I was completely surprised to realize how I’d been drawn into the national conversation on social justice and equality while I was writing these stories. I had no idea I was writing about voiceless characters. Then a pattern emerged (like when my friend said, “What’s with all the underwear?”) and I couldn’t deny it. That’s the mermaid, right? On dry land, without a voice.
May 29, 2015
June 2 is stop gun violence day
You know that just about everything I own is black but this is a wonderful cause (thank you Noelle Howey for telling me about this!) I'm joining in to support efforts to stop gun violence in America, and I hope all of you will do this, too. On June 2, upload a photo of yourself wearing orange with an anti-gun violence message and the hashtag #WearingOrange. And GUESS WHAT? I actually own an old pair of silky orange pants and I am wearing them!!!
May 27, 2015
Jon Papernick talks about his gripping new novel, THE BOOK OF STONE, the Jewish/Arab conflict, being grabbed by the throat by a book, and so much more
"Jonathan Papernick has created a terrifying novel that illuminates the dark corners of those souls who will give their lives for a cause without regard for their own suffering or that of others...in this astounding exploration of morality and madness."
The Jewish Book Council.
"This intelligent and timely thriller is told through a Jewish prism, but Papernick’s persuasive insights into the nature of fanaticism and its destructive consequences could be applied to any ideology. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)
"Devastating, gripping and beautiful. Open this book carefully. You will close it changed." Dara Horn
The first thing you need to know is that Jon Papernick is not only kind, smart and hilariously funny, he's also a real champion of writers--and people. He worked as a journalist in Israel after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He's the author of The Ascent of Eli Israel, There is no Other, and his latest, The Book of Stone is something short of magnificent (just take a gander at the reviews above.)
I'm honored to have him here--and I'm even more thrilled to be interviewing him june 28th at Little City Books in Hoboken, NJ. Please come!
There is always something haunting a writer that gives way to a novel. What was haunting you that gave way to The Book of Stone?
I think in some ways I am always haunted by something or many things. I think the most obvious answer for this question is that I was haunted by my experience living in Israel, in the sense that I wrote about Jewish extremists and violence in my first collection of short stories and still felt that I had not fully explored that issue. I wanted to dig deeper into the fanatic mentality and what it is that makes people into terrorists and The Book of Stone was a much broader canvas which allowed me to explore this fascination. I don’t know if it’s out of my system yet, but I certainly can move on to writing about other things.
Titles are notoriously difficult to get right, but yours seems perfection. Where did it come from and how hard was it to come by?
I’m a strong believer in the importance of titles, how a title should contain the entire DNA of a story or a novel and usually I do pretty well with my titles. The title for this novel was much more difficult to come up with and I spent many, many years working under a different title that I thought was the perfect title. In the end, I realized that it was too difficult for people to remember it reminded them incorrectly of a song that had nothing to do with novel. So as I got back to rewriting my novel I knew I needed a better title, something that was perfect. I did what are Ernest Hemingway supposedly did in his search for titles, and I took out a blank piece of paper and just free associated around the themes of the novel. I tried not to think too much and had about twenty or twenty-five names down in about five minutes. I crossed off the worst ones until I was left with two or three and then it became crystal clear that The Book of Stone was the right title. I like how it echoed the family name Stone, but also the Book of Life or The Book of Death from the Jewish high holidays, even the book of Job. Of course, the novel also involves piles and piles of books so that ties in as well. It still took me a while to fully appreciate that this was the natural title for the novel. I’m glad that you believe it’s perfect, because it was indeed a struggle with this title.
So much of the book is about the Jewish/Arab conflict — as well as the conflict between father and son. How does one inform the other?
The book is indeed about the larger Jewish/Arab conflict as well as a personal conflict between father and son and I guess they inform each in the sense that the Jewish / Arab conflict seems somehow insoluble after more than a hundred years of conflict. On the surface the relationship between Matthew and his father also seems insoluble until Matthew believes he is found a way to finally make peace with his father which clearly is as much a mirage as any peace in the Middle East has proven to be.
What surprised you in the writing? What discoveries did you make? And what kind of writer are you? Did you map this all out?
I think I was most surprised how deeply I came to know Matthew Stone, so intimately as if he really were a living and breathing human being. The same goes for some of the other characters in the book such as his father. The fact is these characters are not real and they are not based on anyone in particular or in general yet to me they became real.
I discovered that the more time you spend with these characters, the more they will reveal to you as they continue to grow and ultimately they start to write themselves based on the foundation I have given them.
I’m a very idiosyncratic writer in the sense that I can go months without writing, and then sit down and write four or five short stories in a few weeks. I often don’t know where I’m going and just have a basic itch that I need to scratch. When I began this novel way back in 2000, I really had no idea where I was going, though I vaguely knew that I wanted it to make my first book look like a trip to Disneyland by comparison. I spent several years writing in the dark with terrible prose, horrible plot ideas and ultimately I found only frustration. I had that urge to work on the novel, but I was so far from what I wanted to do with it that everything was awful and discouraging. Then, one day after banging my head into a wall for several years, the light began to shine in and things started to make sense. This novel is a testament to the power and importance of persistence.
I really feel that so much of your book has to do with the way we all struggle to live now and the way we try to understand the ones around us — those we “hate” and those we love. Can you please talk about this?
The older I get, the more I realize how little we know about the people around us, even our loved ones. And yes it can be easy to hate somebody who is a distant abstraction, somebody different from ourselves, but ultimately we are all broken people, and we all want a better life, though many of us are so broken that not only can we not get that better life, but we can only turn our powers to destruction against others. I really came to understand in a most concrete manner why reading, namely fiction, is important. When one is immersed deeply inside a novel, we know these characters so intimately that they indeed are real, the neurons that fire off in our brains recognizing these characters as if they are real. Ultimately I come to love all of my characters because I could see all the depths of heights of their humanity as multidimensional human beings, in a manner in which we rarely ever know a person in real life.
How did this novel change you as a writer?
I think any arrogance I would have ever had approaching a blank page has certainly been given a pretty hard slap across the face. Writing a novel is something one should not go into lightly, because it will grab you by the throat and take over your life for years, and you have to be ready for that commitment or else the voices in your head will overwhelm you. I’m definitely a better writer now than I was before. I think my prose is cleaner and comes to me more naturally. I know more certainly now than ever that every good story comes out of a psychologically complex character or set of characters. The most important thing about writing fiction is not the prose or even the narrative, but the believable and compelling psychology that will ultimately drive the story.
What is obsessing you now and why?
For years I definitely was obsessed with writing about Jewish themes, strictly Jewish themes, namely related to Israel and though I’m still interested in writing about those themes, I’m definitely over the obsession. My stories now are often smaller, and shorter, dealing with sex and intimacy and the damaged psychologies of human beings looking for the life raft of love. My stories can be considered cynical, but they are also deeply human and they don’t rely on the exoskeleton of the complexities of the Middle East conflict or the endless intricacies of Judaism. I guess as I get older I have come to realize that life never gets easier and that we as broken human beings always struggle to keep our lives together and that struggle is what compels me now in my fiction.
This is your first novel, after two highly acclaimed short story collections. How was writing a novel different than writing the collections? Did you have to get into a different mindset? Was there ever a moment when you felt, oh my God, I should go back to short stories?
Writing a novel is very different than writing short stories; I find novel writing difficult in the sense that I am extremely impatient and often times if I work really hard, I can have a complete draft of a story done within one day or at most within a week and I can already see the possibilities as to how to improve it. At a certain point, often a reasonable time after the original spark of an idea there’s a completed piece of work, a complete world which lives and breathes and exists as a result I feel like I have accomplished something. In a novel, you could spend weeks trying to figure out how to get your character to cross a room and it is often hard to see the big picture as you focus in on the minute details that make this world come alive. Writing a short story is like juggling two balls at once, completely manageable, while writing a novel is like trying to juggle seven or eight balls. I used to say writing a novel is like running a marathon, but that is clearly an understatement. Writing a novel is like running many marathons, and you never know how many more marathons you have ahead of you until the book stops speaking to you and is complete.
There were many times that I felt that I should just quit the whole thing and go back to short stories. I don’t find short stories easy, but I do feel that I know how to work my way around short stories. The novel is so much bigger and there were many times I would have quit if I hadn’t already put in so many hundreds and hundreds of hours. It’s like swimming across the ocean and realizing you’ve gone more than half way and it’s too late to turn back, so you plow forward anyway. I think that is one of the reasons why I saw this through to the end because I most definitely put in my required ten thousand hours on this novel. I don’t think I really had a different mindset except that I was more often scared that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for whereas with a short story I never felt the same level of pressure since I didn’t have as much at stake. If a short story didn’t work after a few pages, I could always crumple it up and start over again, but once I was several years into the novel, that was impossible. I either had to finish it or live with regret at not doing so for the rest of my life.
May 22, 2015
Jami Attenberg talks about her extraordinary new novel SAINT MAZIE, her dapper dog Sid, writing about NYC, and so much more
Portrait of the artist in cowboy boots
The glorious cover
The ever dapper SidJami Attenberg is one of those writers who pops with so much personality, you want to be around for the sparks. How can you not adore someone who happens to be down-to-earth, funny, real--and does not seem rearranged by her mega-success, which by the way, is deserved to the electron. She's the author of the story collection, Instant Love, and the novels The Kept Man
, The Melting Season, and The Middlesteins, which zoomed up on The New York Times bestseller list, and will be published in England, Taiwan, Russia, Italy, France, Turkey, The Netherlands, Germany and Israel in 2013. It was also a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the St. Francis College Literary Prize. Saint Mazie is remarkable, heart-winning and heartbreaking at the same time. I'm thrilled to host Jami, and thank you, thank you, thank you, Jami! I always want to know what sparked a novel--what was the question that haunted or nagged at you that you wanted to explore with Saint Mazie?
Because she was based on a real person, I knew certain facts about her, and I was curious about the motivation behind them. Like I wanted to know why a Jewish woman would have an interest in the Catholic faith, and why she chose to remain unmarried in her life, and how she became the kind of person who would devote much of her adult life to helping the homeless. Those were the three main mysteries to me: faith, love, and compassion. Pretty big topics – certainly an excellent foundation for a novel.
I loved the structure of the novel, the chorus of voices, Mazie’s diary entries, all forming a tapestry that becomes a living, breathing person. Did you always have this structure in mind and did anything surprise you about it as you were writing?
Initially it was supposed to be just her memoirs. For about nine months, I was certain that would be the structure of the book. But I had to take a little break from writing it because my last book, The Middlesteins, came out, and I needed to tour and promote it. And when I eventually returned to writing I saw that the book needed to be bigger than just a memoir. It just didn’t feel authentic to me as written, and I couldn’t say all that I needed to say within that structure. So I ended up chopping up what I had written – probably about 100 pages – and repurposing some of it and trashing the rest. And then the book really cracked open for me. In some ways it became easier to write because I could say anything I wanted because I was no longer limited to a single voice, but it also became harder because I had to master more voices, and create more storylines.
Somebody loved them once and that’s all you need to know. I found this line incredibly moving, because isn’t that what is most important? But I also loved the line where Mazie says she needed someone to know what she knew, then she changed her mind--because needing someone to know what we know, well, isn’t that something like what writers do?
I’m so glad you liked it, thank you. Mazie is vain in a few ways but she is not a braggart about her exceptional humanity – which is one mark of a true hero. The choices that she makes, her devotion to helping others, she does it for no one but the people she helps. I wrote about her because I wanted to learn from her! I wanted to contemplate what it would be like to be a selfless person, even if – or because – I am not that way myself. Because yes, I do so love being heard.
Saint Mazie is such a wonderful, bustling love letter to New York City. I know you live here, but you also spend a lot of time in New Orleans. How does place impact you--and your writing?
No one was more surprised than I was that I was writing a New York novel. It didn’t even occur to me that was what I was doing until I was mostly done with the book. I know that sounds strange, but I was just interested in her, and she just happened to be in New York. And, for the most part, the New York in the novel doesn’t exist anymore. But the research made me fall in love with it again. And there is something about being young in New York that is quite thrilling. I moved here in my twenties, and I had a hell of a good time. So if there was anything I was channeling, it was that period of time, when I stayed up late and walked the streets and everything was crumbling and rising and crumbling, again and again, and I felt like I could change my life if I just kept hanging on here. Mazie’s exhilaration felt very familiar to me.
I have to ask about Sid, your dapper dog-about-town. How has having a dog changed you? Has it changed your writing at all? (My tortoise definitely changed mine…)
He’s made me happier. I don’t have a lot that is stable in my life, mostly because I travel so much. Just my books, and now my dog. For a long time I only had to be accountable to my work, but now I have to show up every day for this adorable pup, no matter what. I’ve always thought of my books as my babies, but the truth is having a dog is the closest I’ll come to parenting. I don’t know if it’s changed my writing. It’s just nice to have him around.
What’s obsessing you now and why?
Ah, this book launch! Planning my time for the rest of the year. I’ll travel this summer and fall here and abroad and I’m just trying to manage all the details of my life. Other than that I’ve got this Courtney Barnett album, “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit,” on repeat. She’s this dry, funny, rambling, poppy Australian singer, and I can’t get her out of my head lately.
May 14, 2015
Jax Miller talks about Freedom's Child, drug addiction, the mafia, being a moody writer, and so much more
Jax Miller's Freedom's Child is the kind of thriller that makes you feel like someone is breathing over your shoulder. Freedom, a woman under witness protection, must set out to rescue the daughter she gave birth to in prison, who has now gone missing. I'm thrilled to have Jax here!
I always want to know what sparks a book? What question was haunting you that propelled you into this particular story?
It wasn’t something that propelled me to write up a story as much as it was creating a character. I created Freedom and she led the way, she told the story. I only wanted to create a person commonly overlooked in society (in her case, the town drunk) and create in her a deep and rich history unimaginable to anyone else. I wanted to create a woman like me who was just trying to dig herself out of a hole and find some purpose in life. I guess I just needed some companionship and found it in a person who doesn’t really exist. I like to think Freedom “gets me.”
You have perhaps the most shattering first sentence I’ve ever read: My name is Freedom Oliver and I killed my daughter.” Where did that come from? And how did you go about crafting the character of Freedom?
I intentionally wanted something to make the reader say ‘Whoa, there.’ I wanted it to be something pretty unthinkable and that was the first thing that came to mind, because it really is something so unimaginable: to kill your own daughter. I wanted her to be incredibly honest from the get-go and couldn’t think of a more shocking confession. It prepares readers from an early start for what to expect from Freedom’s voice.
I loved that Freedom kept track of her daughter via Facebook. But Facebook often presents an untrue picture of what is going on in someone’s life, which I thought added a wonderful extra dimension to the story. Why do you think this is?
Freedom is anything but a stupid woman. I don’t think she’s under any illusion that her kids’ Facebook pages aren’t candy-coated. However, I think Freedom needs to think this and convince herself that their lives are as great as they appear. That way she can justify her choice to put them up for adoption. But rest assured, Freedom will soon learn that nothing about her kids’ lives is candy coated.
In an interview I read, you talk about your books being a puzzle. How do you go about solving them? Do you map things out? Do you wait for inspiration?
I wouldn’t call Freedom’s Child a puzzle as much as the current story I’m working on, ‘This Neck of The Woods.’ Perhaps it’s the amateur in me, but I’ve no idea where I’m going in any of my stories. I never adhere to the outlines I try (I just don’t have enough leg room with sticking to outlines). It’s great, though. When my character gets surprised, I’m just as surprised. The inspiration/idea comes when my character’s ready for it. I really do let my characters lead the way.
You’ve also spoken about how your own prior drug addiction fueled Freedom’s. When you were writing about this, was there anything that surprised you, that you hadn’t considered before about the nature and scope of addiction?
Not really. By the time I wrote this, I was already well acquainted with my relationship with addiction. Freedom (I think) was more fueled by my trying to redeem myself in a world where I’d made so many mistakes, my struggles with sobriety as opposed to drugs, and lastly, my struggle in faith. I realize Freedom’s Child isn’t a religious book by any means, but for me, it was a book that 100% was parallel to my spiritual journey and relationship with God. It was rocky, it was messy, it pissed me off half the time… In that sense, the book shocked me a bit. I was surprised that writing could be a coping mechanism and it helped me come to terms with a lot of my own grief.
What kind of writer are you? What’s your daily writing life like?
If such a term exists, I’m the poster child of binge writing. I’m a moody writer. I can go weeks without being able to write a word but then whip out a hundred pages in a long day or two. Depending on the scene, I need to have music blasting in my head. I can’t write without it!
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
Milk and sugar?
What's obsessing you now and why?
I am plagued with book ideas. I have seven ideas right now (and growing). The main one revolves around the 1920’s and the mafia. I’ve always loved the idea of both. But ask me tomorrow, my passion’s on the move and every day I’m interested in something different.
Lori Horvitz talks about The Girls of Usually, outsiders, memory, and so much more
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Teacher...magician! Lori Horvitz's work has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Epiphany, South Dakota Review, Southeast Review, Hotel Amerika, and Chattahoochee Review. Her book, The Girls of Usually comes from Truman State University Press. Horvitz is Professor of Literature and Language at University of North Carolina at Asheville, where she teaches courses in creative writing, literature, and women, gender and sexuality studies. I'm delighted to have Lori here. Thank you, Lori!</i><br /><br /> I <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">love the title—How did that come about?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“The Girls of Usually” is the title of an essay in the book. That story focuses on a Mexican woman I dated when I lived in New York City. She was a non-native English speaker, so every now and then she charmed me with a mistranslation. Once, when I asked her who’d be going to a dinner party, she said, “You know, the girls of usually.” In a way, the slightly skewed translation is a representation of the whole book—there’s something not quite right, something always a little off, but right enough to make sense of it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I love the whole idea of the outsider—a Jewish girl adrift in a sea of shiny blondes—but what I love more is that instead of trying to be them, you decided to reinvent yourself as something totally new. What surprised you in the process?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I wouldn’t say it was a conscious decision to reinvent myself, but through trial and error, through following my heart instead of my head, the road to reinvention came a lot easier. I always had a rebellious streak, but then again, societal pressures were like a magnet pull. Simultaneously I wanted to fit in, to not call attention to myself, but I’d also go out of my way to get attention. In college, I shaved stripes into my hairy legs and walked around with shorts on. I’d blow dry my hair straight for three hours, only for it to frizz back up into a wild mess. It took a while to embrace the wild mess. I embraced the rebel while secretly, or not so secretly, shunning it. I remember sitting in the kitchen of my East Village apartment while a college friend asked about our mutual friends and if so-and-so were dating anyone. At the time I had a girlfriend. My sexuality was the elephant in the room. She didn’t ask and I didn’t tell. I hated her for not asking, but I hated myself more for not speaking up. What surprised me (but in retrospect is a no-brainer) is when I truly embraced my identity, when I no longer hid from who I was, I was a whole lot happier. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I’m deeply interested in memory, and I always want to know, when someone writes memoir, how the event you remember changes as you are writing about it. Can you talk about that please?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Through the writing process and through time, memories are re-contextualized and re-visioned. My first draft of “The Weight of Stuff,” an essay about my mother (who died in a car crash while I was touring the ruins of Pompeii) was filled with anger. Anger about her inability to nurture and see me. But with each revision, the anger dissipated. I began to find compassion for her, to understand why she didn’t have the tools to mother me. In my final draft, my anger turned to a deep sadness, which gave me the ability to understand her and to find compassion for myself in the process. It always takes time and perspective to make sense of an experience. A number of the essays in the second half of my book speak about hopeful love connections that eventually don’t work out. Without the time and perspective to revision the stories through a lens of humor, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Although your book is a memoir, it really reads like a collection of short stories—very funny ones, at that. What made you decide to do a memoir instead of pure fiction?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This book is made up of a series of memoir-essays; many have been published as stand-alone pieces. As a collection, the essays speak to each other and build on each other towards a bigger whole. I didn’t plan to write a memoir. I just started writing separate essays, which all shared similar themes of identity, love and travel. Although I started off as a poet, and then moved to fiction writing, when I left New York City for a teaching job in the South, I began to write nonfiction stories about New York. Of course, there are elements of fiction in essay writing: in re-creating dialogue, scene, setting, etc. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="im"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What’s obsessing you now and why?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="im"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How will I find more time to write? It’s hard to get writing done with a full-time teaching gig. But I do have summers off! </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="im"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="im"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How does it feel to expose yourself by putting your stories out there? Don’t you feel vulnerable?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="im"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At this point in the process (the first essay was written over ten years ago), I no longer have the emotional attachment to each piece as I once did. I suppose it’s like sending a child out into the world after nurturing them for eighteen years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now it’s time for the child to make her own mark; she’s out of my control, out of my hands. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>
