Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 88

Alan Corey talks about 4 Fun Writerly Things Found in his fab new Book: The Subversive Job Search

4 Fun Writerly Things found in “The Subversive Job Search”
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       I first met Alan Corey when his first book, A Million Bucks By Thirty, was sent to me. What instantly snagged me was the irreverent tone, the whoppingly good advice, and the astonishing fact that Corey, at 22, managed to pull this off. (It took him six years, but still.) He's funny, smart, and a damn good writer, and I think I'd promote his grocery list. Thanks for being here, Alan!

\     Alan Corey’s new book “The Subversive Job Search” is not just creative advice for finding and furthering a career, it also has creative style.  Don't believe me? Take a gander at it from an author’s perspective.  


      Unique Dedication – The dedication of “The Subversive Job Search” at first glance seems simple, stating “This book is dedicated to you.”  But an aside on the following page requests the reader to not tell his sister Jill about the book, so that she doesn’t have a book dedicated to her. 
What looks like a simple joke at his sibling’s expense,  is also a call back to Corey’s first book “A Million Bucks by 30”, where he also “not-dedicates” the book to his sister.  She’s most likely the first person to have not one, but two, published books not dedicated to her. Corey single-handedly created his own material for gaining the upper hand in some sibling ribbing.

2.     Opening line –The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an annual contest challenging writers to write the worst opening line for a novel. The namesake, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, is infamous for his long-winded opener: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
Miffed that the contest is only limited fiction, Corey purposely wrote the worst opening sentence that he could in his latest non-fiction installment. (You’ll have to check out the book to read it.) Luckily the bad writing stops after line one.  Maybe now there will be a new contest for non-fiction writers trying to top Corey.

3.     Inventing Words – Corey calls out on occasion when we invents new words. For example, bosse, which he defines as a posse of bosses huddled in the workplace.  Like any creative author, Corey doesn’t let the dictionary limit his choice of words, whether it is inventing his own office place vernacular or coming up with tongue-tying curse words.

4.     Writing Constraints – The most writerly aspect of the book is that “The Subversive Job Search” is a lipogram. A lipogram is a piece of work that purposely avoids using certain characters, and his book does that by dancing around the letter z.  Not only is that harder than it sounds, but it’s also another nod to fiction-only works as his book is now the only non-fiction lipogram ever published. Corey has introduced his own challenges to writing to keeps things interesting not only to readers, but to himself.  Although Alan Corey’s career guide has writerly aspects that authors may enjoy, it does not distract readers from the book. “The Subversive Job Search” stands alone as a great offering to job hunters and those looking to further their career and incomes. Many of the writerly items mentioned here would go unnoticed to most casual readers, which is the perfect way to make things fun for the eagle-eyed writer types.  The book is in stores now.

Marci Nault Talks about The Lake House, writing with your eyes closed, and so much more

I first met Marci Nault through her wonderful new novel The Lake House. Not only is she the founder of 101 Dreams Come True, a website dedicated to the power of dreaming, but she's also an electrifying speaker and a partner in  the online bridal boutique Elegant Bridal Designs. I'm honored to host Marci on the blog today. Many thanks, Marci!

Writing With My Eyes Closed – Creating Depth in Scenes and Characters
The world changes for me whenever I pick up my camera, feel the weight of my lens in my hand, and look through the viewfinder. Instead of seeing the big picture, I look for the tiny details: an angle that leads my eyes to beauty or even a rusted bike wheel that reminds me of childhood summers. Through my lens I find a world that calms me, forces feelings and creates memories.
It’s not so different from the way I write, but instead of looking outward to the world, I turn my vision inward. I close my eyes, find my setting or character and I search for the small details. The first time I met my character, Victoria Rose, I was sitting in my living room terrified to write for fear that I wouldn’t be good enough. Then Victoria came to me – an older woman standing in her sunroom in the middle of the night with three candles lit. A battered sweater, tinged with the smell of mothballs, was wrapped around her shoulders. Patsy Cline played in the background and a spring breeze came off the lake and through her windows. Victoria swayed and pretended she danced with a little girl, her child, and I realized that the daughter was no longer with her in this world. Then I looked at the candles and knew that each flame was for a woman she’d lost.
Tears filled my eyes as I felt this woman’s heartache. I fell into the depth of loss and regret and how her soul screamed but had to continue to live. Victoria, at that moment, was as real as anyone I’d ever met, but somehow I felt closer to her than real life. I knew that she’d come home to Nagog, the tiny lakeside community in New England where she’d grown-up, because she needed its warmth, love, and a chance to remember happiness.
Each time I write a scene or a character, I close my eyes, take a deep breath and allow a world, not quite my own, to create pictures in my mind’s camera. I seek out the details: the smells, the sounds, how things feel, and the world that defines the character’s personality. Then I do the hardest thing; I allow the emotions to overtake me. I experience every moment of pain, happiness, laughter, and anger. My kittens have kissed away tears many times while I’m writing. Thank goodness I also write funny scenes or I might not get out of bed.
It’s through this empathy and quiet that I can make my characters and setting come to life, and when readers write to me and tell me that they want to move to Nagog Lake I know that every emotion was worth it.

Win a chance to win IS THIS TOMORROW, tweet chat with me, and get a chance to video chat with me, too, all on June 18th!

Want to have a chance to win one of three copies of my new novel, Is This Tomorrow? Now in its second printing, the novels is also a May Indie Pick, a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick/Editor's Choice, a Jewish Book Council Bookclub Pick, and it has also won raves from The Week, The Boston Globe, The New York Daily News, MSN Entertainment, Shape magazine, People Magazine, and more.

And even better, after the tweet chat, a few special individuals will be chosen to video chat live with me on Google Plus. Come on, it's your chance to ask me anything! Please come! To sign up, click!

In Praise of David Abram's The Quivering Pen and call for MY FIRST TIME submissions

Of course, I have the official bio for the amazing David Abrams: his debut novel about the Iraq War, Fobbitt, was a New York Times Notable book, a Best Book of 2012 by Paste Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Barnes and Noble. He regularly blogs about the literary life at the wonderful  The Quivering Pen. But  the unofficial bio is that David Abrams is one of the kindest, smartest, most generous people you'd ever want to meet, and I'm really honored to consider him a friend. His blog has this extraordinary feature called MY FIRST TIME, where you can write about your first publication, your first rejection, your first attempt at a poem. I'm spreading the word and encouraging writers to write for him. And David--many, many thanks for everything you do. And by the way, David is reading from Fobbit at the 86th and  Lexington Barnes and Noble for an event with Ben Fountain and Robert Olmstead on the 17th at 7.  You don't want to miss this. Trust me. 




“My First Time” submission guidelines
My First Time is a weekly feature at The Quivering Pen books blog in which writers recount certain “first experiences” in their writing/publishing careers.  The content is generally anecdotal in nature and is designed to inspire both writers and readers with a sense of how a writer evolves from those first steps in his/her career.
Here are some of the “firsts” which potentially make interesting, story-driven subjects:
My first publication: What were the circumstances behind your first publication?  How did it make you feel?  What other opportunities did it lead to in your writing career?My first editor:  How did your first editor help shape your work?  Was it a good or bad experience?  (Names need not be mentioned)  This doesn’t necessarily have to be the very first editor you ever had; let’s call it your first meaningful author-editor relationship.  My first agent:  How did you find your first agent (or did he/she find you)?  What role did that first agent play in your career?My first inspiring teacher/mentor:  This could be your high school English teacher, a college professor, a fellow writer, or even your mother.  How did they encourage your writing?My first failure as a writer:  This could range from a small stumble early in your career to an “epic fail.”  What mistakes did you make—either in the writing itself (flabby plots, weak characters, etc) or in a career choice you wish had gone a different direction?  How did you learn to “fail better”?  If you could go back and give your younger self some advice in that situation, what would it be?My first success as a writer:  The converse of the above.  What did it feel like to get the news your book or story had been accepted for publication?My first public reading:  If not the very first, then the first memorable public reading—whether it was sharing that Thanksgiving poem with relatives gathered around the table when you were 13 years old, or the first time you stood in front of 30 strangers at the local bookstore to read from your first novel.  What were the circumstances, and what lessons did you take away from the experience?My first review:  Good or bad, how did it feel to see your work analyzed in print?The first book that made me fall in love with books:  I realize this is a bit of an obvious question for a books blog, but I think we’re all curious about the early books that shape an author’s life.
These are only some of the “firsts” to be featured at The Quivering Pen.  I’m certainly open to any other ideas for stories related to a writer’s initial steps.   I’m hoping the topics will be mere springboards and that responses will lead to deeper and more personal stories from the participating writers.
I know your time is valuable and many of you are already spread thin with other writing obligations, speaking engagements, and “day jobs.”  Unfortunately, at this point I’m unable to monetarily compensate for contributions to the blog.  I will, of course, wholeheartedly promote your book or other published work in an introductory bio note.  And you would have my bottomless thanks for whatever you could contribute to the blog.
If you would like to participate in “My First Time,” please send it as a Word document or in the body of an email to david.abrams@gmail.com, indicating this is a submission for “My First Time.”  Word length is generally 250-750 (though authors are certainly free to go longer if they feel the story warrants it).
In sincerest appreciation,David AbramsThe Quivering Pen blog:  www.davidabramsbooks.blogspot.comTwitter ID: @ImDavidAbrams
P.S.  If you know of another published writer who would be interested in contributing, feel free to pass along this email.

Joan Silber talks about FOOLS, time span, writing, obsessions and so much more

Truth: Joan Silber is one of my favorite people on the planet. When I first read her book Household Words, I carried it around, rereading it, underlining passages, so haunted, I couldn't put it down. I eventually tracked her down and had lunch with her, and we became friends. Actually, one of the high points of the Jewish Book Council auditions was seeing her there--like the best kind of surprise! Even better, at the reception, when I drifted into a room off the side just to get a minute of alone time--Joan was already there!

Her new collection of short stories, FOOLS, is, in a word, genius. And I'm not the only one who says so.  The Boston Globe raves: Silber deftly constructs whole, fully realized lives in just a few pages." Publishers Weekly, in a starred reviews, says: "This tightly constructed collection shows her talents at their finest. "

Joan's first book, the novel Household Words won the PEN/Hemingway Award.  Her four other works of fiction include: In the City , In My Other Life , Lucky Us , Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories, finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and The Size of the World , finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize in Fiction and one of the Seattle Times’ ten best books of fiction of 2008. In the summer of 2009 she published a nonfiction book in Graywolf Press’ “The Art of” series, The Art of Time in Fiction.\She’s been the recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her short fiction has twice been chosen for an O. Henry Prize and twice for a Pushcart Prize. Stories have appeared in The New Yorker,Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and other magazines. Her most recent story, “Fools,” appears in the winter 2009 Northwestern Review.

Joan teaches fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She’s also taught at New York University, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Utah, Boston University, and the 92nd Street Y. Her summer teaching has included conferences at Napa Valley, Bread Loaf, Indiana University, Manhattanville College, Stonecoast, Aspen, and Sarah Lawrence College.

Thank you so much for being here, Joan! 

I loved Fools. So much of it pivots around the whole issue of the small choices we make that have long range impacts. Can you talk about this?

Your question about small choices reminds me that I have a slightly odd sense of drama.   In my stories, people amble along and are surprised by what happens.  In most of what I write, people go deeper in spite of themselves.   I love this inadvertency.

I have to admit that while I was writing this book, the old tune “Everybody Plays the Fool” would occasionally refuse to stop playing in my head.  Here’s a link on YouTube-.

Tell me how you came up with the title, which I love?

I came up with the title Fools when I was reading about anarchists; it was so clear that people have always laughed at them (do without government? are they crazy?) and I didn’t want them laughed at.   When I had to say the title to people, I’d say, “But fools in a good way.”  I love what you say about the “gift” of being a fool—it has to do with sacrificing a self-image to something higher.  And I think we worry too much about being in that role.

And the Blake quote I use in the front—“If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise”—is like a plot distillation for fiction writers.

Fools moves back and forth through time, and sometimes character reappear in stories. Did you always know this was the structure? Did anything surprise you about it?

Okay, the time question.  Even when I was young, I was interested in long time-spans (the first novel covered twenty years) and this interest naturally increased as I got older.  I count Alice Munro as the writer who showed me how stories might contain great sweeps of time—and do it more strikingly than novels.   And once I started connecting stories (this is the third book of linked stories I’ve done) I had another way to follow consequences over years and years.  This pattern also helps me think of new stories—I look for threads I can pick up.
         
These maneuvers with time have helped me try to make the work bigger.  I always think I’m a miniaturist by nature—I like to get in very close—and I wanted the work to have a wider perspective, a more spacious feel to it.   More in line with what my beliefs are now.

What’s your writing life like?

I’m a steady writer.  I show up at my desk after lunch and sort of try to work until dinner.  I revise the sentences as I go—I don’t go through multiple drafts.  I take notes before I start to write, but I’m always surprised later at how little is there—I thought that was going to be a whole story?  More stuff is required than I ever think.

What’s obsessing you now and why?

I’ve been obsessed about questions of freedom and solitude.  At the end of Jane Eyre, Jane says she and Rochester are “as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.”   (Most people probably do want both.)  Our culture tends to view solitude as something no one would ever want, but the freedom in it has great attractions; in Fools I was working on this in the story, “Two Opinions,” where Louise carves out her own form of separation.  And it’s come up in two stories I finished since Fools.  I just saw a show at the Asia Society in New York—The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in 17th-Century China. Amazing landscapes--and they say recluse like it's a good word.

I think a good deal about stories versus novels.  I feel that I'm working in a hybrid form, and I have the sense there are now more books like this--composite novels, linked stories.  I'm glad.

Karen Brown talks about The Longings of Wayward Girls, why suburbia fascinates us,

Prepare to be haunted. Karen Brown’s The Longings of Wayward Girls, about suburbia, unsolved mysteries and the crimes of the past, is a stunner. She's also the author of Little Sinners and Other Stories, which won the 2011 Prairie Schooner Book Prize  and Pins and Needles,  the recipient of AWP’s Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has been included twice in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, as well as in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, and Good Housekeeping. I'm thrilled to host her on the blog. Thank you so much, Karen!


You've won prizes for your short stories, but this is your first novel. Did anything surprise you about the process? Do you find you're more comfortable with one form over another?
The most surprising part about writing a novel for me was the length of time it took to get it right. A short story is done, and it feels done. A novel is interminable, and full of dangling potentials. I like things neat, and a novel is messy. It tricks you into thinking you are done with it, and then you turn it around and all its loose strands are suddenly visible. The characters’ lives are rife with possibility and history, and I feel I need to keep everyone in tow. Originally, LONGINGS was told through a handful of characters’ voices, each with their own version of the past. Revising showed me that none of that was necessary—I could tell the story without all of their side trips. So, it’s daunting, but thrilling at the same time.
 So much for The Longings of Wayward Girls (great title, by the way) is about memory, the things we try to forget, and how memory is often transformed by time. Can you talk a bit about that, please?
 Growing up I had a best friend who moved away when I was five. Years later, in middle school, she reappeared to tell what seemed to be outrageous stories about me. Had I really been so painfully shy in kindergarten that she had to speak to the teacher on my behalf?
“Mrs, Susskey,” she’d say. “Karen wants to know if she can get another piece of paper.”
I’d always believed I had an excellent memory—and yet either I had somehow forgotten part of the past, or my friend—who had no reason to lie, was making it all up. I became intrigued with the versions of the past we tell ourselves—how our memories are unintentionally faulty, and we cannot always remember correctly. Misremembering is a fascinating aspect of characterization.
Just recently another childhood friend (for whom the novel is dedicated) sent me a photo of a tiny porcelain box decorated with dragonflies that I’d given to her for her birthday when we were young. I never remembered giving her the box, but I recognized it immediately—almost as if I’d stepped through some sort of curtain, or portal, to hold the box in my hands, lift its lid again. I wanted to recreate that feeling in this novel—to have the past be suddenly present and immediate, both new, and yet strikingly familiar.
 The novel is set against a backdrop of quaint suburbia, which made me think of how David Lynch used suburbia in Velvet. Why do you think a place like the suburbs is actually the perfect location for something cruel or evil simmering under the placid surface? 
It’s an appealing place—so tidy and organized. There are the clipped lawns and ornamental trees, driveways and porch lights—a taming of the natural landscape. The suburb is a fine cover. You drop your guard in a place like that. There’s a lot of freedom and a disarming illusion of safety. But really people make bad choices among us everywhere. I think the opportunity to keep dark or aberrant things hidden in a suburb makes the setting so ideal. All those basements!
 What's your writing life like?
I try to write every day—even if it’s just for an hour or so. When I’m teaching I feel a great sense of obligation to my students and their writing, and it’s always a struggle to find time for my own. But when I was a student myself I was also teaching, and raising children, and I always found a way to prioritize and allot time for writing. I try to remind myself of this when I see I’m letting time slip away, or I’m doing an inordinate amount of line editing of students’ stories. (They really should already know how to punctuate dialogue.) Summers feel like a mad rush to cram in as much writing as I can.
What's obsessing you now and why?
I wrote a story last year that I never finished. I make it a point to finish everything worthwhile that I start, so that is my latest obsession. You can tell when something is worth your labor—there’s that little bit that surprises you, even after having read it over fifty times. The story is different from others I’ve written, so I’m on uncertain ground—that in itself makes me uneasy. And it’s not a nice story—the character has done something horrific. So I constantly ask myself why I feel the need to tell her story, or why anyone would want to read it. (Just the typical agonizing and self-doubt we all know and accept as writers.)          What question didn't I ask that I should have?
 You might have asked me where the idea for my novel came from. I wanted to write a story set in my childhood Connecticut neighborhood—one built on old farm land—and capture the childhood games my friends and I would play. The Haunted Woods was a regular summer event, as was the neighborhood Lobster Bake—even the pit dug in the yard and the line of trash cans filled with ice and beer. One summer, a friend and I did write a letter to a girl in the neighborhood, pretending to be a farmer boy, hiding the letters under a stone. Of course we didn’t keep it up as long as the characters do in my novel, and thankfully the subsequent events that occur in the book are entirely fictional. But like my forgetting my own selective mutism in kindergarten, this event from my past had been totally forgotten, and remembering it altered my perception of the kind of child I’d been. I knew I wanted to write about a character grappling with the past, her place in it, and its effects on her present.

J. Courtney Sullivan talks about The Engagements, our fascination with marriage, spanning 100 years and why a "diamond is forever"

Quick, name someone who doesn't adore J. Courtney Sullivan? Can't do it, can you? She is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels Commencement and Maine, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011. Courtney’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, Elle, Glamour, Allure, Men’s Vogue, and the New York Observer, among others. I'm thrilled to have her here and I cannot thank her enough--but I'll try.

What do you think it is about marriage that fascinates us so much? Did you discover anything startling in it while you were writing this novel?
Marriage is one of the most conventional, universal human experiences and yet every marriage is completely unique. As a novelist, I love exploring the aspects of relationships that we don’t necessarily get to see in real life—those private moments that exist between two people when no one else is looking.
When I started writing The Engagements, I was thinking a lot about how and why we choose the mates we do, and what happens next. Is a successful marriage based on compatibility, or does it have more to do with luck and the circumstances that befall a couple as they move through life? I wanted to create a cast of characters who are at different stages of the process: Evelyn and Gerald have been married for over forty years and their greatest heartbreak is their son’s failing marriage—through him we see how a marriage becomes about the whole family, not just the married couple. James and Sheila are in that frenzied period when the kids are young, money is tight, and there are few chances to be alone together. Delphine married her husband because he was kind and familiar, but the passion was never really there. Seven years later, when she meets a sexy younger man, she is forced to choose between comfort and excitement. And Kate rejects the very idea of marriage, seeing it as outdated and problematic.
The novel is structured into five interconnected stories and spans a hundred years. Did you know that was always going to be the plan? Why do it this way and what were the difficulties--and the rewards?
I wanted to write about these particular marriages, but also to tell the story of marriage in America as a whole. The lives of individuals are so often shaped by legal and cultural realities. In Evelyn’s present day (1972) interracial marriage is newly legal and no-fault divorce is a new phenomenon. In Kate’s chapters (2012) same sex marriage is just beginning in New York. With progress there sometimes comes a tendency to forget our recent past. It’s important to remember that only forty-some years ago, it was illegal for a black man to marry a white woman in this country. A wife couldn’t get a credit card without her husband’s permission. These big picture ideas of course had consequences for the lives and stories of individuals.
Evelyn grew up in the 1920s, when divorce was considered a scandal. Kate grows up in the eighties and knows more kids with divorced parents than married ones. Being about her age, I’ve often considered how my generation had all the information right up front, courtesy of our parents—marriage might not last. Yet my friends have all gotten married anyway. The institution changes with each passing decade, but in some ways it stays exactly the same.
I wrote the five stories separately, almost like five novellas, and then had to cut them together. That allowed me to focus on each character in a really intense way, which I loved. But it was also kind of scary—I wrote my other novels in a linear fashion because even though there were multiple points of view, there was really only one story. This time, I had to write 400 pages and then combine them before I could say whether or not the story worked as a whole.
I loved that one of the characters is responsible, in 1947, for that iconic ad line: a diamond is forever. The advertiser’s view of marriage is not always in synch with what is going on, but how deeply do you think advertising influences how we think we should feel, and what can we do to break that cycle?
I absolutely believe that advertising is a powerful (and sometimes dangerous) tool. This is the reason why I can't attend Super Bowl parties anymore, because by halftime I will inevitably be in a fight with someone about how damaging those awful, sexist ads are—the men are always portrayed as dolts whose only reasons for living are football and beer. The women are either nagging wives or Danica Patrick.
This is one of many reasons why I included Kate in the book. Not only does she resist the idea of marriage, weddings and (especially) diamonds, she's also wary of everything else that's sold to her and her family--princess toys for her toddler daughter, reality television, genetically modified food, and so on.
All of this said, as I researched the careers of Frances Gerety and her co-worker Dorothy Dignam, I couldn't help but fall in love with them. They were such pioneers. Dorothy was writing advertising copy as early as World War I, and she kept these great lists of questions that men asked her every day, things she was expected to know as a woman in the office, like Could a winter hat have a bird’s nest on it? Is Macy’s singular or plural? What do you give a girl graduating from a convent? Do women ever warble in the bathtub?
At the time, women were only hired to write ads for women, a task that was seen as sort of beneath men. But any woman working in advertising in the forties probably didn't have all that much in common with the average housewife. Frances Gerety wrote "A Diamond is Forever" in 1947, and every De Beers ad after that until 1970. Dorothy did the PR on the account. Together, they helped to create the modern diamond engagement ring tradition. Yet neither one ever married. At a certain point in their lives, both women wanted to write the Great American Novel. I think in a way that when they created ads, they were creating a fiction rather than reflecting reality. Unfortunately, many Americans couldn't tell the difference.

What’s obsessing you now and why?
I wish I could claim that some lofty literary pursuit was occupying my mind, but the truth of the matter is I am getting married later this month, eleven days after the book comes out. So most of my thoughts at the moment are about seating charts and the fear of dancing awkwardly in front of 120 guests.
I think some people believe that novelists write fiction to reveal an absolute understanding of the topic at hand. In my case, one of the main reasons I write is to ask questions that I don’t know the answers to yet. I look for answers—or at least possibilities—as I go. In this case, I started writing the book before I was engaged but my now fiancé and I had been together for two years, we lived together, we had a dog. We knew we would get married sooner or later, so I definitely had marriage on the brain.

What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
I’m really proud of the research that went into this book. Commencement and Maine, my first two novels, centered on worlds that I knew well. This time around, I wanted to challenge myself by writing about worlds unknown to me—modern paramedics, the rare instrument business in France, advertising in the forties and fifties, and so on. Before I was a full-time novelist, I spent four years as a researcher at the New York Times, working for the op-ed columnist Bob Herbert. I’ve always been amazed by the generosity of strangers in this respect—all you have to do is ask and they’ll tell you their stories.
Anne Akiko Meyers, a wildly talented violin soloist, helped me write the violin virtuoso who captures Delphine’s heart. The paramedics in Cambridge, Massachusetts brought me on ambulance ride-alongs and answered hundreds of questions. And Frances Gerety’s former co-workers and neighbors shared their recollections of her. I built extensive family trees for Frances on Ancestry.com. I worked with her photo hanging over my desk, and even consulted with a private investigator.
Throughout the book, I quote from confidential memos between De Beers and the advertising agency NW Ayer. For two years, I searched for these memos without success. Then, at the very last minute (the day before the book was due) I visited the woman who bought Frances Gerety’s house in Pennsylvania. When I left, she handed me a box—the only thing Frances left behind when she moved. It contained wonderful family photos and all of the confidential memos.

Jane Ciabatteri talks about the reissue of her stellar collection, "Stealing the Fire," from Dzanc reprint, being optimistic, writing, and so much more

Jane Ciabattari is one of the shining names in literature. Really. Not only is she a stellar writer, but she is also the Vice President/Online of the National Book Critics Circle, in charge of the Critical Mass Blog and her articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, NPR.org, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times, and more. She's been awarded fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, and more, and she's been associate faculty at Bennington's Low-Residency MFA program and she was Distinguished Writer in Residence/Visiting Professor of English at Knox College and also has taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. And, she's one of the smartest, most interesting women around.
Her short stories have been published in Long Island Noir, edited by Kaylie Jones (Akashic Books, 2012), The Literarian, the online publication of the Center for Fiction (edited by Dawn Raffel), KBG Bar Lit, LOST magazine, Chautauqua magazine, Literary Mama, VerbSap, Ms. Magazine (nominated for O.Henry and Pushcart awards), The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Hampton Shorts (which honored her with an Editors' Choice Award), The East Hampton Star, Blueline, Caprice and Redbook, which nominated her for a National Magazine Award. Her story "Payback Time" was a Pushcart Prize "special mention." Her story "How I Left Onandaga County," appears in the anthology "The Best Underground Fiction" (November 2006,Stolen Time Press) and also was a Pushcart Prize special mention, as was her story "MamaGodot," which appeared online in Verbsap and in the summer issue of Chautauqua magazine.
Dzanc Books has started this truly innovative ebook reprint series, along with Open Road Media, where they reprint books by such authors as Ellen Gilchrist and me (my first four novels will be out around September.)  "Stealing the Fire" is just out and the notoriously cranky Kirkus Reviews raves: "Ciabattari is a master of transformation as she gives these stories of loss, woe, crisis and collapse the salutary and sometimes bracing qualities of plain good fiction." Watch a video about the book here.

I'm thrilled and honored to have Jane here. Thank you so, so much, Jane!

I think what Dzanc is doing with the rEprint is really an exciting new venture in publishing because it really does give books a second life in a very accessible way. How does it feel to have your collection now back into print? Did you reread the stories and do they feel different to you now? Has the meaning changed at all?
It feels great. Dan Wickett was in touch out of the blue, with word they wanted to include Stealing the Fire as a selection in the Dzanc Books rEprint series. I was startled and honored.  It’s just a thrill. I’m in great company in the series—Nadine Gordimer, T.C. Boyle, Elizabeth Crane, Ellen Gilchrist, Abby Frucht, Stephen Dixon, Kelly Cherry, Gina Frangello,  Dawn Raffel, and on and on. And I understand you are a Dzanc author, also? (Caroline's note: YES!  Wait until September, when four of my backlist will be reissued.)
Stealing the Fire was published a decade ago by a wonderful small press, but had no distribution. I had wonderful pre-publication reviews, but no books in the stores. So it’s great to have this opportunity for the book to be available in an inexpensive form with super distribution (Open Road Media is the new Dzanc Books distributor.)
Rereading the collection now was like encountering old friends. I have a better understanding of their flaws, their foolishness, their blind spots.  And happily, I still care about them.
What was it like to write the collection originally? What sparked it and did you always intend for the stories to be based around one theme?
I started writing the title story after I finished graduate school in the late 1980s. I studied creative writing at Stanford, and then went to graduate school to study writing at San Francisco State at night, while working full time as managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle. I studied with a marvelous man named Herb Wilner, who died after heart surgery. He was a huge influence on many of us (a group of women from his workshop, including Molly Giles, Jane Vandenburgh, and Susan Harper, were in a writers’ group for years afterward).  The title story,“Stealing the Fire,” is an attempt to come to grips with the influence a mentor can have on a young writer, in this case a young woman. I fictionalized it, of course, but that’s the impulse behind the story. For a woman to write as powerfully as a man, to be considered equal as an artist, felt like a taboo that had to be confronted, and that, it seemed, took courage. Hence “stealing” the fire. I set the story in San Francisco and Squaw Valley, where I had a scholarship to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, which was a great help to me. I have taught workshops there from time to time, and always feel a bond of gratitude. It’s a wonderful summer writing program.
Like most writers (and readers, I suspect) I’ve always been drawn to fiction exploring life’s challenges rather than the easy parts. And I’ve tended to write about people unlike myself. So I’ve written about single women and single men (I’ve been married forever to my college sweetheart), and people who realize too late that they have missed out on opportunities, like Liza in “Once in a Blue Moon,” who misses the life she had on the road with a blues musician, or Sally, who missed her chance to have a child when she was younger, and can’t quite to commit to the man she’s involved with at 35 (she calls him “the almost-perfect man”). Beth, in “Totems,” who can’t find anyone to allow her to grieve for the child she miscarried.  Joshua, in “Payback Time,” gives up everything to work 24/7 in Silicon Valley. He wakes up one morning and smells the espresso: “What he wanted most now was time—late mornings in bed, Peet’s coffee, sunshine on someone’s hair. It was time to cash out. He was thirty. Quarter by quarter, the valley had burned him out. Now it was just a matter of time before the big payoff.” But he doesn’t expect to be foiled by corporate malevolence. Such an innocent!
Looking back at the book, can you pinpoint what's changed in your writing? 
I no longer have a tendency to make explicit literary references. Upon rereading, I noticed references in the stories to The Waves, The Great Gatsby, On the Road, Absalom, Absalom, The Cherry Orchard and other books I revered.
If you were to write the book now, would the stories be different, do you think? Probably! But I’m not sure how. I’m focused on the work I’m doing now. I’ve finished a second collection, and am near the end of a novel.
What I loved about the stories, besides the fierce, honest voice, were the glints of hope. Can you talk a bit about that, please?
I’m an optimist, always expecting things will turn out. I wake up curious and eager to start the day, and I have lots of energy. Oddly, this seems to make me hopeful. Try this, try that, something will work out. 
What's obsessing you now and why?
I’ve been working on a novel for a number of years, struggling to get it right, with multiple revisions. I can’t let it go, because I believe in the material. It’s about a woman who marries a high school sweetheart, who leaves her when their son is not yet two years old. She moves in with his parents and raises the child with their help. She is descended from abolitionist founders of the small town in Illinois where they live. He’s descended from one of the slaves who was freed through their work in the underground railroad. The present-day story is set in 2004, during the Obama-Keyes senatorial campaign. Her son, who has just been sent to prison for the third time for running a successful drug business, calls her from jail to ask for help. His girlfriend is pregnant. With twins. That phone call blows apart her life. I’m learning how to integrate a lot of historical research into a contemporary narrative without losing the thread. Novel writing is so humbling. I sometimes feel I am pushing the limits of my optimism. But I feel good right now about the shape of the current revision. Ask me again in three months!
 What question didn't I ask that I should have?
How does it feel to have Stealing the Fire back in e-book form? Like a painless rebirth. I wasn’t tense about reviews (I already had the prepub reviews, which were so positive I have been sustained for years of writing a second collection and the novel).
Also Dzanc Books created a new cover, which I love, and Meg Pokrass, flash fiction writer and BLIP senior editor, created a book trailer. Imagine that! I love the look of the book on my iPad. I’m still working on how to SIGN an e-book. I’ve had suggestions. Everyone has been so generous and helpful, including you. I appreciate your finding a place for me on your blog.  Also, because I spend so much of my time as a book critic, it’s good to be back in the author’s seat. And I'm energized to complete The Journey to Eastville, the novel.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a great new book blog!

John McMurtrie, the amazingly talented books editor of the San Francisco Chronicle has a new books blog and it's fantastic. Check it out here with a first interview with Mark Bowden.

Lionel Shriver talks about Big Brother, the real meaning of food, fame, writing, and so much more.

Lionel Shriver is a literary heroine of mine. This adulation began shortly after I plucked up her first book, the Female of the Species, which was so inventive, so gorgeously written, and so funny and heart-shattering , that I actually bought two copies, just in case I lost one. I've followed her career ever since, but it's not just her novels that interest me so deeply. She's outspoken about everything from the bad, too girlie covers publishers often put on women's books, to her years of professional disappointment before We Need To Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize and So Much For That was a National Book Award Finalist, followed by the highly-acclaimed The New Republic. 

I so admire her--and her work--that I tracked her down, and actually wrote her a bonafide letter, not really expecting a response. I'm honored to post the interview I did with her about her extraordinary newest novel, Big Brother, which is about food, weight, and what we owe the ones we love. 

Thank you so much, Lionel.



Some writers want to talk about the backstory to a book, but others get irritated and think the work should stand on its own, so please feel free to ignore this first question: I did read (and I'm sorry to hear about it) that your brother died from complications due to obesity. Was this and your own trajectory to fame part of the impetus in writing the novel? 
From the very inception of "Big Brother" I've been torn over how much to expose--and implicitly to use, which is potentially ugly--my real older brother in the publicity for this novel.  It's a matter of public record that he died in late 2009 from complications related to his weight.  But he was a remarkable, unusual person, and (as I note of Edison in the last chapter) would never have wanted to be posthumously famous primarily for being fat.  On the other hand, having seen up close how painful it is to see someone you love reduced to a walking wad of lard in others' eyes has made me so much more sympathetic with anyone who battles a serious weight problem.  My real brother gave me a point of entry with this subject matter that was implicitly kind.  In a legal sense, the history of obesity in my own family has given me standing.  Otherwise, I'd be in danger of appearing one more skinny bitch scolding the slobs to get a grip.
As for the topic of fame (btw, a disclaimer: I'm pretty well known in the UK, but wouldn't consider myself remotely "famous" in the US, and no fiction writer enjoys--if that is the word--the scale of celebrity that actors or pop musicians do, even after winning Bookers and Pulitzers): it intermingles with the weight-and-food theme in a manner that I found surprisingly productive.  My own small experience of, say, going to a literary party and discovering that I don't have to introduce myself anymore has been something like, "Well--huh.  Isn't that weird."  My reaction to career successes has been emotionally mild.  This was a big surprise.  I suspect this sense of mildness is common, but--not wanting to appear ungrateful--most successful people keep their mouths shut on this point.   
What does celebrity have to do with weight?  Both issues involve appetite.  Desire, anticipation, craving. My theory is that both food and fame are ultimately unsatisfying.  As the narrator of BB notes, they are the idea of satisfaction, "far more powerful than satisfaction itself."  Yet desire is what is truly satisfying.  Desire has trajectory.  It has energy.  Getting what you want, or what you thought you wanted: you just sit there.  (See a later answer on the subject of sitting.)  So you're better off staying hungry--in relation to food and fame both.

Why do you think food is less about nutrition and pleasure than it is about control? How on earth did we get that way? Through the book, you explore diet culture, where no one is left off the hook. Fletcher’s insistence on healthy eating is frankly joyless, while Edison’s overeating is often disgusting--yet neither man takes any real pleasure in food. Why do you think we really no longer know how to eat?
That's right: both the hyper-disciplined character and the indulgent over eater fail utterly to enjoy their food.  How did we get this way--how did we evolve so that, as Pandora remarks once, opening the refrigerator "is like staring into a library of self-help books with air conditioning"?  It's a puzzle.  If anything--and this is admission against interest, since in publishing this novel I could be part of the problem--in our era eating has been over-examined.  This simple daily activity has become self-conscious, when it's meant to be a matter of primitive instinct.  God, all those food shows on TV, all the recipe columns in magazines (which I read, by the way).  The studies, the diet drugs, the endless fucking advice.  We've made it too important.  We've turned it into a national obsession, and that obsession has backfired.

Big Brother also talks to the whole issue of how fame kills and starves us, even as we’re addicted to it the same way we crave chips. Edison was a star who plummeted back down to earth. Tanner is mocked for wanting to be in the movies. Why do you think we’re all so hungry for fame? And why doesn’t it ever feed us? There’s a difference in what we really expect food/fame to do for us, and what it really does do, and how tied up in emotions it is for us. Can you talk a bit about that, please?
It's probably a good idea to separate two concepts, and thus two experiences (which I just realized I conflated myself in a previous answer): success, particularly success in one's own terms, and celebrity.  As for the latter, it's the cotton candy of the career world.  The ambition to be known by a bunch of strangers, or--a distinction Pandora makes--to convince a bunch of strangers that they know you when they don't--is overtly pathetic.  Empty.  Unnutritious. 
Yet I wouldn't entirely do down achievement.  There's a feeling I get when I finish a book and I conclude, yes, that is what I wanted to write, and I think it works.  That sense of achievement is very private, and quiet, but "quiet" isn't the same thing as "mild."  I don't jump up and down or open champagne.  But I do have a warm, whole, resolved sensation (mingled with no little relief, since of course I've probably been hacking away at this first draft for at least a year), which I also experience on a smaller scale when I finish a paragraph or a scene that pleases me.  This is a sensation I can commend.  It doesn't have to do with winning awards or getting a good review--or at least not from a third party.  It's getting a good review from yourself, and I'm sure many other professions have equivalents.  Unfortunately, this gently, quietly gratified glow doesn't last very long ...

There’s also a lot in the book about the difference between New York and Midwestern values, and how the sense of place informs us or nurtures us. You yourself live in both London and Brooklyn. Do you feel more of a pull to one place than another? Do you feel and operate differently in each? And do you think place really changes us or it just the appearance of change?
I'm never sure how much place matters, and as fiction writers go I may not put as much emphasis on setting as many of my colleagues.  I did quite deliberately set this novel in Iowa.  I liked the natural parallel between the Midwest and modesty--Iowa is anti-fame.  Anti-NY as well.  The "heartland" is also where a lot of the weight gain in the US has taken place, so I thought this choice of state sociologically apt.  Moreover, my mother grew up in Iowa; my own grandparents lived there; my younger brother still lives there, and I go out to visit him every year.  So I'm familiar with the place, and have gradually come to appreciate why my younger brother long had ambitions to move to Iowa (of all places), though he went to high school in Manhattan.  It's beautiful--serene.  As I think on it, that long horizon, those wafting cornfields, those big soft skies, the golden light: the landscape is a pictorial representation of the "gently, quietly gratified glow" that I cited in my last answer.  I identify Iowa with being satisfied--w not needing that much, with being content with your lot.  W what Edison finally seems to find there toward the end of the novel: accommodation to ordinary life.  
My only reservation about choosing Iowa was that the Iowa Writers Workshop has enticed all too many aspirant novelists and short story writers to set fiction there.  I decided to live with that.  Iowa is part of my territory, and I wouldn't be bullied out.
This is, of course, not what you asked.  I must be tired of answering questions about NY vs London.  The main difference for the cities for me is the set of politics with which I engage.  Right now I'm up to my neck in exasperation that George Osborn can't seem to appreciably reduce housing benefit and dismay over why anyone gives a toss that there's horse meat in Findus lasagne.  When I head for NY, I'll change channels.  I'll get exercised about the sequester and rail at the TV over why Obama never seems to propose any cuts to the federal budget or restrictions on entitlements.  I'll stop reading the Daily Telegraph.

Without giving anything away, I want to talk about the stunner of an ending, which reminded me a bit, of what you did with the brilliant We Need To Talk About Kevin, which was to make the narrator unreliable, and to shift our focus from what we thought we knew we were reading about to a deeper, more disturbing meaning. So how is the alchemy done? Was this something planned out ahead or did it evolve organically in the writing?
I came up with the ending about halfway through.  I had intended a different ending, but I was unhappy about it.  As you say, not to give anything away, but I did not want, fiercely did not want, to write a novel whose message was that it was hopeless to try to lose weight.  In general, too, the novel was formally in danger of being too linear.  Linear = your reader is way ahead of you.  You don't want your readers to get the jump on you.  You don't want readers to have already written the ending in their own heads.  They think they want to be able to anticipate what's going to happen, but they don't.  They want to be surprised.  So other than the obvious A) happy or B) sad ending, I needed a third way.  When I wrote the last chapter, I could tell I was right.  The book suddenly descended into a deeper emotional register.  It became more than just about food, diets, weight, fame, and torn loyalties--all of which sound notes in a tenor range.  I went to bass.
Can you talk about your writing life? What are your days like? 
My days are v boring, and the only thing that might be even faintly interesting is the change I introduced into my work day a year and a half ago: I stand up all day.  I read standing up, I write standing up, as well as cooking and exercising standing up.  The latest health advisory (I'm as influenced by fads as anyone) is that sitting is worse for you than anything, and the more you sit the sicker you'll get, EVEN IF YOU EXERCISE A LOT.  That last detail incensed me.  But I got w the program and now I'm used to it.  Warning: standing for 12 hours a day is hard on your knees and lower back.  Of course, you know how these fads work, don't you.  After I've been doing this for ten years they'll come along and say, "Actually, that advice was totally wrong, and the more you stand the sicker you'll get, so if you've been mostly standing for ten years you're going to drop dead tomorrow."

What’s obsessing you now and why?
Debt, especially sovereign debt.  Inflation.  Pension and entitlement obligations for an increasingly elderly population that are unsustainable.  Fiat currencies and why I didn't notice at the time how important it was when Nixon took us off the gold standard.   The euro and how perplexed I am that we're supposed to regard the whole crisis in the eurozone as over when nothing has really changed.  Has to do w next book (of course).

What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
How about, "What is wrong with you that you can't ever deliver a short, punchy answer?"  I'm not working on a novel right now.  The only writing I'm doing is the odd sad-ass article for the release of Big Brother.  So I put my fingers on a keyboard and they dribble.  Something builds up, and I become linguistically incontinent.  Sorry.