One of the perks of pushing good books is getting to meet the authors who
write them. Letting what's on our minds come out of our mouths is just the icing on the cake.
Recently...
Simon Rich, author of What In God's Name
Previously...
Danielle Sosin, author of The Long-Shining Waters
CGB: You’ve mentioned that The Long-Shining Waters is less a
character-driven story than a kind of meditation on place, which is a
fascinating project as conceived through the writing of a novel. That said,
Lake Superior is a pretty beautiful place to have to spend 400 years in the
collective mind of your three characters. Did it have to be the lake? Or are
you interested in the idea of place, and places, in general? Could you, in
other words, ever write a novel about Hobby Lobby?
DS: I’ve been drawn to Lake Superior’s powers since I was a kid,
so my questions about the mystery of that novel were a natural thing to explore
in a novel. But I am definitely interested in the idea of place. Place is story
after all. Every place has its own archaeology. There is physical evidence of
story left behind, and some places hold psychic
evidence as well. I call it juju for lack of a better word. In those places the
past is palpable. Lake Superior is like that. It has big juju. As for Hobby
Lobby? Theoretically, someone could write a novel about that place. I barely
passed my 7th grade sewing class, so I’m pretty certain it won’t be
me.
Your process of writing this novel initially involved a
great deal of not writing a novel, or rather, not endeavoring to write a novel.
Did that freedom or reluctance stem from your background as a short story writer? And do you think you might approach writing a longer work that
way again? That is, with equal parts excitement and indifference?
After a failed short story, which the novel’s 1622 storyline
grew from, I did set out to try to write a novel. I was just clueless how to go
about it. Still, I was excited by the challenge. Though short stories and
novels are made of the same craft components – character, place, point of view,
theme, plot – there are huge differences in the execution of the craft. A
particular focus and skill is required to bring a work to life for 30 pages
verses 300. It wasn’t indifference I felt at the start of the novel. It was
fear. Embarking on my second novel is as exciting as the first, but still there
is fear. The questions are unanswered and the path is unknown. My dad once told
me that the most important quality in a surgeon was the ability to see
three-dimensionally. Well, probably the most important qualities in a novelist
are the abilities to have faith and endure.
In my mind, a lot of poetry and mystery is set around bodies
of water, I suppose to aid in both the grizzly death scenes and reflections on
solitude, but less commonly fiction. Besides bridging the gap of time and space
between your characters, what did the setting of this novel enable you to say
or think or do?
That’s a big question. The setting of the lake allowed me to
think about connectedness and conductivity. How circular existence is, and how
we all grapple with physical and emotional survival and loss. But mostly the
setting led to more questions and to my pondering the presence of mystery. The
book is largely about the things that we as humans can only know at the edges,
things we intuit about the mysteries of existence.
Along with lists of details and descriptions that would become
your novel, you kept a record of potential titles. Before you settled on The
Long-Shining Waters, did you have a system in mind for eventually winnowing it
down? Pin the tail on the donkey, perhaps? Throwing darts?
Ha! I wish I were capable of that kind of letting go!
Basically I was stumped. For years I was convinced that the word “Superior” had
to be in the title. Well, Superior is a hard word to work with. I kept lists of
potential titles, pages and pages of brainstorming, while using the working
title Superior’s Keep. Finally, I gave up on the word “Superior” and aimed for
a title that would refer to both water and time. More lists. Many more. In the
end, my honey woke up one morning having dreamt the title The Long-Shining
Waters. -August, 2012
Nichole Bernier, author of The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.
CGB: Hilary
Mantel has said that to write a historical novel, you have to research and be
true to the ideals and behaviors of people, or characters, from the period
you're writing about. While every novel is historical, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. calls attention to itself as an
especially salient instance of the modern novel, not only because it takes
place just after 9/11, but because the premise of the book is based on that
which we make public and that which we conceal, and how both serve as documents
of who we seem to be.
Did you feel at
all obligated to make your characters behave authentically to 2002, in the
sense of being perhaps less attentive or more anxious than they might have been
in 1889 or even 1987? Let's say, hypothetically, encumbering the narrative by nature of
their being unable to concentrate on one scene at a time, or furtively texting
lines of dialogue across the page? And while we're on the subject, do you think
the novel of the not-so-distant future might not do away with speech and action
altogether, in favor of more beautifully written accounts of people switching
to Verizon or staring at their iPods?
NB: It’s a fascinating question. The issue of time,
in terms of era, was one that was always on my mind from a psychological
standpoint. The summer of 2002 was an extraordinary time when it felt like
anything could happen: anthrax, Mad Cow disease, sneaker bombs, threats of
poisoned reservoir. It was an unnerving time to be a new parent responsible for
a small new life in an uncertain world, and for Americans who hadn’t
experienced the proximity of threats in that way, it happened literally
overnight. Most of us moved on from that place of paralysis, and we know with
the gift of time showed that no next huge thing was, in fact, about to happen.
But I was fascinated by the prospect of creating a main character who could not
move on, and didn’t yet have the gift of passage of time to temper her anxiety.
As
far as other temporal accuracy and encumbrance: my main character has a
tendency to forget to recharge her cellphone, which does become a plot device.
(In case you’re interested, I once wrote about the role of technology as a plotdevice).
But I don’t think that’s going too far out on a tech limb. At least as long as
batteries have to be recharged, there will probably be distracted parents who
forget to charge them.
I imagine that writing a story like
this would bring to mind some things that you yourself have never shared with
anyone. What's one thing that on purpose or absent-mindedly you've kept, until
now, to yourself? Could be embarrassingly private, could be that you've always
thought of Bill Russell as more of a power forward.
So… I’m going to take my embarrassingly private thing, and after 45 years of
keeping it to myself, share it with the blog of one of the country’s most
beloved bookstores? Sure, why not.
My novel
is about lifelong journals that begin with a preteen’s coming of age pain, and
my journaling started a bit that way, too. I
started keeping a journal when I was twelve, an awkward
twelve (as if there’s ever anything else) and brand new to town. My English
teacher gave the class an assignment to write about something on our minds, and
we were to do this for ten minutes daily. My first entry was about something the girl at the desk next to mine had said to me 10 minutes
earlier. “I like your skirt.” My family had just moved to the East Coast from
the Midwest, and as the oldest child of four whose mother still picked out her
clothes, I had no concept of what was cool. So I had no idea I was about to
experience my first social catastrophe of junior high when she realized it was
not in fact a skirt but pants, glorious plaid extending all the way down to my
lace-up Buster Brown shoes. I can still see the expression on her face, a combination
of disbelief and good fortune, because she had something so rich for the person
beside her.
I continued the journaling habit
the following year even though it was no longer an assignment, recorded each
hopeful and painful detail that had to be exorcised, like the time a boy
announced to homeroom on the first day of eighth grade that over the summer,
Nichole Bernier’s mosquito bites had turned to maraschino cherries.
So there you have it. I once had
plaid pants, and I once had mosquito bites that became maraschino cherries. As
you can see from my author photo, they pretty much stayed that way.
Now that you mention it, you look believably relaxed in that photo for a woman with five children. The average person finds it hard to
unwind between their work and magazine subscriptions. What's your secret? And
how on earth did you find time to write a book as a full-time mom, and then
some? Are you holding on to one of them with your feet (not pictured)?
If I
look relaxed in the photo, it’s because I’m in a serene sunlit studio in New
York being spoken to gently by a photographer and stylist, which couldn’t be
more unlike my daily life than if they’d done a photo shoot on Mars.
There really was no big sexy secret. The short
answer is that I chipped away writing time little by little, night and weekend
hours, and when I became really obsessed, I started giving over some of my
babysitter hours that were supposed to go toward my paying freelance writing
assignments. The long and very unsexy answer is that I gave up a lot along the
way. I started the novel shortly after my third child was born and finished
just before the fifth came along, and the further into it I went, the more
hobbies and activities fell by the wayside. In a way, it was a good reality
check on what really mattered, because it made me triage my interests. I
wouldn’t be PTA president, I’d be a room parent. I could live without running
road races or having a gorgeous garden or cooking ambitious meals, but I
couldn’t not write.
But the most important thing by far was having
a supportive husband. He gave me chunks of time to steal away when I was really in
the thick of it, and believed in the book even at times when I didn’t.
Your blog, like Elizabeth D's journal, gives a look behind-the-scenes as well of how a book is brought
into existence. I was especially taken by your account of the events surrounding
your friend's death on 9/11, and your realization that "Fictionalizing the
facts of the story freed [you] up to dig deep into emotion." I'm guilty as
the next guy of taking creative license when it comes to seeing people not for
who they are, but as someone else who likes me. But I mostly mean
acquaintances, not friends. Was writing about the secret journals of a
fictional character a way for you to re-conceive the friend you lost in life?
I know it’d
be more poignant to say yes here, but truthfully, no. Once I went through the
initial catharsis of writing about a woman imagining her friend’s last moments
on a doomed flight, it was as if I’d balled up a bad wad of paper and sent it
into the stratosphere. Everything was fictionalized, based on my observations
and curiosities about marriage, friendship and motherhood, frustrations and
aspirations and fears.
My thoughts about my friend — who was a part of
my group, but not an intimate or confidante — were inspired by a small role I’d
played for the family, helping them field media calls and describe her in
quotes and sound bites. For a long time afterward, I wondered how she would
have wanted to be described, how she’d have perceived her legacy. That led to
wondering about how well any of us are known and memorialized, the roles of
honesty and facades, and years later, to the book. -July, 2012
Matthew Batt, author of Sugarhouse
CGB: Sugarhouse, the Salt lake City neighborhood in which you found your
fixer-upper, contains streets with names like Emerson and Browning. As you say,
there's something American or Emersonian about your desire or conviction to
start from scratch and, more-or-less, rebuild a house yourself. Especially
considering your not knowing the difference at the time between a hammer and a
nail, and "doing it anyway." What in recent memory have you
"done anyway," regardless of a lack of knowledge, with less
favorable or benevolent results? As in, "I didn't know how I'd
react to once again consuming dairy, but I ate the chocolate ice-cream,
anyway! With whip-topping."
MB: I’ve
been mostly really lucky/determined enough to see something through revision
after revision after revision until it’s right or, you know, right enough, but
winter before last when we had a ton of snow in Minnesota and then some warm
weather and then some super cold weather, we got some tremendously robust ice
dams on our roof. People were having theirs jet-washed off for thousands of
dollars and, sadly, still had bad leaks inside and all that. I thought, Surely
there’s a DIY solution here and, sure enough, found a friend who recommended
putting salt in panty hose and slinging them over the ice dams and in a few
hours, she said, you’ll have these tidy little channels for when the ice melts.
Well, let’s just say that I spent a little too much time fretting over whether
they should be control top or if they had to match my shoes and not enough time
practicing slinging what are effectively really uncooperative snakes over my
gutter in subzero temperatures while perched atop a twenty foot ladder. When
everything finally melted we had beige stockings hanging from our eaves as
though the neighborhood high school kids had run out of eggs and toilet paper.
It was unfortunate.
What, in terms of labor, proved most difficult, disgusting, or unexpectedly
endearing as a result of your new home having once been full of crack?
The
one thing we never did fix was that whenever we would use the shower, the white
walls would weep this orange, gooey resin. We probably conserved a good deal of
water, we were so scared to be in there for very long.
Amidst repairs, your family life was faltering as well. Did your enthusiasm or
perseverance for this project manufacture from an instinct to simply not let something else implode?
Technically,
things could have been worse. Like maybe in the fine film Red Dawn, Russians could have decided out of the blue to attack the
Midwest and the mountain states, as though they were somehow the key to
controlling the nation. But short of being strafed by a bunch of MIG fighters,
it was the worst year of our life. My dad died, my grandmother died, my wife’s
grandfather died, doctors detected a suspicious mass on my mom’s abdomen, my
grandfather was having prostate trouble, four of our very best friends were
getting divorced, others were having babies while we weren’t . . . no jet
fighters, but we probably wouldn’t have noticed. Our decision to dig in, buy a
house, and fix it up ourselves wasn’t some self-fashioned move to make us
appealing to all the Canadian producers of HGTV (and they are all
Canadian—isn’t that weird?) but rather it was our only option short of
unmerging our book and music collection and trying to decided who was getting
the dog and who was getting the cat.
I laughed out loud at your line about buying a car based on its cup holders,
and other less-than-informed purchase decisions. And I'm just betting you can
name a book or two you've bought based on its cover that defied your
expectations, for better or worse. Anything particularly explosive come to
mind? And any advice for readers who themselves buy books for looks, like
"Keep doing it," or "Way to go!"?
I
am loathe to admit it but I bought the novelization of the movie Rambo. I might have been thinking, What
could be finer than Stallone’s acting prowess? Or what’s better than watching a
very soggy vigilante single-handedly blow up a town? Reading about it! I was
twelve. What can I say? As for readers who buy books for looks—that’s catchy!—I
would say it’s absolutely the way to go if the words don’t matter. Like if you
only want them to stack in chromatically-unified piles—the way those bastards
on HGTV do! (I know, I harbor a lot of resentment toward them. It’s all just an
expression of a secret crush on Candice Olsen.)
Now that you live in Saint Paul, what do you miss most about Salt Lake City
and/or the lingering stench of old takeout?
The
mountains, of course, and the aridity. That rarified, dry mountain air made it
all the easier to smell with—and that, of course, cuts both ways. -July, 2012
Tim Brady, author of 12 Desperate Miles
CGB: 12 Desperate Miles, though based on facts surrounding the November 1942, first American invasion of North Africa, has been likened to a novel for its adrenalized, edge of your seat sense of direction, its inconspicuous foreshadowing of an equally book-worthy beach invasion, and your exposition and development of "characters," like German U-boat admiral, Karl Dönitz. No doubt a lot of readers would like to know just how an author pulls that kind of fact to fiction-esque writing off. I'm curious, however, how far one might go. Did you consider splicing harmless, made up details in about what the nefarious Dönitz shouted to his crewmen, for example, prior to attack, or have to stop yourself from writing what the moon was like that night?
TB: I began my career as a fiction writer and failed at it, in part, because I took forever getting to the point---describing the moon when my readers simply wanted to find out what happened next. History itself is so dense with material that I find that it drives the narrative of its own accord, which relieves me of the burden of making things up. My job is to steer the semi, which can be difficult enough. I don't have to add any weight to the trailer.
Aside from villains, the story of the SS Contessa features heroes, such as the french-born seaman Rene Malevergne, who piloted the New Orleans banana boat up the Sebou, and whose private diary, The Exfiltration of René Malevergne you researched and drew from. Did you come across any licentious or mundane entries, entirely unrelated to the events of the story? For example:
October 3, 1942
"Yesterday, I walked into town to buy three watermelons, but the vendor had a deal: 'Buy three, get one free!' So, I purchased four. I had no idea how quickly ripe fruit spoils. Shouldn't someone tell you that? I mean, when you're alone and buying four?"
Rene Malevergne was a very forthright and upstanding man; I couldn't detect a hint of licentiousness in his character. As far as mundane details are concerned, there were quite a few and I wish there had been more. When a person is writing a book about war, and using the words and thoughts of others to put it together, mundane details can help make a character and circumstances come alive, and offer a realism that makes a story come alive. I was grateful, for instance, when interviewing the grandson of the Contessa's captain, William John, that he remembered, not just that his grandfather smoked heavily on the bridge, but the brand of cigarettes---Winston's.
Back for just a minute to the harmless, made up details thing. The name of this particular U.S. invasion was "Operation Torch," which is unassailably cool, but, to my mind, doesn't instantly conjure the ins and outs of yielding a large boat up a small river. Just for laughs, let's each make up one alternative, more-or-less dubious name. Mine's Operation Dogstorm! What's yours?
The Saturday Evening Post writer who first told the story of the Contessa back in 1943 said that the ship crossed the sandbar at the entrance to the shallow Moroccan River Sebou "with all the grace of a hog going over a mud bank." What followed was twelve miles of achingly slow travel up the river to Port Lyautey, with the Contessa's bottom dredging river-bottom sand the whole way. How does Operation Hog Slog sound to you? -June, 2012
Nick Dybek, author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man
CGB: You've said that one theme of your book is how idealized images
of things and people can be hard to reconcile with the reality of that
thing or person. You're also an avid record collector. Who, if anyone,
has totally foundered your expectations in live concert?
ND: Unfortunately, there are many occasions when seeing a band live has
zapped the magic from the albums—in performance the artist doesn’t
always conform with the picture you had in your head. It’s a bit like
seeing a film version of your favorite novel where the characters don’t
look or act anything like you pictured them. But why focus on that?
I drove up to Detroit during the fall of my freshman year in college to
see Modest Mouse. I’d been listening to Lonesome Crowded West on repeat
for three months, though I knew next to nothing about the band: no one
really did back then. The album painted such a vivid portrait of an
America full of deserted truck stops, trailer parks, drunk cowboys,
junkfood, and long rides on the seedy public transportation. But the
lyrics were so thoughtful and poetic that part of me didn’t quite buy
it. I expected the singer, Isaac Brock, to look like a Swarthmore grad,
a disdainful intellectual in thick-rimmed glasses.
The man that took the stage at the Magic Stick that night was
overweight, side-burned, flannel-shirted and drunk out of his mind. He
sang through the pickup on his guitar. He charged into the crowd, not
affectionately. At one point he bent down to whisper in the ear of a
heckler in the front row. The man turned white and immediately headed
for the exit. A few songs later Brock emptied what looked like a water
bottle onto the stage, lit a match, and dropped it. The stage erupted in
flame until a roadie came with a fire extinguisher. Incidentally, he
also played the absolute hell out of the songs. Now that I’m past 30
I’ve pretty much abandoned my old rock dreams. Except this one.
Besides records, objects in general seem to play a part in your
thinking and writing about people, in terms of how things help us
visualize ourselves. Say it's your birthday and you're given an
oversized American League jersey from a not terribly close friend. Do
you consider integrating it into your wardrobe or move confidently in
the direction of an adult male?
I’m a big sports fan. Reading about Michigan Football, and the Chicago
Bulls and Cubs, is my go-to procrastination. And while trying to write,
and I procrastinate a lot. Any interest in an analysis of the
Wolverine’s 2012 recruiting class? Care to know more about the Cub’s top
minor league prospects? We should talk. So maybe it’s hypocritical to
fully accept some parts of the culture of American sports fandom while
rejecting others. But as to the jersey question: salvation army, pronto.
One reviewer noted, after reading Captain Flint, they had to stop
themselves from "crying in public." Which I imagine must feel great. If
that same person though was sitting next to you on the subway, book in
hand, obviously struggling to keep it together, would you be more likely
to sit back and enjoy the ride, so to speak, or pretend to be wearing
headphones?
I became a writer because it got boring bringing only my friends and
family to tears. I thought I could do so much more. But if there is one
thing I’ve learned about the New York Subway in the brief time I’ve
lived there: always pretend to be wearing headphones. -June, 2012
Su Smallen, author of Buddha, Proof
CGB: I suppose more rarely than not are we offered a book of poems written
entirely with use of a persona. But then, Buddha isn't the easiest of
targets when it comes to pinning someone down. In this case, Buddha
variously takes time with his feet and hates Barbie, at least "during
[her aerobics] class." Was there anything you felt that Buddha wouldn't do or think?
SS: Well, Buddha doesn't really hate, right?
"Buddha, Barbie" is one of the earliest poems, and at that time I was
thinking Buddha could use the word hate like we do when we say, "oh I
hate the way that makes me feel." But hate now feels too strong. Maybe
Buddha wouldn't think this--after all the readings I've given of this
poem, I'm uncomfortable with the word. Even so, it makes people laugh
because we recognize that feeling of being pushed too much beyond what's
comfortable or known and then blaming the instructor or coach, even
though we signed up for it. Buddha definitely has a deep sense of humor
and is the first to laugh at himself. Other than that, I often felt
while writing the book that Buddha is limited only by my imagination.
Barbie, too, is featured in these poems, whether contemplating
"tenderness" or made reference to by Buddha's trip to Target and
subsequent, inscrutable, desire for a Midge doll (Barbie's friend). Are
both Barbie and Buddha figures in a way? Empty vessels, open to
manipulation? Or is Barbie too defined; an inverse instance of your line about our being "so full, we are empty"?
I like "empty vessels"--certainly Barbie, in the best
sense, is manipulated by
her child, her deus ex machina. She has much to say about the
Americanized west and therefore is a good friend for Buddha, who speaks
from the east, who is making his way in the west. Is Barbie so empty,
she is full? Well, the empty-full question is a kind of chicken and the
egg question meant to break open duality: we are full and we are empty,
we are empty and we are full.
At one point, Buddha laughs, and the mistrust and immediacy of the world around him ceases. Does that ever work for you?
Yes! But I never remember soon enough or often enough to laugh, Buddha's compassionate laugh. -May, 2012
Eric Utne, editor of Brenda, My Darling
CGB: Your talk tonight alluded to the uniqueness of an epistolary
romance, in today's age of instant communication. But Brenda Ueland
edited her letters in time to "leave history exactly as she wanted it,"
and Fridtjof Nansen sent nude photos of himself that probably came
across as instantaneous to Ueland then as such photos tend to
now. In what ways then do you think that writing letters, as opposed to
texts or emails, has an effect on what is written?
EU: An "epistolary romance"... you mean love letters?
Yes, love letters.
Well,
I've been writing letters online more recently. Actually, since doing
this book, I find myself bringing more thought, and being less slapdash
in my digital communications. But I also have to say that getting any
letter that someone has written by hand, in the mail, feels like I'm
getting a present. I feel like I'm unwrapping a present when it arrives.
And I know that if I feel that way, others are probably feeling that,
too. So I do take the time, occasionally, to write a genuine letter, and
a love letter's even more precious. Also, if you know that your
recipient wants to be written to, there's a kind of challenge; it lifts
you, it's like you want to deliver the goods, you want to rise to the
occasion and do something that's worthy of their expectations. Wouldn't
it be an interesting world if everybody wrote love letters?
Speaking of getting a gift, Nansen was a polar explorer, diplomat,
and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. More than a public intellectual, he
was an international celebrity. Did it ever cross your mind that in
sending naked photos through the mail, he was hoping to get "caught," in
a Janet Jackson, Us Weekly sort of way?
Well, his great grandson said on television that
he thought his great grandfather was proud of his body, but I also
learned while over there that Knut Hamsun and... who's the painter who
did "The Shout"? Edvard Munch. Knut and Munch were also taking nude
photos of themselves just around the same time. So it may be that this
was going on, not only in Norway, but probably throughout Europe; that
people were discovering photography. I mean, Nansen took these of
himself. And he probably took them about 10 years before he sent them to
Brenda, cause he looks young enough. There's no way he was 67 when he
took these. So he was probably sharing them with other women, too. They
were definitley living in an artistic milieu, and exploring the human
body was something a lot of people were doing.
Remind me of that line from Brenda's book you cited.
Yea,
I'll read it to you. Brenda's secret for good writing was to "slow
down, as in long, inefficient, happy, idling, dawdling and puttering,
and this inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic,
energetic striving, but it comes slowly and quietly and all the time,
though we must regularly and everyday give it a chance to start flowing,
prime it with a little solitude and idleness."
Okay, so just for fun, can you think of any other situation, besides writing, where that skill might come in handy?
Well,
I think life, ya know? I mean, actually, Graywolf is promoting Brenda's
book as an inspiration for a creative life, not just the writing life.
People now are turning to yoga and meditation, and they talk about
mindfulness-based stress reduction, but that's so much just the surface
of it. The reason to get quiet is because that's where the inspiration
comes. A friend of mine, Arthur Zajonc, just wrote a book on meditation,
and he calls it a contemplative inquiry. He says that's where great
scientific discoveries come from and that's where artistic inspiration
comes from, learning to be quiet, and listening. Listening deeply is
what Brenda talks about in her essay on listening. Thats where the
creative spirit, the imagination, comes alive, out of that quiet. That's
why Nansen went to the far north, what he called the world's loneliest
and saddest rims, because he felt that no true leader could ever emerge
unless they knew that kind of quietude. For Nansen, it was going to the
wilderness, but Brenda knew how to get there just by "dawdling" and
"puttering." She'd also say, "woodling" and "doodling."
Your own life was in jeopardy as a result of publishing this book. Who was it that informed you?
It was a woman named Caren Berg, and she wrote a book called Nansen and His Women,
and she documented about 15 women with whom he had affairs. And she had
come here and seen the photos at the historical society, and chose not
to use them. And so, when I contacted her, she said, "Don't publish
those photos, because you will put your life in danger." Maybe I'm the
Evil Knievel of the publishing set.
Is it more or less exciting, death, if you know it's coming?
I haven't a clue, but we all know it's coming, don't we? -February, 2012
Louis Jenkins, author of Before You Know It and Nice Fish
CGB: As I was reading European Shoes, it occurred to me that interspersing poetry with notebook
entries, as a form, felt suddenly brand new.
LJ: Well, I got the idea when I was in Wales. I’d
been, you know, writing things, taking notes, and working on poems all the
time. I talked with a class, and they had been working with a form called
Haibun, which if you know the Japanese poet Basho… he did a book called
something like… they translated it as, The
Narrow Road to the North, or something like that, and that’s the form. He
goes and he has a little travel entry, and then he writes a little haiku poem.
So I thought, ‘Well, I could use that, and just write prose poems instead of
Haiku.’ And so that’s kind of how I put the book together.
It’s an exciting form, in part because we seem to do less
writing in notebooks, in the age of social media. Have you worked through other
forms?
No. Garrison wanted me to hook all of these poems together
and turn them into a novel. But I tried that and it didn’t work out very well.
If you were assigned to write a Minnesotan version of your
poem, “The Full English Breakfast,” with a list of Minnesotan fare, what would
that poem be?
I don’t know. Of course, everybody would immediately write
about Lutefisk. I think I’d have to think about something else. And, of course,
there’s the proverbial hot-dish, church basement fare. But I don’t know. If I
were gonna write about food of Minnesota,
I’d have to think about that awhile. Because, you know, you could do those
kinds of things, but they’ve been done and been done well. I’d have to think of
something new. And at the moment, I have no idea.
If you did the hot-dish, I could see that getting pretty
wordy, too. What with all of the preheating…
I discovered that the traditional green bean casserole… you
know that?
Yea, with the stuff on top?
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Yea, the canned, fried onion rings. I discovered, by looking
on the web… I thought, ‘Well, there must be an alternative, better recipe’…Very
difficult to find. Almost every one of them called for Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup and canned green
beans.
There's not something more up-to-date?
I found one or two, and I even tried one, but frankly, I
didn’t think it was as good as the old one.
So, Campbell’s
has a monopoly on the green bean casserole, unfortunately.
I guess so.
I haven’t lived in Minnesota
long, but as a boy, during visits to Duluth,
I and everybody else was captivated by the raising of the lift bridge. And as
soon as it began to rise, everybody came to the shore there to start looking
out for ships. Is that how it is in Duluth?
Are people in awe of it still? Still taking time to watch the ships?
Well, in the summer you get a lot of tourists, and, of course, it's all new to them. For people who live on Park Point it can sometimes be an annoyance. You get trapped. You're supposed to be at work or the dentist or something. So, it sort of behooves you to know the schedule. -January, 2012
Theresa Weir, author of The Orchard.
CGB: Many writers write in coffee shops or studios. You, however, bought a
church. Does that "I shouldn't be doing this" feeling that people often
claim to feel when it comes to using the lord's name in vain or sneaking boos inside a sanctuary ever occur to you while you write? Even a sentence
as harmless as "He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack on the
dashboard." Does a part of you think, "Eh, I'll change it to candle"?
TW: It's really more about what the neighbors think. One night I looked
outside to see an angry mob of torch-carrying villagers trudging up the
hill to the church. I thought they were saying, "Kill the witch." They
were actually saying, "This hill's a bitch." So it's easy to
misconstrue how people react to living in what was once a sacred space. I
think everybody's okay with it.
You divide your time between St. Paul and rural Wisconsin. Everyone assumes the worst, so what's the easiest thing about living, occasionally, in
the middle of nowhere?
Nobody can hear you scream.
One of the audience members mentioned having seen your book,
The Orchard, out
and about, in the hands of a stranger, and you lit up,
adding that you'd always wanted to see a "live copy" of your book in the
world. I love this idea of a "live book" vs. a "dead book," which I
suppose is any book not being read, but just displayed. If you were to
come across a "live copy" yourself, what would you do? Would you let the
reader know? Or would you act like someone else and simply mention to
that person that you too had read The Orchard by Theresa Weir and, as far as you could tell, your days of reading other people's books were over?
My middle name is Toiling In Obscurity, and I'd really hate to have to
change it to I Think I've Heard Of You. So I wouldn't admit to having
read or written the book.
So, you're a genre-spanning author, who lives in two places
at once and writes under the pseudonym Anne Frasier. Do you have a
favorite anything?
My favorite thing is getting behind someone who's driving very slowly in the left lane. I love that. -December, 2011
Lynne Cox, author Swimming to Antarctica and South With The Sun
CGB: In reference to swimming across the English Channel, you mentioned
never wanting to do the same thing over and over again. How do you feel
about stop-and-go traffic?
LC: That's why I live in California, so I can drive on the freeways.
It
took you 7 years to write South With the Sun, and 21 to write Swimming to Antarctica, which you began writing on a typewriter and finished on computer. Do you prefer one over the other?
Each book has its own method. The way I wrote Swimming to Antarctica was chronological, but then Grayson was just sitting down to write this "One day..." story, and then [South With The Sun]
was me weaving stories through time and place and theme, which was so
different than what I'd done before. So, your question was... what?
Well, your answer is more interesting than my question. But some
writers have strong opinions about, for example, writing on a laptop as
opposed to a pad of paper.
What I learned is that I'll start by writing longhand. When I know
that I'm ready to do it, I'll start writing, and the first two or three
or four paragraphs will be constant writing, and then I'll sit down and
start writing it on the computer, because I don't think writing longhand
anymore is good for me. Now, I can just go from brain to computer.
You spoke of invoking a "presence of mind," while
swimming
alone in the dark at 1 in the morning or above a baby whale. Does
that presence of mind
necessary for enduring such mentally and physically demanding states and
situations serve a purpose in the process of writing a book?
Absolutely. That's such a great parallel, because you have to
maintain the storyline, you have to keep going in a forward direction,
because if you don't, you lose yourself and you lose the story. And
there's nothing worse than to be in the middle of... "I finally figured
out what I need to write here," and then somebody calls you. Because you
know that that whole thing you've figured out in your brain now that
you're just about ready to write... you're thinking as you're going
along, and now that thought is gone, and it just drives me nuts.
So you value preparation and endurance when it comes to thinking?
Exactly, and seeing a thought all the way through. That's why I
don't write poetry. I'm a long writer. I write books. But that whole
sense of being right there in the moment as you're writing it, that's
what I really try to do. That's why I love when people say, "When I read
about your swim in Greenland, I felt like I was right there." That's
the best that I could ever hope to write: that I could take somebody and
make them feel like they're right there in that moment.
It sounds like you're saying there's an association between length and longevity and the ability to focus.
Yes. And I learned, like swimming short distances in very, very cold
water, the intensity of that focus is probably what got me through it.
And the long distance swimmer is like the long distance novel or
nonfiction writer. It's a book, not a novella.
You seem to like the cold. Have you considered writing a book about or in Minnesota. Perhaps one titled, Living in Saint Paul?
I hadn't thought about that. But I keep hoping that one day I'll get to swim across Lake Wobegon. -November 2011
Peter Geye, author of Safe From The Sea
CGB: As former editor of Third Coast, you must have read a lot of cover letters. What's the oddest personal fact about an author you've ever come upon that had nothing to with their writing?
PG: I got a letter from a woman who said that she'd never heard of any of us, but that we should remember her name, because she was going to be famous. In fact, I was at Benjamin Percy's reading the other day, and a woman came up to him and said, "I've never read your books, and I'm not going to buy them, but you should remember my name." For all I know it was the same person.
Your novel takes place along the northern Minnesota lakeshore. What's your favorite thing about fall in Minnesota?
It means it's almost winter. I love the cold. It's 80 degrees in the middle of October. That's not right. It should be 55 right now, preparing us for highs of... 6.
It's coming up on Halloween. Say trick-or-treaters come to your door, but don't say "trick or treat". Instinctively, how would you react?
I'm pretty adamant about wanting to hear it. But we live in a neighborhood with the world's most polite children, so they not only say "trick or treat" but "thank you," "happy halloween," the whole thing. -October 2011