Jenny
& Martha McPhee
The fabulous writing McPhee
sisters talk to Robert Birnbaum
 Posted:
December 25, 2002
Copyright 2002 by Robert Birnbaum
All photos by Red Diaz / Duende Publishing
Print this interview.
Martha McPhee is the author of Bright Angel Time
and recently the 2002 National Book Award finalist Gorgeous Lies.
Her work has appeared in Zoetrope, The New Yorker, Vogue, Redbook
and Open City. She has also co-authored Girls: Ordinary
Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits with her sisters, Jenny
and Laura McPhee. Martha McPhee teaches at Hofstra University and
lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
Jenny McPhee attended Williams College and
has worked in publishing. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer
Train, Zoetrope and Brooklyn Review, The New York
Times Magazine and The New York Times Book Review. Her
novel, The Center of Things, was a New York Times
Notable Book. She also works as a film program coordinator and translator
(Italian). Jenny McPhee also lives in New York City with her husband
and children.
Jenny and Martha McPhee's father is writer
John McPhee.
Robert Birnbaum:
Many occupations tend to define people—you're at a party and
someone will ask, "What do you do?" You answer and people tend to
assume they then know a lot about you. When you say you are a writer
that doesn't really give a clear picture…
Martha McPhee: I know when people say they
are a writer to me, especially if I have never heard of them, I
go, "Oh okay." You have this sense that this person is, somehow,
not really a writer. Or they are a want-to-be writer. There are
a lot of them out there. For a long time I encountered that too.
"Oh, okay, yeah, you're a writer…" Like, I don't believe you.
Jenny McPhee: I still do.
Robert: Both of you still encounter that?
Martha: Less, Jenny, because you now have
a book. What happens is they want to know your resume. That's the
next question. What have you published? Where? Who published it?
So if you say it, it's a label that you have to be able to back
up with something. I find that annoying. It's not about the substance
of the writing. It's about the accolades or the publisher. Or the
agent.
Robert: So that's, people using your stated
occupation as way of identifying your status in the world?
Jenny: Isn't that true for every profession?
Everybody identifies, "Oh you're a lawyer, you're a this." And that's
not who they really are, actually. Maybe they say they are a lawyer
but they are a really, really good writer.
Robert: That is my point. When you are asked,
what do you say?
Jenny: I do now [say I'm a writer]. It took
me years and years—even though I have been writing for years
and years—to actually say that. Because our culture has a funny
thing, as Martha is describing, about legitimacy and writing. I
mean, you are only a writer when you have published? I don't believe
that.
Robert: Isn't there a way of looking at writing
as an avocation? That is, "Geez, can't everyone write?" There are
many doctor-authors and lawyer-authors.
Jenny: There's that misconception, too. No,
not everyone can write, in the sense that I can't be a doctor if
I don't go to school. I don't necessarily think you have to go to
school but school in sense of you have to do it for a long time.
It's like playing a piano. You have to practice for a long time.
Martha: But the thing about it is in, terms
of asking that question, "What do you do?" "Are you a writer?" "Oh,
where have you published?" "Who's your agent?" "What prizes have
you won?" or whatever, is that writing is something that almost
everybody does want to do and it's such a lofty thing. It's creating
art. People want to be able to take you for real if you are going
to give such a lofty label to describe what you do. They want hard
facts to back it up. And I can see that. On the question of defining
people by what they do, it's an entree into a person's life—and
a way to—because we do work at least 40 hours a week, one does—figure
out how to talk about it just as it is, "Do you have children?"
"Oh, you do." "You have a son." "Tell me about your son?" "How old
is he, what does he play?" It's a way to talk to people, and so
I think it's a genuinely positive question. It's just a way to have
a connection.
Robert: Okay, that's right. After you tell
me you are a writer and I don't start asking for your CV, I still
don't know anything about you. Somehow, when I am told that you
are a doctor or a lawyer, that gives me the sense that I know a
lot about you just with that information. I think that is true of
almost every occupation, that I am much closer to narrowing down
to a picture of that person's life. Tell me you are a writer and
it doesn't give me a clear picture. There are so many variables…
Martha: Basically, a writer sits in a room
by themselves all the time. So if you are encountering a serious
writer—you can have the image of the lawyer who is out there
arguing a case, you know that it's a litigator—you have the
idea of the person alone in the dark room, just working away, pondering,
staring out the window…a loner. Someone who loves to be alone.
Jenny: Not all of the time. Some people have
to go out and sit in cafes and be around people when they write.
You have a point. As a very different way of tapping into whatever
it is that is going to then be the writing. So it's true, every
writer is pretty different.
Robert: What is fueling this question is
that the more writers I talk to the less I feel that I know what
is identifiable. And I think you are correct, that culturally we
seem to give a lot of weight to the activity of writing…
| Basically,
a writer sits in a room by themselves all the time… alone
in the dark room, just working away, pondering, staring out
the window…a loner. Someone who loves to be alone. |
Jenny: I'd say it depends on who you are
talking to. There are a whole lot of people out there who couldn't
give a flying you-know about writers.
Robert: Don't you feel like there is more
celebrity attached to writing? That there are more authors appearing
in gossip columns and style magazines.
Jenny: On the book page. Getting off the
book page is one of the major things for a writer. We're not Hollywood,
we're not even socialites.
Robert: But more and more…
Jenny: It depends who you are.
Martha: There are a selected few who get
that. The average ordinary literary writer…both of us for example,
we are not in the gossip columns. People don't really care.
Jenny: Believe it or not, even where we are,
coming from the family we do, it's not glitterati.
Robert: In the New York Observer around
the time of the Frankfurt Book Fair there was a lengthy piece about
young writers. Eminem is [reportedly] dating Zadie Smith and so
on.
Martha: Zadie Smith is a best selling international
writer. In England she was a sensation.
Robert: I know her credentials. Here's what
I am suggesting. There is a ripple effect. Let's say, as in books,
the cultural attention span is only capable of attending to four
or five of a category of things at a time. So currently Jonathan
Franzen's name has high recognition…
Jenny: Oprah. Zadie Smith. Eminem. Get the
connection. It's not Zadie Smith per se.
Robert: But they're writers.
Jenny: It's not new. Norman Mailer was in
to this. There is always the five…
Martha: I don't find it very interesting.
I don't aspire to being on the front page of the Observer because
I am dating Eminem or whoever. That's not what interests me about
writing, at all.
Robert: And I wouldn't think that most serious
writers would be. Or maybe not, fame has its own currency these
days. Okay, so why do so many people enter writing programs, wanting
to become writers when if they know anything at all about the life
of a writer and the chances for success they should know that they
are heading toward a hardscrabble life?
Martha: I went to a writing program and she
didn't. So we probably both have different answers on this. She
had a whole different approach to her apprenticeship, as they call
it. When you to graduate school—I went to Columbia—there
are all sorts of kids there. There are kids that are just out of
college, that don't know what to do next with their life, who did
a little bit well in school and they have a lot of money and they
are just there to understand what is happening. Then there are people
that have been out for a while and they have always loved writing
and they want to try to get back in and they are really serious.
They are in their forties. And then there are people that are just—I
guess you lump into that even a younger set who is very serious—and
see it as way to buy some time. And to work with a group of people
doing the same thing that they are and giving themselves two years
to really sink into a situation. Because it is hard to do if you
are working full time. It's hard to really get into writing. It's
hard to have that time. And that's what I did. I love the word "apprenticeship."
That's what it is. You get to sit there and work and feel legitimate
doing it and have the time. And yes, as my father likes to say to
us, "the average annual income of the writer is $800 a year." So
why bother. But I don't think writing is something that you sit
down and choose to do. It's something that you have to do. And if
you don't have to do it, you'll stop. Many people I went to graduate
school with are no longer writing. And that's not surprising.
Robert: That's not answering the question
‘why'? Given that statistic, clearly many people who don't
have to don't, but they are inclined to. There is something so attractive
about the vocation that they want to put themselves in the position
of being a starving artist.
Martha: But I did answer the question when
I said they have to do it. A lot of kids that I went to college
with—when I was waitressing and going to Columbia and working
in publishing to get by and catering—were enormously wealthy
and working on Wall Street and our lives just went like this [criss-crossing
hand gesture]. Because I couldn't afford to go off on a safari,
get married and have children—I did that much later—I
did the starving artist thing.
Robert: Your answer to the question is that,
they have to try?
Martha: They have to do it because they have
to do it. If they don't have to do, they don't do it.
 Jenny:
Here's what I think the appeal is. And I got this, in part from
the great psychologist/writer, Adam Phillips. Writing for me and
for a lot of people is like being a child again with your imagination
and you can do anything. You sit there at the desk and you can play.
And your playing with everything that you have ever known or learned
and what more glorious thing to do with your time all day than that?
Now, it's also incredibly difficult…
Martha: There are big sacrifices.
Jenny: …because you are then going to
put it out there. It's probably total crap half the time, you're
thinking. You are constantly also dealing with your superego—which
is beating you up, all the time. So how much of that can you take?
Where's the trade off? You get to play. And then you get beat up.
So is the beating up worse and then you quit or do you somehow manage
to play enough of the time to then take all the other stuff along
with it?
Martha: But in the end, the ones that stay,
really have to stay. Otherwise, they wouldn't. Right?
Jenny: Umm, yeah.
Martha: I would have given up so many times
when I was writing this second novel.
Jenny: I think a lot of people do give up
and don't necessarily want to. I don't have as much the sense—that
somehow you are designated.
Martha: I'm not saying that God is saying….
I am just saying it's something I can't stop doing. I mean there
is a lot of torture involved and there are so many times I would
have chosen a way, if I possibly could have, a way out. But I couldn't.
I couldn't do that.
Jenny: I think that is denying the joy of
it, more than you think. I think you get a really big high and that's
why you stay.
Martha: I don't think those are mutually
exclusive. Of course, there are great ups and then great downs and
great ups and great downs and great long stretches where nothing
happens at all. But that's not what I am saying at all. Let's say
that for a long time I wanted to be a cook. That didn't pull me
or else I would be a cook. I wouldn't be doing this.
Jenny: We're saying the same thing. I'm coming
from the positive aspect, which is that I think it's the high that
keeps you there, not the low.
Martha: Absolutely.
Jenny: Not the, "There's nothing else I can
do." It's more, "I really want to get that high." It's
the same thing.
Robert: There is something tautologous about
the formulation that says you become what you are or that you have
to be what you are. But let me raise the well-worn Dorothy Parker
phrase, "I hate to write but love having written." Clearly a cynical
take on the effort. It's not hard to imagine that it can give one
a great buzz but what do you mean when you say it is so hard or
that it's torture?
Martha: I think that's part of pushing through
the block. Not the writer's block but there is this wall in front
of you when you start off writing something. You have no idea where
it's going to go, even if you think you do. And it is hard. It's
like trying to pull something out of thin air and put it on to the
page.
Jenny: And you are constantly facing your
own mediocrity. Your own failure. Your own horrible sentences.
Martha: An old professor of ours used to
describe it as this little bird sitting right here (points to her
shoulder) that you call your shit bird. That just says, "You suck.
You suck. You suck. You suck. You suck."
Jenny: And really you just have to listen
to that and sometimes it takes. Sometimes you shove it way over
in the distance and it's just a whisper. But it is always there.
Robert: So you shut it up by actually writing?
Jenny: If you can. And if you can't, you're—drinking.
(all laugh)
Robert: The first trick is to shut it up?
Jenny: Yeah, the first trick is to shut it
up.
Robert: You went to writing school (to Martha)
and you didn't (to Jenny), so besides something genetic, what brought
you to writing?
Jenny: Here I go back on all of what I was
just saying (laughs). I always wanted to be a writer. I just always
wanted to be a writer. I did try and do a lot else because our father
always said, "Never be a writer." So, and then at a certain point,
I did have to make a choice. I could have gone on very happily doing
other things but I really wanted to see if I could do this. And
it was a love and I wanted to do it.
Martha: Why do you have a hard time with
that concept of "having to do it"? Because it feels exclusive?
Jenny: It does feel exclusive.
Martha: Of people that just sort of want
to do it but don't really do it?
Jenny: Yeah, as if they have some… that
they won't do it because you have to have some calling.
Martha: I'm not saying it like I have some
sort of calling from a higher spirit that is pushing me to do it.
That's not my intention. It's what you are saying now…
Jenny: I really do believe that somebody
who comes to writing at age forty who has never really wanted to
write before can sit down and really learn how to write. In other
words, I think there is a whole range.
Martha: Let's say you get there at sixty.
There is a woman that did start writing in her eighties. I don't
exclude her. She discovered that she had to do it. I don't want
it to sound like it has to be in you from birth.
Jenny: Right, right.
Martha: Once you do choose, even if you are
100, it's something that you need and have to do, otherwise you
would never do it. You wouldn't sit there for six years or five
or two trying to push something out, if you didn't have to.
Robert: Is there anything inherent in writing
that suggests that writers are morally superior individuals?
| And
old professor of ours used to describe it as this little bird
sitting right here (points to her shoulder) that you call
your shit bird. That just says, “You suck. You suck.
You suck. You suck. You suck.” |
Martha: Who knows? I think everybody is different,
has a different character. That's certainly not mine.
Jenny: There is definitely—something
I have thought a lot about—around writing and writers, and
you were talking about this before about books and bookstore owners,
there is an aura and it's among a certain group of people. Because
most of the world just doesn't really care about art. There is this
idea that somehow there is a moral superiority because you are pursuing
some sort of higher art. I very much shy away from that and have
a lot of trouble with it. And yet it does keep coming back and back.
Because you are doing something that you hope will heighten other
people.
Robert: Improve the world.
Jenny: Improve the world. I mean there has
to be something about that. Martha and I were interviewed the other
day and I had this thought—because in my book there is this
physics theme—how physicists are constantly running around
trying to formulate a theory of everything so that they can explain
the world. And I am thinking that each writer, in each book that
they do, it's their little theory of everything. And there is some
kind of higher moral purpose in that, whatever that is. Everybody
has a different idea of what that theory of everything is.
Martha: These are just the sort of things,
that if you are sitting down to write, you can not think about (all
laugh) otherwise you will not write.
Robert: Maybe in your leisure time. A lot
of the perceptions of what we call the craft, the profession, the
calling have to do with the fact that there is commerce involved
and so then there is a press that pays attention to that business
and there is publicity about people associated with writing that
one may or may not find amusing. It's like inside baseball, you
may like the sport and like to watch but the trade rumors and who
is the closeted gay player on team and so on…
Martha: It's so easy to get caught up in
that, especially living in New York. And who is hot and who's not.
Who is in and who's out and of course you want to be part of that
buzz. But when you step back and get a little distance on it, which
is the wise thing to do for your own sanity, it's massively unproductive.
The only important thing is sitting down there and doing the work.
All of that other stuff is just a buzz, static that gets in the
way and you can never get as much as you want. You can never be
filled up on it…
Robert: …because it's like sugar…
Jenny: …potato chips
Martha: The more time I spend in this profession
the more I want to stay away from all of that. It's so distracting
and so empty and so banal.
Jenny: But there is a fun aspect to it, too.
There definitely is. It's when it does start eating at you that
it stops becoming fun. You have to really be careful about that.
Robert: Because NYC is the book publishing
capitol of North America, does it spawn a certain kind of New York
book?
Martha: Give us a an example of a New York
kind of book?
Robert: The Corrections. As opposed
to In The River Sweet or Plainsong or The Cadence
of Grass…
Martha: Those are equally popular…I'm
not sure what you are…
Robert: The brand name Gucci or Manalo Blahnik
won't appear in them. There is something about New York books that…
Jenny: Bret Easton Ellis or Jay McInerney.
Robert: Very urban and sophisticated and
the fashionable wines and cuisines are part of the setting. The
characters have powerful exciting occupations… When the stories
move away from New York the characters actually work at more ordinary
things.
Martha: I'm not sure I really understand
the question?
Robert: Because New York is the center of
publishing activity with major publishing houses and press there
the culture there may produce or make likely the success of certain
kind of book…
Martha: You think that's what's responsible
for the Franzen's success?
Robert: I'm asking you.
Martha: Is that the question though? Is that
why Franzen is so successful?
Robert: Okay, the question is really why
aren't other really wonderful books…
Martha: Didn't Kent Harouf's book do really
well?
Robert: Well, it won an award.
Martha: I could start listing. Richard Ford
is always there, he's incredibly popular. The woman who lives in
Wyoming…
 Jenny:
Annie Proulx.
Martha: I could list so many. And how many
popular books about New York City are there?
Robert: I'm not doing well here. It's not
about being about New York, it's about the kinds of books that editors
in New York accept.
Martha: But they always have their hot little
darlings.
Jenny: It's true and you can never figure
it out.
Martha: Donna
Tartt, she's receiving a lot of buzz. Allison Pearson's I
Don't Know How She Does It…every season there is going
to be a book that is…or look at The Lovely Bones, that's
such a big popular book.
Jenny: And who knew? That book supposedly
went to ten different publishers before it was published.
Martha: It is New York where they really
begin. It is the center of the publishing world.
Robert: Well, what's on my mind is the being
told these stories about fifteen rejections or twenty-seven rejections
by published authors.
Jenny: You know what, everyone has a different
story.
Martha: Franzen had two books before this.
And neither one sold particularly well but they were well reviewed.
But I think you are right…
Jenny: I'm always saying this to Martha.
It depends on your particular stars at that particular moment whether
they are aligned or not. And they can not be aligned your whole
lifetime and you can die and be discovered afterwards. Or like Faulkner,
you can have a good run for a while and then die in a basement somewhere
with no one caring about you.
Robert: Or Fitzgerald.
Jenny: Or so many. Who are then rediscovered
later or not. How many women have been really successful but we
never hear about them because history decides that women don't count
and so …you can't think too large. As Martha was saying before,
you have to think, "Am I going to get a jolly today sitting down,
writing?" and that's it. Everyday. And that's it. Process is everything.
Robert: It seems that you spoil some things
when you talk about them. Maybe how to tell a joke or talking about
sex…
Martha: Jenny, for example, I don't know
if this is where you are going but she won't talk about her next
book very much. I keep asking her and she won't give me very much
about it. Whereas, I am so happy to talk about what I am working
on. The only thing is when you end up reading the book six years
later, it will be completely different than the thing I told you.
My second novel was—my intention was that it would be about
a girl that goes to India and disappears into the Hollywood film
world. Because her father is dying, I never got to that and I don't
have a problem talking about it.
Robert: Jenny can you talk about why you
can't talk about your book?
Jenny: Sure. It's because when I am there
at the computer I want to be able to have anything happen, at all.
And be able to throw something out or put it back in and not have
any fixed idea about at all. The minute I articulate what it is
that I am doing, it somehow in my head becomes fixed, in a way.
And I feel like I have less ability to really play with it.
Martha: Which is true, I kept beating myself
up—probably one of the reasons this book was so hard to write
was because I kept saying, "She's not getting to India, she's not
in India. She needs to be in India. Everybody thinks she is going
to India." I'd go to party and people would say, "How's that India
novel going?" "Oh, it's going really well." And when I published
the book, "Oh, that's the book about India. Right?" So the idea
was fixed. It'd probably be much better if I kept my mouth shut.
Jenny: Maybe you are doing the same thing,
subconsciously? That's the answer but everything else is happening…
Robert: Let me see if I have this right.
There are four sisters that write and then there are collateral
relatives and so when you come together for Thanksgiving…
Jenny: We fight. (all laugh) About nothing
to do with books.
Robert: And this year Martha is a National
Book Award finalist. Is there rivalry about awards?
Jenny: There is such rivalry and great competition
that we have lived with for a very long time.
Martha: We deal with it.
Jenny: We try and make it work for us.
Martha: My husband is giving a reading the
same night I have to give my National Book Award reading. So Jenny
is my date and she is coming to the book award with me. So maybe
five or ten years ago we wouldn't have been able to do that. So
I'm nominated this year and she'll win next year. We realize the
ups and downs of these things. She got a great full page review
in the NY Times last summer. I got a two-column hatchet job
this year (all laugh).
Robert: This is silly but indulge me. Hatchet
job in the Times or blurb by Tim
O'Brien? Which has value…
Martha: Tim O'Brien. I love him.
Robert: You don't know him?
| Each
writer, in each book that they do, it’s their little
theory of everything. And there is some kind of higher moral
purpose in that, whatever that is. Everybody has a different
idea of what that theory of everything is. |
Martha: I don't know him but I wrote to Tim
O'Brien right after I read The Things They Carried. It was
a three-page love letter, just telling him that I thought he was
the greatest thing and he wrote me back the sweetest … and
we started this little correspondence and then he gave me a blurb
for Bright Angel Time. I wasn't going to bother him with
this [Gorgeous Lies] but a good friend of mine did at the
last minute and he came through. I was too shy to bother him again.
Jenny: Gertrude Stein says no writer needs criticism. Writers
only need encouragement. Any artist who thinks they need criticism
is no artist.
Martha: I didn't read the review in the NY
Times. I heard enough about it to have a sense of what it was.
I was devastated by that. You can't not be.
Jenny: It just feeds that little bird.
Martha: Yeah, that bird is well fed.
Robert: Is it sufficient for your writer's
lives to have close relations with your writing family so that conferences
and panels are redundant?
Martha: Generally, the protocol is that writer
is invited.
Robert: Do you care about such things?
Martha: If I'm invited sure. I went Yaddoo
and MacDowell when I was younger. Those are things you apply for.
I always found it incredibly difficult to get work done there. There
is so much pressure. Here you have all day and all of life's tasks
are taken away. You can't wash the dishes. You can't even make a
snack.
Robert: No water cooler?
Jenny: I like those things. You are not going
to get that much work done. There are big distractions, they are
interesting distractions and of course books are something we are
completely fascinated with, so it's something that feeds us. But
you are not working. It's a trade off.
Martha: I met my husband at MacDowell. So
that was successful.
Robert: Those art colony settings are supposed
to be what people dream of.
Martha: It does weird things to people. Some
people are really good at handling it. I get caught up in the lives
of all the people there and they get caught up in mine.
Jenny: I think it really depends on how good
your procrastination habits are. And what you need. You could just
use it as one big procrastination fest. I think I would do that.
Robert: Is the case that more often than
not that people who are writers are people who started reading very
young and with great devotion?
Jenny: In our cases it was different. I had
a fanatic devotion to reading. I read for escape. My mother used
to scream at me, "Stop reading!"
Martha: She used to scream at me to read.
I hardly ever read. I was so distracted. I didn't start reading
until high school when I started reading Gone with the Wind.
Then I read that several times and never stopped. People come to
things in so many different ways. You have to be a reader in order
to be a writer. There is no question about it. I don't think it
matters when you start. I have students who say they are too busy
to read. There is a famous quote that says something about if you
are too busy to read forget about writing.
Robert: In his memoir, Jim Harrison mentions
experiencing a deflating feeling when people tell him they are too
busy to read. I started to read early because my mother took me
to the public library. I also have this clear picture of a playground
with screaming children playing and one child off to the side reading.
Or reading books under the covers with a flash light.
Jenny: I'm the only one in the family who
has bad eyes. I was that type of kid. But it doesn't mean anything.
Robert: Well what do you make of people like
that?
Martha: What do you make of what?
Robert: The fact that people will adopt something
that within the last generation, maybe two, doesn't seem culturally
necessary?
Martha: Reading, you mean? Repeat the question.
Robert: How does it happen that anyone at
all reads?
 Martha:
We are surrounded by literary people. People that love to read.
There are a lot of writers in this family and we have a lot of friends
who are in the publishing world and I teach so I am surrounded by
academics. We have academics in the family. Little kids love story
books all across the board no matter what kind of family they come
from. So I feel like I don't know anything other than that, really.
I can't imagine not wanting to curl up with a great book. I go on
the subway and I see so many people reading. I find that so heartening.
Jenny: Yeah, but it's a huge problem. Not
enough people read. That's the problem in our country.
Martha: It's great, too, that people like
Oprah have done their book clubs. And that these morning shows are
doing it as well. Even though there is big controversy over New
York City Reads and the choice of the book and what it should be.
All those things are phenomenal.
Jenny: I even have to hand it to Laura Bush.
You just have so many more lives if you read. It's so wonderful
for anybody be able to get out of wherever you are, through a book.
And it's so easy.
Robert: What's the big gap? Where is the
disconnect?
Martha: Television. Sometimes when I come
home, I am too fried for a book. I'm sure people have a lot of that.
Jenny: Also, you are not born knowing how
to read. Unfortunately, it is a skill and it is something to do
a lot and if you don't do it from the time when you are young you
are not going to do it when you are older. It becomes a task.
Martha: When you are young you need someone
to do it with you. So if you have an overtired mother and a very
busy father, a chaotic household, it becomes easier to put the child
in front of a television than to sit down and read with them.
Jenny: It becomes intimidating.
Robert: What are you reading and how do you
come to read what you read?
Martha: It's never on the basis of a review…it's
because somebody has told me something is great. So many people
for so long told me I had to read A Suitable Boy. And I am
and it is one of the most phenomenal books I have ever read. So
when that sort of thing happens to me, it's my favorite book, ever.
But that happens to me a lot. Lonesome Dove, I just loved
that book. Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried. After that
I had to read everything he had ever written. So, it's word of mouth.
Robert: A Suitable Boy is the only
one of three thousand-page books that I set my self to read that
I have not yet read [I have read Infinite Jest by David Foster
Wallace and Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer].
Martha: It, to me, is Tolstoyan. It's a huge,
sweeping love story that cuts across every single class and ethnicity
and culture in India bringing them vividly to light—this guy
[Vikrim Seth] he loves his characters. He loves every one of them.
And draws them with humor and sympathy, even in all their tragedies
and foibles. It's post raj India, 1951 and you such a big vivid
sense of that country and it [the story] only spans a year or so.
We don't write like that anymore. To me I would put this up there
with War and Peace and Anna Karenina. It's really
phenomenal.
Jenny: I've been running around months now
telling everyone to read Life of Pi. And boy was I laughing the
other day when I read about [the plagiarism controversy]…it
vindicated me in a big way in the sense that, you know, he's [Yann
Martel] a real writer. He steals. Writers steal. And maybe he didn't
steal too elegantly there. He could have been more elegant.
Martha: But as Jenny said to me, "No one
would have cared, had he not won the Booker [Prize]." At all.
Robert: Right [to Jenny]. Wasn't your book
blurbed by Amitrav Ghosh?
Jenny: Yeah.
Robert: The Glass Palace was wonderful.
Jenny: Yeah, it was really fabulous. I loved
Atonement. Technically, I think it's brilliant.
Robert: Do you read a lot?
Jenny: As much as possible. We both have
young children so that cuts into it. Of course and we both reading
constantly for our own work. There is a fair amount of research
you have to do even to write fiction and also—I think it was
Edith Wharton who said, "Don't ever read anyone contemporary."—I
think she is totally wrong. But she is right that you constantly
need to be reading back. The classics, so to speak. But now I am
really into Kurt Vonnegut. And he's just amazing. I am constantly
rediscovering things that I read when I was little and being inspired
again.
Martha: I love Thomas Hardy. He is one of
my all time favorites. I love how he draws landscape, especially.
And also his female characters are always so wonderful and strong.
The landscape becomes its own character.
Jenny: Direct influences on my work? Graham
Greene and Raymond Chandler. I am always going back to them…
Robert: Not the same kind of writer. What
about them?
Jenny: Both of them have love of plot as
does Shakespeare. I like how they make plot a character in their
work. And how Chandler makes it, in the end, not really matter.
Even though it is all very plot-driven, you never know what the
plot is. I love the way Greene does the high-low thing. And how
he is very philosophical and still very much about story. Both are
very atmospheric and I like that. Also, you read who you love and
that makes you want to write.
| Whenever
I read somebody I really, really love… I have been listening
to a tape of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio
and it makes me want to drive right home and start writing.
|
Martha: Edna O'Brien was a huge influence
when I started writing because I read The Country Girl's Trilogy
and that's what made me realize I had to be a writer. I wanted to
do the American version of that. I have only written two and that's
where I stop, it's a duet, not a trilogy.
Robert: You never know.
Jenny: You never know. Maybe much later.
Martha: Maybe much, much, much later. Not
now.
Robert: It maybe it's better that you don't
intend it. Julian
Barnes wrote Talking It Over as a single book about ten
years ago and then wrote Love, Etc. because he wanted to
know what happened.
Jenny: I shouldn't leave out Muriel Spark.
She's a huge influence, She is probably why I wanted to start writing.
I read her a lot as a teenager.
Martha: You know what it is? Jenny was just
touching on it. Whenever I read somebody I really, really love,
like the Vikrim Seth book, I want to try my hand at a big sprawling
novel that covers a lot of culture and religion and a woman's life
over the course of the 20th Century. Whenever I have picked that
book up it makes me want to write. So I am slowly savoring it because
it will take me a long time before I can even begin to think about
writing that sort of book. I have been listening to a tape of Sherwood
Anderson's Winesburg,
Ohio and it makes me want to drive right home and start
writing. I don't know it well enough to say that it's a favorite
book because I just started listening to it. But it gives me the
urge.
Robert: You do both, read and listen to fiction?
Martha: I'm starting this. I prefer to read
because I like to see it but am commuting to Hofstra. But I think
it is a big practice for your ear. That's a wonderful skill to develop
and to really flex. But there's so much to read.
Robert: I think the tape of a book is a whole
other thing, like a movie is another thing.
Jenny: It is another thing. It has to be
a really good book to work on tape. And really well read. Really
bad readers can ruin a book.
Robert: I've heard authors ruin their stuff
at readings.
Jenny: Absolutely. Authors often are the
worst readers. I really does take practice.
Robert: Both of you have children. Any interest
in writing a children's book?
Martha: No.
Jenny: My son asks me all the time, "When
can we write a book?" I did write a children's book and tried to
publish it and nobody took it.
Robert: [to Martha] You adamantly said, "No."
Martha: I would not know how to speak to
young adults, at all.
Robert: Is it your intention to keep this
touring "band" together?
Jenny: We were just trying to plan out books
so that they would come out at the same time. It just nicer to do
it with someone else. Writing is such a lonely thing, you have to
do it by yourself, so anytime you have a chance…
Martha: When I went on book tour to San Francisco
the first time I would just stay in my hotel room. That is just
pathetic, sad and lonely. With Jenny, the moment we got there we
were out the door, all over the city looking at—mostly shopping.
When we weren't shopping, we were eating great food. We just had
so much fun.
Jenny: We really saw that city, too.
Robert: And your presentation at a bookstore?
Jenny: We read a little bit. Short.
Martha: Ten minutes each and then we take
questions.
Jenny: And that's our favorite part.
Martha: People ultimately want to ask questions,
and if they ask a good question and the person gives a good answer,
they are probably more likely to buy the book.
Jenny: It's the engagement with the audience,
really for us, is the fun interesting part.
Robert Birnbaum came to journalism, where
he has been a practitioner for the past two decades, from a series
of possibly (it's too soon to tell) educational vocational experiences
that are too numerous to mention. In the '80s and '90s, as publisher/creative
director of STUFF magazine in Boston, when he wasn't attending industrial
gatherings, he interviewed nearly 500 hundred writers — from
Martin Amis and Isabel Allende to Marianne Wiggins and Howard Zinn
— and read almost 1000 books. He is currently, among other
things, pondering if there is a place for him in a profession increasingly
infested with vulgarians who believe 'editorial content' is celebrating
restaurant and shop openings, endlessly lionizing the same small
group of celebrities and reiterating the press releases of the publicists
they have just had lunch with. He lives with his Labrador retriever
Rosie and helps parent his young son Cuba Maxwell.
Note:
Featured author in November 2000
E-mail: reddiaz@aol.com
Writing interests: Interviews, Photography
Author interviews: Dorothy
Allison, Nicholson
Baker, Julian
Barnes, Andrea
Barrett, Alex
Beam, Jill
Bialosky, Amy
Bloom, Amy
Bloom 2002, Alain
de Botton, Arthur Bradford,
Ethan Canin, Stephen
Carter, Sandra
Cisneros, Michael
Connelly, Richard
Conniff, Frank
Conroy, Mark
Costello, Elizabeth
Cox, Jim Crace, Nicholas
Dawidoff, Andre
Dubus III, John
Dufresne, Tony Earley,
Barbara Ehrenreich, Gretel
Ehrlich, James
Ellroy, Richard
Ford, Alan
Furst, Alan
Furst 2002, Anthony
Giardina, James
Gleick, Adam
Gopnik, Allan Gurganus,
Barbara
Haber, David
Hadju, Ethan
Hawke, Christopher Hitchens
#1, Christopher
Hitchens #2, Gabe
Hudson, Elizabeth
Inness-Brown, Ben Katchor,
Nora
Okja Keller, Chip Kidd,
Anthony
Lane, Annette
Lemieux, Alan
Lightman, Paul Lussier,
Ruben Martinez, Daniel
Mason, Thomas
McGuane, Thisbe Nissen,
Tim
O'Brien, Susan
Orlean, Ann
Packer, Arthur
Phillips, Samantha
Power, Christopher
Rice, David
Rieff, Hazel
Rowley, Richard Russo #1,
Richard
Russo #2, John
Sedgwick, David
Shields, Ilan
Stavans, Darin
Strauss, Manil
Suri, Nick
Tosches, Brady
Udall, Sarah
Vowell, Brad
Watson, W.D. Wetherell,
Mark
Winegardner, Howard
Zinn
Author portraits: John
Sayles, Howard
Zinn, Robert
Stone, Ana
Castillo, John
Waters, Allen
Ginsberg, Carl
Hiaasen, Carlos
Fuentes, Barbara
Ehrenreich, Eduardo
Galeano, Isabel
Allende, Junot
Diaz, Joan
Didion, James
Ellroy, John
Edgar Wideman, Martin
Amis, Michael
Ondaatje, Richard
Price, Rigoberta
Menchu, Louis
de Bernieres, Studs
Terkel
Photography: "I
am the Son of my Son"
Journal: "A
Reader's Progress"
Link: Review
of Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion at Hyde Park Review
of Books |
