Interview With Margaret Atwood

I still remember clutching Margaret Atwood's story collection, Wilderness Tips, in my arms as I went to the library to write during my first year in graduate school -- reading one of her stories, then immediately scribbling lines of my own, as if some of Atwood's intelligence, clarity, complexity might sprinkle onto the page.

So it was a thrill to interview Atwood about her new collection, Stone Mattress, for The Washington Post. The Post interview appeared today, and here's two more questions that didn't make it in.

Atwood talks about these stories being a hybrid of realist stories and tales.

Why did you want to push that boundary?

I didn’t want to push anything. People think there is a lot of intentionality involved. You just find yourself doing it. For instance, “Stone Mattress” came out of a conversation about how you plan to murder somebody on a boat in the Arctic. I was having that conversation on a boat in the Arctic and I began a story just to amuse my fellow Arctic boaters.

You chose the story “Stone Mattress” – in which a woman kills a man named Bob who’d raped her in high school – as the title story. Is old age, often depicted here, a stone mattress?

Well, it’s where Bob ends up. I never thought about it like that. The thing about a good title is it has many meanings. “Stone Mattress” was irresistible to me because it was such a rare conjunction of words. It’s a transliteration of the word for a stromatolite. There’s a resonance as well with the well-known song from the Mexican revolution, called “Bed of Stones.” So is old age a stone mattress? Let’s find out.

Writers Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella:A Mother-Daughter Team

Bestselling crime writer Lisa Scottoline pairs up with her daughter Francesca Serritella every week to write about their lives -- women, motherhood, daughterhood, boyfriend, pets -- and their latest columns have been compiled into their fourth book together: "Have a Nice Guilt Trip." (St. Martin’s Press, $24.99)

In their interview with me for The Washington Post, they spoke about what it's like to work together, Francesca as a writer still working on her first novel, and Lisa, who's written more than twenty.

Here's a bit that couldn't fit into yesterday's Washington Post interview.

Burns: What’s it like to write as a mother/daughter team?

Serritella: "I try not to make my Mom my editor, because as a writer, I can find a lot of great editors, but I only have one Mom. Also we would obviously just fight. (laughs) But it’s funny, when we put the columns together – and this is my Oh-my-God-am-I-becoming-my-mother? moment – you begin to see these parallels that we didn’t plan at all. In an earlier book, I had written an essay completely busting myself, my own crisis of feminism, when I realized I was getting a little neurotic, reading the New York Times wedding announcements. This was so out of character for me, but I was worrying, Oh, am I going to find the right person, she’s this age, I’m that age… I was totally like I have to change this, so I wrote about that. And then I saw Mom had written one about getting neurotic reading the obituaries, and I thought: OK, we both need to calm down. Step away from the newspaper!

Scottoline: I think by reading these books a mother can find out how your daughter thinks by reading how my daughter thinks; and I also find out by reading these essays.

Here's the full interview.