Jan. 10, 2008 -- The journalist in me can’t do it. The memoirist can’t do it. Even the fiction writer in me cannot recreate the conversation.
Why didn’t we tape the damned thing?
Because the star of the Off the Page launch party at Poets & Busboys in Washington, D.C., was the conversation with writers Mary Kay Zuravleff and Carolyn Parkhurst, as they responded to my questions about quotes in the book, without much idea of what was coming next, and me (I found out later) putting them on the spot: So, Carolyn, how do you see place in your fiction?
There’s a chance to see them both again at Politics and Prose on Friday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. along with writers Alice McDermott and Marie Arana.
In the meantime, the ever-energetic Mary Kay has answered a few questions. Zuravleff (who also has her own Web site) is author of two novels, The Bowl Is Already Broken and The Frequency of Souls and the winner of many awards including the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Her frank, down-to-earth and intelligent answers had many of my friends saying afterward—I want to read her book!
I’m going to start with one of my favorite questions to ask other writers—and, when I can bear it, myself.
Carole: Why do you write?
Mary Kay: All my favorite sentences start with “What if?” and my writing is an attempt to follow these hypothetical questions to some satisfying conclusion. For some reason, "what if" is like a fuse that I must chase to see where it leads. I’m still surprised when the fuse leads into a maze or back to the starting point. In other words, the questions that matter provoke novels, lives, families—complex and rather disorderly systems, all.
Carole: The quote from Marie Howe’s poem, “The Meadow,” which you included in your Off the Page bio, is very beautiful. Why do you think it's so important to you? What exactly do you get out of it? The quote is:
"your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life."
Mary Kay: One of the major paradoxes as a writer is working through years and drafts to get at what you’ve always known. Or, quoting another part of Howe’s poem, “As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them.” How can that be so challenging? For me, make-believe stories about invented characters and imaginary situations scratch an itch that real life can’t reach. I need the pyrotechnics of expression—absurdity, language, structure—to clarify what I can’t quite access.
Carole: Can you talk about your current project?
Mary Kay: Lately, I’ve been writing short stories, and it has been a joy to be confined in the small, tight world of a story. After the unruly orchestral maneuvers of composing a novel, I feel as if I were singing in the shower. One clear voice can echo like crazy, and even the off-key song, lathered up and delivered with bluster, has its charm.
Dec. 11 -- Off and On
This was not at all the day I planned. But then again, it was.
Yesterday--Dec. 10, 2007, when Off the Page was officially published--was filled with technological error. Or terror.
First, forty-seven emails that I wrote on the plane for sending once back on earth refused to go out on Monday morning. And so I spent hours (yes, hours) copying them into Yahoo’s Web mail, cutting and pasting and reformatting hundreds of e-mail addresses to announce the day's “Off the Page” interview with Marie Arana and Richard Bausch-—the kick-off to the book.
All afluster, I began my washingtonpost.com chat. About fifteen minutes in, I realized my name was showing up instead of Richard Bausch’s. As far as the world knew, the online audience was asking Bausch questions, and I was answering them in crusty-sounding man-speak.
Washington, DC: Why do you write?
Carole Burns: Fast answer: It beats coal mining.
Later, heading off to my friend’s, I realized I had no coins to call her when I reached her Metro station. I dialed collect. When told to hit 1 for instructions in English or 2 for Spanish, I aimed my finger for 1 but slid against 2.
I knew just enough Spanish to say “Carole” when asked my name. But poor Holly took French in high school.
Ring, Ring. “Carole, are you at Friendship Heights?”
“Usted ha alcanzado Verizon Special Services. Una persona trata de alcanzarle hacer--”
“Carole?”
“--una llamada a cobro revertido. Su nombre es Carole. ¿Aceptará usted las cargas? Para aceptar, para decir si o--”
A confused Holly finally cried out: “This is Spanish!”
But then again, the day was perfect. Because behind all this ridiculous confusion—at the day’s center--was what has made Off the Page, for me, such a joy: listening to writers.
Bausch’s name did begin appearing, and Arana’s had been showing up all along. Arana admitted she has to play the fool when writing fiction; Bausch says he writes because he loves it.
It’s best in their words.
Question: Do non-writers enjoy reading what writers say about writing?
Marie Arana: A reader is as much a participant in a book as a writer, I feel. What was it that Alvaro Mutis once said? "To read a book is to be born again. You enter another mind's world and yet you are creating it yourself, in your own imagination."
Which says to me that I would be fascinated in writers' answers about their work, whether or not I were a writer myself. Reading is such a collaborative act, no?
Richard Bausch: Well, I'm not a non-writer (yet--gulp) but I recall that when I was very young and an avid reader and not dreaming I would ever put pencil to paper, I was also completely enthralled by every single comment I ever encountered by a writer about the work. And I never forgot one thing, not one slight dropped comment about the whole thing that I ever heard or read.
Indeed.
The mojitos I had that night, finally celebrating, were fabulous. But not as fitting, not as memorable (especially after the third mojito!) as Marie Arana and Richard Bausch, talking about their art.
Yesterday--Dec. 10, 2007, when Off the Page was officially published--was filled with technological error. Or terror.
First, forty-seven emails that I wrote on the plane for sending once back on earth refused to go out on Monday morning. And so I spent hours (yes, hours) copying them into Yahoo’s Web mail, cutting and pasting and reformatting hundreds of e-mail addresses to announce the day's “Off the Page” interview with Marie Arana and Richard Bausch-—the kick-off to the book.
All afluster, I began my washingtonpost.com chat. About fifteen minutes in, I realized my name was showing up instead of Richard Bausch’s. As far as the world knew, the online audience was asking Bausch questions, and I was answering them in crusty-sounding man-speak.
Washington, DC: Why do you write?
Carole Burns: Fast answer: It beats coal mining.
Later, heading off to my friend’s, I realized I had no coins to call her when I reached her Metro station. I dialed collect. When told to hit 1 for instructions in English or 2 for Spanish, I aimed my finger for 1 but slid against 2.
I knew just enough Spanish to say “Carole” when asked my name. But poor Holly took French in high school.
Ring, Ring. “Carole, are you at Friendship Heights?”
“Usted ha alcanzado Verizon Special Services. Una persona trata de alcanzarle hacer--”
“Carole?”
“--una llamada a cobro revertido. Su nombre es Carole. ¿Aceptará usted las cargas? Para aceptar, para decir si o--”
A confused Holly finally cried out: “This is Spanish!”
But then again, the day was perfect. Because behind all this ridiculous confusion—at the day’s center--was what has made Off the Page, for me, such a joy: listening to writers.
Bausch’s name did begin appearing, and Arana’s had been showing up all along. Arana admitted she has to play the fool when writing fiction; Bausch says he writes because he loves it.
It’s best in their words.
Question: Do non-writers enjoy reading what writers say about writing?
Marie Arana: A reader is as much a participant in a book as a writer, I feel. What was it that Alvaro Mutis once said? "To read a book is to be born again. You enter another mind's world and yet you are creating it yourself, in your own imagination."
Which says to me that I would be fascinated in writers' answers about their work, whether or not I were a writer myself. Reading is such a collaborative act, no?
Richard Bausch: Well, I'm not a non-writer (yet--gulp) but I recall that when I was very young and an avid reader and not dreaming I would ever put pencil to paper, I was also completely enthralled by every single comment I ever encountered by a writer about the work. And I never forgot one thing, not one slight dropped comment about the whole thing that I ever heard or read.
Indeed.
The mojitos I had that night, finally celebrating, were fabulous. But not as fitting, not as memorable (especially after the third mojito!) as Marie Arana and Richard Bausch, talking about their art.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
