Michelle Latiolais is the author of the new work of fiction She. Her other books include the short story collection Widow and the novel A Proper Knowledge. She is an English professor and codirector of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.
Q: How did you come up with
the structure of the book, which features one character's story alternating
with those of other characters?
A: I only know one writer who
ever worked off outlines and knew precisely how the structure of a book would
unfold, and that was John Williams of Stoner, Butcher’s Crossing and Augustus
fame. He made extensive outlines and character sketches.
But my influences are pretty
obvious here: Winesburg, Ohio, In Our Time, The Wild Palms, and I’ve talked about
this, but I was realizing the other day in answering the question of what books
I admire most in the world that Last Exit to Brooklyn continues to be a huge
influence on me. That’s a book with several sections or stories linked by
place, and certain characters, but not completely, and certainly not slavishly.
In hearing more and more
about the Orlando, Florida, shooting, Omar Mateen, I kept thinking about
“Strike” in Last Exit. Powerful, painful writing that articulates a certain
psyche, and I think might even get at the confusion of the wife, her
contradictory statements.
So, I’m perhaps far afield of
my own writing, but we hear over and over this search for a motive, or the
question of whether or not “the shooter” was mentally ill. Read some serious
fiction folks; you’ll hear the news, the real news. DeLillo’s Libra, brilliant,
even Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins. Listen to that.
Q: Did you know how the book
would end before you started writing, or did you make many changes along the
way?
A: It’s not that I made many
changes so much as I originally ended the book with “Promotion,” and that was a
kind of metafictional gesture back at the reading process, or what the book is
now, filtered through the reader’s reading, et cetera.
Too clever by half, dumb, dee
u em, as my sister would say. And Elizabeth Tallent said, hey goofball, you
can’t end the book without us knowing where she lays her head that night,
can’t, can’t, can’t, and I do everything Elizabeth tells me to do, because I’d
be a fool not to, and John Glusman also very much wanted a closing section of
She.
So, I wrote that after the
book was taken. I love that phrase, “after the book was taken,” as though it
got ravished off a Récamier chaise longue!
Q: The book takes place in
Los Angeles. How important is setting to you in your writing, and could this
have taken place somewhere other than L.A.?
A: Now Deborah, are you
really asking me that question. As my colleague Ron Carlson says to students,
“nothing happens nowhere,” and if the writing could happen anywhere, are there
sentient characters on the page? Or perhaps the writing takes “place” in a
deprivation chamber?
Of course, now, I suppose, we
have a lot of stuff happening online, or in the ether, that place, or realm, or
domain, love it, domain, technology’s feudalism!
But being serious, that is an
amazing arena of freedom for some people, and for a kind of artistic
collaboration, and I respect that, but I’d be lying if I also didn’t say that
one of the pre-eminent reasons I go to books, serious books, is to be in the
presence of a single mind thinking or creating singularly; I want to read the
emanation of a single mind at work; character matters to me; product is product
and I’m much less interested in that than I am in something that has really tussled
itself into the world. I know why product makes it into the world. So what.
Q: How was the book's title
chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: It was just always the
title. She. Some things in writing have squatter’s rights. I think it was the
poet Juan Delgado who I first heard say that, or tease someone about something
that writer was holding onto in a piece of writing. “Hey,” Juan said, “it doesn’t
have squatter’s rights.” I always loved that, but She just always had squatter’s
rights.
Plus, my late husband always
refused to introduce me as “my wife,” because he said that people then rarely
if ever asked any subsequent question. “Wife” seemed definition enough to
people, and that angered him.
So, something in my thinking
about the word “she” being both an erasure and mystery at the same time, though
this book is not autobiographical. Pronouns also just keep us closer in on the
character. At least I think they do.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: A cherry tarte for guests
tomorrow night; I just made the pastry dough, and tossed it in the fridge. I
need to walk up to the world’s most expensive grocery store and buy some
hazelnut oil for a dressing for green beans, and I was thinking maybe I’ll just
roast the asparagus with olive oil and lemon. I don’t know. I’m thinking . . .
you can smell the burning.
If I was cool, I’d say I was
Tweeting something; I just always find people are hungry afterwards, though.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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