Lori Carlson-Hijuelos is the author of the new memoir A Writing Marriage. It focuses on her marriage to the late writer Oscar Hijuelos. Her other books include the novel The Sunday Tertulia.
Q: Why did you decide to write this memoir?
A: In December 2013, my church, The Riverside Church in New York City, held a beautiful memorial service for Oscar. It was given two months after his death.
Following the service, an old friend of ours, Philip Graham, said to me, “You have to write about your life together, Lori.” In that moment, I knew I would. The marriage that Oscar and I created and cherished needed to be concretized for me on the page.
I wanted to leave behind our story so that Oscar’s readers could add to their understanding of his art and, also, his persona. And for purely selfish reasons, I needed to be able to hold our marriage in my hands. Not just remember it but touch it.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I did not really choose the title. The title resounded within me. And I liked it. I heard in my heart: Right. Write.
I suppose the title signifies two things. It refers to a marriage of writers who spent their days composing books. And, of course, it alludes to the unusual blending of fiction and nonfiction in memoir form, Oscar’s words from his unfinished novel and certain memories of mine--prompted by a cathedral workspace--of our life together.
Q: Why did you decide to incorporate excerpts from your husband’s novel Blue Antiquity into the memoir?
A: The scholar in me, the trained academic reader who was nurtured formally in a graduate school program years ago, wanted to try an approach to writing about marriage in a distinctive way.
I was amazed by Oscar’s pages of Blue Antiquity when I found them among the many boxes of materials in his studio, and I just knew they had to be published some way. Well, at least a selection of them, as the manuscript is about 2,000 pages long.
I began to analyze the manuscript as I read it, and it was during my emotional reading of the work that I understood I could comment in writing on the story he had been composing.
While I was pondering this idea, so too was my editor. We didn’t know we were thinking alike until we had a phone conversation about my proposal.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Writing this book had a religious impact on me as well as a forward-moving thrust upon me.
It has been more than a decade since Oscar’s sudden death from a heart attack in New York City’s Riverside Park, but the passing of those years did little to heal my spirit. Time was useless in lessening my pain. I have used the word “broken” to describe how I often felt after Oscar’s passing.
Writing my memoir in a cathedral library was an incredibly sacred experience. The subject matter of Oscar’s novel—often deeply spiritual and sometimes biblical—did not escape me as I wandered around in my soul, looking for connections to him, hoping to find him anew.
Oscar was SO present with me in First Lutheran Church in Jamestown, New York. God, Oscar, and I were making this book, I felt. I have found a certain peace in the writing of this memoir. I have moved forward. Finally.
I hope my readers are stirred by the faith, hope, and love in my book. Mainly, love.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am collaborating with a marvelous director, Andy Señor, Jr. on a musical of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I am hoping to teach a college course, somewhere, that explores the grandeur of Oscar’s fiction—using the newly released paperbacks published by Grand Central/Hachette Book Group. I really want to teach an in-depth seminar that honors my husband’s literature.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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