July 10

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
July 10, 1871: Marcel Proust born.

July 9

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
July 9, 1887: Samuel Eliot Morison born.

Q&A with Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler, photo by Beth Gwinn

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of the newly reissued story collection Black Glass. Her other books include the novels We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Q: Black Glass was first published in 1998. Why is it being reissued now, and do you think your writing has changed at all in the intervening years?

A: Putnam offered to bring the book out again and I was delighted by the offer.  In general, I don't look back at my work. Too afraid I'll see things I wish I could change.  So it's been an unfamiliar experience, but has gone better than I'd feared. 

It's a bit of a time capsule -- I see what I was obsessed with, what I was angry about, what had a hold on me back then. Those things are different in their details, but not so different in their general outlines. 

Which is to say that I'm still a very political person; I'm still very interested in families, though my focus has switched a bit from parents to siblings. The voice is still mine. There I am! Younger for sure, but recognizably me.

Q: The stories in Black Glass are set in a variety of time periods, often within the same story, and some of the stories feature appearances by famous characters like Carry Nation, Tonto, and Queen Elizabeth. What do you see as the role of history and myth in this collection?

A: History and myth -- sometimes my own, but mostly not -- are where I most often find my stories. I'm particularly interested in revision, stories I can come at from another angle, think about in a different way. And I like the scope using these larger matters provides. 

I always want my stories to acknowledge in some way the fact that, though they are small, they take place in a large world and that the large world does not care about my stories, but is busy with its own stories.

Q: How was the title "Black Glass" chosen for the story, and for the collection overall?

A: My editor and I chose "Black Glass" as the first and the titular story together. In the story, it is supposed to evoke the obsidian toad which makes an appearance and also the demon drink of Carry Nation's campaigns. 

For the collection, I also like the hint of mirrors, but not reliable reflections, something darker and dimmer than that. The imperfection of human perception, the echoes of "through a mirror, darkly."

Q: You've focused on Jane Austen in your work. What influence has she had on your own writing, and which other authors have influenced you?

A: I love Austen for her humor and her clear-eyed, unsentimental approach. I love Ursula Le Guin for her imagination and power; I love Angela Carter for her intricate, complicated detail; I love Maxine Hong Kingston for her voice and vivacity; I love Robertson Davies for his clarity and wit. 

With role models like these, I can never be accused of not aiming for the stars.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm working on a story about the ‘60s. With changelings in it.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Chantal Thomas

Chantal Thomas is the author of the new novel The Exchange of Princesses, which looks at two 18th century marriages between French and Spanish royal children. She has written many other books, including the novel Farewell, My Queen.

Q: Why did you decide to write about these particular princesses, and why as a novel rather than nonfiction?

A: This novel follows Les Adieux à la reine (Farewell, My Queen), and Le testament d’Olympe. My novels “progress” by going back in time, and Louis XV appears as a character in both. In Le testament d’Olympe he is 50 years old.

So I read a lot about him and was struck by the loneliness of his childhood and by the episode, never recounted, of his first marriage as a child to a Spanish princess, his first cousin.

This is how I came to discover Anna Maria Victoria and Louise-Elisabeth, through Saint-Simons’s Memoirs. I was inspired by the situation of these two very young princesses, the mixing of courtly splendour with the brutality of their destinies. 

For that particular tale nonfiction would have been rather dry. The story can be told in one paragraph (and this is in fact the way it is told in history books).

Only fiction makes people and places concretely and sensually exist, with their complexity and ambiguities. Fiction puts the reader in sympathy with the characters and lets us realize, and feel, that the past is part of ourself.

Q: How did you research the novel, and what surprised you most in the course of your research?

A: I of course read history books, but also newspapers of that time, memoirs, and correspondences. I looked at paintings and clothes, and spent a lot of time in Versailles and in the Spanish castles (El Escorial, for instance) where my characters had lived.

What surprised me most were the few letters written by Louise Elisabeth, the future queen of Spain. They are full of mistakes, almost incoherent, but they clearly express that she is lost and in despair. I read them in the archives of Madrid and was very moved.

Q: The princesses and their husbands were children--one of them only 4 years old. How were royal children treated during this period?

A: They had many servants and were thus never alone. A governor or a governess took care of them. Usually they did not have an intimate relationship with their parents. They were treated in ceremonies as future kings or queens, and they spent a lot of their time – still, stiff, silent – in religious ceremonies.

Q: How were relations at that point between France and Spain?

A: They were calm. The marriages were a way to maintain and consolidate the peace.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A book on my childhood and on the place where I grew up: the little town of Arcachon, near Bordeaux. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

July 6

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
July 6, 1935: 14th Dalai Lama born.

Q&A with Marian Palaia

Marian Palaia is the author of the new novel The Given World. Her work has appeared in a publications including TriQuarterly and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She lives in San Francisco.

Q: How did you come up with your main character, Riley? 

A: Riley was originally a sort of version of me, for what was meant to be a stand-alone short story. It was never meant to be a novel (then, about 15 years ago), and Riley was simply a girl with a missing brother, working in a gas station and driving a beat-up Mustang convertible.

It wasn’t until I started working on my MFA at Madison that she began to show up in other places, and began to become more and more her own person. The more she became that, the better the story got. 

Q: Why did you decide to include the Vietnam War and its legacy as one of the main themes in the book? 

A: I grew up during that war, and its aftermath. I also lived in Vietnam for a time in the ‘90s, and have read dozens of books about it, in all its stages of existence.

It’s a fascinating place, and it was a fascinating time. I think my generation may have set the bar for ruffian behavior, and no generation has come along yet to match it. Whether or not that’s a good thing, I don’t know. 

Q: Did you know how the book would end before you started writing, or did you make many changes along the way? 

A: I had no idea how the book would end until I was about two-thirds of the way through it. I didn’t even know what the second chapter would be. I don’t write like that. I set out with a character and a situation, and just let it roll. 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you? 

A: My agent and I searched for a long time for a title. She really saw the book as one of redemption and hope (and I agree with her) and wanted the title to reflect that.

Poems are always a good place to look for sets of words that resonate and are beautiful, and when I found the Jane Hirshfield poem that opens the book, I said, “Oh, that’s it.”

“The given world, flaming precisely out of its frame.” Wow. The significance to me is this: we are each given “a world,” our own world, and then we have to learn how to live in it. It took me a long time to learn that, and it may have taken Riley even longer. 

Q: What are you working on now? 

A: I’m working on another novel, called “The Hello Kitty Justice League.” It has several story lines, but the Justice League is two women in western Montana burning down/blowing up math labs. It’s sort of “Thelma and Louise” meet “Walt White,” but not really, but, yeah, kind of. 

Q: Anything else we should know? 

A: A reiteration of sorts. It is a book about redemption. Yes, it does take Riley a very long time to get it together, but it isn’t as if she isn’t trying, and isn’t making progress all along (in fits and starts). That is the way it is for many people, and if you can’t scrounge up some empathy for the deeply wounded, this probably isn’t the book for you. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. This Q&A also appears on www.hauntinglegacy.com.

Q&A with Nina MacLaughlin

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of the new memoir Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter, which describes how she switched careers from journalism to carpentry. She is a former editor at the Boston Phoenix, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Q: Why did you decide to write this book, and how does writing complement carpentry for you?

A: I never anticipated I’d write a book about learning carpentry. About three years into the carpentry work, an editor got in touch about a book review I’d written, found out about the carpentry work I do, and the conversation went from there. It was very lucky, and there are still moments I can’t believe that things unfolded the way they did.

It turns out, for me, that writing and carpentry complement each other beautifully. After days or weeks in front of the computer screen writing, all I want to do is get back to building a deck or a set of bookcases.

And after some days at the saw or swinging a hammer, I start to get that itch to write. Putting my brain into my hands, not having to think about language and putting sentences together, is a welcome relief. And after physical work, it’s good to return to wrestling with sentences instead of cabinets.

Q: When you saw the ad, "Carpenter's Assistant: Women strongly encouraged to apply," what made you decide to apply?

A: If that posting had been looking for an electrician's assistant, or plumber's or plasterer's or roofer's, I would've skimmed right over it and not given it a second thought. There's something essential about carpentry, something that appealed to me, something practical, useful to learn and know.

I had no experience with the work. Zero. When I left my journalism job, I had a vague crave to do something a little more tangible, something away from the screen. When I saw this post, the immediate feeling was this is it. I will say, had there not been the “women strongly encouraged to apply,” I would not have had the courage to toss my hat in the ring.

Q: You note in the book that very few women work in carpentry. Why do you think that is, and do you think it's likely to change?

A: If you look at the statistics, the numbers don’t seem to be changing much; not many more women work in the trades now than in the ‘70s.

I think in part it’s the result of representation: when you don’t see women doing the work, it’s not going to feel like an option, not going to feel like a path to consider if no one you know, or know of, or see in your daily life is doing it.

I think it also has to do with some deep-rooted misconceptions. People – men and women – assume that it’s a hostile environment for women, that it’s rough and crude and condescending.

Maybe I’m lucky, maybe we work with good people, but I haven’t found that to be the case at all. It’s respectful, funny, relaxed. (I dealt with more hostility and condescension in my journalism job.)

Q: You write, "Five years with [your boss,] Mary, and the work still feels new." How do those five years compare with the years you spent in journalism, and what would you advise people who are unhappy in their career but nervous about making a big change?

A: The carpentry work still feels new in the sense that there is so much left to learn, and so much to improve on. I loved working for a newspaper. I loved the people I worked for and with. After a time, I couldn’t locate the satisfaction in the day-to-day hours spent scrolling and clicking. So far with the carpentry work, six years in now, the satisfactions remain and continue to deepen as I get better at the work.

In terms of advice for people looking to leave one career or job (or city or relationship or any life scenario that defines how you spend your time and energy): I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s going to be scary. It will feel overwhelming and daunting and frightening.

At some point – and trust yourself to know when this is – you have to stop thinking about it, stop the fretting, stop the planning, stop the second-guessing, put your hands in the air and take the step.

It took me over a year to summon up the courage to leave my job. And the following months were ugly. It wasn’t some quick-and-easy leap. These sorts of dismantlings are challenging, and because of that, possess the most potential.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Carpentry-wise, we just finished up a kitchen renovation, and are about to start a quick job lining a ceiling with cedar boards. Later in the summer, we’ll be building some decks, which I’m looking forward to a lot. And I’m about to start working on some end tables for a friend of mine.

Writing-wise, I’m working on an essay about seeing a dead body for the first time, a book review about the new collection of work by Shirley Jackson that’s coming out, and a longer project about the month of November.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb