{"id":108332,"date":"2017-06-20T11:09:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T15:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=108332"},"modified":"2024-07-08T13:46:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T17:46:18","slug":"novelist-elizabeth-strout-interviewed-by-bates-college-president-spencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/06\/20\/novelist-elizabeth-strout-interviewed-by-bates-college-president-spencer\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Novelist Elizabeth Strout \u201977 interviewed by President Spencer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big Reunion crowd who heard Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning author Elizabeth Strout \u201977<\/a> interviewed by President Clayton Spencer on June 10 was a Strout-savvy group.<\/p>\n

As Spencer welcomed the gathering to the Fireplace Lounge of Commons, she asked how many had read one of the novelist\u2019s books. Nearly every hand shot up. \u201cGreat, then we\u2019re all speaking the same language,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n

For those not yet fluent with Strout, it\u2019s helpful to know something about her approach to writing before we begin this Spencer\u2013Strout Q&A.<\/p>\n

While her novels have the usual beginnings, middles, and endings, Strout does not create her works in that linear way. Instead, writing by hand, she fills sheets of paper with various scenes \u2014 moments, dialogue, vignettes \u2014 as they come to her.<\/p>\n

Those sheets end up all over her large kitchen table. \u201cI am a very messy worker,\u201d she wrote in an essay for The Guardian<\/em> last March. \u201cI push these scenes around our table…and over time I realize which scenes are connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"President<\/a>

President Spencer and Elizabeth Strout ’77 talk with audience members after their interview.(Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Strout and her husband, Jim Tierney (a former Maine attorney general), split their time between New York City and Brunswick. The novelist was on campus for her 40th Reunion.<\/p>\n

The characters in Anything Is Possible<\/em> are connected to the characters in My Name Is Lucy Barton<\/em>. Did you know as you were writing Lucy Barton<\/em> that this was lurking in the wings?<\/h5>\n

Yes. As I was hearing and writing the conversations that Lucy Barton and her mother were having in the hospital, I would think about [the character of] Kathie Nicely. \u201cShe came to a bad end….But what did happen to Kathie Nicely?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I would move over and write scenes about what Kathie Nicely ended up becoming. Then I would write different scenes about what happened to Mississippi Mary. So when I was done with Lucy Barton<\/em>, I realized that I almost had another book.<\/p>\n

There are many parts of this book where the scenes are just exquisitely drawn. You write this about Kathie Nicely\u2019s daughter Patty: \u201cShe parked, checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror, gave her hair a bounce with her hand, and then heaved herself from the car.\u201d<\/h5>\n

I can\u2019t always remember writing a scene \u2014 I just write all the time, and a lot of it gets thrown away. But I do remember writing that particular scene, and I think I initially wrote only that \u201cShe heaved herself from the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I went back and thought, \u201cNo, no, no. This is Patty Nicely. Let\u2019s think about this. Let\u2019s clarify this. Let\u2019s really get in there and be<\/em> Patty. She\u2019s going to check her lipstick. She\u2019s going to give her hair a little bounce.\u201d That was a rewrite.<\/p>\n

As a writer, it seems you\u2019re either this authoritative narrator, or the characters and their conversations are carrying the action forward. You\u2019re never in between. How do you think about that?<\/h5>\n

I don\u2019t think that I do think about it. At this point in my writing career, I have settled into a situation where I can write scenes<\/em>. I always write by scenes, and I never write anything from beginning to end.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t write a story from beginning to end. I don\u2019t write a book from beginning to end. And I almost don\u2019t write a scene from beginning to end. But, I will sit and start a scene, or a piece of a scene. I\u2019ve learned how to do that, so that it will have a heartbeat to it.<\/p>\n

At Bates, were you a theater major involved in English? Or an English major involved in theater?<\/h5>\n

I was a theater major who switched to English in the last year \u2014 because I realized that I could read more if I was an English major.<\/p>\n

Is there any line we can draw from your theater experience here to how you write about scenes?<\/h5>\n

I just loved theater, and I still love theater. The classes I took with [Dana Professor of Theater] Marty Andrucki were wonderful. I loved those classes: Tennessee Williams, Clifford Odets, Eugene O\u2019Neill. I would read those plays with so much interest. My ear might have been beginning training itself for a certain kind of dialogue, or certain use of dialogue.<\/p>\n

What did your English classes contribute to this mix?<\/h5>\n

In my freshman year, I was just 17 years old. I never graduated from high school because I didn\u2019t like high school, so I left. And I got into Bates. I never figured out how I go into this place, but I did and I am enormously grateful for that.<\/p>\n

\"web-170610_Elizabeth_Strout_Clayton_Spencer_0048\"<\/a>

“I am really interested in time and place,” Strout tells her audience. “We all come from a place. And we all come from a certain time in history. And those two factors determine much of what happens to us.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

My freshman year, I had Jim Hepburn, chair of the English department, for a class on short stories. I read Winesburg, Ohio<\/em>, by Sherwood Anderson. And I could not believe <\/em>that such a thing could be done with human language.<\/p>\n

Jim Hepburn saw me as a writer, which was so important.<\/p>\n

Even in that first semester?<\/h5>\n

Yes. He once gave me a B on a term paper, and I went to him and said, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t I get an A?\u201d He said, \u201cYou know, I don\u2019t think I want to bother teaching you how to write term papers. I don\u2019t think it would be good for you. So, every time there\u2019s a term paper due, give me a short story. It will be our little secret.\u201d<\/p>\n

Really?<\/h5>\n

Really. And I took every class I could with him.<\/p>\n

Your books are often about the leavers and the stayers, and there\u2019s not much in between. In this book, there\u2019s a category of leavers that seem especially complicated: mothers who leave.<\/h5>\n

Yes, in this book there are a lot of mothers who leave.<\/p>\n

I am really interested in time and place. We all come from a place. And we all come from a certain time in history. And those two factors determine much of what happens to us.<\/p>\n

This book is about women for whom, in that time and in that place, it was unusual to leave. Mississippi Mary leaves after many, many years, but in her generation it was still not something that women did. Kathie Nicely, if she had waited 20 years, would have been fine, but in that time in history, you just didn\u2019t leave your husband. That was what I was interested in exploring in this book.<\/p>\n

Have you thought about a more permissive, contemporary structure regarding staying and leaving?<\/h5>\n

Not yet.<\/p>\n

Where do you get your character names?<\/h5>\n

Oh, the names. They are so fun \u2014 and very, very important. If they are not the right names, the story won\u2019t work. I realized that way back with Amy and Isabelle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Many of the names are from my family. I had a great aunt Olive, and the name Burgess is a family name [The Burgess Boys<\/em> was her fourth novel]. A Kitteridge was married to a family member. So there are lots of names to mix and match. Otherwise, the names just come to me: \u201cThat\u2019s right, that\u2019s what she is. Let\u2019s call her Patty. That\u2019s perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

You mention time and place. I\u2019m curious what got you from a kind of romantic Maine with a dark side to the Amgash, Ill., of My Name Is Lucy Barton<\/em> and Anything Is Possibl<\/em>e.<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n

It was freeing to write about the Midwest after writing about Maine, but it\u2019s a similar cultural section of society that I\u2019m writing about. When I was just playing around with scenes for My Name Is Lucy Barton \u2014<\/em> writing scenes, messing them around on my table \u2014 I wasn\u2019t sure that I wanted to write the book. I wasn\u2019t sure if I was going to write the book.<\/p>\n

Then, as I realized that her mother had never been on a plane before, I thought, \u201cOh.\u201d And then it just came to me: She comes from the sky. I saw sky, tons of sky, all around, the only kind that you can get in the Midwest. Then I saw this very tiny house, surrounded with sky.<\/p>\n

\"Audience<\/a>

Audience members react as President Spencer interviews Elizabeth Strout ’77. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Once I made that decision, my husband and I made a few trips out there to make sure, for example, that I had the soybeans at the right height at that particular time of year. And we went out in November and had Thanksgiving at the Congregational Church just the way Lucy Barton\u2019s family does.<\/p>\n

Do you consider yourself a visual person? And is being visual necessary to being a good fiction writer?<\/h5>\n

I can only speak for myself, but I do see a lot. It is important for me. And it\u2019s important to hear.<\/p>\n

How do these novels come to you? You\u2019ve said that Olive Kitteridge came to you.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Yeah, she just showed up.<\/p>\n

Can you describe that?<\/h5>\n

I was unloading the dishwasher, or loading it \u2014 something with that dishwasher. And I saw this woman standing by a picnic table. And we\u2019ve never had a picnic table in our family. But there she was, standing by the picnic table. And I could hear her, inside her head, thinking, \u201cIt\u2019s high time everybody left.\u201d And I thought, \u201cOh, I better get that down right away.\u201d And I did. And that was Olive.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the process by which you were led to unpack all the threads of Olive for the book?<\/h5>\n

Olive shows up, and I realize right away that this will be a book of stories about Olive. I understood what the form was going to be, and that\u2019s important. Then I begin to understand right away that Olive will be too much to take on every page. The reader will need a break. I\u2019ll need a break.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so interested in different points of view, and that\u2019s fun to do in a small town. I just love how, in a small town, we think we know someone, but we only know them this<\/em> way, and someone else knows them that<\/em> way. That was interesting to me, initially, as a way to give readers a break. But then as I made these characters I realized that they are living people who happen to know Olive in their own way.<\/p>\n

How is what you\u2019re doing in Anything Is Possible <\/em>different or the same from Olive Kitteridge?<\/em><\/h5>\n

It\u2019s almost an inverse. The Lucy Barton who connects these characters isn\u2019t really present except for one story. She\u2019s the thread \u2014 that connection and how they overlap \u2014 but there\u2019s no \u201cOlive force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coming out of the unlikely mouth of Vicky, Lucy\u2019s sister, in this book is the sarcastic reference to the \u201ctruthful sentence.\u201d Lucy Barton talks about that also. It seems that you are on an inexorable quest for the truthful sentence.<\/h5>\n

It is essential, and I\u2019ve always understood it to be essential. For years I kept thinking, \u201cWhat is a truthful sentence?\u201d I was trying to write as truthfully as possible but it was not sounding truthful.<\/p>\n

It took years \u2014 and years and years \u2014 of practice and rewriting to know that this is a truthful sentence and that is a truthful sentence \u2014 to understand it intuitively.<\/p>\n

Is a truthful sentence saying exactly what you mean? Or does it mean saying exactly what the character means to say?<\/h5>\n

The whole thing. It\u2019s hard to describe what a truthful sentence is; it\u2019s a very awkward thing to discuss. But it has to have all those things in it, and it has to be as direct…as…possible.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

“I think I was born with intuition,” Elizabeth Strout ’77 said. “I could understand things, like about the human heart, from a very young age.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Your writing has the precision of an X-Acto knife. When we read a scene, are we reading the 23rd written draft? Or do your draft 22 times in your head and put it on paper once?<\/h5>\n

It\u2019s something in between, and that\u2019s because I write in patches. Some of those patches come out like the scene of Patty heaving herself from the car. Then there are other scenes that I will rewrite a lot more. Then there are some scenes at this point that come out almost directly.<\/p>\n

“In my head, it\u2019s like I have a bolt of material unfolded on my table, and on it I can see a constellation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because I do write in a such a messy way, the problem is getting all the scenes to connect. It\u2019s like, \u201cHmm, OK, I\u2019ve got all these things that are sort of truthful, now what am I going to do?\u201d I have to make sure I can get them together to present to the reader. But that\u2019s a separate section of writing.<\/p>\n

You make the reader your co-conspirator in actually knowing more than the characters. So when Angelina is visiting her mother, Mary, in Italy, she says, \u201cYou want to hear a little gossip?\u201d You almost create an omniscient reader.<\/h5>\n

That was fun having them gossip.<\/p>\n

In my head, it\u2019s like I have a bolt of material unfolded on my table, and on it I can see a constellation. There\u2019s Charlie. There\u2019s Patty. There\u2019s Mary. I know that they will all connect, so when something comes up \u2014 like when Angelina says to Mary, \u201cYou want to hear some gossip?\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s perfect. There we go. It ties it in.<\/p>\n

Do you have a daily routine?<\/h5>\n

I\u2019ve always been able to write anywhere, which is helpful. My first choice is to have breakfast and get my husband out of the apartment. And then I work for three or four hours and put lunch off as long as possible. That\u2019s my favorite way to work.<\/p>\n

Do you go back to the writing after lunch?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

That\u2019s a tricky thing. If I leave the table thinking, \u201cThat was a good day of work,\u201d then I\u2019m always tempted to look at it again. And if I look at it again and think, \u201cThat\u2019s was not such a good day of work,\u201d then I feel anxious.<\/p>\n

You never talk about a book in process. Why?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In my mind, there is something furtive about writing. For me, it needs to build pressure. And if I talk about what I\u2019m working on, it leaks the pressure.<\/p>\n

I have friends who are writers, and they will tell me, \u201cI\u2019m writing a book about this, this, and this.\u201d I\u2019ll think, \u201cThen why are you going to write it? You just told me.\u201d Then they write exactly what they told me they were going to write, which I don\u2019t understand because I don\u2019t know what it is I\u2019m going to write until I write it.<\/p>\n

But even if I know what I\u2019m working on, I\u2019m not going to tell.<\/p>\n

So we can assume you won\u2019t be describing your next book.<\/h5>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

Is there one?<\/h5>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

Last question: Is it hard to write in this distracting moment in our national life?<\/h5>\n

Yes, it is.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a serious question.<\/h5>\n

I know it is a serious question, and my answer is a serious answer. I have to just keep my head down and tell myself that this is my job, that I will continue to try to do what I can to reach people with my work.<\/p>\n

You have a \u201cnow more than ever\u201d sense.<\/h5>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

Spencer then invited audience questions, and the Strout-savvy crowd offered some good ones.<\/em><\/p>\n

How do you believe your creativeness was created?<\/h5>\n

Honestly, I think I was born with my creativity in me. And I think I was born with intuition. I could understand things even though I didn\u2019t understand much about the world. I could understand things, like about the human heart, from a very young age.<\/p>\n

Have you ever thought about writing a play?<\/h5>\n

I have never thought about writing a play \u2014 but I have thought about why I haven\u2019t thought about writing a play. As a writer, I understood right away that writing a play would require other people to partake \u2014 you need actors, you need to be involved in a whole network of people \u2014 and it\u2019s not in my nature to do that. I\u2019ve always thought of myself as a novelist.<\/p>\n

At Bates, it\u2019s not that reading the plays tempted me so much, but I really, really, enjoyed them. It\u2019s an entirely separate thing to be a playwright.<\/p>\n

What writers are your major influences?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Alice Munro and William Trevor. They are my bookends. Munro writes with such authority, and Trevor has such a lightness of touch. He can flip over a sentence in two seconds to show you what\u2019s underneath it. In their different ways they have been enormously helpful to me.<\/p>\n

How did your early experiences in Maine affect your writing and what you write about?<\/h5>\n

I do think I was born with a creative gene, but I could\u2019ve sat there my whole life and not done anything with it. My mother was an enormous influence in my becoming a writer. She would tell me, \u201cWrite down what you did today,\u201d and she would buy me notebooks with those big lines. So I was always writing at a young age.<\/p>\n

“A writer has to have those inner resources because it\u2019s a lonely job.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was a tremendous amount of solitude in my childhood, and that was a good thing for me as a writer because it built inner resources from a young age. I have relied on those resources. A writer has to have those inner resources because it\u2019s a lonely job.<\/p>\n

My mother is very intuitive. We were sitting in a hotel room in Maine, and she looks out the window at a couple and says, \u201cOh, second wife.\u201d And I said, \u201cMom, how can you tell it\u2019s his second wife?\u201d And I went over, looked out, and said, \u201cOh, second wife.\u201d We\u2019ve always been that way. She was always a part of my seeing things.<\/p>\n

Do you consider yourself a female writer?<\/h5>\n

No, I don\u2019t consider myself a female writer. I just consider myself a writer.<\/p>\n

Do you think about different gendered characters differently?<\/h5>\n

For me, from my point of view as a writer, it has always been equally easy to inhabit a man as a woman \u2014 if it\u2019s the right man. Or the right woman. It has to be a character I can go into. It has never felt any more difficult to go into the character of a man than a female.<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth<\/a>

Elizabeth Strout ’77 signs a copy of Anything Is Possible<\/em> for a Reunion-goer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Jim Hepburn is quoted as saying to you, at graduation, \u201cOnce you’re out of here, nobody will care whether or not you write another word.\u201d How did you take that?<\/h5>\n

At the time I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s not very nice.\u201d It still wasn\u2019t nice. But it was true, absolutely true. He was just letting me know the truth of the situation. He was just making an observation.<\/p>\n

And nobody cared for years and years and years and years.<\/p>\n

That has always been my driving force: What does it feel like<\/em> to be another person?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had lots of \u201cjob jobs\u201d after college, but didn\u2019t give up on being a writer. I went to law school. I had a social conscience and I thought I would do good things in the day, and write at night. I was sadly misinformed. I left law school and had \u201cjob jobs.\u201d I worked in a department store but I couldn\u2019t sell very well, and they had me selling mattresses by the end.<\/p>\n

I went back to law school and practiced for six months, but I was a very bad lawyer.<\/p>\n

Then I got stories published in literary magazines, and when we moved to New York City, the J.D. degree was considered a graduate degree, and I could teach at Manhattan Community College, and it was wonderful.<\/p>\n

The New Yorker<\/em> said, in simple terms, that you can take the girl out of Maine, but you can\u2019t take Maine out of the girl. Since we\u2019re in Maine, what is it that you carry with you, when you are in New York City, from this northern, mostly white, rural state?<\/h5>\n

For me, it is a worldview that is not a worldview. It is the opposite of a worldview, actually. It is the intimate parts of a culture that is not particularly expressive, and so what is going on? What is it? What is it? What is it that they are thinking and feeling or experiencing?<\/p>\n

That has always been my driving force: What does it feel like<\/em> to be another person? I am just so Maine whether I\u2019m in a New York City apartment or not.<\/p>\n

I think there are other people who could have come from a background like mine and actually who could have done a better job pretending not to have been from that background. There are people who can make changes that I can\u2019t. I\u2019m just a girl from Maine. That\u2019s just who I am.<\/p>\n

Do you spend time on characters who don\u2019t work out?<\/h5>\n

I throw them out, and it happens all the time.<\/p>\n

I put a lot of time into Ethel, but she just didn\u2019t work. That\u2019s just part of my job: to try to find people. Olive showed up, but they don\u2019t all show up. But with others, I have to find out if they can do it, and if I can do them. It doesn\u2019t bother me if they don’t work. I just think, \u201cLet\u2019s get someone in here who can do the job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning author talks about her approach to writing, being an English major at Bates, and how being a Mainer has given her the “opposite of a worldview.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":108347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7,11010,133],"tags":[10935,3212,11373],"class_list":["post-108332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-arts","category-creativity","tag-clayton-spencer","tag-elizabeth-strout","tag-reunion-2017"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108332"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149651,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108332\/revisions\/149651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}