Ann Beattie, ONLOOKERS: Stories
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[1:03]And beauty is the author of onlookers stories and has been included in five O'Henry award
[1:09]collections in the best American short stories and the best American short stories of the
[1:12]century.
[1:13]She is the recipient of the Penn Malamud Award for Achievement in the short story.
[1:18]In 2005, she received the Ray Award for the short story.
[1:21]The former Edgar Allan Poe professor of literature and creative writing at the University
[1:25]of Virginia, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American
[1:30]Academy of Arts and Sciences.
[1:32]And her husband, Livyn Maine, Virginia, and Florida.
[1:35]Welcome and thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss
[1:38]onlookers and, you know, life in general.
[1:41]I'm very happy to be here.
[1:43]Well, why don't you start out by talking about your new collection and what made you
[1:48]where these stories came from as a group, why a new collection now and all of the backstory?
[1:55]I didn't know at first that they would be related stories that I must admit that I
[1:59]tinkered with a couple of them to, you know, put them in and make them fit in a way
[2:04]that would make the, you know, the theme of the book more, well, we would reinforce the theme
[2:09]of the book more.
[2:10]I started out writing just a couple of stories that were based in Charlottesville, Virginia,
[2:15]which is a town that I know pretty well.
[2:19]Back in 1975, it was my first job at UVA out of graduate school.
[2:24]And I've had a long history with the place.
[2:27]You know, of course, everybody in the nation knew Charlottesville was put on the map yet again
[2:32]by the United the right rally that happened in 2017 with the neo-Nazis and the counter-protesters
[2:40]and the terrible death of Heather Hire and so forth in Charlottesville.
[2:45]So as I began to write some stories based in Charlottesville, which is, again, just a place I feel
[2:50]very comfortable with.
[2:51]I know the terrain.
[2:52]I kind of know, you know, landmarks, things about the place.
[2:57]I mean, it's very easy as a writer to at least write a rough draft when you can just sort
[3:00]of in your mind, you know, bring those things forward visually and have settings for your
[3:05]stories.
[3:06]I realized that, you know, I couldn't run away from the current controversy about the monuments
[3:11]coming down.
[3:12]So I decided that that would be a unifying link of all these stories.
[3:17]So they're not linked so much in terms of one character following through in every
[3:21]single story or anything like that, but the fact that in the background of all the lives
[3:26]of the people in the whatever it is, eight or nine stories in the book are these contentious
[3:32]monuments no longer contentious removed as well they should have been, but they're gone.
[3:38]I really enjoyed the story about Alice Ott and her inheriting a home that from her boyfriend
[3:45]quote unquote, maybe who knows and how her family was at first, you know, not surprised
[3:53]so that was happening and then delighted to see it and all of that.
[3:59]So I really enjoyed that story in particular, but no, I'm glad.
[4:03]Well I named her Alice Ott because there's a, there are references to Alice in Wonderland
[4:08]throughout.
[4:09]So, you know, if you've read the story as you have, you know, you know, that they're
[4:12]at all these long ornaments that really be with the girl.
[4:16]In the story who is a girl who's this very young teenager when the story begins is looking
[4:22]back and remembering and thinking of how at first she misunderstood or misremembered what
[4:28]these things were in the yard and really it was kind of like an alternate Alice in Wonderland
[4:34]kingdom that her lover had created for her and suddenly she just flashed on that as a much
[4:39]older person, but you know, I wanted that to be there in the story and I named her Alice
[4:43]on purpose and she's a kind of, she certainly is a kind of latter day Alice in Wonderland.
[4:49]Oh, I love that.
[4:51]I also started reading more to say your collection of nonfiction, which is really great
[4:58]and I love how you talk about all the things that writers will do just to get out of the
[5:03]active writing, taking up photography or any of those other things, we doing anything, whatever
[5:12]it takes to get out of the deadlines or whatever, but also that you get to take different
[5:17]perspectives and take different moments in nonfiction, which happen and yet you can have
[5:23]these different ways into a story, even though it all just happened.
[5:28]So I don't know.
[5:29]Maybe you could talk a little about that because I found that so interesting and the way
[5:32]you were approaching your nonfiction and essays and how you even said maybe I can find
[5:36]it.
[5:38]Yeah, you're in the witness protection program and you said, I've had fun sneaking around
[5:41]mood lighting as a nonfiction writer.
[5:43]My friends hardly ever commented.
[5:45]I assume because they never even saw my nonfiction, you know, your fans really, I mean,
[5:50]joke on me, they didn't see it.
[5:52]I always, you know, you think, oh, well, it might take years, but so and so will eventually
[5:56]read this piece by me in a fairly obscure place.
[6:00]Let's say like a particularly like a journal about photography or something, that's
[6:03]something everybody is going to be likely to read on a weekly basis or anything.
[6:08]But I realized that there was just stunning silence through the years and in fact, I didn't
[6:13]quite realize myself until this book was published by Goodeen and Joshua Baudwell is the publisher
[6:19]and the book was really his idea.
[6:21]This was not an idea of mine.
[6:24]So he knew more about it probably than I did, but he told me that the first piece in
[6:28]the book went back, I think 30 years or 31 years.
[6:33]And that the most recent was a piece that I had published, I believe in narrative magazine
[6:38]just the year before the book came out, you know, so it really is a span of years in
[6:42]which I've been doing this.
[6:43]I've given people every opportunity and I've hidden so well that nobody ever, ever
[6:48]brings this up in conversation that I write nonfiction.
[6:50]Well, the secret is out now.
[6:52]Yeah.
[6:53]And in addition to nonfiction, of course, you do both short stories and novels and how
[7:03]did you originally get into writing anything at all?
[7:06]Like if you take me back to that and then as you decide which form to follow, which is
[7:11]like the easiest for you or how you decide even which to continue on or maybe there's
[7:17]just more to say for novels or how does that all work for you?
[7:20]Mm-hmm.
[7:21]And how did you get here?
[7:22]Very different.
[7:23]I mean, it's a hard question in a lot of ways because there are a lot of aspects to that
[7:26]question, really, as you realize.
[7:29]But I don't think I've ever, for example, started to write a short story and thought,
[7:33]oh, this is a novel.
[7:34]Okay.
[7:35]Or vice versa.
[7:36]Maybe I should.
[7:37]My novel, I should spare myself the misery and just, well, we're 13 or 14 pages or
[7:43]something like that.
[7:45]But usually, you know, I'm a short story writer.
[7:48]I mean, that's what I'm more easily suited to.
[7:50]The other things are a different kind of work.
[7:52]And I almost feel like you use a different part of your brain somehow when you're writing
[7:57]a novel, not just because it's longer in particular, but because you really have to, you
[8:04]know, if your talent is to try to be subtle and to embody things in the story that are
[8:09]not going to be didactic or too obvious for the reader, if they think, oh, that's kind
[8:14]of cool.
[8:15]I didn't realize Alice was named Alice, and then there's something else there about Alice
[8:19]in Wonderland, and should I think about that fairy tale as I'm reading the story?
[8:23]You know, I mean, that's the kind of writer I am.
[8:26]And I'm putting things there, and I'm hoping some of them will spark and we'll go
[8:30]off together.
[8:31]That's awfully hard over several hundred pages because you either hit it too hard or
[8:36]people lose it.
[8:37]They lose track of it over 300 pages.
[8:39]They're not going to lose track of it over a story that, you know, in manuscript is maybe
[8:43]25 pages.
[8:44]True.
[8:45]So that's hard, but to go back to your original question about how I ever got into this
[8:50]to begin with, in very few talents, in fact, I would, I mean, I would claim this to be
[8:56]almost like good luck that be fell me rather than even talent when I started out because
[9:01]I look back and I sort of wins and I think, well, it's wonderful that I didn't know
[9:06]a lot because I wasn't scared off of this as a possibility of what I could devote my
[9:13]life to.
[9:14]I didn't know other writers in those days.
[9:17]There were very few MFA programs, I mean, yes, there was the University of Iowa.
[9:22]There were other, a few other programs.
[9:25]Now as we know, it's almost like, you know, a lineup of things that most people do in terms
[9:31]of becoming a writer, which is to get an MFA.
[9:34]But I didn't do that.
[9:35]I didn't know other writers.
[9:37]I didn't have the good fortune when I was in graduate school to live in a house with a bunch
[9:40]of other people.
[9:42]You know, everybody had their thing.
[9:44]I mean, somebody was a really good guitar player.
[9:47]Somebody was a brilliant scholar.
[9:49]There was Anne, what was Anne doing?
[9:50]Anne was writing these weird little stories.
[9:52]You know, what did she write today and or did, you know, if they had a handle and who
[9:56]the character was, what did, you know, let's say, Sam, do today.
[10:00]what happened today.
[10:01]So these were just fun, they were amusements
[10:04]and I got so much reinforcement from my friends.
[10:07]And it kind of took over.
[10:09]I was at that time in graduate school in literature,
[10:12]which is what I have my graduate degree in,
[10:14]not creative writing.
[10:15]And I never took a creative writing class.
[10:18]Wow.
[10:18]It's hard to believe now.
[10:20]It was to show you, I guess you just don't need them.
[10:23]Oh, they're helpful in their way.
[10:25]No, I'm kidding.
[10:26]Oh, yeah.
[10:26]No, I actually love writing classes.
[10:28]I haven't taken a little while, but growing up
[10:32]and even after college and writing classes
[10:34]are something that it just never gets old.
[10:37]You can always learn.
[10:38]You can always improve.
[10:39]And no matter what age you are, you might as well go.
[10:42]And you'll get an out, there will be an output
[10:45]from the class, whether it's whatever the goal of it is.
[10:48]Like if you really want to write something,
[10:50]you could just take a class and have the deadlines.
[10:52]And like you have to do it.
[10:53]So right.
[10:55]So for the stories here, when you're writing
[10:57]and crafting a short story,
[10:58]even though it's not that many pages,
[10:59]like I've heard, I used to work with Lee Newman
[11:02]who writes short stories as well.
[11:04]And she said, oh, no, writing a short story
[11:05]is so much harder than a novel
[11:07]because you have to fit everything in.
[11:09]Everything is compressed and every sentence matters
[11:11]so much more.
[11:12]So when you're writing a story,
[11:14]how long does that take?
[11:16]Like do you still want an idea for a long time?
[11:18]Do the characters come to you first?
[11:20]Tell me about that process.
[11:22]Well, I certainly take her point.
[11:25]I mean, I certainly understand what she's saying.
[11:28]I don't think I look at it that way though.
[11:30]Personally speaking, you know, it's fun for me.
[11:33]And it's not fun ever to start out with something
[11:36]and be very enthusiastic and find out
[11:38]that it's just not having any sort of motor of its own,
[11:42]that it, you know, that you're forcing it in some way.
[11:45]You have to do that at the beginning.
[11:46]It was true.
[11:47]You have to just sort of state some things.
[11:48]You have to orient yourself
[11:50]so that you can orient the reader.
[11:52]But sometimes those things just aren't as lively
[11:54]as you hope when you actually look at them,
[11:56]you know, type there on your computer screen
[11:58]or however you write.
[12:00]And I throw those things away.
[12:01]I mean, I press delete.
[12:03]I would say I throw out, I mean, certainly 50%
[12:06]probably embarrassingly more than that of rough drafts.
[12:10]And I don't recycle anything
[12:12]because it's not about the pros.
[12:14]It's about the whole work.
[12:16]And again, we're not talking about a novel.
[12:18]We're talking about a short story.
[12:19]I mean, anywhere from 10 to 30 pages,
[12:21]something like that conventionally, you know,
[12:23]in manuscript.
[12:24]And if I have to press delete, I press delete
[12:26]and I start over and I think, well,
[12:28]please to my material, you know, give me some feedback.
[12:31]Do something on your own that's sort of like out of my control.
[12:35]That'll be the thrilling thing for me
[12:36]because then I feel like I'm already communicating
[12:40]with something personally.
[12:41]And I'm not just controlling something.
[12:43]I'm not just milling something into being.
[12:46]I mean, that's of course not what your friend was saying at all.
[12:49]But just in terms of my own writing method,
[12:51]I mean, I think it's that idea that things are shaping up
[12:55]on their own and they catch up with them
[12:58]that really motivates me and makes me able
[13:00]to write short stories more easily than novels.
[13:03]Wow.
[13:04]It's this whole subconscious being transcribed
[13:07]onto the page in a way.
[13:09]Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[13:10]Yeah.
[13:11]What do you like to read when you're not writing
[13:13]and do you prefer reading other short stories
[13:16]or do you just read everything,
[13:18]any lifelong favorites?
[13:20]Well, certainly there are a lot of short story writers
[13:23]I hugely admire.
[13:24]I mean, if anything is published by Deborah Eisenberg,
[13:27]I'm right on it.
[13:29]If anything is published by Joy Williams, I'm right on it.
[13:32]Craig Nova, who writes very few short stories actually
[13:36]known for other things as novels in particular.
[13:39]I think just in a story called The Prince,
[13:42]I think he wrote one of the half dozen best short stories
[13:46]I've ever read.
[13:47]I mean, so there are certainly names that I look for
[13:50]and I do subscribe to a lot of literary quarterlies
[13:53]and journals and read narrative magazine online
[13:56]and all that kind of stuff.
[13:58]If anybody puts anything in my hands,
[14:00]90% of the time I really do read it or try to read it.
[14:04]I just finished reading a really good book.
[14:06]I don't know if you've ever spoken to her,
[14:07]but it's called White Cat Black Dog.
[14:11]No, I have a black dog too, so there you go.
[14:15]Oh, yeah, that's a really, really good short story collection
[14:18]which itself is based on fairy tales.
[14:20]Some of them more usual to me like Snow White Rose read,
[14:24]others to me rather obscure fairy tales.
[14:27]But I didn't look at the models again.
[14:30]I just read the kind of revision into current time
[14:33]with certain sort of surreal aspects of them
[14:37]that I thought were really wonderful.
[14:38]That's by Kelly Langk, a White Cat Black Dog
[14:42]that I thought was terrific.
[14:44]I don't know if I know a collection.
[14:45]This is an exception to her.
[14:47]I don't often find things that I think, oh, this is great.
[14:50]I find one or two stories.
[14:51]But what's wrong with that?
[14:53]I mean, if you go and treat the same thing,
[14:55]it's what moves you in the book.
[14:56]It's not a value judgment.
[14:58]It's just really what you find moving.
[15:00]Yes.
[15:02]Of course, that's the trick of finding the right audience
[15:04]for any sort of book.
[15:06]Sure.
[15:06]There's that intangible element
[15:09]in how do you communicate that to the right people
[15:10]who need it?
[15:11]But yes, now I'm about to interview Kate Doyle about,
[15:14]it's called I meant it once, collection of stories
[15:16]by Kate Doyle coming out in July
[15:18]that's getting lots of attention.
[15:20]So anyway, it looks really good.
[15:23]So that's my first book.
[15:24]That's my next collection.
[15:26]I'll show it to you.
[15:28]Is it her first collection?
[15:30]I should know this.
[15:31]Obviously, I have not prepared this one yet at all.
[15:35]Let's see.
[15:36]I know so I only ask because I know someone named Kate Doyle,
[15:38]but I've heard short stories have been published
[15:41]in no tokens, electric, public space,
[15:43]split lip, wig leaf, and other publications.
[15:46]That looks like she hasn't had any other books yet.
[15:48]She's a former bookseller, originally from New England,
[15:52]public writing space fellow.
[15:53]She's lived in New York, Amsterdam, and Ithaca.
[15:55]No.
[15:56]Anyway, I'm not sure if it's the same Kate Doyle,
[15:59]but how interesting.
[16:00]What beautiful books you're showing me, by the way,
[16:02]they really look terrific.
[16:04]Oh, these ones are this one.
[16:05]Yeah, no.
[16:06]So when I open up Kate Doyle's book, yeah.
[16:08]Yeah, I mean, I could just spend the whole time
[16:10]showing you the covers of all these upcoming books.
[16:12]Yeah, I love visual things.
[16:14]Yeah, and then this is my last one.
[16:16]It's called Stripties.
[16:17]Very different, but it's about millennial lessons.
[16:19]Oh, that's cool.
[16:20]I like that.
[16:21]I thought that was really fun covered, too.
[16:23]And then, of course, there's this one called onlookers, you know?
[16:26]Oh, yeah, you know, we went back and forth so much.
[16:28]I love the concept of the cover.
[16:30]Absolutely loved it because, of course,
[16:32]when these huge, statue heavy, heavy statues were removed.
[16:36]Do you remember at the time,
[16:37]how many photographs there were in the New York Times?
[16:39]I mean, just everywhere, you're removal of them?
[16:42]I mean, it was like, it was like a post-mortem
[16:46]or something like that in a lot of ways.
[16:48]I mean, you felt like it was something between, you know,
[16:51]a lynching and I mean, it had so many connotations
[16:55]which you were looking at with the chains,
[16:57]lifting these things into the sky
[16:59]and being loaded off on flatbed trucks and so forth.
[17:03]But the idea that what you're seeing there is something
[17:06]disappearing and all that sky, you know,
[17:08]it's like there is new possibility.
[17:10]It's true when there is, it is a new world
[17:13]and you're sort of like watching the old world leave
[17:15]right on the cover, but we went back and forth
[17:18]because, you know, not to say that I have the ultimate say
[17:22]but I felt like, you know, if they cropped it just a little more
[17:25]if we had even less of the neck, maybe we didn't want
[17:29]to see the face at all.
[17:30]If it really was just the horse,
[17:31]like that was all that was left
[17:33]because the horse was never the problem.
[17:35]It was the man at the top at, right?
[17:37]Right, right.
[17:38]Yeah, so I loved love the cover.
[17:41]I love the cover too.
[17:42]It's so great.
[17:43]It's really so great.
[17:44]I like words.
[17:45]I mean, I really like the cropping, but whatever.
[17:47]I mean, no, I do too.
[17:49]I mean, I think they came up with the perfect thing to make,
[17:51]you know, a headless rider, rider on the horse.
[17:55]Yeah, definitely not a headless rider.
[17:57]That would not be the best thing.
[17:58]No, so what do you like to do when you're not writing
[18:02]and working and all that?
[18:04]What are some of your favorite writing and working?
[18:07]I work too much.
[18:08]And as you know from my essays, I go out and do things
[18:11]to avoid things.
[18:12]Yes, exactly to avoid what I shouldn't be doing that.
[18:16]You know, if somebody comes to dinner tonight
[18:18]and they hand me a book and say, oh, you've got to read this
[18:20]and it's a friend and I trust their taste.
[18:22]I have a book of 20, you know, pile of 20 books
[18:25]that I really want to read.
[18:26]That's going to go to the top of the pile,
[18:28]at least to look at it initially.
[18:29]It just really is.
[18:31]So it's amazing the number of books
[18:32]that sneak in that way.
[18:35]And what I like to do when I'm not doing that,
[18:37]my husband, I just got back from a couple of weeks in England.
[18:40]It was a real trip we've taken for a vacation
[18:44]since COVID began.
[18:45]So really that was an absolute thrill, you know,
[18:48]going to museums and seeing having lovely dinner
[18:51]with one of my ex-students, graduate students in London
[18:54]and seeing another old friend there
[18:56]who used to work in publishing in New York.
[18:58]I mean, it was just thrilling to be out in the world again.
[19:00]I have to say so generally we like to travel a lot
[19:03]and we've been curtailed like everybody else
[19:05]because of presence circumstances, you know.
[19:08]I will say though that last week, when it rained a lot
[19:11]in Maine, I went out on two days and I really felt
[19:14]I kept my head down, not just because I was pulling out
[19:17]Daniel Island with the trail,
[19:19]but because I didn't want my husband to be on to me
[19:22]that I was doing this instead of any of the work I should be doing.
[19:26]Oh my gosh, well, if there's one thing we've established
[19:30]here, procrastination methods, you know.
[19:33]Yeah, no no bounds here.
[19:35]So, and yet look at all the productivity.
[19:38]So it's like it doesn't even matter and I'll get stent.
[19:41]Well, it's surprising to me, it does a lot of productivity
[19:43]and certainly it's in a unique circumstance in my life
[19:47]and it's because really Josh Baudwell, as I was saying,
[19:49]had the idea for this essay collection
[19:52]but that came in on last Valentine's Day
[19:55]and I wasn't anywhere where I could do any publicity for it then.
[19:58]So I'm kind of doing publicity.
[20:00]for that now, but it's right on the eve of, I'm not complaining, but it's right on the eve of
[20:04]onlookers coming out. You know, so I'll have a lot of events that I'll be doing for that too.
[20:09]Wow. And it's just a lot, a lot at once. And I'm also just working on a very long essay,
[20:15]I've been writing for a while too, so it's kind of frustrating because I'd like to get back to
[20:19]that. But basically, if it rains today, the dandelion's away, and I'm, I'm out to the backyard again.
[20:25]I love that. Well, Ann, thank you so much. This has been so nice, and it's a pleasure getting to
[20:31]know you, such a literary legend. So thanks for taking the time to the chat with me today.
[20:37]Thanks very much for having me on the show. It's my pleasure. All right. Have fun with the dandelion.
[20:41]Bye. Okay, bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[20:48]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zooming Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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