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-Hello, I'm Nancy Pearl.
Welcome to Book Lust.
My guest today is author Elizabeth McCracken,
and we'll be talking about,
among other things, her new book, “The Hero of This Book.”
Elizabeth, it's so great to get to interview you.
I just wish it were in Seattle so we could go out to tea together.
-I know, but it's wonderful to see you.
-It is as.
Yes. Yes.
So as you know, I have been a fan of yours
since your very first book.
“Here’s Your Hat What's Your Hurry,”
a collection of short stories.
And it was one of the books that was an American Library Association
notable book.
And the reason
I take full credit for it, for it being a notable book, because I
I insisted that everybody sit down at lunch together,
and I read them the first story,
and everybody was as taken with it as I was.
So thank you for for that
early, early introduction to your work.
-Well, thank you.
I feel I feel silly that I have not realized
that it was you all along, because the book was,
shall we say, quietly published at the imprint closed before.
And I remember when I when I heard about the ALA notable book,
because as you know, I'm a I'm a former public librarian.
-Yes. -And so I was actually working in the library when
when I heard about that, the Somerville Public Library.
And it meant a lot to me.
-Well, I just
so I followed your career with great with great
with great admiration and affection
and your new book...
So I've started talking to people who have read the book.
And one of the things that that they find so interesting about it and so
so what makes it so good for a book group,
I think for book group discussion is,
is it a memoir or is it a novel?
And I know you talk about this in the book,
but could you talk about how you regard it
or how you regarded it when you were working on it?
-I mean, at first, when people ask me that question, I would pick up
a copy of the book, and this a novel right there: legally binding.
And it was I knew that
it would be a novel, but
it's about my actual mother who cannot be mistaken
for any other human being who ever lived.
And so lately I've been thinking it's an it's
a novel about writing a memoir about my actual mother.
-Oh, yeah.
But that's too many words to put on the front cover.
-They wouldn't let me. (laughter)
They didn’t let me do it.
-Did you know that you were going to do that?
I know that in that first book of that collected
in your first story collection of stories, “Here's Your Hat
What's Your Hurry,”
one of the stories is the secretary of state,
which which I have always wanted you to turn into a novel.
But when we talked about when we met, when you and I met,
you said that that was really that really happened.
It was one of the few stories or maybe only story that was really based
on real, real life.
-The characters that the large things
that happened to the characters are not based on real lives.
But my Grandmother Jacobson was from a family with 11 brothers
and sisters who loved to argue about absolutely everything.
And I grew up with the stories about the Bernsteins
my whole lives, including both
how when you went into my Aunt Etna’s house, she would follow you around
demanding what you wanted to eat, and then you would feel something...
You’d turn it down and then you just went cold at your elbow.
You'd say, “What is this?”
And she'd say, “It's the ice cream you asked for.”
(laughter) And there's a story in it
about them all arguing about who would run the government
when they would, when they were inevitably put in charge.
And that, in fact, my father, who's not the father in that story, said,
“I'd like to be secretary of state.” And my
Aunt Etna was very rude about it.
And then she
literally called him at the restaurant because my mother and I, he went out
to apologize and say that he could be secretary of state
if they wanted to. They were watching my brother and they thought the baby...
something terrible happened to the baby.
(laughter)
-So did you I mean, did you did you plan...
Did you know you were going to write this book or did this come as a surprise?
Do you know what I mean?
Is that a reasonable question?
-No, it's a totally reasonable question,
because there are definitely books that I know that I'm going to write,
even if it's just that I think, “oh, I have some time off for my from my teaching job,
this is the right time for me to start a new novel.”
And I sit down and I start. This novel,
I was I was in London
as the narrator is, walking around the city and thinking as my narrator is
about my mother, who had died a year before
and whose memorial service I had just been to. And I had been...
My husband, Edward Carey and I were we in our kids.
We were in a house in Clerkenwell in London,
and we had rented a whole little house, and I was trying
to get some stories off the ground and they were just not working.
And then I thought, “Well,
maybe I'll write about this thing that I'm thinking about.”
And I knew it was a novel
that I wanted to be novel was that I didn't write a novel, a book.
And then I decide what it was going to be.
But it did it totally surprised me.
And it was...and this is not uncommon with my novels and short stories,
I know what's going to happen in them, but novels I know a lot less.
I mean, maybe it's just a a bigger
cave with more dimly lit,
but I didn't know how I was going to write it until until I wrote it.
-In the end, was it
was an easy novel to write?
Or were there big decisions that you found
that you inevitably had to make?
-It was easy and it wasn't easy.
I was very aware as I was writing it,
that my own mother was very, very private
and might not like the idea of me writing a book.
And I felt
quite a bit of trepidation over that.
But I decided, which is sort of generally what I do,
is I'll write it and then I'll figure it out later.
Because if I'm always worrying about is this right or is it wrong,
then I won't advance or have any more complicated thoughts about it.
But at the same time, it was such a pleasure to think about my mother.
In that way
it was quite easy and the way that it was...
it came out.
The shape of it was quite easy, you know, I didn't plot it out.
And the only thing that was different and somewhat difficult
is that the original version of it, I imagine
with footnotes or endnotes that were about writing
and the main character was not a writer and didn't talk about writing. All of that.
All of the sort of thinking about writing
fiction versus memoir was in the footnotes.
And that was a
it was a clever idea that did not pan out.
That was too clever, but it didn't it didn't fit into the novel itself.
And one of the things that I realized I think I was
I was leery of putting much of myself into the book at all.
And so I had sort of hidden it in the footnotes
and everything that's... and I was keeping myself quite safe
I think in the first draft of the book.
And the most difficult part was I realized the footnotes wouldn't work.
But I also knew that the book needed something of that.
And so I took about 10% out and put it into the into the novel itself.
And that I really did
sort of think I felt very exposed.
I mean, for about as we writers do,
you know, for a good two weeks and now it doesn't bother me anymore.
But anything that is
personal that's about me,
or I should say the narrator, the narrator, who seems a lot like me,
was was
some of the last stuff that I did.
-I actually would have liked to
have had that with footnotes.
That's exactly the kind of thing that I would just enjoy.
And and the way the way that you play, the way
that you've moved it into the book itself.
I appreciated those parts of the book a lot.
I guess we should just say that the one the one fact that I knew about your mother
before I read the book was that she had invented the mojito.
-Yes. The self-proclaimed inventor of the mojito.
-We should give her credit.
(laughter) -I think I always
people so to say “So who were you influenced by?”
And I always think “I don't know who I was influenced by.”
But I have realized with this book, both in terms of footnotes
and the phrase of the the self-proclaimed inventor of the mojito,
the first influence is Nicholson Baker's “The Mezzanine,”
which is a book that I just loved and and still love.
I love Nicholson Baker, and I read when I was in graduate school,
and it's about a journey and it's got a ton of footnotes in a brilliant way.
It's just it's yeah, it might be the first novel I read
that was heavily footnoted and the whole journey is just an escalator ride.
-Right. To buy a shoelace. Right?
-I can't remember whether it's going up or down either.
(laughter) -Yeah,
-And the second is Calvin Trillin, who was also one of my mother's favorites.
And I feel like he
enjoys giving people running joke nicknames,
and his work is full of running jokes.
And I love running jokes.
And I feel like this book is, my book is is
to the Calvin Trillin influence.
-You talk about in the book, not you,
the narrator talks about
never thinking that
that she would never write another memoir.
And in fact, there is a memoir that you wrote.
Very moving.
Why...is it partly because your books are...
quirky
is one of my highest compliments that I can give a book,
you know, wonderful writing characters that just you get to know
and a little bit of quirkiness is is my that's that's what I that's what I love.
And your books, all your books, short stories and novels are like,
fulfilled that for me.
So I have to thank you for doing that, for writing those books.
But that memoir
must have been
quite a change from your novels and your short stories.
And what why did you think you
what impelled you to to write that if if we can talk about it, you know?
-Yeah. No, absolutely.
One of the
when you write about something and put it in the book,
or at least when I write about something, I put it in the book,
it means I can talk easily about about it.
And the book is about the stillbirth of my husband
and my first child. And I wrote it in that sort of a compulsive way.
I think
maybe not all writers do this, but there's a line
and in this book it says talks about putting things into arranging facts
into sentences, because the only way I've ever understood anything in my life.
And when I wrote my memoir,
then I didn't know whether I was writing a novel or a memoir.
I thought I was...
I thought I was taking notes for a novel that I would write later on.
And then when I was done with it and it was incredibly useful for me,
I really think writing it saved me.
I also realized, “Well,
I'm done with that.” I’ve been through the whole thing.
And when I gave it to my early readers, it was to say...
First I gave it to my husband
just to see how he would feel about it being out in the world.
And if he'd said “No thank you,” I would have gone “Of course,
I totally understand.”
But I knew that if I hadn't gotten
it right is the wrong word.
If it wasn't a book, I wasn't going to revise it.
I would have said it serves my purpose.
And I wrote it in three weeks,
which is also, I've never written anything that quickly.
-When an idea comes to you,
is that what you start with, an idea or a character or a place or what?
What's usually the first thing that comes to you
when you know that you have this piece of fiction
in your, in your, in your mind or your body
or your DNA that you need to get out?
-It's so funny because the “Here's Your Head
What’s Your Hurry”
next year will have been 30 years since I published my first book.
And if you told me then it would shift all the time.
I wouldn't have.
You know, this is the kind of writer I am.
The first thing I have is a sentence in the voice of the narrator.
100%.
I would have said that about writing in that collection is
there's one third-person story, but all the rest are first-person stories.
And almost everything...
And then for a long time, a lot of things that I wrote came from photographs
stuck in my head.
“The Giant's House” comes from a photograph of Robert Pershing Wadlow
that I was obsessed with and the Guinness Book of World Records. But,
I mean, sometimes with the with “Bowl
Away,” the first thing I had was the names
which I copied out of my grandfather's genealogies.
And then the next thing I had before I knew who those names belonged to
was about, I really want to write a book about a Campleton
bowling alley.
Yeah, it just shifts.
And this sort of
this really was, I must tell, have something that
when I said I started to read it, which is that I saw
my good friend Eimear
McBride, who had “A Girl is a Half-formed Thing”
and she,
we were in London and she was about to publish “Strange Hotel,” and she said,
“Oh yes, I just wrote this small sort of semi auto fictional book.”
And I was like, “That sounds great.
Why aren't I doing it?”
And so for the first time, I would actually say
the genesis of this book,
which I've never done before, is I wanted to try a form
of some kind.
-When a when one of those things comes to you,
how do you know whether it's going to be a novel or a short story?
-It's interesting.
For me, it is instantaneous, and part of it
probably has to do with whoever I think the characters are.
To me, that's the big difference between short
stories and novels is sort of the size of the characters.
So there's somebody who I think I can't get to the bottom of in a short story.
Then it's a novel.
I also, generally speak, when I'm working on a novel,
I just try to
cram everything that occurs to me into the novel.
I don't I don't stop because I've got an idea for a short story.
I might if my teaching load is heavy,
I might put a novel aside and then sort of go, “Oh, I have time for a short story.”
-What do you tell your students about
about the difference between writing a novel and writing
short stories, besides the time it's going to take you to do it?
-Honestly, this is the main thing.
But I do.
I was I was talking to a
wonderful student of mine,
former student Sindya Bhanoo, who's she's on the Carnegie longlist
with a astonishing collection of
short stories called “Seeking Fortune Elsewhere.”
And she you know, she was she was talking about writing a novel
and she was like, “I don't know, you know, but I'm writing all these short stories.
I almost got another collection.”
And I
said, which is something I really believe
is which is that when you when you have a novel idea, you'll you'll know it.
If you especially if you are a natural short
story writer and drawn to the form, at some point you'll have an idea
and you'll just know that it's a novel story...
You know that you will need to spend a much longer time
to understand it and understand the people and what it means.
-In the olden days, it used to be that a writer would publish a work of,
you know, a collection of short stories, and everybody
would be looking forward to the novel that was coming.
But in a way that seems to have changed
in the sense that many people, I learned this on Twitter,
many people are like reading, like the short story form
maybe has come back into its own.
Do you think that's the case or what do you think?
-I mean, I think it sort of it truthfully
and I'm not speaking as somebody in the world
of publishing because I don't know what sells and what doesn't sell.
But I think people sort of and it's pronounced if you're on social media,
everybody has this idea that like, oh, nobody's interested in short stories
and they tell each other that, which may make it a little true.
But I sort of feel like the short story,
I think the I think it's never gone away.
I think there may be a year where the big books are all big books.
I do think that
I wish that short stories were more regularly considered
for big awards because quite often
there will be no short stories.
I think there is at least one collection of short stories in the National Book
Award finalist list.
And I also I love connected stories.
I hope they don't eclipse collections that are not connected.
I like both.
They seem like different forms during.
But yeah, I mean I,
I, I do live in a sort of verified world in which people really like short stories.
(laughter) -Right
Yeah.
I mean I'm always running across people in
IRL or on social media
who are talking about reading a short story a night.
I mean, that's what they're doing for, you know they see that there.
And that, it seems to me is very it's it's exciting in a way.
I mean, I always look forward to the best American short stories
to see kind of what I've missed.
And I just judged an award
where two of the three finalists were collections of short stories.
So that was really interesting.
But it seems it seems as though
that...
Well, I guess they're yeah, I mean, I don't know what's
what's selling and what's not selling except for except for the big books.
So let's talk about what you read.
When you're not writing, you're not teaching, you're not being a mom, a wife.
What do you read?
-Well, at the at the moment,
I have been reading student novels.
I had a I can plug
a bunch, actually, because this is
this year and next year,
I have so many former students
from all periods of my lives
with books that have come out or are coming out.
So Ian Lee,
who was my student a million years ago, I taught her nothing because
reading the book, of course, “The Book of Goose” I absolutely love.
And Paul Harding from around
the same time has a beautiful book called I'm going to blank on It
because it's not it's got a new title, I think it's called “This Other Eden.”
-Yes, I think that's what it's called.
Yeah.
-Quite beautiful.
-He was a student as well? -Yeah. -Oh my.
-And, and what I can take
credit for is he, when he was my student he was working on two novels
or he had two ideas for novels and one was a novel excerpt
that I read, and the other was, “Do you think I should turn that a story
I have about like the Clockmaker into a novel?”
And I was like, so that's my hand in “Tinkers.”
Yes, “I think you should,” I said.
And I
there's a
there is several books coming out next year:
“Light” by Greg Marshall, “The Bandit Queens” by Parini Shroff,
“Night Wherever We Go” by Tracey Rose Peyton
“The Great Reclamation” by Rachel
Hang.
No, I'm forgetting some other great books that I read
by students
“The Caretakers” by Amanda Bestor-Siegal,
which came out earlier in this year and is a fantastic book.
Syndia’s book, “Seeking Fortune Elsewhere,” is wonderful.
-Well, when you're
when you're reading and the students novels, what are
what are they hoping for and what are you what are you able to do?
-All writers hope that the person will say, “Oh my God, that's perfect.”
-Right. -I will give you a publishing contract myself right now.
(laughter) -Right.
-But I think the second thing I think they want is a novel. A trick story
you can hold in your own head and sort of have some idea of what it's like.
But novel writing is such a strange and private thing
that I, I one of the things that I can do because I really like reading novels
and I tend to read them in a short period of time for a student
is to just describe it to them, to say,
“This is what your book is doing, this is its shape, this is its structure.
Maybe this is
where the structure is a little wonky and this is what I think the plot is.
These are here are the characters.”
And then and then they have a conversation about what they and with the book.
And I do, you know, also say, I hate it when you use gift as a verb and
at the very least, it’s
my great pleasure to find anachronisms in historic novels.
-Right. So when you're reading the book, you're actually interrogating the fiction, right?
-Yeah, a bit.
The first time I read a book, I read it without a pen in my hand.
So I'm not marking it up so I can have a sort of readerly experience with it.
But I am trying to get a sense of a sense of it.
-Yeah. I mean, I think
the way I'm understanding what you're saying is that what the
students really want is somebody to listen to what they've written.
-Yeah, yeah.
-And, and, and what a gift that is to have you to have you
Elizabeth McCracken as the teacher.
I think that's absolutely.
Wow. That that's so fortunate for those students.
Do you do you have a list of
novels that do that
you plan to write or, you know, little ideas?
Do you keep a notebook or...?
-I really don't.
I have...I was just actually looking at it the other day...
I have a little,
so I wrote quite a bit of the hero of this book in the fall of 2020.
It started it and this in the summer of 2019.
And then I had to put it aside to finish writing this...
The book that I was actually contracted to write, which is the “Souvenir Museum.”
But I was on leave in in the fall of 2020. And
I don't know, I found myself with a lot of free time on my
hands and the fall of 2020.
And so
I wrote a second little, very small novel, but it's not right.
And I, I was I went back and looked at it the other day
and I was hoping that go, “Oh my God, this is so much better than I thought.”
I looked.
And I went, “Oh, you know, it might be interesting,
but there's something something not quite right about it,”
which is what I have sort of known and I haven't looked at it.
So I may go to that. But I don't, I don't.
I feel like a novel ideas have to sort of come upon me.
And even if I if I thought about one, but I didn't have time to write it,
that that feeling would dissipate by the time I started to write it.
-Well, I'm always reminded of C.S.
Lewis’s statement that there's not a cup of tea big enough
for us, a piece of fiction long enough
to satisfy him.
So he was he was not a short story fan.
I guess.
Elizabeth, thank you so much for being on the show.
And I look forward to your next book,
and your next book, and your next book, and on and on and on.
So and congratulations
on “The Hero of This Book,” which I think is absolutely marvelous.
-Thank you. It's always a joy to talk to you.
-Bye bye. -Bye
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