Monday, July 11, 2011

Kate Christensen Interview, Part One

Kate Christensen is the PEN/Faulkner Prize winning author of The Great Man, Epicure's Lament, and other lauded novels.

Her newest, The Astral, follows Harry Quirk, a Brooklyn poet in his mid fifties whose marriage and professional reputation are in decline. Set in contemporary Greenpoint, the first-person narrative captures the texture of Harry's consciousness with an uncanny facility and truth to life.



PH: To me, Harry Quirk represents New York bohemianism before it became irrevocably self-conscious. What about his aspirations and struggles moved you to portray this man so carefully, so inventively?

KC: There's a certain kind of New Yorker I don't see written about much -- the artist who keeps making art without any reward of money or fame -- the artist who reaches middle age in a state of scruffy, striving dedication. Successful artists of any stripe interest me far less than struggling ones. I know so many people -- painters, photographers, poets, novelists, musicians -- who are still in that state, middle-aged, living hand to mouth, no insurance, no savings account, still paying rent, trying to survive, but not giving up -- their lives have been shaped around their art. It's a quiet heroism. I'm inspired and moved by artists who do it because they have to -- because it's who they are -- and for no other reason. I admire their integrity, authenticity, and deep dedication. They are an unsung and crucial part of the city's character.



PH: What was the biggest piece of editorial advice you accepted on this novel, and the biggest piece of editorial advice you rejected?

KC: After he read the first draft, my editor, Gerry Howard, told me he wanted more back-story and history. He wanted to know more clearly who Luz was, and he wanted me to flesh out Harry's marriage, family, and friendship with Marion. His idea was to make Luz more sympathetic, to let us see her side of things as clearly as we see Harry's. I agreed with the first suggestion and rejected the second. I added seven or eight full scenes from Harry's past, which I felt helped deepen and shape the book -- but rather than making her sympathetic, I showed Luz as a controlling, cold, histrionic bitch. This was completely necessary to the novel; my editor agreed with me when he read the next draft.

PH: What have been turning points for you in terms of craft? What were the lessons you learned, the breakthroughs you made, the epiphanies? Did they come from your Iowa MFA, or a novel you read, or essays on craft, or elsewhere?

KC: The major turning point for me came when I was almost 30. I had spent the entire decade of my 20s writing stories and novel chapters that were simultaneously earnestly overwrought and callowly underdeveloped, an attempted imitative amalgam of Ann Beatty and William Faulkner. These were not terrible stories and chapters; I was encouraged to keep going in this vein by getting into the Iowa Writers' Workshop, winning the 1988 Mademoiselle fiction contest, and then, after I'd moved to New York, getting a series of handwritten New Yorker rejections asking me to keep submitting -- I thought I was on the right track.

But one day -- I remember this so clearly -- I looked over the thing I was working on and felt a profound revulsion, an aesthetic nausea. I couldn't stand it another minute. That was the day I started writing "In the Drink," the day I realized that my own voice was not the one I'd been writing in all these years. I realized I'd been faking it; I had a flash of what my writing was going to be. It felt so good to switch to my real voice. It felt like taking off the training wheels and flying down a hill for the first time with no hands -- freeing, euphoric, subversive.

18 comments:

  1. This is wonderful - I can't wait to read more. So interesting to me that writers can labor for years - and even be successful - before finally giving themselves permission to be more authentic and dig deeper. What a relief that must be, to shrug off imitation and feel like you're finally seeing your real voice on the page.

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  2. Fantastic interview - brief yet deep.

    The biggest compliment one might pay to an article about a particular writer whom one doesn't know is - will it make me want to read her work? The answer here is, "yes."

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  3. Great question! I loved her response that she had an aesthetic revulsion. I've had that too!

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  4. excellent reading... my favorite passage is
    "but rather than making her sympathetic, I showed Luz as a controlling, cold, histrionic bitch. This was completely necessary to the novel..."

    Kate's not just smart... she's got teeth!

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  5. Yea I like the ferocity Kate shows here; it comes through in her writing: stylistically, her observations, her unflinching portrayals.

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  6. I can remember walking the Hall at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a split screen in my mind. To illustrate my idea:

    SCREEN A :

    http://bit.ly/pdOgwc

    EXTERIOR SHOT :
    The front of Art Center. Modern black box building . On it’s roof a suicidal fine art student dressed up as super chicken. Can of gas, match and bungie cord. He looks around. Is the camera rolling, yup. Puts on blue crash helmet, lights himself and jumps.

    The Oh and Ah begin, Fine art departments digs into a deep philosophical critiques .

    In essence, this sums up the fine art department .


    SCREEN B:
    In a studio room which could double as a sterile white lab. Students are going over a very life like drawing /photographic with a fine tooth comb. “ I see a loose stroke”. The other looks ,”no there isn’t”, back and forth for about an hour.

    Here, it’s all about being a technician mustarding as an artist.

    The first about rebellion, the latter about conformity, I say to myself this is not why I came here.

    We had what is called Studio Visits where in artist like Julian Schnabel and such would come into talk . Time and again I asked myself, aren’t we supposed to be talking about art?


    There came a time when I looked at the Black Box on the Hill and my subconscious started humming that Talking Head song, this an’t my beautiful house, this an’t my beautiful wife, how did I get here?

    Some time down the road I realized I was trying to be an artist at an art school, how weird is that?

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  7. Some one asked Picasso about becoming an artist and he said, I don't become, I AM!

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  8. This is exactly it - I've read other interviews with Kate that betray her obsession with becoming/being and the quest of Quixote, the artist masquerading as knight errant, and vice versa.

    As one critic has said, What real person lives in our minds as vividly as Don Quixote? Who's more real?

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  10. Winston Churchill said “
    If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.

    Notice how cynical conservatives tend to be?

    Notice how cynical our data enriched world is today?

    Do we see any connection?

    In one way, we are growing up faster today, and in another way to slower. Faster about the things we shouldn’t know, and not fast enough about the things we should know. We know about sex and booze allot younger, but true responsibility, what?

    As one of my art teachers used to say, you’re all a little too smart.

    In many ways, the world has become too smart .

    How can you avoid walking backwards into the future these days?

    In art school , I can tell you how many times someone said, in essence, your work is not original it looks like X, Y, Z. …. No matter what you did, you couldn’t avoid being seen through a lens, filter or who knows what, a Psychic X Ray …

    This champion wasn’t digging it at all !

    No matter where I went, green with yellow spots on red with white strips or red and white strips on jet black. Never seemed to get it right. Couldn’t shake my high waters!

    Anyways, back from detour .


    Is smart “REALLY” about how much facts and figure you can hold in your head or is about being a babe in the enchanted forest and finding your way home?

    I think it’s about finding your way when there are no signs. But do we ever get the chance to find our way home without the confusing signs?

    Confused, or is this confusing or am I confusing?

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  11. TS Eliot: "Where is the knowledge lost in all our information? Where is the wisdom lost in all our knowledge?"

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  12. who ever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours."
    — Hermann Hesse

    Woody Allen Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

    TRANSFORMERS, how many millions and numero uno at the box office, shall I say more, shit du jour!!!!!!

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  14. As the saying goes, a computer is only as good as the information it gets. Unlike computers, our brain is much more of a gland . Think electrical activity "happening" through an non symmetrical vessel of gelatinous goo that shifts and changes in odd, gooy ways often at randomly .

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  15. "But one day -- I remember this so clearly -- I looked over the thing I was working on and felt a profound revulsion, an aesthetic nausea. I couldn't stand it another minute. That was the day I started writing "In the Drink," the day I realized that my own voice was not the one I'd been writing in all these years. I realized I'd been faking it; I had a flash of what my writing was going to be. It felt so good to switch to my real voice. It felt like taking off the training wheels and flying down a hill for the first time with no hands -- freeing, euphoric, subversive."

    I WONDER IF YOU CAN SHED YOUR OWN PAGES ?

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  16. Great post! Am especially curious to read more about how Kate distinguishes a struggling artist from a successful one. Were those who are successful once struggling? Am also curious about if and how the character of NY is changing as it is increasingly gentrified. I wonder how her characters explore these issues. This interview really piqued my interest! Thank you.

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  17. All artist struggle; even more so with fame.

    True artists are prisoners much like Sisyphus ; pleasure, pain, beauty and it's evil twin, the rock is pushed forward, stagnates, and presses back on the impetuous .

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