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Welcome to the book show A Celebration of Reading and Writers. I'm Joe Donnie.
The obituary writer is the 13th novel by Anne Hood.
Hood is one of Best American Spiritual Writing Award, the Paul Bull's Prize for Short Fiction and Two Push-Cart Prizes.
The story of the obituary writer goes back and forth in time between 1919 and San Francisco, when obituary writer Vivian Lowe searches for the man she lost in the great earthquake of 1906 and 1961 Washington, D.C.
When Claire, a young wife and mother struggles to decide whether to follow the man she loves or stay in her secure marriage.
It is a great pleasure to welcome author Anne Hood to this week's book show.
Thank you so much for having me.
What brought you to this place? To write the story?
It's actually kind of a strange story and not the way I usually write novels, but I was at a dinner party and sat next to this very charming man.
We ate a lot of butternut squash lasagna and drank a lot of wine and about halfway through the dinner he admitted that he was a fan of my writing.
So much so he said that when he died would I write his obituary to which I replied absolutely because he looked pretty healthy.
So when he died a week later, suddenly, unless he had some sort of a premonition, he was not ill at all.
So I was then called to task to write that obituary and I was really humbled by the experience.
And as I tried to find the details that would really bring this guy to life in the way that I remembered him ever so briefly, but in his delightful charming way, I thought what a character, the person who gives loved ones this really great farewell for who they've lost.
The obituary was born that day.
And at that point, how did you start to flesh it out in the sense of this is this is the experience I want to tell, but this is the structure that I'm going to give it.
That came very slowly actually. I had the character and you know, I often say my brain is like that thing in your dryer that collects lint.
So I had a lot of lint up there and they seemed it seemed very disparate yet I knew that I could pull it together.
So I had this idea of the obituary writer. I had this feeling that she was old fashioned, you know, she was from another era.
I happened to love the 1920s and so I knew she'd be from around that time.
And then I went to the writer's allmanak, you know, and it was the anniversary of the day.
It lost my daughter Grace. She died when she was five, 11 years ago.
And I was looking for a poem where some inspiration from Garrison Giller on the writer's allmanak.
And what I learned is that's the anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
And right then my obituary writer, I knew, had her private earthquake, that thing that kind of shook her life on the day of that earthquake.
And from there I started piecing together the story.
And because it focuses on two women and we go through different eros in different times.
And that is that a comparison in some ways or it obviously it's linked.
But do you use that also as a way of saying this was then this is now that's pretty much the same.
Exactly. Yes. Well, I'm always fascinated by the role of women in different eros.
But somehow as I read in both fiction and nonfiction about women, I'm always struck by it's the same even though the props in a way are different.
And so I liked the idea of taking these two different times.
So the obituary writer Vivian's 19, 19, 13 years after the earthquake.
And Claire is 1961 and her whole story takes place in the 24 hours Kennedy is inaugurated.
So I mean here we have, especially the 1961 woman, she's a little bit before Betty Friedan.
And so she has no one to really talk to about these feelings she's having.
And they are both both women and their stories do intersect as you know eventually but both women are struggling with what it means to be a woman and the expectations for love and life.
And yes, the similarities are what really to me are one of the connective threads of the book.
And it also gives you a sense of what when it comes to women of their role as writers in that time which is fascinating in and of itself.
And what did you find out about as you said the props are different but what did you find out about that time?
You know the 1961 I was young but I do remember a little bit about that world.
You know I remember the fascination with the Kennedys and Jackie in particular.
I remember we lived in Washington DC at the time which is why I kind of put her there because I have such clear memories of the cocktail parties my parents would go to and the cigarette smoke.
And you're bringing out the B&B at the end all these small props but the women were home and the women had very particular roles.
And my mother went on to work later. She told me she confessed to me that during that time that I remember as kind of Rosie she was so unhappy being at home all the time.
She wanted to go out and work she wanted to be in the world you know she was a great mom and all that stuff but she had all these feelings that she couldn't express and I think I took that and kind of ran with it for that era.
1919 it was a little more interesting because actually a lot of women were being quite bold then you know the beginning of flappers and so I liked exploring someone who actually starts having choices.
She's right at the brink I guess in a way they're both at the brink of change you know and I liked that I like things that are about to happen.
And then how much do you know going in of what will what will happen of the nothing conclusion but what will be the next the next step.
That's that's the process really because in this case with two alternating stories and that's how the book is you know we hear from Claire and then Vivian and they alternate throughout I knew that to intersect and so I had to really figure out a lot before I wrote in order for that to work.
But always with every book I know my first and last line I just I have to have that like goal I have to be writing towards something I find the discovery to be in the places in between that opening and that closing more than in discovering what the end is if that makes sense.
And that's where the magic happens right I mean in that in that discovery and knowing how to.
I mean there's the what will happen but then there's the the art and the craft and the beauty of finding the words to express that there's the what will happen and I think a lot of people think that's what the excitement is but it's really how will it happen you know knowing what will happen allows you to discover how it can happen and I think for me that's the real.
And I think I'm both challenged and joy in writing you know so if I have this I often think of it as a triptych like we used to get from triple A I said this to college students and they were like what's a trip.
Why didn't you go to Google maps but but for me I still kind of have that image of that book you know that with the arrow and you just kept getting to the next place and then you would flip the page but on the back there were all these places where you could get off the main road and discover other things and that's how I sort of see the novel.
So I think I'm just trying to get to the point where I was writing you know I was in in just looking in the in the back flap of the book that you have been the recipient of the best American spiritual writing award and and that struck me because I don't immediately think of you as a spiritual writer but then when I read that I said well yes of course and which then again brings me to a point of well labels are kind of silly but I think I'm going to be able to see what I'm going to do.
It is it is a it is a fascinating nature and I was curious as to how conscious that is for you.
Yeah it's a really good question I won that award for a piece that was in a literary journal called double take and it was about when my dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and I went to find him a miracle.
So I'm Italian and we grew up side by side with everyday miracles you know and so I know the word spiritual is very complex but I prefer it to be like miraculous that's sort of what I like the miracles of the extraordinary in the ordinary.
And so is it conscious I think it's more just sort of part of my DNA almost so I guess not consciously but always present you know.
And then conveying that to a readership conveying that to an audience of that being part of your DNA but it does it does color obviously much of what you write and then getting back to what we were talking earlier of that magical and special.
And so I think that if we focus too much on some of those kinds of things in the writing itself at the beginning that's when you can't can be too preachy or too abstract.
So to me I write it as purely as I can and then spend a year or more layering in the other pieces those other things we're talking about or making sure they're present you know that's all for me part of what comes next I like to have that first draft to be completely messy without being too conscious of all the things I know will need to be there.
And how much of it do you but there's still the the baseline is you know what needs to be there in some sense I mean that's your skill as a writer this is novel 13 so I mean at this point it never gets easier obviously but you at least know that.
And I have a system I do I am it I can take three to six or even eight months just coming up with my beginning and then I work really hard on the first 50 pages more or less and I rework and rework those and once I get those then I go then I get to that place I was describing but they are very almost those first 50 pages are often quite terrible you know I'm not getting that.
I have to really by reworking those I'm finding my my group you know I am but once I find it then I can just really write so all of that is putting everything in place that has to come so I'm very conscious of what needs to come next and all these books later I realize don't despair during those 50 pages you know that's it's going to work you just have to keep chipping away at it right.
I'm always fascinated in talking to writers there becomes a inevitable detachment you work very very hard in a book and then you come out and you talk about that book and you do many events and then you work on something else and eventually that that book finds its place on the shelf and then I'm curious is to when you look back or do you afford yourself that luxury of of looking back and you know I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to do that and saying and almost learning from your own writing of something of this worked really really well or because I've I found it it can be both ways you look back and you think oh I wish I could have done that which is what keeps I think keeps many of us from doing that
I also look at something and say wow you know I have that in me.
Yeah that's a really interesting idea because there's a danger too if you look back and say I did that well to keep doing that and I real you know that's dangerous for a writer for anybody I suppose.
I want and I'm happy to be surrounded with people my editor and my agent who really want me to keep not doing that keep what I do but really grow from that and so there's a danger looking back too much and I also think that when I start a book I kind of have two goals one of the personal sort of writing goal so for the obituary writer I was trying to see can I can I pull this off can I have two women in two different eras.
With stories that are equally as compelling and have them intersect that that was a real challenge for me as a writer my goal for my for the book itself and for putting it out into the world and for what I wanted readers to take from it was different and I always have those two so there's always something that I'm pushing for me to grow as a writer because it's so easy to say oh that book worked and here's how I did it I'll just change from knitting to I don't know clicking or you know I'm going to do that.
You know clicking or you know what I mean so it can be dangerous to do that too.
You just made me think of something that I'm talking to other writers that have had dual narratives of that challenge of one taking over of one character kind of pushing the other one out and saying I'm the bigger force right.
And I kept in mind years ago I was teaching with Russell banks at the Swanee writers conference and someone asked him that question about continental drift how did you have a character in Haiti and a character New Hampshire and I remember what he said you want the reader every time they realize we're going back to New Hampshire said I don't want to go I want to stay in Haiti and then when they read the next you know section to say I want to stay in New Hampshire you want that feeling at the end of each section.
They've fallen or refallen in love with that one enough to almost not want the next one you know each time.
Because I think probably all all readers have had this where you're you're reading something and it's not great and it has multiple voices and each chapter you know is is check truck and Ted and Alice and Sue and you just start well I only like Sue so I'm going to go and I'm just going to read about Sue.
When you when you think of coming to of the maturation process as a writer and and what and what you have what you have learned in in overcoming many of those of those challenges it it brings a it brings a confidence but yet you're still trying to to accomplish something else.
I have to say and I know writers say this all the time but it's so true each book is just as terrifying as the first one and actually when I with my first book somewhere of the coast of Maine I am I didn't know what the heck I was doing I never went to I never got my MFA I was working as a flight attendant for TWA I had taken a couple writing classes at NYU and I remember sitting on the floor of my apartment on Bleaker Street with all these pages around me thinking what.
The heck am I doing and although those mistakes I don't make again in a way I'm always on that floor saying what the heck am I doing really.
And there's the there's that image of being surrounded by your work and putting it together and whether that's whether that's reality or metaphorical it is it's still a very important part of the of the process to have that pieces around you so that you are.
So it's just that you're doing everything and roping it all in.
Exactly and that's in a way what you're doing for much of much of the revision process and I'll tell you the obituary writer was very close to having to be completely finished when something was just not quite working and I had done many revisions and I told my editor I just can't figure out and she said let me call you back and she looked at again she said I think we need to reverse chapter one in chapter three.
I read it through and I said that's what it is so how about that here I am almost about to go to press and feeling all the pages around me but something was still out of order you know and so it's it's something that doesn't ever stop as part of the process.
And it also seems as if one of the things that surprises us both in creative pursuits but in life in general that it doesn't have to be concrete especially you as an artist well you can change it.
You have that you have that power.
Yeah exactly I mean that's that's one of the great reliefs is that it's very malleable you know and because I don't often write something chronologically that allows for a lot of freedom with that shifting and moving around and I remember reading that Alice Monroe said she takes each scene in her short stories and just keeps rearranging them until it just feels right.
And I think some of it as you said it's not concrete it's that feeling of I hit it I got that right you know.
I am I I asked this question because we just had James Altarron and he was talking about how it was bothering him that so many people were highlighting and underlining sentences and then he felt that it was undermining the story.
Because people would say this is a gorgeous sentence and pour over it and in his new book he almost wanted to avoid giving them a sentence that they would feel that way and and I was reading this book right after that interview and I thought to myself but my god there's some beautiful gorgeous sentences in here and and what is what is that process.
Like in the sense of playing with those words and getting it right and is is that is that something that you want us to notice.
I'm really thinking a lot about I love James Altar and so I'm really interested in that what he said I read out loud everything I write.
So when I sit down to write I read aloud when I wrote the day before so am I thinking about gorgeous sentences not in that way but there is a sound that has to be when I say it out loud there has to be a particular sound.
Again it's something hard to describe but when I'm sitting alone in my room reading out loud and I hit on a sentence that just doesn't I stop right then and I fix it so I like this idea of this flow of language.
I find that fascinating because of all the of all the authors I've spoken to you're one of the few that that has talked about the power of reading it out loud certainly comes up in poetry not as much in prose I would think that would be very powerful to hear to hear it come back in your ear.
To me I don't think I could write without doing that I know I couldn't so in a way my first draft is really my second draft because I have read all of those sentences out loud and fixed them tweaked them made them better I'm never want to put that TK in and to try to fix it later I everything has to kind of one sentence as to flow into the next and the next I just have this real love of the rhythm of language.
When you when you hit it and you know that that it becomes one of those one of those pieces on the on the ground and then it becomes well that doesn't get lost right that that doesn't that doesn't get overwhelmed or or overshadowed by anything else.
That's right yes and then sometimes because there's those pieces are all around you you have to go back and that's a big revision because you there is the danger of losing that that rhythm that I've worked under that rhythm is not quite the word but that flow and so then I don't sit and read out loud from page one through I have heard writers say they do that which is mind blowing to me.
But I might read a lot sections to see if there's a flow together if now that I moved everything around if there's still what I'm looking for.
I have heard authors say that when the book is in it's done and then they're asked to read the audio book that that is like attending your own funeral that that that that that it.
They hear it.
They ask me audio people I don't want to do it.
Oh I mean there is a point and we love our novels I know when they're done but they go through so many you know copy edits and edits that I at there's a point when I look at that and I say this is like reading the phone book to me right now it is as dry and my mind wanders and I have to do one more of these you know.
So the thought of sitting down with you the whole thing is just terrible.
There are many people with beautiful melodic voices out there that I give that joy to.
Beautiful voice to that.
When you think of you have been very successful both with both with novels and with short stories and is there always something going in both in both avenues at any given time.
I love writing short stories that is my favorite thing to write and of course it's the hardest it's so funny to me that as a young writer and many young writers out there you think oh I'll write short stories because I can write 12 pages.
But really they have for me to write a short story and to get it right is one of my most satisfying moments.
So if you could look at my computer right now you would see anywhere from five to seven stories in various forms of completion some seem finished but I'm not ready they're not right yet.
And right now I'm in between novels because this one just came out and I'm still kind of working on the next one.
And so this is short story time for me I'm playing with a couple of them and hoping that I can actually get them right.
Novels when I get those 50 pages I go with them I never get stalled like that but I go back to my short stories and I look and I love them it's like tending you know a very dear garden or something.
And Hood's new novel is the obituary writer it is published by Norton and Hood thank you very much for being with us.
Thank you so much for having me.
We enjoy hearing from our listeners about the show you can email us at book at wamc.org and you can listen again to this or find past book shows at wamc.org.
Sir, I'll do produces our program special thanks to the Woodstock writers festival where this episode was recorded bookmarks for next week and thanks for listening for the book show I'm Joe donna you.
