The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life

by Amy Tan

  It was my mother, and this surprised me. Had someone helped her make the call? For a few years now, she had been losing her mind through Alzheimer’s disease. Early on, she forgot to lock her door. Then she forgot where she lived. She forgot who many people were and what they had meant to her. Lately, she could no longer remember many of her worries and sorrows.

  “Amy-ah,” she said, and she began to speak quickly in Chinese. “Something is wrong with my mind. I think I’m going crazy.”

  I caught my breath. Usually she could barely speak more than two words at a time. “Don’t worry,” I started to say.

  “It’s true,” she went on. “I feel like I can’t remember many things. I can’t remember what I did yesterday. I can’t remember what happened a long time ago, what I did to you. . . .” She spoke as a drowning person might if she had bobbed to the surface with the force of will to live, only to see how far she had already drifted, how impossibly far she was from the shore.

  She spoke frantically: “I know I did something to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I did terrible things. But now I can’t remember what. . . . And I just want to tell you . . . I hope you can forget, just as I’ve forgotten.”

  I tried to laugh so she would not notice the cracks in my voice. “Really, don’t worry.”

  “Okay, I just wanted you to know.”

  After we hung up, I cried, both happy and sad. I was again that sixteen-year-old, but the storm in my chest was gone.

  My mother died six months later. By then she had bequeathed to me her most healing words, as open and eternal as a clear blue sky. Together we knew in our hearts what we should remember, what we can forget.

  • my love affair with vladimir nabokov •

  After years of being asked in public, “What’s your all-time favorite book?” I should have a definitive sound bite by now, you’d think. But for me, having to choose a best book conjures terrible visions of school days when I waited to be chosen as someone’s friend. Because my family moved almost yearly, books became my comfort, and I wanted to embrace them all.

  Certainly Jane Eyre fits in there with the bests. Its setting of gloom and chill matched my emotional interior. I identified with Jane’s alienation, her meager hopes. Moreover, I loved her spunkiness; she was confined by circumstances, yet subtly rebellious and spiritually subversive. From Jane Eyre, I acquired a literary preference for gothic atmosphere and dark emotional resonance.

  I also want to say the dictionary, any unabridged dictionary, is a best. I read lists of words as though they were stories. Within their nuances, I see possibilities. Like many writers, I am passionate about words. To this day, I love reading dictionaries, including lexicons of dead languages. I love the sounds and shapes of words, the way certain consonant blends can evoke related images: glow, glisten, glimmer, glen, along with flabby, flap, flop, flotsam, flatter, flatulence. I am fascinated with the origins of words, when they came into being, how they were first used. Within their histories are stories. The dictionary for me is my Scheherazade. Plus it can spell Scheherazade.

  There’s also Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich and Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid. I have reread both those books many times. And every time, I am inspired to think about the narrative qualities I cherish in stories. Love Medicine is the book that made me want to find my own voice. It influenced my early attempts at writing fiction.

  Finally, we get to the clichéd litmus test of literature: I am often asked, If stranded on a desert island, what book, other than How to Get off a Desert Island, would you want? To provide me with endless entertainment and literary puzzles, I would choose Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I often reread passages of it for language, for “aesthetic bliss,” as Nabokov called his own literary pursuit. I am infatuated with its imagery, its wit, its bonanza of allusions and arcana, as well as its parody and the prosody in perfect rhythm to its stylistic bent. The parenthetical phrase “(picnic, lightning)” is one of the most tragic, grand, and comic images in all literature. It is a miniature marvel. For me, reading Lolita means conducting a torrid love affair with the English language, and nearly every writer I know has been besotted with its prose.

  Then there’s the bonus of the annotated edition of the book, with notes by Alfred Appel, Jr., which includes a brilliant afterword by Nabokov himself. The annotations, nearly half again as long as the novel, are a brilliant reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life. French phrases, puns and poems, references to geography and lepidoptera, as well as highway routes, are scrupulously cited, often with notes from Nabokov himself. This edition is similar to DVDs, with bonus tracks and outtakes and the director’s explanation of how the crash scene was faked. In it you see the absolute deliberateness with which details were chosen. There is a reason for everything, the names, for instance. Why Humbert Humbert and not Hugo or Harold or Horatio. Why Dolores, Lo, Lolita. Why Quilty. As a writer, you think, “What style! What intelligence! How lazy I have been with my own choices.”

  My fascination with Nabokov is also personal. In 1968, luck or fate led my mother, my little brother, and me to live in the picturesque town of Montreux, Switzerland, where Nabokov lived from 1959 until his death in 1977. Although I can’t claim with certainty that I ever met him, I do recall the hotel where he lived, the Montreux Palace, a majestic structure situated by Lake Geneva, in whose mirror-still waters you could see a perfect reflection of the Alps on the opposite shore. My friends and I often walked by the hotel, bumming cigarettes off one another. And since Montreux was a smallish resort in 1968, I feel I can say, without too much exaggeration, that it is likely Nabokov and I might have crossed paths.

  I can still picture it. There I am, in my yellow-and-pink flower-power dress, my waist-length hair streaming behind as I rush toward a secret dalliance with my boyfriend Franz, who is waiting for me in a café in the lovely Alpine hamlet of Les Avants. About fifty paces from my family’s chalet is the jumping-on point for the funiculaire, a tram on cogwheels that ascends several hundred feet to Les Avants, which is also the hunting grounds for many a lepidopterist, including Nabokov. Seated on the slat bench in the funiculaire is an old man—my being sixteen makes “old” hard to judge, but I would guess he’s at least sixty. He wears owlish spectacles, a tweed jacket, and sturdy brown shoes. In one hand is a butterfly net, and on his lap, a sketchbook. He gives me no glance, no word.

  As the tram jerks into motion, I press the play button on my tape player, a present from my boyfriend. The soothing sound of the Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” blasts out in harmony with the passing scenery. The old man abruptly leans forward enough to spit out one word: “Mademoiselle.” His snakelike eyes lock on to mine and I am hypnotized with fear. I press another button and the noise stops. For the next five minutes, we are two strangers quietly cogwheeling toward the same verdant paradise but miles apart in our thoughts. In my case, I am thinking that the man across from me is a creep.

  It never would have occurred to me at the time that this grumpy gramps might have been Vladimir Nabokov. At age sixteen, all I knew of Nabokov was that he, like Henry Miller and D. H. Lawrence, had written a book about sex, and his included a pervert. Since his book had been banned, that would have been qualification enough for me to make it a must read.

  Alas, twenty-five years passed before I read Lolita. And now my admiration for Nabokov is so huge that I regret not meeting him when he and I lived in the same small town. I have searched my mind for those occasions when we might have occupied the same breathing space, that time on the funiculaire, for example. I shouldn’t have played that awful music. I should have said something witty. Could it be that I never had the chance? After all, the scene in the funiculaire was just wishful thinking. I made it up.

  My editor, Faith Sale, told me that by not meeting Nabokov, I also missed being scarred for life. She was a student at Cornell when Nabokov taught there, and she recalls that his words were so brutal, his mann
er so arrogant, he could reduce cocky students into sniveling idiots crawling on their hands and knees. He was even worse with critics and academics. He was a literary Darwinist who would have placed critics somewhere among the fungi, along with spore and mold. I’ve read a book devoted in large part to his retorts to reviewers, and the pages smolder when you turn them. I have the sense he was not kindhearted to most people who bumble through life, as I often do. He was, in fact, the sort who described public swimming pools brimming with people as petri dishes.

  But those reports of Nabokov’s meanness do not diminish my admiration for him. Au contraire. What author who has had her share of bad reviews would not relish the opportunity to toss into the face of a snooty critic a symbolic cream pie? I say this even though it’s become my policy not to read reviews of my books, good, bad, or in between. I don’t think it’s wise to place your self-esteem in the hands of strangers.

  Yet every now and then, some well-meaning friend will shove a nasty review under my nose, proclaiming loudly, “Even if he is with the largest, most influential newspaper in the world, I beg to differ. I don’t think it’s that dreadful.” When I hear things like that, I am reduced to the emotional level of a six-year-old outcast, taunted at school for bringing Chinese food in her lunch bag. The words remain as indelible as cat piss on my bed pillow. I lie awake, thinking of ways not to think about them. For hours, I focus on Zenlike thoughts—right mind, right attitude, oneness with self—but as the night wears on, voodoo dolls come to mind, as does a Brazilian black-magic spell that a former roommate of mine used on an unfaithful boyfriend; the charm—swear to God—left him impotent for two years to the day. Yes, I quite approve of Nabokovian revenge.

  Revenge aside, I dream of writing my own annotations one day, appended like those in Appel’s edition of Lolita. The book included among other things the names of motels where Nabokov his wife stayed when they were on a cross-country butterfly-hunting expedition. I take a similar approach. Consider the numerous times I mention food in my writing. Contrary to what is suggested in CliffsNotes analyses, it is not my intention to write about dumplings or fish or rice cakes as symbols of abundance. They are there for simple reasons of hunger and pragmatism. The way I figure it, if I order prawns and sablefish and sesame-seed dumplings in a restaurant and the next day I write about these dishes, that food bill becomes tax-deductible as necessary research.

  My husband the fairly conservative tax attorney often argues with me about my method of writing and then writing off. Red flag or not, I tell him that this method helps me decide best how to extract fictional elements from the humdrum of daily life: for example, ethnic jewelry I’ve bought becomes “authentic details,” fascinating places I’ve visited become “settings,” safaris and skiing lessons are “action.” When difficulties arise, such as mudslides and broken legs, those are transformed into “plot,” and how I handle them is called “character.” I outline the formula for my husband’s number-crunching edification:

  Authentic Details + Settings + Action + Plot + Character = American Novel

  American Novel = Work

  Work = Tax deductions (U.S. income only, as per American Novel itemization clause)

  My husband is not as impressed as I am with Nabokov or my formulas. He disallows the deductions.

  Nonetheless, Nabokov remains in my mind as a model. When I am asked what my all-time favorite book is, I remember myself as that girl sitting on a tram, an older gentleman with a butterfly net across from me. Although he appears to be in sweet reverie, I interrupt gently to tell him: “By the way, I love your books.” He smiles to thank me.

  It’s all fiction, aesthetic bliss. And now that I’ve written it down, I can recall it as fond memory of truth.

  LUCK, CHANCE, AND A CHARMED LIFE

  And then Peanut found a fortune-teller she liked, a fat woman with a big smile who promised she knew everything—love, marriage, wealth. A sign in front of her stall bragged that she had the luckiest fortune sticks, knew all the lucky numbers, the right lucky marriage combinations, the best days for making lucky business decisions, remedies for changing bad luck into fantastic luck. Everything guaranteed.

  • The Kitchen God’s Wife

  • inferior decorating •

  I am not overly superstitious. But then again, I am not one to take unnecessary chances.

  Why risk displeasing the gods (or God, the Buddha, and the muses) when a subtle sprinkling of good-luck charms and a few tasteful signs of respect can make heaven smile down on earth? (Speaking of the elevated perspective of holy ones: My mother told me I should hang my inscribed Chinese banners upside down so that those on high can read them more easily. Nothing more annoying to deities than to have to cock their sacred heads to read a mere mortal’s plea suspended hundreds of miles below.)

  If you were to enter my home, you probably wouldn’t see any obvious signs that I place my life in the hands of divine intervention, or, for that matter, in the hands of an interior decorator. The first impression is, I hope, one of a cozy abode: unpretentious and intelligently appointed to accommodate the fur balls of a cat. But if you stayed for tea, you might begin to notice what my husband refers to as “kitsch,” or “clutter,” or sometimes “Amy’s junk.”

  These are my good-luck charms, and they come mostly in the form of dragons, fish, strategically placed mirrors, and heaven forgive me, New Age crystals. (As to the cultural deviation of the last, there’s nothing mystical about their inclusion. I just happen to agree with what my niece Melissa once told me—that it warms the heart to see “Mr. Sun playing with Mrs. Glass.”)

  In the foyer at the top of the stairs is a rosewood chair, a bit of Chinese gothic whimsy from the 1920s. The arch of the back and the hand rests are carved with dragons, their piercing inlaid-ivory eyes guarding over its owner, me, another dragon. Next to the chair is a bamboo-and-wire birdcage. This houses only lucky turquoise and copper Chinese coins. Meanwhile, the birds (plastic and made in Taiwan), sit outside the cage and chirp warnings whenever the cage of money is disturbed. On a carved stand opposite the birdcage sits a porcelain vase big enough for me to climb into. If you were to look inside the vase, you’d see painted there a lionhead goldfish swimming about, which, along with an electronic alarm system, is excellent for chasing off devilish spirits and thieves. Above the vase is a mirror with a nineteenth-century dragon carving as its frame.

  A word about mirrors: They can supposedly repel bad luck or attract good. I’m not sure about which laws of physics apply. All I know is that I once had a neighbor whose nightly hammering nearly drove my husband and me up the wall; after we aimed a curved mirror in his direction—total silence. In my current home, the dragon mirror is directed at a nice neighbor who has a surfeit of parking spaces in his garage. I have no garage, but I’m usually lucky enough to find a space in front of my door.

  My study is where I’ve applied most of my decorating skills. Scattered about are chimes, banners with lucky sayings, and wooden fish—as well as a stuffed piranha for fighting off heavy-duty distractions from writing.

  And the location of my study is particularly auspicious, according to Chinese principles of feng shui (“wind and water”). Its three bay windows overlook neighborhood rooftops and face north toward water and mountains. In terms of San Francisco real estate principles, it means I have a knockout view of the Presidio’s eucalyptus forest, the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, Angel Island, the Marin Headlands, and Tiburon. But here’s where the Chinese gods and literary muses come into conflict; the muses have decreed that I hang shades in front of the view, the better to concentrate on the computer screen, rather than on sailboats, mating pigeons, and cable TV repair people shimmying across the slanted roofs.

  While I’m on the subject of computer screens, some years ago, while writing my first book, I stuck a Dymo-tape message across the top of my monitor that read: “Call Your Guardian Angel.” This was my reminder to think about my sources of inspiration. One day my mother saw the
reminder, sat down at my desk, and proceeded to have a “chat” with my computer, thinking that this was where her mother, whom she considered my muse, now resided in motherboard sartorial splendor. Well, just in case a hundred-year-old spirit really is my muse, I’ve placed three bamboo calligraphy brushes below the monitor, as well as copper clappers from Tibet.

  By far my best and favorite lucky charm sits in a corner of my office. It, or rather she, is an exquisitely painted Chinese porcelain statue about twelve inches tall. I’ve grown up seeing statues in Chinese restaurants and stores. They’re usually kept in miniature temples and given offerings of tea and oranges. Shopowners tend to pick a god or goddess who corresponds to the kind of luck they wish to have flowing through their doors, say the God of Money for a constantly ringing cash register, or the God of War for aggressive business deals.

  I chose an unnamed goddess while writing my then untitled second book. I didn’t think it was good manners to ask her for anything as crass as good reviews and placement on bestseller lists. And anyway, if she was anything like my mother, my goddess had never even heard of The New York Times. In the end, I asked only that I be able to write the best book I could, and that no matter what happened to it, I would have no regrets, no sorrows. I called my statue Lady Sorrowfree and titled the last chapter after her. I titled the book The Kitchen God’s Wife, which was how she was known, as the wronged spouse of a wandering husband. I gave her offerings of airline mini-bottles of Jack Daniel’s.

  Inspiration for my decorating comes from my ancestors. . . .

  Do these things really work? All I know is this: I have been incredibly lucky these past few years. What I may lack in terms of sense of style, I more than make up for by giving myself a sense of luck.