Your story, “Applause, Applause,” was featured in Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, a short story compilation edited by David Sedaris. How did you come to be included in this collection? Who are your favorite short-story writers?
David Sedaris came across “Applause, Applause” in an anthology edited by Tobias Wolff, Matters of Life and Death. The story obviously struck a chord with him, and he has very often and very generously singled it out. I’m delighted to be included in Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, alongside many of my favorite short story writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Charles Baxter, Joyce Carol Oates, and, to come full circle, Tobias Wolff.
You write about characters who sometimes make poor decisions and do horrible things yet it never seems like you are judging them. How do you keep your own feelings out of the picture?
Well, my own feelings are the picture. But like God, one strives to be present everywhere yet always unseen. Withholding judgment is mostly a matter of authorial control, of allowing the reader to arrive at their own judgments.
The Family Barcus describes a typical suburban family of their time. Do you agree with Tolstoy that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”?
For the most part I do agree, although so many unhappy families seem to have depressingly similar syndromes, such as alcoholism and addiction.
Why did you make Throw Like a Girl the title story of this collection? It reads like such a personal, heartfelt story. Was this based on something you experienced?
In fact I had recently lost a friend to cancer, although my friend was male, not female. I suppose I combined that experience with my notion of women’s friendships, and how charged and difficult they can be. I wanted the title story to be a strong one, to anchor the collection, and I hope that this one is and does.
During the writing process, how helpful is it to read your work out loud? Is it helpful or harmful to read other writers while you are working on a new novel or story? Can you walk us through a typical day when you’re at work on something?
The only time I read work out loud is when I’m practicing for an actual public event, a fiction reading, and want to see how something will come across. I think that reading can be helpful while you’re writing, as long as you resist the temptation to become too stylistically enamored of your reading material, and therefore imitative. Typical working day: walk dogs, drink coffee, try not to get too involved with newspaper. Sit down and read previous day’s new work, edit, brood, read the entirety of chapter/story, see if I feel like the new pages are heading in the right direction, retype, refine, then, once the new work has been incorporated into the whole and I’m pretty sure all that has gone before is good enough to serve as a foundation, launch into that day’s new composition. Rinse, repeat.
With a story like Pie of the Month, it starts out seemingly so simple, but there are complex issues afoot, especially with the divorced Mrs. Pulliam, who begins to share her son’s feelings about war. Did you set out to write something with an anti-war sentiment or did this just naturally evolve during the writing?
Believe it or not, I mostly wanted to write about pie. But pie in and of itself does not a story make. “Pie of the Month” was written just before the invasion of Iraq, and so that story line was grafted on. The war is played out as a kind of parable of small-town life, and the tone is, for the most part, simple, even naïve. That masks, or translates, the outrage and helplessness I was feeling at the time. The story itself becomes an anti-war pie.
What would you like readers to take away from your stories?
I would hope that readers come away with an appreciation of the transforming power of literature, how it can remove us from the everyday world and let us see with new eyes. I would hope that they would go on to seek out other writing, my own and that of others. There are so many wonderful authors out there who should be read and celebrated.
Enhance Your Book Club Experience
Keep track of author Jean Thompson through her publisher’s website and you can find out if she’s appearing in your area: http://www.simonsays.com/content/destination.cfm?tab=3&pid=358973
If you enjoyed reading this short story collection, your group might want to check out others at this site, which recommends classic short stories for you to enjoy: http://www.bnl.com/shorts/
For the more information on school violence,
go to www.uhgfiles.org and www.crf-usa.org.
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