Untimely Interview: A Conversation with Aurelie Sheehan, Pt. 1 ...

by Glen Grunberger

This past Christmas after graduating from the University of Arizona with my MFA in Creative Writing, I luxuriated in once again being able to read with no agenda other than personal pleasure. My first selection was Aurelie Sheehan?s 2006 novel, History Lesson for Girls, which got into the queue because Aurelie was the director of my MFA program and I?d intended to read the book three years earlier. ?Nonetheless, I was very much enjoying my Christmas read and doing what I normally do with a book I like?having an imaginary conversation with it, scribbling comments and questions (on post-its, mostly)?when I realized: hey I know this person; maybe for once ?I could have a real dialogue. Here then, via months of email correspondence with the gracious author, is a real-life conversation with Aurelie Sheehan, speaking on behalf of her novel, History Lesson for Girls.

Glen Grunberger: Before we get going, I want to note that there are two quite good interviews with you on History Lesson for Girls, already published in timely proximity to the novel?s 2006 release.? Here?& here.
But I promise not to cover the same ground (much). You still game?

Aurelie Sheehan: I?m game, definitely.

GG: We know from the book?s cover that it?s a ?wistful, gentle ? coming of age? story with ?heartbreak? figuring significantly in the final outcome.? But as I?m now re-reading the novel, I?m struck by how consistently funny it is.? The narrator, Alison, has this great, deadpan delivery (?[The other kids] all looked the same: skinny, good-looking, evil?) and a way with similes (?I ? turned like a doorknob?).? I don?t want this to come out wrong, but ? do people know you?re funny?

AS: I don?t know if people think I?m funny or if I am funny (I had hoped to receive the Funniest Girl nod in eighth grade, but nothing came of that). But I do certainly admire humor, because it is usually a combination of the intellectual and the emotional?at least the best kinds of humor are. When I?m writing, and when I?m walking around the world, I am often struck by the humor in life, as well as the beauty and ? yes! ? heartbreak. But I do at the same time chafe at those three words you mention from the jacket copy, just a tiny bit. Wistful, gentle?..hmmm?..I probably never set out to write anything wistful or gentle, and it didn?t exactly feel like that kind of story to me. I think it can be exceptionally sharp and problematic and not particularly wistful when children are washed away in a tide of historical befuddlement, a.k.a, the 70s. Or, a.k.a., just the pointy edges of growing up at all.

GG:?I agree with you about ?wistful?? it seems to me almost a projection, a reaction readers might have to a thwarted impulse toward nostalgia ? something your novel assiduously avoids even as it revels in some of the absurdities of the 70s. Is that something you had to wrestle with at all consciously ? having fun with the historical tropes but avoiding the gauzy lens effect?? Also, I?m fascinated by the unique relationship you have with that word ? ?history.? You?ve just cast ?historical befuddlement? as a fundamental adolescent danger ? and then there?s your ongoing collection of short fiction, One Hundred Histories, and of course the many ?history lessons? in this novel.? This word feels like a kind of sacred term of art for you.
?
AS: It?s true that in History Lesson for Girls, as well as the ongoing project I?ve worked on collecting ?histories,? I am compelled toward histories that go unspoken, are a counterpoint to the dominant theme. In the novel, I think of the ?Lost Heroine? history as being true emotionally, if rather fantastic on the subject of the town?s verifiable history. And in my other project, the histories I?m writing are exceptionally personal, also, again essentially an emotional or imaginative truth, privileged over a factual truth.

History also has a strong relationship to memory, naturally, and the mercurial or malleable qualities of both intrigue me.
?
GG: You mention the ?Lost Heroine? story-within-the-story: it?s intended by its fictional authors to be a kind of created artifact, and of course, it is a different sort of created artifact that ends up feeling very true to an early adolescent mind and imagination. Did you have any tricks for managing that?find some old journals of yours squirreled away from your junior high days, for example?

AS: Writing this novel came with its own special set of problems since the main character?s experiences have some parallels to my own life, although the story as a whole is essentially and absolutely fiction. But as a writer I kind of had to blast my way out of ?autobiography? in order to let the story kick loose and become its own thing. For that reason, I didn?t consult any of my own artifacts from childhood. It was an interesting problem, though. I wanted the place and time and characters to be authentic, and so I did return to the town, spend time in the local libraries, and engage in that kind of research for that kind of authenticity. But as for imaginative or narrative or, essentially, fictional veracity, I needed to move in a different direction, just staring into, then falling headfirst into the page.
?
GG: Maybe those headfirst dives account for the exceptional range of tonalities and registers within the first-person narrative here.? In addition to the Lost Heroine narrative Alison seems to have voices that are by turns young and old, funny and serious, colloquial and, at odd intervals, strikingly lyrical (the pool at Devil?s Glen becomes a ?grievance of water).? I think about famous retrospective narrative voices in fiction ? Scout in To Kill a Mockinbird, Holden Caulfield ? and while these child-protagonists are preternaturally canny observers, I don?t think Lee or Salinger or most any other writer I can think of attempts the elasticity you do with Alison?s voice. What I?m curious about is whether that was planned (thirteen is a mercurial age, after all) and whether or not you struggled with the balance between freedom and consistency in the voice?

AS: I?ve been dying to tell you that I?m a Gemini, which I?m going to use as my excuse for mercurial voices. I am the type of person who tends to think that, if anything, we often underestimate?can?t fathom?the multitudes within others, especially young ones who don?t always speak for themselves. I felt that I had a bit of latitude in the voice because the narrator is speaking as an adult about events in the past. Still, I had to keep within at least two parameters that would make sense, the adult Alison, and the young Alison, and keep them apart or blurred as need be. It?s an odd thing, isn?t it, writing from an older perspective looking back?.because I?m the same person, even if I may know other things now, as I was Back Then. So surely characters are like that, too, both ?older? and ?changed? but still the same soul, the same person.

The larger question of freedom vs. control in fiction is definitely something I?m always thinking about, Glen. Clearly both impulses are essential for us as writers, but when, where, and how does one or the other impulse make the most sense artistically? Allow you as a writer to do your best work? It is always a mix, but I usually find myself wandering in one direction, then the other, trying to find that balance.
?
GG: It seems you do put a tremendous amount of trust in your unconscious self, in the practice of letting go of control when you sit down to write.? I?m especially interested in writers? relationships with their muse ? or as Ann Lamott calls it, her inner ?broccoli.? Have you developed any particular disciplines or tips for mining that source?or has it always been just a matter of showing up and, as you said, ?diving in??
?
AS: It?s both so difficult and so easy. In some ways, I think ?the muse? or whatever wants to be said, will out?and all we have to do as writers is try not to get in the way. And, at the same time, to just be there to do the work. Reading Carlos Fuentes? obituary this morning, I feel renewed in my conviction that the creative life is meaningful, that the life of the writer is meaningful. This kind of overarching intent or attitude is what can be hard to find?.in a world of sick kids, salary issues (or no-salary issues), and all the other necessities that get in the way. Once you re-up to yourself the absolute necessity of ignoring a whole bunch of other practical things that really should have your attention too, all the shoulds of our lives, then you are at your desk. And when you are at your desk, you?re halfway there.

The other half?

The framework of storytelling and publishing, in addition to the architecture of our personal psychology, has an effect on our work, obviously. I think the best thing to do is try to be aware of the pros and cons of any of that, all the constraints, and use them when they can help (take an external constraint and make it part of your fiction), or simply try to be aware of them in a realistic way, so that you aren?t fighting against them in some exhausting subconscious battle.
But?.those exhausting subconscious battles can also be the very heart of our most excellent fiction.

So, Glen, I guess it?s just like living with a beast at your table. Fighting half the time, but also, reluctantly perhaps, giving it some silverware.
?
GG: Nice.? I think my beast just wants potato chips out of the bag.

?

Please return for Part 2 of this conversation, which?will be posted tomorrow, August 3, 2012.

Like this:

Be the first to like this.

Source: http://sonorareview.com/2012/08/02/untimely-interview-a-conversation-with-aurelie-sheehan-pt-1/

enemy of the state golden globe nominees joe philbin miss america pageant 2012 shipwreck jose aldo vs chad mendes lana del rey