“Right here, I’m laying you down, Momma,” I say, but I don’t feel anything important, just unbearably tired. I start to sing, “Precious Jesus, let me live my life in thee,” and lift the urn up–it’s not heavy, it’s not light–and swing my arm in as wide an arc as I can manage, and there she goes, sifting into the air, drifting full wide between the trees and over the brush, and out across the creek I can’t see, toward the distant houses with the lighted windows, through the night, maybe flying all the way to Egypt.
~ from “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble” in This Far Isn’t Far Enough
Letting go is never easy. We are rooted in tradition, in promises, in expectations. And yet, we inevitably reach that moment when the old, the familiar, the safe no longer serves, when we must release whatever anchors us in order to survive.
Lynn Sloan’s new collection of stories, This Far Isn’t Far Enough, is full of characters faced with the choice of letting go. For some, the choice is liberating, soothing. For others, the release is pinching, dangerous. In either case, such decisions are never simple, never so clean in consequence.
I’m honored to host Lynn Sloan today to talk about This Far Isn’t Far Enough. Her opening story, “Ollie’s Back,” will be read on NPR’s Selected Shorts in March. Here, gain insight into her work and enter the giveaway for a copy of her book (courtesy of Fomite Press & Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity). Sign up by Tuesday, February 27th. Now, welcome Lynn Sloan!
Christi Craig (CC): This Far Isn’t Far Enough brings together a myriad of stories about a young woman who wants to be a prizefighter, a widow living under the thumb of her husband even after he’s gone, and about an artist lost between fantasy and reality–just to name a few. Which was the first story you wrote, and how did this collection grow from there?
Lynn Sloan (LS): The earliest story included in this collection is “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” the one about a young woman who wants to become a prizefighter. That story came to be when I had a friend who wanted to become a prizefighter. After serious training, she invited me to her first fight. “What must your mother think?” I wondered as I watched my friend get pummeled, and pummel her opponent. My friend had not invited her mother to that fight or to any that came afterward. As far I know, her mother never found out about my friend’s short, but prize-filled boxing career. I had a little baby at that time, and I must have been grappling with how one adjusts to one’s beloved child getting beat up.
You asked if my collection grew from there. In fact, this collection didn’t grow up, it collected, like filings around a magnet. I like variety. Each time I finish one story, I want to try something different with my next. After I’ve written from a middle-aged mother’s point of view, in first person, as in “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” I want to try something entirely different: a naïve Army grunt, his third person point of view, and I want to try a different time frame, after WWII in Germany, before my own time. This became “The Gold Spoon.” Investigating varied characters and situations is a way of challenging what I do, and is my pleasure. A couple of years ago, I broke my ankle and was told I must keep my cast above my heart-level for a few weeks. Stuck on my couch, without the slightest urge to write, I decided to clean up my computer files. As I re-read these stories, I discovered that certain emotions link them all, even though the circumstances are different. Discovering this was an “ah hah” moment. My characters ache for love, they are compelled by regret and loss, and they can’t escape their pasts. These recurrent emotions and desires were the magnet that drew these stories together into this collection.
CC: In an interview on The Literary Fiction Book Review, you say, “Fiction reveals how we live beneath the surface of the obvious and the visible.” I’ve been ruminating on this sentence for a while now. Do you mean fiction allows us to embrace certain truths that we choose to ignore otherwise? Or do you mean fiction gives us more liberty to explore a character, a situation, a reaction to such depths that we uncover a piece of our core we hadn’t known existed?
LS: What’s below the surface is where the action is. Gestures and words can be deceptive or genuine. And isn’t everything more complicated than it appears? We read news items about a postal worker who leaves a million dollars to a medical school, and we wonder what did he deny himself to save that money? We read about a rancher who lined his driveway with Cadillacs half buried in the dirt, and we wonder if this was an expression of mockery, fury, or delight, or some impulse we haven’t thought of. You ask if writing might allow us writers to examine what we might prefer to ignore in our own lives, to “uncover a piece of our core”? I would say that writing opens us to empathy. By probing our characters’ needs and desires, we become more empathic with those unlike ourselves, and perhaps even those who are unlikeable. What makes this empathy possible is understanding ourselves and the links that connect us to others.
CC: With the last question, I’m thinking of “The Collaborator” and the protagonist, Daveen, who is caught in the politics of tenure and gender and her own version of #MeToo. I imagine this story was written well before the movement, so I wonder, when reality takes on the role of fiction and reveals how we live and think below the surface (which isn’t always pretty), does it change the way you view your work in retrospect? Do you ever think back on a character like Daveen and wonder how her story might shift if it were set in a post-#MeToo time?
LS: You are right. This story was written fifteen years ago, when feminists were regarded as scolds, hopeless bores, and pathetically retrograde. That’s how Daveen is regarded, especially since she broke off a friendship with a male colleague because of his sexual relationships with students. What was true when this story was written, what was true in the world that Daveen inhabits, and what is true today: patriarchy rules. In institutions like colleges, some men with power are attracted to younger, less powerful women, and it’s also true, some young women are attracted to men who possess power. Sex and power are two of the most elemental forces in culture. In “The Collaborator” sex, sexual politics, and power are the forces operating, but the story is about one woman, a thwarted feminist, and her response to a student whose sexual game upends her sense of self.
Each fictional character lives in a particular moment, as we all do. One of the things that interests me is how lives are lived within a historical context, and that context determines choices and possibilities. For Daveen, if she were living in this #MeToo time, she could turn to Human Resources with her complaints about sexual misconduct and she’d be taken seriously. If she were living twenty years earlier, she wouldn’t have a tenured position. Every story is set in a moment.
CC: What are you reading these days?
LS: I’ve just finished reading Joan Silber’s wonderful novel Improvement. Right now, I’m reading Patrick Modiano’s Such Fine Boys, a marvelous, moving novel that follows a group of school friends who are thrown into adult situations for which they were unprepared. Both novels include many characters, many stories braided together. Multiple stories—that’s what I like about story collections, too.
CC: What fuels your writing…coffee, tea, a certain view from the window, or a favorite pen?
LS: My desk. It’s a small desk in a small room that’s really a hallway, but sitting at my desk focuses me. Sometimes I want to write somewhere else, like in a comfy chair by a window, or in nice weather, I’ll want to write outside, but as soon as my thoughts and words start to flow, I need to get to my desk.
~
Lynn Sloan is a writer and photographer. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and American Literary Review, among other publications, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of the novel Principles of Navigation (2015 Fomite). Her fine art photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. For many years she taught photography at Columbia College Chicago, where she founded the journal Occasional Readings in Photography, and contributed to Afterimage, Art Week, and Exposure. She lives in Evanston, Illinois with her husband.
If you’ve been a subscriber to this blog for a while, you know I love to introduce you to new books, spotlight up-and-coming authors, tempt you with good stories. Today’s Author Q&A is no different, except in format.
CC: Speaking of artists, I’ve been studying the artwork you include (Carlin Reynolds’ “Radio Silence” [see cropped image to right] is one of my favorites). The pieces appear to be drawings in pencil or ink, a simplicity in the choice of medium that matches many of the stories as they focus on new beginnings and a back-to-basics kind of living. The images themselves, though, are all but simple; full of intricate detail, they each warrant thoughtful discussion on their own. In your original call for artwork, did you aim for a certain style? Or, what did you hope to receive?