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11.17.04

You Once Said:
An Interview with Christine Schutt

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In a "You Once Said" interview, the interviewee is quoted from previous interviews and asked to elaborate on certain topics and themes.

Christine Schutt's novel, Florida, has been nominated for this year's National Book Award (which will, incidentally, be announced today).  She is also the author of a collection of short stories titled Nightwork.  Schutt mastered modern technology in order to complete this interview, for which Me Three thanks her sincerely...

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You Once Said: "It surprised me that Tom McGuane could damn my book without having read it. And by the way, 'Florida' has sold at least 1,099 copies." (NYTBR)

Sarah Stodola: I find that surprising, as well. You would think another literary author would respect the National Book Awards committee for nominating a book that has not been validated commercially. Isn't that what serious writers are always complaining about - the lack of attention given to non-commercial authors?

I feel like if they had nominated Philip Roth, people would be attacking the committee for only going with the big names.

Christine Schutt: One of the critics made it clear that the National Book Awards should honor and promote the following: the industry, the press, and the public.  The order of honorees in the previous sentence is interesting.  The judges for 2004 elected to honor writers.

You Once Said: "My first collection of short stories was titled 'Nightwork' because I wrote it at night while I was divorced and raising two sons." (NYTBR)

SS: Was the writing of Florida any different, in terms of budgeting your time?

CS: Only slightly altered.  I was teaching part time after Nightwork, but part time still involves, at the high school level, five days a week, three classes a day.

You Once Said: "I do think you should honor some work that is trying to be a clean, hard object -- a piece of writing should be hard and clean in the sense that there is nothing extraneous about it, not feathery adjectives." (NYTBR)

SS: That describes your writing perfectly. So are you a compulsive editor, or is your writing so spare already in the first draft?

CS: I edit and edit, yes.

SS: Do you dislike the writing of those who write in a more flowery or convoluted style, then?

CS: No.  I admire any extravagant performance on the page.

You Once Said: "When you write, you always make it a little bit bigger and bolder than it is in life." (NYTBR)

SS: If that's the case, then how do you manage to remain honest to the subject and the story? If everything is a bit exaggerated, how can the story be said to reflect something real in life?

CS: You can be honest; altering events, enlarging some, are ways to impose order on experience, which, if quite literally transcribed, is a mess.

You Once Said: "I am working on another novel and stories. A second collection of stories -- entitled A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer, is to be published by Northwestern University in spring 2005." (Curled Up)

SS: Having been published by both commercial presses and small presses, which do you prefer?

CS: The commercial press can do more for a writer as regards publicity.  The commercial press has money, but very often they tend to spend it on the "big" book of the season, and one's little book is an orphan in a big house.

SS: Do you feel any bitterness toward commercial publishing?

CS: I regret their unwillingness to consider manuscripts (of third and fourth novels) despite sales figures.

You Once Said: "I thought the judges (of the NBA) were very brave to fly in the face of the expected and the commercially proven, to take up books that had not sold very many copies, that aspired to a certain daring kind of performance at the risk of being less commercially successful. I thought that was something we all wanted - literature that's not necessarily easy at first, that asks the reader to participate. But the response has been otherwise. (Beatrice.com)

SS: With that statement, you could be talking about politics, where rather than participating in more difficult thought processes and considerations, the electorate goes with the candidate who offers simple and meaningless catch phrases. It seems that everyone just wants to be mindlessly entertained. Do you think that, like politics, the response to your and the other nominations is a sign of a culture that has lost interest in intellectualism?

CS: An illiterate literary culture has been in the spotlight.  The gatekeepers are revealing their ignorance.

SS: Are you ever preoccupied by how a book might sell while you are writing it, or are you able to remain focused on the "daring performance"?

CS: It's always the performance, the tasks I set myself are what I aim to meet.

SS: I thought Florida was a lovely book, but it didn't seem all that inaccessible to me. I don't really see why a book like this should not be commercially successful. Why do you think it is not embraced by the masses?

CS: Northwestern did not market or advertise the book simply because they didn't have the money.  So distribution and whatever else keeps the selling of literature chugging along, was not in motion for Florida.

You Once Said: "It's about time that the industry started thinking about what it could do for writers, and how we might be able to keep more of these midlist writers afloat as opposed to offering celebrities million-dollar advances. You live long enough to see it happen again and again, and you get used to it, but still -- If you gave Madonna a smaller advance, you might able to cultivate more assiduously the Mark Costellos, the Matthew Sharpes, the Matthew Derby -- I know a lot of great writers who could stand to be taken up by the industry, and it would be to the betterment of the culture, I think." (Beatrice.com)

SS: From your personal experience, is it true that editors no longer have the liberty to stick with authors they believe in unless they sell well with their first book? If Gordon Lish had stayed with Knopf, do you think it would have published Florida?

CS: A lot of publishing is driven by (previous) sales figures.

SS: As a midlist author, have you ever even received an advance?

CS: Yes.  For both Nightwork and Florida.  The money was modest.

SS: Have you ever had a sense of stability as a writer?

CS: Financially?  Enough money to do only that, write?  No, I have not had that stability.  But I have had constant support from my sons and husband and writer friends, by which I mean, understanding, kindness.  They have always taken me seriously.

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© 2004 Me Three