Dara Horn stops by

by Joan

Dara Horn, photo by Michael B. Priest

A few years ago I reviewed Dara Horn’s gripping Civil War drama All Other Nights. I had loved her previous novels In the Image and The World to Come and wasn’t the least surprised to love All Other Nights as well. 

So when I learned about her newest novel, A Guide for the Perplexed, I eagerly awaited its release. It only took one paragraph to know I’d love this one, too.

“What happens to days that disappear? The light fades, the gates begin to close, and all that a day once held—a glance, a fight, a taste of bread, a handful of braided hair, thousands of worries and triumphs and regrets—all of it slips between those closing gates, vanishing into a dark and silent room.”

I am so pleased that today Dara Horn will join us here for a Q&A.

Dara received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University,  studying Hebrew and Yiddish. She published her first novel at age 25 (collective sigh!) and in 2007 was chosen by Granta as one of America’s “Best Young American Novelists.” Her books have earned many awards and accolades, including the National Jewish Book Award and Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review. All Other Nights, was one of Booklist’s 25 Best Books of the Decade. 

JM: First, congratulations on your novel’s rave reviews. How did you feel when you first read Geraldine Brooks’ gorgeous blurb? “Intricate and suspenseful, A Guide for the Perplexed is both learned and heartfelt, an exploration of human memory, its uses and misuses, that spans centuries in a twisty braid full of jaw dropping revelations and breathtaking reversals. An elegant and brainy page-turner from a master story-teller.”

DH: I was really thrilled. One of publishing’s sordid facts is that book-jacket blurbs are almost always from acquaintances of the writer, or at least from writers who use the same publisher. But I’ve never met Geraldine Brooks or been in touch with her, and we don’t have the same publisher either. So while what she said about my book was very beautiful and apt, there was something even more beautiful about her generosity in saying it at all. I was very moved.

JM: How wonderful! More praise in the Boston Globe, Saul Austerlitz called A Guide for the Perplexed your best, which is a tall feat compared to your other novels, especially the brilliant All Other Nights. Can you share with our readers who might not know the background, what inspired you to write this story?

DH: A Guide for the Perplexed is about a software developer who invents an app that records absolutely everything its users do. Since I was a child I’ve had a fantasy of turning life into an archive, of writing down and recording everything as a way of stopping time. Now, of course, social media has made my dream come true, and turned it into a nightmare.  I was very intrigued by how the technologies of just the past few years have changed the way people experience time—by how all that matters is what’s happening right this second, but of course everything that’s recorded right this second is also archived forever. (Thank you, Google, Facebook, and our friends at the NSA!) I wanted to explore the difference between history and memory, between turning our pasts into collections of evidence and turning our pasts into meaningful stories.

The contemporary plot in the book involves a software developer being kidnapped in post-revolutionary Egypt. That makes it sound like a thriller, which it is, but the story is inspired by the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. (The software developer has a sister who envies her tremendously, and it is this jealous sister who persuades her to go to Egypt in the first place.) I think stories about sibling rivalry are so fundamental to the question of how the past lives within the present, because siblings are usually people who share a past but not necessarily a future. It’s a capsule way of investigating those questions of differing interpretations of the past, and of exploring how much of our lives is up to us and how much is controlled by circumstances we can’t control.

JM: Now Josie creates the computer program, Genizah, so users can record every moment. The past is no longer lost forever. Upon learning this program wasn’t available when her mother grew up, Josie’s six-year-old daughter Tali wisely says, “You get to remember everything the way you want, instead of how it really happened.” I love the idea of a memory palace, a place we can visit to remember not only what actually happened, but what we would like to have happened. Can you share your thoughts on memory and forgiveness, major themes in the book.

DH: One problem with turning memory into history—with recording everything so that nothing can ever be lost—is that it can make forgiveness impossible. In the biblical story of Joseph, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery in Egypt, but he rises above his circumstances and ends up managing Egypt’s food rationing during a famine. When his brothers come to Egypt to buy food and then meet him again, he tells them, “Don’t be angry at yourselves that you sold me to this place, because it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you.”

That’s a mind-blowing revision of the past. How can you claim that a heinous crime was actually a benevolent act of God? I think it reveals the selective memory that’s absolutely necessary to make forgiveness possible. If he doesn’t put aside certain memories, or radically reinterpret their meaning, this family can’t have a future. While our own lives are hopefully not that dramatic, we’ve probably all been in situations where the only way forward was by deliberately forgetting (or at least trying to forget) painful aspects of the past.

With Tali, the software developer’s daughter, I wanted to create a character who was born into this digital all-remembering world, someone who never had a chance to live in any other way—which is true for most young people now.  I’m 36, and I already feel sorry for people younger than me, because they will never have a chance to meet a stranger. Every time they have a date or a job interview or meet a new roommate or potential friend or lover, they will always know a tremendous amount about that person almost immediately, and that person will know a tremendous amount about them. They will never have a chance to create their own first impression, to write their own story about themselves. In A Guide for the Perplexed, I wanted to explore the vast implications of what it means to try to write your own story when the technology (that your parents, or at least your parents’ generation, created!) has already written it for you.

JM: That is a disheartening thought. In an interview you wrote: “We’re convinced that we know the real facts and that the people who lived before us were superstitious idiots. The fact that we will someday be our own grandchildren’s superstitious idiots is very humbling to me.” I, too, am fascinated by memories and ancestors who are lost forever. Because of our computerized world –the Internet is forever—do you think our lives will be less mysterious to our descendants?

DH: You don’t really think that the Internet is forever, do you? I think it’s very unclear how digital data will be stored on a historic time scale, or how easily that data will be retrieved. My wedding was recorded on videocassettes. I’ve only been married for 13 years and I already can’t watch it anymore without professional help!

The past is only as mysterious as we want it to be. People who choose not to learn much about the past end up being nostalgic. But the truth is that “too much information” is an ancient fear. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates argues that now that writing has been invented, people’s memories will be destroyed because no one will bother to remember anything anymore. It’s easy to forget that everyone thinks they are living on the cutting edge of civilization, no matter how long ago they lived.

JM: Excellent point, Dara. I love stories with multiple timelines, especially when they’re weaved together flawlessly, as you have done. What are your thoughts on writing with this structure, which you also used for In the Image and The World to Come?

DH: You’re right that I used this structure in my first and second novels. When I got to my third novel, I began to see it as a kind of crutch. With my first two books I felt very nervous about plotting—I never wrote short stories, so my first novel was also my first attempt at fiction, at creating a plot—so whenever a storyline began to stall, I would just jump to another time period and start something new, hoping that at some point later I could tie everything together.  With my third novel, I decided to eliminate this weakness once and for all, and I wrote that book with a single character’s storyline all the way through, with one plot driving the whole thing. Plot is extremely importantly to me, because I see plot as a moral enterprise—not because there is a “moral of the story,” but because there is a moral in the story: the causes and motivations that we attribute to events are where the beliefs and assumptions embedded in a story are revealed.

With A Guide for the Perplexed, I intended to write an entirely contemporary story. But once I understood that I was writing about the possibilities and limitations of remembering the past, it felt dishonest not to bring the past into the book. I needed something more consequential than one person’s childhood against which to test these theories of memory.

I used to feel the need to forcibly tie these storylines together—by having the characters be related, for instance, or by having some physical object or image reappear, or something equally improbable. But this time I felt confident enough in creating a real plot that I could let the historical stories run parallel to the contemporary one without creating a contrived connection between them.

JM: What a fascinating observation - one that hit home for me. Now for the business side of writing. We all struggle with time constraints, but you must be a master of time management. You are the mother of four young children, you lecture and write award winning novels and non-fiction. You wrote: “After my fourth child was born last year, I created an app that actually dilates time. If you buy my book, I’ll give you one.” Well I did, so please send it over! Really, not to sound cliché, but what advice can you give other writers who struggle to prioritize their writing?

DH: I’m one of four children myself, and I watched my mother struggle with this problem while I was a child. She aspired to an academic career and earned a doctorate. But the four of us were born while she was completing it, and as a result she found it too difficult to take on everything else required to continue on that path—college-level teaching, academic publications, attending conferences, all that. She went on to a tremendously successful career in public school teaching—she won awards as the best teacher in the state, and was honored by Scholastic because her students won that prestigious national writing contest for nineteen years in a row (no other teachers had ever had their students win even twice, let alone for nineteen years!)—but it wasn’t what she set out to do.

I was very terrified of being derailed professionally by children. Like my mother, I got married very young—I was engaged on my 22^nd birthday and got married at 23—but I told my husband that I wouldn’t have children until I published my first book. Then I was very lucky and sold my first book at age 24, and even luckier to be able to have children when I wanted them. So I ended up with these children at a time when writing (and scholarship; I also often teach and lecture, and I publish academically as well) had already become my regular job. My children are all in public school or daycare, and I write while they are out of the house, which works out to something like 9:30am to 2:30pm. (On days when no one is sick and no school is closed, of course—a surprisingly rare confluence of events!) Since my time is so limited, I really do spend every minute of that time working. And since I have this luxury of having writing be my job, I don’t have the luxury of having writer’s block.

My advice for writers who haven’t (yet!) been so lucky is to act as though you have been, because what you lack is not really the time, but the will. People make time to go to the gym; they make time to watch their favorite TV shows or to use Facebook or Twitter. The time most people spend online alone is more than enough to write a novel—or a nonfiction piece for a website or magazine, which is how unpublished writers really ought to begin. Give yourself twenty minutes a day. You’d be surprised what you can accomplish in twenty minutes. Write one paragraph every day, even a bad paragraph. Don’t wait until you have time. The time will always be now.

JM: Fantastic advice, Dara. How wonderful you had such an inspiring role model. I loved reading in an interview that your mother used to put a timer on the table and give you and your three chatty siblings five minutes each to speak, which turned into five-minute comedies, tragedies and operas. You and your siblings found a way to turn memories into stories. Do you do the same with your children?

DH: My parents did this when we were older than my children are now, and my children aren’t yet articulate enough to pull it off. (My youngest is 16 months old, and mostly says “Uh-oh!”) But what I do with them now is what my parents did with me and my siblings when we were younger: instead of attempting and failing to have mealtime conversations, I read out loud to them at every meal. (My husband and I still have our adult dinner after they go to bed.) We usually go through about four or five picture books at every meal this way, with the children choosing the books, and with a fair amount of “discussion” of each book (like “What do you think will happen next?”). I consider this preparation for when they are old enough to tell their own stories.

Beautiful! Dara, thank you so much for joining us! Readers, if you’re in the Dallas Area, Dara Horn will be at the JCC on November 5^th to launch Community Read. Elizabeth and I will be there!

A visit with Megan Mayhew Bergman

by: Joan

A few weeks ago, I mentioned we should all be on the lookout for Megan Mayhew Bergman’s Birds of a Lesser Paradise. Since Megan's short story collection debuted on March 6, her book has earned Publisher's Weekly "top pick of the week," Kirkus Review's "top notch debut," O Magazine's "title to pick up now" and Amazon's "title to pick up now." My copy arrived on the 7^th, personally inscribed by Megan (get yours too from Battenkill Books and support an independent while you’re at it.)

It’s not the first time I’ve mentioned I’m not the most outdoorsy type. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating that others are. In an alternate life, where I’m not squeamish about blood, open wounds, and “animal scat” or afraid of cats and coyotes and insects, I’d want to sit on the porch inside one of Megan’s stories, let nature teach me about life.

In Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Megan portrays relationships in pitch-perfect fashion, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, not-husbands and not-wives, animals and cruel nature. In addition to flawed believable human characters, the pages are full of fleshed-out animal ones named for movie stars, pop culture icons and corporations, of sheeps in houses, chinchillas in bedrooms, feral cats, aye-ayes (never heard of those!) and “special-needs retrievers.”

What other writers might accomplish in three paragraphs, Megan writes in less than a sentence. She’s a master at tension (read her Ploughshares blogpost and see for yourself). Her sentences have poetic rhythm without a trace of melodrama. And as with poetry, symbolism is hidden everywhere, subtle undertones that a careless reader might miss on first glance. I beg you, don’t be careless.

Her stories are nuggets of wisdom, full of subtle and laugh-out-loud humor, gritty descriptive language and raw nature. Her imagery and phrasing conspire to make you believe her stories are about someone else, someone you could never be. They lull you to a spot on your voyeur’s hammock in the woods, so that you don’t see the naked truth of her words when they sucker punch you back to your own reality.

I intended to share a few masterful phrases, but I couldn’t choose just a few. Not to mention, to share them here would take away the joy of reading them for the first time, in the context where they make the strongest impact.

Although not everyone might relate to animals the way Megan does, she has a way of making you wish you did. More than once I was transported to the past, cuddled up on the floor beside my long-gone miniature schnauzers, Mollie and Madison. Or to the many times I worried about what the world would do to my now-grown son or how he will feel when I’m old and demented. Worries that never go away, but are eased a bit because they are universal. And because a wise young author said, “In the end you let it go.”

Megan took time from her crazy launch schedule to answer some questions (our virtual tea in Oxford).

J: Your short stories have won awards and been published in well-respected literary magazines, your book reviews have graced the pages of The New York Times Book Review, you blog for Ploughshares. Now you have a short-story collection setting record numbers of lists. You have carved a career worthy of five people, obviously not listening to those who say publishing short stories is near impossible. How did you keep on track and do everything so right?

M: I'm so grateful for the support and attention! Once I decided to make writing career, I really decided to work at it. To really work. To get up early, stay up late. To accept rejection and keep trying. I’m scrappy!

Just as the book got released I felt things get a little out of control. My inbox and social media accounts are a mess; I owe people emails. Whenever I start to worry, I just remind myself that my children are my first priority. I devote myself to them when I can, and then when they are with other caregivers, I do what I can manage. It isn’t always very pretty. Lately I’ve been sending myself emails at the end of each night, so that I can wake up to a to-do list and hit the ground running!

J: Yes, though social media has blasted the phrase word-of-mouth to a new level, it does eat time. Readers, in garden-gnome fashion, pictures of cats and dogs reading Megan’s book have crept across the internet. Truly hilarious.

Megan, your characters don’t jump off the page, no, they cut their veins and bleed onto the page. For you, what makes a character worthy to spend time with?

M: They must be self-aware, never self-righteous, and always believable, even if they are strange. I am working on a novel now, and will be thinking about these criteria. It’s a very helpful question for a writer to ask herself.

J: Interesting point—and true. Your writing is spare, clean, precise. It’s literary but does not show off. How do you pull this off? Tell us about your revision process.

M: Someone along the way told me to start writing the book I’d want to read. That was a bit of what we in the south call a “come to Jesus moment.” I like spare and unsentimental prose, but I also like the rewards of traditional narrative structure; my earlier work was a little more experimental and at times self-indulgent. I realized that I needed to create and edit my work with better selectivity and honesty.

I revise constantly at the line level, and then I put a piece aside for a few days and come back to it to see how it works for me on the macro level. I need some distance from my work to judge if it takes me to the place I want my readers to go.

J: Tell us how it felt to be included in a short story collection edited by THE Geraldine Brooks?

M: That email, letting me know that “Housewifely Arts” had been selected for the Best American Short Story anthology, was a major turning point in my literary career, and a complete surprise. I’m pretty sure I cried.

Geraldine Brooks was so kind. Her introductory essay to the anthology is mandatory reading; I recommend it highly. She reminds us that there are wars raging, and that travel can benefit our perspective and writing. It’s a call to action for a writer.

J: You are a southerner at heart, transplanted to Vermont. You and your veterinarian husband live on many acres, tend a charming house and working farmland, raise animals and two young daughters. One might get the sense that you live so close to earthly delights that you wouldn’t have a TV. But you are also a huge basketball fan, is that right? You’re a complex character I wish I’d written.

M: We love basketball. And sometimes Jeopardy. But most days go by without any television, mostly because we’re too busy running around. I knew that when I became a working mother that I was going to have to give up television. The hours after my girls go to bed are precious. I work, run, or eat dinner with my husband. Plus – my girls and animals know how to make a mess. I spend significant portions of every day cleaning.

I’ve found that I’m a better writer when I’m engaging with my physical world, so I try to do that as much as possible. I’ve also tried to recommit to reading. The last few years have been so busy with two babies, teaching, and writing that I haven’t been great about making time for reading. Some nights, especially during winter, I make a hot bath and dive into a book.

J: I remember those early days, and I have only one child! How has motherhood, in Vermont to boot, changed your writing.

M: Motherhood has changed my writing more than anything else. I had a jolt of empathy toward my mother after I became one myself, a better understanding of the sacrifices she made. Faulting her for things seemed petty. We pick our mothers apart, don’t we? I rewrote a lot of the mothers in my stories after my first daughter was born.

Motherhood and moving to Vermont happened to me at a difficult time in my life, a time when we were grieving the loss of my husband’s mother. I was homesick for my own family in the south. And I started to realize all the complexity and sadness adults have to hold onto throughout life, how you have to climb your way out of it as best you can.

J: Oh, yes. Mothers say not only the right and wrong things in your stories, but they also leave a lot unsaid. If you could tell your daughters one thing about life, what would it be?

M: You are in charge of your own happiness. Choose it, pursue it, fight for it.

J: I have a feeling they will. What can you tell us about your novel-in-progress?

M: My novel-in-progress circles a lot of the themes in my short story collection: the difficult choices women make, the human-animal bond, rural life. I can hopefully tell you more in a month or two!

We will be waiting! Thanks for spending time with us. Readers, yes, I know Megan. Yes, I’m thrilled for her success. But that’s not why I loved her book. Buy it. Take a picture with your dog or your cat or your aye-aye and post it on FaceBook. And let us know how you liked it!

Our Best Reads of 2011

By Kim

All of us at What Women Write are compulsive readers as well as writers. As 2011 comes to a close we thought it may be fun to share the books we loved most this year. As you will see, our taste is varied. There are only two books we have all agreed on. The first was The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and the second is a book that won't hit the bookstores until sometime in 2013 - namely Calling Me Home by our very own Julie Kibler!

Have you read any of the books we mention below? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Inspired to run to your nearest bookstore and pick one up? We’d love to hear that, too.

Susan Poulos

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett- (probably one of the best books I have ever read.)
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obrecht
Bent Road by Lori Roy
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

I would classify all of them as literary fiction, although Lori's is probably considered a literary thriller. I also think that all except for State of Wonder are debuts... imagine that!!

Kim Bullock

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley - I devoured this historical mystery in two days!

Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland – I picked this one up because I love everything by Susan Vreeland, and this one happens to take place in NYC in the same year my great-grandfather was there. He even knew Mr. Tiffany. Clara was unforgettable – very ahead of her time.

Next to Love by Ellen Feldman – This was a beautiful novel about three WWII soldiers and their wives.

The Truth About Delilah Blue by Tish Cohen – I love books with artist protagonists, and there are so many Canadian authors who are neglected in US markets.

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin - I challenge anyone to forget Vinnie! What an incredible life.

Bloodroot by Amy Greene - Very unique voice, and a haunting narrative.

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton – The woman is a genius. Any of her books are wonderful.

Elizabeth Lynd

Sally Gunning! She has three, The Widow’s War; Bound; and The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (which I think came out in 2011). All are absolutely perfect.

Joan Mora

The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
22 Britannia Road, by Amanda Hodgkinson
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
The Persimmon Tree, by Bryce Courtenay
Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley
Caleb’s Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks (1/2 way finished!)

What do all these books have in common? Stellar character and voice!

Pamela Hammonds

My reading choices tend to be all over the place--humor, memoir, women's fiction and more. But my most memorable reads for this year are:

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
Unplanned by Abby Johnson
Stop Dressing Your Six-year-old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark
Another Man's War by Sam Childers
Best Kept Secret by Amy Hatvany
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

But I'll have to say, my greatest source of reading pleasure this past year came from my fellow What Women Writers. I read Julie's manuscript in early 2011, just finished Susan's and will soon finish Joan's. Next year, I plan to read Kim's and Elizabeth's completed manuscripts. And hopefully they will be reading mine before too long as well.

Julie Kibler

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - Each time I read a book set in England, I want to go back. Immediately. This was a quiet book with a big message.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - I waited too long to read this. Loved it/hated it. Was sucked in and could barely climb out when finished, but have somehow managed to not read the second and third in the series yet. I can't wait for the movie.

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum - I believe we will read holocaust stories forever and never comprehend the horror of all that happened.

Empire Falls by Richard Russo - I wonder, when I read a book like this, what took me so long to pick it up.

Mudbound by Hilary Jordan - Like my novel, this explores pushing racial boundaries to the point of danger. Another one I waited too long to read.

How to Be An American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway - I loved this even more due to getting to know Margaret in person beforehand and recognizing the bits and pieces of her heart that are hidden in this story.

Before I Forget by Leonard Pitts, Jr. - I read this based on Carleen Brice's recommendation while researching point of view for my manuscript, and I couldn't put it down. A heartrending father/son story.

Falling Under by Danielle Younge-Ullman - My fellow Backspacer reissued this digitally after the rights reverted back to her. It's not for the faint of heart, and if you are a child of divorce, you will recognize your own heart on every single page.

How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal- Because I read Barbara's new stories every single year and love them every single year.

Barbara's was the only one on this list originally published in 2011! Many I've listed have stood the test of time—they aren't newly published, but they've stayed on the shelves and gone back for printing after printing and appear on many lists. The reasons are obvious when you read them. But when I consider my books-read list, I see many 2011 books I loved, too! It's hard to choose "favorites."


What are your favorite books of 2011? We'd love to hear from you!