Barbara Kingsolver has emerged as one of the leading voices in contemporary American fiction. Her books include "Homeland," "Pigs in Heaven" and the hugely successful "The Poisonwood Bible." Balancing a strong sense of social justice with an engaging narrative tone, her novels exude authenticity. In Paris this month, she discusses her new book of essays "Small Wonders"...
Why do you write mostly about women?
For the same reason as I write mostly about people who live in the US — who must work for a living, who have functional eyes, ears, and limbs, who speak English, who are raising children, who face imbalances of power in their relationships and lives...
A novel is a rich collection of details all added together in a way that satisfactorily answers some of life’s universal questions. So, I don’t believe the categories I’ve listed are superior to, for example, men, citizens of other countries, people who have no children, who speak Portuguese, or are disabled. I passionately love to read stories of lives vastly different from my own. But when I write, if I hope to arrive at any convincing answers, I have to begin with characters whose details I know by heart.
Among all of your books — which is your favorite? Is it always the last one you've written?
This question feels exactly like being asked which of my children is my favorite. All of them! Each book I've written was difficult for its own particular reason — with each new book I set out to tackle some new challenge of craft, or scope or content... that I'm sure I can't possibly pull off — and each one has succeeded especially well at its own particular thing. I tend to be most preoccupied with my latest — until I become preoccupied with the next one. In this way books are different from children: there will always be a next one.
Why did you start writing? Is it something you’ve done all your life, or was there one event that sparked your need to write?
I have no idea why I started, only that I did, at age 8, daily, after somebody gave me for Christmas a small red diary with a tiny pencil and a tiny gold lock — easily picked with a bobby pin, as it turns out... I've continued to write frequently, if not daily, to this day. By the time I reached adolescence I wasn’t just recording my life but also inventing poems and stories. Writing gave me a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction as a way to make sense of things and feel useful, at least to myself. Eventually I wanted to extend that “utility” to create stories that might be useful to others, in the way that books had been valuable to me. I'm sure the absence of television in my life also caused me to invest more time in both reading and writing. Because I think this was a very good thing in the long run, I've made a point of keeping TV down to a minimum in my own children's lives.
Critics have compared your work to that of Henry David Thoreau. Are you, or were you, inspired by his writing?
I was, and am. I first read Walden as a teenager and was blown away by how carefully this guy paid attention to the details in his immediate surroundings — the seeds, the trees, the behavior of squirrels — and seemed to feel happy and wealthy as a consequence, even though he lived in a tiny house and owned only one chair. It gave me a sense of the indulgence of my own teenage fixations on imagined material deprivations and abstract grievances. I remember writing about this in my journal, consciously readjusting my world view. I've since read most of Thoreau's work, some of it many times, including the posthumously published "Faith in a Seed." He was a rare combination: a good scientist in his time, a spiritual interpreter of life, and a brilliant prose stylist. I would be proud to claim him as an influence.
To what extent is your fiction based on your own life, and how much of your main character is really you?
This is by far the question I'm asked most ... and probably that all fiction writers are asked, unless they write about homicidal maniacs, in which case their readers probably wonder but don't actually ask. Every author’s answer would be different. Mine is: almost not at all. It's not my life, and none of the characters is me. I figure it’s my job to invent lives that are more entertaining, instructive, and perfect than my own. That’s the main advantage of fiction over life. You get to control the endings.
I can’t base fiction on my life. When I begin a novel, I don’t start building the story around pre-existing characters or incidents. I begin with a theme. I devise a very big question whose answer I believe will be amazing, and maybe shift the world a little bit on its axis. Then I figure out how to create “a world” in which that question can be asked, and answered. I generally choose a setting I know well, because fiction is nothing but a big old pile of details, and if they’re wrong, it’s a big old pile of lies. Fiction is invention but it’s ultimately about truth. I need to know what my setting looks like, smells like, what flowers are blooming in a particular month. So most of my fiction is set in southern Appalachia, the midwest, or the southwest. My characters may also briefly visit a place I have visited, in a season in which I was there. But to write about other places extensively, I have to make field trips.
I people a setting with characters who’ll act out my theme, scratching their heads in wonderment all along the way until their interactions with the world and each other have finally caused them to cry “Aha!” and my question is answered at last. These characters are my slaves. They have to do exactly what I tell them to do, to illustrate my theme and make the plot work. Obviously, I can't use myself or my friends in this little scheme.The people I do know will hardly even take my advice about perfectly obvious things such as whom they should date. No way would their personalities submit to all the fictional machinations I have in mind.
So, I invent people from scratch. I think about what they'll need to do, then work backwards, inventing entire life histories that will render them believable. They have to be the type of people I know, because the details have to be right. So they tend to have jobs and belong to economic classes I have known myself, or closely observed. I'd have to do a ton of research to write about a World War II submarine crew, for example. Or, millionaire vacationers in Southampton... But, they aren't people I know.
Barbara Kingsolver is at Brentano’s, Oct 17, 6:30pm, 37 av de l'Opéra, 2e, tel: 01 42 61 52 50
“I invent people from scratch”
