My favorite interviewer of writers is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a writer herself: Michelle Huneven. She's written for countless different outlets, but these days is interviewing for the literary site The Millions.
This week she published an interview with a young novelist who wrote a book called The Gin Closet. Here's Michelle's introduction to the book and the author, Leslie Jamison:
I read and admired Leslie Jamison’s The Gin Closet when it first came out –and was immediately curious about its author: How could someone so young (Jamison was 26 at publication) write a book so lyrical, dark and knowing?
For more on the book, please read Michelle's interview. I doubt anyone could unveil it better, even the author herself. But for those curious about the title…
MH: One scene really haunts me. Stella [a young woman] goes to her aunt’s trailer in Nevada and sees the gin closet, her [elderly] aunt’s drinking room. It’s a terrible womb-tomb place, bottles, flies, a turkey carcass of all things, a stool in the corner—truly the nightmare version of a tuffet. Appalling! But the next thing you know, Stella and Tilly are drinking together. Reading along, I was thinking: No! Don’t do it, Stella–you’re giving too much ground! I knew she wanted to help her aunt and bring her back into the family. While I never thought she had a chance of succeeding, I really didn’t want her to sink to her aunt’s level.
LJ: I wanted to destabilize Stella’s hero complex from the start to show it as confused. She wanted to connect with her aunt and build a sense of trust and to not be just another voice saying, “you’re a fuck up and we want your problems far away from us.” The short cut to that was to get low with her, get shamed with her.
That’s as opposed to saying I’m here, in a better spot, and I want you to come here too, which imposes a boundary and a separateness that requires a lot of moral fortitude and a kind of caring that’s willing to be patient.
A lot of wisdom there, and a lot of issues, too.
Kit Stolz 