One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.)

At my wedding last September, my theme — beyond the necessary trilingual nature of the event due to being Russian and marrying an Israeli — was books. For the centerpieces, I chose my favorite literary works, stacked ten copies of them on top of each other, tied them with a large gold ribbon, and then gave them away to the attendees when the night ended. I had classics for the more aged (and non-English-speaking) of the bunch, Russian translations of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but for the younger crowd, I picked Jonathan Franzen and Safran Foer titles, Gary Shteyngart’s appropriately titled Super Sad True Love Story, Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot. But probably my most current favorite of the bunch was The Borrower by fellow Chicagoan Rebecca Makkai. It was a book I had recently read and one that had stuck with me as a great representative of contemporary literature. I wanted everyone I knew to read it (and it didn’t hurt that there were Russian characters involved, since anyone reading it from my wedding would at least be able to relate on that level). Makkai now has a new book, The Hundred-Year House, a novel about the life of a haunted family and a haunted mansion, told in reverse. We recently sat down to discuss it: The Millions: The first thing that was really clear to me after finishing your book is how incredibly complicated the structure of it is, especially how every section goes backward in time – from 1999 to 1955 to 1929. How did you go about writing it? Did you write it in chronological order, or did you play around with it a lot? Rebecca Makkai: I wrote a short story once called “Gate House,” which consisted of some of the plot of the 1999 story. And it didn’t work as a short story at all; it was terrible. But when I revisited it, years later, I suddenly thought of turning it into a novel, and that’s when I started to consider what I would have to do to move backwards in time. At that point the whole thing was coming to me as I went about my day, as I was brushing my teeth – I would have these ideas of the way the plot would be layered. Soon I realized it would be stupid to start writing without seriously outlining, so that was the next thing I did. I ended up with a sixty-page outline. I had calendars, I had timelines, I had historical events. And of course it changed a ton as I was actually writing it. I knew I wanted to write it in reverse chronological order, as it appears in the book, but I had to outline first. Because I couldn’t write 1955 until I knew what happened in 1929. TM: So you did have to jump around a little? RM: Well it’s not that I was jumping around, it’s that I had to have every detail worked out before I could write anything, which is unusual. I think people are afraid of outlining, but it didn’t take any of the creativity out of it. And even with the scaffolding the outline provided, I was still catching things up to the last moment. For instance, there’s this bear statue in the woods, and you find out later that it was built in 1957, but I accidentally had it there in 1955… It’s probably not something the reader would really catch until the second or third read—but someone would eventually. TM: I saw Nathan Englander last year at Printer’s Row, and he said something very similar to that, about how every detail of a story needs to be thought out, no matter how small. If there’s a story set in Chicago, you can’t have a character turn left down a one-way street going in the opposite direction. RM: Yes, exactly. For me, the details of this house were really important. I ended up drawing the floor plans three times, once for every era. From different angles too. I had to refer to them constantly. TM: Did you have fun with that, or do you not like drawing? RM: Oh they look horrible – and I was staying at Ragdale [an artists’ residency] at the time, so there were actual artists there. TM: Did they see the drawings? RM: Oh yeah. One of the painters was laughing at me. But it was very helpful. I thought I knew the space pretty well, but then as I drew it, I realized that mentally I’d had the kitchen in two different spaces, depending on the scene. TM: I would imagine it was really helpful to draw it, since basically all of the scenes take place in that house. RM: Exactly. In each era there’s someone kind of trapped there. TM: I did have that feeling a lot. Especially with Case, where all those bad things keep happening to him; the car fire, the knee injury, the bee stings. RM: The house has this sort of magnetism to it. In 1999, Case is literally crippled by all these accidents. Then in 1955, Grace is trapped there by an abusive husband. And in the ’20s, when it’s an artists’ colony, the characters want to be trapped there. It’s their home, and they’re protecting it. I talk to students a lot about keeping people trapped together in a story so that they don’t just leave, because most people are so conflict-averse that they’d realistically just walk away. I have them practice by writing a scene with characters trapped in an elevator. I don’t think I realized that I’d done that myself until just now. TM: Was your intention to have some sort of magical element to that feeling of entrapment? And to the house in general? RM: For sure. I wanted everything to theoretically have some kind of an explanation, but at the same time there’s this question of luck – can you really have that much good luck or bad luck, or does it at some point start to feel supernatural? That’s the question a lot of them are dealing with. For Case, its almost like the house hates him. He just doesn’t belong there. TM: You said that the first section, the one in 1999, was also the first thing you wrote. Did it change a lot once you decided to make it novel-length? RM: Yes, quite a lot. Originally, if you can believe it, the story was about male anorexia. No one believes that this guy, who later becomes Case, is anorexic, and the character who later became Doug follows him around, obsessively trying to prove it. The main problem with that story was it was too long. But there was something in it that I loved, and I kept going back to it and trying to cut it,  so that it would be publishable, but nothing ever came of it. Five years later it was still sitting there, one of many unpublished stories. TM: Do you remember why you suddenly came back to it? RM: I wish I could remember, but no, I don’t. And the original story, about the anorexia, it’s not even there at all anymore. The only trace of it that’s left is the idea of Violet, the original owner of the house, possibly starving to death.  There is also a point when Doug takes that idea and puts it into one of the children’s books he’s writing, and it gets him fired. I tried really hard to keep that anorexia in the novel; it was hard to admit that was the thing that needed to go because it was the spark. It was like putting out the match that lit the candle. TM: The character of Miriam probably resonated the most with me, because I lived with a lot of art majors in college, so someone creating works of art with found objects is very familiar. Did you know someone like that as well? RM: Twelve years ago, I was in a pizza restaurant in New Haven, CT, with my husband and in-laws. It’s this world-famous place called Pepe’s, where you have to wait in line for hours to get in the door. We had finally made it into the lobby and there’s this group there, and it’s clearly a guy introducing his girlfriend to his parents for the first time. And what she did for a living was create portraits of people’s pets out of strange materials. In my memory, she was making marionette puppets, but I could have made that up. And the parents were trying so hard to be supportive, but they clearly didn’t understand. For some reason that was the seed of Miriam—this person who does this thing that no one would think would be sustainable but she’s actually quite successful. TM: One thing that surprised me is that you had three separate sections with characters that we never see again. Did you think about the risk of that a lot? RM: It’s not entirely true, though. The middle section is about Grace, and you do see her again in the 1929 section, as a small child. And there are other characters you see briefly too. I did worry that readers might be disgruntled as I divorced them from these people I’d just gotten them invested in, but I was careful to try and keep certain characters’ spirits in the story. For Doug and Miriam in particular, even though you never get back to 1999, you learn things in 1955 and 1929 that affect their story – that even change our understanding of what’s going to happen to them. TM: Was there anything else you worried about? RM: Well, I’m confident that none of my readers will remember 1929 clearly. But I’m worried about 1955, because readers who were around (and know that I wasn’t) could go into it looking for mistakes. But 1999, I remember myself. For a long time I’d wanted to write about the Y2K hysteria, because it was an interesting time, and I like to give deadlines to my stories. There’s a clock ticking; things that are going to happen have to happen by a certain time. TM: It was a lot like a movie in that way, with the pacing. RM: Yes. That said, I don’t think it would make a good movie. You’d have to take a lot of liberties, and do it very differently, and maybe return to 1999 in the end. TM: The Borrower would make a good movie too. RM: I feel like no one would want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. A ten-year-old boy… With sexuality issues… It would have to be an indie film. TM: These two books are so different from each other. Was there anything different about the writing processes? RM: I think it was more fun [with The Hundred-Year House]. All that outlining that I had to do paid off hugely when I sat down to write. The problem with The Borrower is that in the beginning I didn’t understand what I was doing yet and I wasted years floundering around, just figuring out how to write a novel. TM: How long did this one take, after you just sat down to finish? RM: I really got back to it around the time The Borrower came out, in 2011. So it happened fast. The Borrower took ten years, because I was poking at it, and I was working full-time so I didn’t have as much time to write. TM: If you could tell your past self anything about writing The Borrower, what would it be? RM: Just to outline. You can see the shape of something when you outline. You can see the structural flaws. Working on a novel is like painting a mural: if you’re close enough to work on it you’re too close to see the whole thing. You have to step away and look at it from across the room. TM: Do you edit as you go along? Or do you write and come back? RM: Both. You don’t want to spend time editing language when you’re not even sure if that scene is going to stay in the book. You don’t want to polish something you’re still carving. I’ll fix it up if something sticks out, but I wont do micro-edits. TM: What’s your favorite part of the writing process? RM: I actually love outlining. Especially when it’s new and you’re just generating ideas. I also love polishing the language. I don’t like the big structural edits as much. I get myself geared up for those edits by letting myself play spider solitaire. It turns on the math-and-logic part of my brain. At least that’s what I tell myself. TM: How much of an impact do your editors at Viking have on your books? Do they change it quite a bit? RM: They don’t change it themselves; they ask the writer to change it. But it’s mostly bigger things, not the details. They pushed me to cut a lot from the 1999 setting; it was much, much longer before. TM: Oh! Is that why the chapters are kind of short? Or is that just how it came out? RM: No, that’s just how it came out. I ended up cutting entire chapters, rather than parts within the chapters. I think I cut it by a third or a half. But I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I’m glad they pushed me. TM: How many times has your husband read this book? RM: That’s a good question! Definitely not as much as The Borrower… He’s probably read the entire book three times. I held off giving it to him, so he didn’t read it till close to the end. TM: Was he helpful? RM: Yes. He’s my best editor. TM: Are you in a place where you never want to look at it again? RM: Weirdly, I’m not. I’m never going to sit down and read the whole thing, but I’m not dreading the many occasions where I’ll have to read from it out loud. Whereas with The Borrower, I’ve read from it so much that I don’t particularly want to read from that again for a while. TM: Do you have a book tour coming up for the release? RM: Yes. I’m going to the east coast in July, and in August I’m doing Chicago, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. TM: What are you working on now? RM: I’m wrapping up a short story collection called Music For Wartime that’s coming out next summer. TM: Are you editing a lot or is everything pretty much done? RM: Yes and no. There’s one story I feel strongly about that’s unpublished and I really need to revise it, so I’m working on that. I’m also working on the order of the stories. It was done a couple years ago, but we decided to publish the novel first, so I had an order picked out, but since then I’ve written more stories. TM: How many stories total? RM: Some of them are short, one or two pages, so it actually ends up being sixteen stories all together – but the total page length isn’t unusual for a story collection. TM: Have you started a new novel? RM: I have the idea. I want to work on something set in the New York art world in the ’80s amidst the AIDS epidemic, and Paris in the ’20s. There are artists, some stuff about tuberculosis, and a connection between the two worlds, though I’m not sure what yet.

One is tempted to attach the pop-cultural sobriquet “overnight sensation” to writer Edith Pearlman’s current moment in the sun. (She quotes comedian Danny Kaye when I used the phrase). As it is, Ann Patchett’s introduction to Binocular Vision (Lookout Books), Pearlman’s award-winning story collection and any number of reviews ask the question, “Why have I not heard of this fine writer before?” Why indeed? Pearlman has published over 250 short fictions and works of non-fiction in all the usual (and some unusual) places, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, The Pushcart Prize Collection,and The O. Henry Prize Stories Collection. My own take on Ms. Pearlman’s fair-weather fame has something to do with the limited attention paid to the practitioners of short fiction -- when I grouped her in the company of much heralded short story maestros Alice Munro and William Trevor, Edith blushed (though she did not demur, false modesty is not an attribute she has). As is the case with my author colloquium, Edith Pearlman and I talked about many things – Tales From Shakespeare, Hermes typewriters, Penelope Fitzgerald, reading Dickens, the task of literature, Aunt Jemima cookie jars, and more. Okay then. Robert Birnbaum: What was the first book you remember reading? Edith Pearlman: Interesting question. I think it was Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare. RB: How old were you? EP: I don’t know – eight. You asked about the first book I remember reading -- I am sure there were books I read before then. My aunt taught me to read at four. I think we read [Lamb] together. RB: How did she teach you? EP: Some kids are ready to read. I don’t think they need much teaching and I was one of those. My grandson is the same way. RB: Your reading career started in earnest when, at age six? EP: I suppose so. There were plenty of children’s books around -- maybe I read Five Little Peppers and How They Grew or-- RB: After reading Lamb were you a fully engaged reader? EP: Then I read the plays in order. (Both laugh). No, I think I went back to Mary Poppins. I read Lamb with my aunt. RB: And when did your writing career start? EP: It started even earlier. I started a book, I think, at the age of three. And it was called All About Jews. RB: I have recently come across three writers who began writing really young – Gary Shteyngart wrote a novel when he was six or seven. And Ben Katchor, he started early. EP: I started to write the book at three, but I didn’t get any further than the title. RB: Really – writer’s block? (Both laugh). EP: I think so. RB: Will you ever revisit that story? EP: I have revisited it often in interviews. RB: I mean All About Jews. EP: Probably not. RB: Are there generalizations with which one can describe short form fiction writers? For instance, many novelists write short fiction, but it seems that short fiction practitioners don’t often write novels. EP: It is something that clings to you and that you fall in love with. And though I love to read novels and so do my colleagues, I have no wish to write in the long form. It’s my destiny. RB: Have you ever tried? EP: I started to write -- actually I finished writing a mystery story with a friend but it wasn’t very good. And no -- I don’t think I ever have. RB: How do you know it wasn’t any good? EP: Well, nobody took it. RB: (Laughs). Alright. Writing came to you as an avocation, hobby, and obsession-- EP: It came to me as an occupation. I was making my living as computer programmer, so writing was in those days confined to letters. But my letters were rather long. RB: Do you still write letters? EP: I do still. RB: Hand write? EP: No, but a typewriter. I write my stories on a typewriter too. RB: It seems there is a renaissance of interest in typewriters EP: Yes, somebody told me that. RB: Well, at least if you pay attention to The New York Times. I have a few -- one is a [portable] Hermes 3000, which reportedly was the typewriter of choice for journalists. EP: I used to use a Hermes. I don’t remember what model it was. It was pretty old. RB: For some reason, the 3200 comes up in a few stories. EP: It was a very good typewriter. I used it for years. RB: Did you study writing anywhere? EP: I took a course in college and a course or two in my 30s. I did not get an MFA -- I took a total of three courses. RB: In the course of your writing career I read that you had written over 250 stories. EP: I have written 250 short pieces, not all fiction. RB: Is there a group of people you talk with about writing? EP: I have particular friend and colleague whom I meet with every month who is also a writer and we exchange manuscripts. That’s been going on for 25 years. RB: Any fights? EP: We have had and we are ruthless with each other. I also have a non-fiction group of four and we meet once a month too. RB: Which writers do you like to read? EP: Well, I like best to read Dickens and I read him over and over again. I have been doing that for a long time. So I have probably read each book five or seven times. RB: Rereading is a great thing. I feel compelled to keep digging in to the newly published. Although I reread 100 Years of Solitude three or four times. The last time I didn’t feel I got anything new and it made me wonder about past judgments about the book. EP: Well, in Dickens, each time I find something, some turn of phrase, a manipulation of plot or a character I hadn’t appreciated. I read them in order to live in them. My purpose is not to find new things. My purpose is to sink into them. RB: Dickens makes appearances in a number of contemporary novels -- Peter Carey's Jack Maggs. EP: That was a riff on Magwitch in Great Expectations. I don’t think Dickens appears. RB: Right. But he is in Richard Flanagan’s Wanting and in Joseph O'Connor’s Star of the Sea. EP: There is a story by Evelyn Waugh, a novel I can’t remember which one it is. The end of it is a about young people and explorers and takes place in Africa -- Black Mischief? The hero alone is captured by a crazy, fanatic ex-preacher who lives alone. And is held captive in order that the young man can read over and over and over the novels of Dickens until the old man dies. It’s supposed to be a tragic ending. To me it sounded like a wonderful life. RB: Is that the extent of your reading, you just read Dickens? (Both laugh). EP: I thought you asked who I read most or my favorite -- at any rate. RB: You gave me the impression that you aren’t required to read any particular writer. EP: Right. I don’t feel I have to read anybody. At this point I feel like I’ve probably read enough. Not enough to educate myself -- if I stopped reading, which would be a horror, I would probably not be a different person. People are made by the books they read and I think I am finished. That is to say, my making is finished. RB: Do you think the task of literature is to instruct and entertain? EP: Exactly. How did you know? RB: (Laughs). EP: I would put entertain first. RB: Richard Russo introduced the volume of Best American Stories he guest edited with an amusing anecdote about Isaac Bashevis Singer visiting the campus where Russo was teaching and answering a graduate student’s inquiry with the “task of literature is to instruct and entertain.” Apparently the gathering wanted a more elaborate answer. I think that view is actually taken from Horace. EP: Oh really? RB: Is writing short fiction important? EP: Yes. RB: Because? EP: Because literature is important. The project is important. RB: Do you have any sense that it’s being drowned out? EP: It is being attacked so to speak. Drowned out isn’t the word I would use. It’s being narrowed by all sorts of things. But it probably always was. We notice the Internet, television, and all these electronic things, but 100 years ago it was affected by farm work. Only the very rich could read. RB: That was probably the case for most of history -- that only a small fraction could benefit from reading and writing. EP: I don’t know that the percentage is any different now. RB: The percentage may not be the different but the cause may be and thus the hold it has on our civilization may be different -- more tenuous. I work with people who don’t read -- 35 year olds who play video games. EP: Well some time ago they might have been plowing the fields. RB: There is this meme of the educated working class guy who finishes his shift on the assembly line and goes home and picks up William Faulkner. In fact, that is the story of Southern writers like Larry Brown and William Gay. I don’t think that obtains any more -- especially because I don’t think one can be poor with dignity in the 21st century. EP: People do come home and read no matter what their occupation is. RB: Working class people have to work hard -- frequently taking on second jobs EP: Why don’t they have that luxury in their off hours? RB: Besides fatigue, there aren’t a lot of cultural prompts. EP: Where did people get it before? RB: This belabors the obvious, but this a world that is far different than what we were raised in. EP: My husband plays early music -- he plays the viola de gamba as an amateur. The early music crowd is eccentric and a world unto itself. And passionate and they don’t write early music -- it’s already been written, but they play it and adapt it. It is their overwhelming hobby. I think that’s what reading may become. A small group of people who love it and don’t care if they are thought of as crazy. RB: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has seemed prescient to me. EP: It is. It is. RB: People who collect guns or Aunt Jemima cookie jars are passionate also. Today it would seem passion -- people who like reading and literature passionately began to champion the independent bookstore. That’s okay. I mean, who likes cookie cutter retailers? On the other hand, booksellers were beatified as if they weren’t merchants and capitalists. C’mon! Maybe a few were/are heroic -- Truman Metzel of the late Great Expectations in Evanston Ill., or Sylvia Beach in Paris, Vincent McCaffrey in Boston. EP: And now they have readings. Those of us who want to sell books are delighted. RB: I understand. Do you go to the annual BEA? EP: Tell me what it stands for? RB: It’s a big booksellers trade show. EP: In Frankfurt? RB: That’s the Frankfurt Book Fair. This is the big American convocation of the book industry. EP: Obviously, I don’t go to it since I don’t know what it is. RB: So, do you go to book related events? EP: I go to literary events -- mostly at colleges. I go to bookstores. I go to festivals. I go where I am asked. If the BEA invited me, I would go. RB: That does speak to the assumption that writers should help their publishers promote and sell their books. EP: Yes, right. I do it for my publisher. RB: Your publisher is blessed to be located in a civilized place like North Carolina (laughs). Wilmington? Chapel Hill? EP: Wilmington. Do you know him? RB: Ben? No. EP: I thought he introduced us. RB: Oh yeah, by email. EP: He knows you, knows of you. RB: I don’t remember the chain of events that brought us together -- it must be because you are an overnight sensation (laughs). I must have read about you in Variety. EP: No you didn’t. I am an overnight sensation of a sort. I have been writing for 40 years and this is my fourth book. And I always had a small following. And I never expected to have any bigger following. I would go to my grave with a small collection, happy. So this somehow happened. RB: You knew about Ann Patchett’s intro to [Binocular Vision]? [She writes:“My only challenge was to keep from interrupting myself as I read. So often I wanted to stop and say to the audience, 'Did you hear that? Do you understand how good this is?'”] EP: That certainly helped. RB: And there was a review in the LA Times that took the same tone. As did Roxana Robinson. I am happy for you, but that’s a bit of journalistic gimmickry. There are many artists that one can say that about. EP: Absolutely. I had the luck to be plucked. It was luck. There are writers absolutely as good as I am or better who write their books and don’t get noticed. RB: I am disturbed by that -- I am reluctantly drawn into thinking about the business part of book publishing. Success frequently is serendipitous. I am certain you know the stories of writers who have submitted their books to many publishers and were rejected. EP: Absolutely. Or 30 rejection letters for a story. RB: Tibor Fischer’s story is particularly amazing. Of the almost 50 publishers in Britain he was rejected by all except the last one he approached. How do these decisions get made? EP: By human beings. By fallible human beings. RB: It would be okay if there were some humility attached to the gate keeping of publishing. Don’t you think? EP: Yes. And the prize givers ought to be more humble and certainly the writers. In general the writers are -- they know how lucky they are. RB: You start out with a sense that there is a civilizing effect of thinking and writing and telling stories. It made life somehow better. And looking around today, it may be true but the contemplative life seems to be losing the battle. EP: It improves the individual life, I think. People who read, people who write-- RB: Wouldn’t it be nice if they were to be salvation for all of us? (Laughs). EP: I would, but I am not a proselytizer. RB: All right, I scratch that line of thought. I have three favorite stories in Binocular Vision. “The Ministry of Restraint,” in part because I didn’t know what was going to happen -- how well do you remember your stories -- pretty well? EP: I think so. RB: A guy takes a trip to some backwater town, and takes a train back to the capitol and meets a woman. The train is blocked at a tunnel and the passengers have to get off and return to the starting point -- as man and the woman walk side by side, their hands come close to touching but do not. And then over the years they meet. In final pages, you learn explicitly that they were lovers once. I was charmed by their initial close proximity which was brought to some fruition much later. EP: I’m glad you liked it. RB: And then the heart wrenching tale of a damaged infant. Why did you name her Tess? EP: I don’t remember. I don’t remember. It has a slightly angelic appeal to me. RB: Any connection to Thomas Hardy? EP: No. She wasn’t named after Tess of the D’Ubervilles. RB: How many Tesses do you know? EP: Probably none. RB: It’s an unusual name EP: Yes, it’s taken from the nickname for Theresa. RB: Was it a hard story to write? EP: Yes. I wrote it in pieces. And, of course, it’s told in pieces. And I didn’t write it in the order of its final form. RB: You chose to have a number of people tell the story. EP: Only one person speaks in her own voice -- that’s the mother. There are probably a half of dozen people who see the child -- each of them has a thought that you know about. But it’s the mother who speaks in the first person. RB: And it was hard to write because? EP: It dealt with such sad things. RB: Do you have enough time to emotionally identify with the characters? EP: Yes, I think I do. I have enough intensity to get involved. RB: I wonder about the aftermath of writing a novel, which requires a writer to inhabit lives for a period of time. How long does it take to write a story -- a year? EP: No, no. A few months. I suppose in a hardhearted way I forget the sadness of the story I have written. Life goes on and I write the next story. RB: Are you tempted to write what seems to be a current trend-- EP: Linked stories? Well I have several stories that take place in the same place -- in soup kitchen. The stories about the woman who works for the joint distribution committee -- there are four about her. It’s not a temptation so much as I am not through with that character, so I want to write another story about them. RB: Is there one thing that moves you in taking up or developing a story -- a name, an image, feeling, a memory? EP: All of those things. It’s not one -- something I dream-- RB: When you begin, do you know what is going to happen? EP: When I start out, it’s a lot of improvising and I write many pages of improvisation and then I begin to see what story I want to write. I start all over again with the knowledge that I have gotten from the improvisation. RB: Do you think the piece is finished when the story is written? EP: Well, I take them to my friend, whom I meet every month, who is ruthless with me and I with her. RB: Does she use any instruments in her ruthlessness (laughs)? EP: No, no. It’s all an abuse of the mind. And she either says, “This is almost done” or “Go back.” And I do. RB: One writer told me that she submits the draft -- her editor sends a back a few notes, which enrage her. She writes back to her editor expressing her anger. The editor doesn’t respond. And a few weeks later, the writer decides the editor was right (laughs). EP: She had to get over her rage and humiliation first. RB: Really! Where was I? EP: You were going to tell me the third story you liked. RB: Right. It was the one entitled “Chance.” It had a Torah study group card game. I enjoyed the Hassidic slant, but I really like that it went somewhere I didn’t see coming. I lost track of why the card game devolved to the temple and presentation ceremony. EP: It begins with the Torah being delivered, and so I had hoped that the Torah would always be somewhere in the back of the reader’s mind. RB: Yes, it’s mentioned in the middle of the story. I was distracted by the card game interlude. EP: Well, the title of the story is “Chance.” That’s what poker is about-- RB: And what the Torah is about (laughs)? EP: No, that’s what the destruction of Jewry was about. That is to say it was chance that some Jews lived and some died. RB: The story’s last two lines were quite powerful. Story collections are a delight because despite what is usually a deliberate sequence you can go through and begin with titles that you find appealing. I would never skip around in a novel. EP: My daughter used to read novels that way. A piece here and a piece there. And I read somewhere that Nabokov wrote his novels that way on 5x8 cards. There is a writer who found or could have found his ideal reader. RB: Movies are made that way -- out of narrative sequence. EP: When I was a girl, I‘d go to a double feature in the middle and go around for the part I missed. They don’t let you do that now. I tried and was told that the director did mean for you to see it that way. RB: In the last few years, I have relaxed my personal rule about finishing books that I begin-- EP: Many of my friends have said that [same] thing to me: “Now, if I don’t like it out it goes.” RB: It means I have shifted more responsibility to the writer. It’s always an issue, the immediacy of our reaction -- you may hate a book one day and find it quite readable the next. EP: Yes. And the things we believe today, we can expect not to believe tomorrow. RB: (Laughs) If we can remember them. EP: (Laughs). RB: Do you go back to your work? EP: Well, I do when I make a collection. Because it’s a chance to improve them. So I go back -- when a story is accepted by a magazine, it’s an opportunity to correct things. RB: You see that as a correction? EP: Improve? If it then goes into an anthology like Best American, I take an opportunity to correct or revise there -- but not much. Not wholesale revision. And then, for a collection of my own, I certainly have an opportunity to change or review. RB: Where does that impulse come from? At one point you felt the story was finished. Not perfect but done. EP: I thought it was done to the best of my ability at the time. RB: And then you got better since you wrote it? (Laughs). EP: I don’t know that I got better -- I got different. I was in an event in which three short stories were read by three actresses which was a lot of fun. I was watching one writer listening to her own story -- she said later all she could hear were the infelicities. So I am sure if that story gets re-collected she’ll change some things. RB: There is also the matter that the creator has expectations of the audience to grasp their creation in a certain way. EP: No, I don’t feel that way. I agree with the statement, "Trust the tale, not the teller.” My attitude about a story I have written may well be different from a reader’s. And I don’t mind that. RB: Would you say it should be different? EP: No, I don’t say that. It can be appreciated in many ways. Or not appreciated. RB: This recent collection was a collection of stories that already existed? EP: Thirteen new stories that had not been in a book. They had previously been published in magazines. There were 16 stories that had never been collected. RB: They had all been previously published somewhere? EP: Except for one. I can’t remember which one. RB: Some writers say they will write stories specifically for a book. EP: No, I don’t do that. I write hoping that a magazine will take it. And I don’t think about a collection until I have quite a few stories. RB: Why are writers like Alice Munro, William Trevor, and yourself admired in a way that seems different than many writers? EP: Thank you very much for putting me in that threesome. I was so dazzled by that that I didn’t hear the rest of the question. RB: (Laughs) I took your breath away. Does it strike you that there’s a craftsmanship assigned to the writers I mentioned. That short fiction writers are looked as artisans? EP: Yes, we have to have our end not only in mind, but pointed towards, within the story. Like the ones you mentioned. RB: You seem to travel a lot. EP: I'm traveling now because-- RB: You’re an overnight sensation? EP: Did you ever hear Danny Kaye’s comment when he became a success and somebody said he was an overnight sensation? He responded, “Yes, after 20 years in the Borscht Belt.” I’m not an overnight sensation, but at the moment I’m in demand. It won’t last forever, so I am responding to it. RB: How do you know? Mostly there is a six-week window of attention for books and then goodbye. Your “15 minutes” has lasted since the Spring. EP: It’s been three months. RB: That’s a long time. EP: Yes, yes. It received these very good reviews. But other books are coming along with good reviews. RB: What’s come out that has really excited reviewers? EP: The Tiger Wife. I’m trying to think of fiction -- I am sure there are others. RB: I think not. Except for David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. EP: What about David Mitchell’s book? RB: That was a while ago -- it just came out in paper. EP: I bought it in hardcover. RB: Did you like it? EP: I haven’t read it. RB: (Chuckles) You bought the book and haven’t read it. EP: I have a lot of books I haven’t read. RB: What are you reading now? EP: The Worst Journey in the World, which is about Scott’s last expedition. It’s a nice alternative to fiction. RB: Do you know Andrea Barrett’s The Voyage of the Narwhal? It’s about an Arctic expedition. EP: I’ll bet its good -- I like her short stories. Anthony Doerr got very good reviews. RB: Sure, but within the usual window of attention. And not a widespread choice. So what’s next? Any polar expeditions? EP: No, no. I have a grandchild I walk every day. I have lots of friends whom I meet for coffee. Love to go to the movies. RB: What was the last movie you saw you liked? EP: I liked The King’s Speech. I usually like movies when I see them. There are very few movies I don’t like. RB: Meaning you choose carefully? EP: No, I have a general love of movies. I love the experience. RB: Do you watch TV? EP: (Shakes her head). RB: None? EP: I don’t have one. RB: Wow. Isn’t there a whole bunch of culture you are missing? EP: I am. Yes there is. I do lead a somewhat insulated life without television. RB: Well, you have missed one of the great TV series -- The Wire. EP: Oh yeah? What’s that about? RB: Big city life in Baltimore -- drugs, unions, corruption, public schools, politics, media. There were five seasons and every season had a different focus. It was a Tolstoyan tale. EP: I am sure I am missing things that are good. I have a feeling that I'd become addicted if I started watching. And I also have a very good radio. RB: What do you listen to? EP: Music mostly. I listen to interesting interviews RB: What’s it like to be on book tour? Especially when a small amount of people show up for an event -- has that happened to you? EP: It certainly has. This [current] book seems to get a crowd. I read for my other three books a lot and seven people would be there. You do as well as you can for those seven people. I once was on a lineup that included David Sedaris and I was the first reader and he was the second. I had the experience of standing before 500 people reading my story -- all of 499 had come for him. It was fun. RB: That’s show business. EP: Thank you.