Julia Glass reads her reviews. When I ask her what she thought about Liesl Schillinger’s comment that Glass’s new book I See You Everywhere is a “literary clafoutis,” the author says “We took that as kind of a slap, since clafoutis is comfort food, a kind of mix – but then I realized that The New York Times really respects me to have reviewed my third book, and I kept reading. Overall it was a very positive review.”
Glass continues. “Some of the most interesting reviews have revealed things to me about myself as a writer. It can be marvelous to see how an intelligent readers ‘reads’ you in ways that surprise you. For example, one man who came to a reading talked to me about the way I use secrets, and I’d never seen that in my own work. But I believe that ‘the reader is always right;’ if they’re smart, it’s probably there.”
Right readers are why Glass “so enjoys” going out on the road and answering questions. “A high-school student asked me how I tackle the problem of writing silence,” she says. “That’s a great question, and it made me think hard about that the next time I sat down to write.”
She believes that some problems can be tackled, while others get worked on subconsciously. “For the longest time, I didn’t know why I’d created the character of Saga in The Whole World Over, but now I do: I created her because I had to have a foil for Greenie Duquette’s husband Allen. He’s so mind- and intellect-focused; she has to live more in the present, because of her brain injury. I wanted to look at the way our relationship to memory changes as we grow older, how we get to the point where we realize more is behind us than ahead of us.”
Glass and I chat for a few minutes about how when we lose people and they therefore exist only in our memories, memories take on a different value. This is particularly relevant to I See You Everywhere, which is about sisters Louisa and Clem Jardine and the loss that changes their relationship forever. “When you have a sibling,” says Glass, “You’re thrown together, quite possibly for life, with someone who is more genetically like you than anybody else in the world. There is no way you can ever sever that relationship, even if you don’t talk for decades.”
Siblings, she says, are “potentially your greatest soulmate or ally, but the truth is that person is also set up to be your greatest rival and competitor in life. It’s such a paradox!” As some readers already know, Glass had a troubled relationship with her own sister, who committed suicide. “A lot of hidden truths are exposed between siblings,” she says. “Even though we were not best friends, in times of extreme crisis, we’d call each other. It’s a subtle wish to speak to the person who will tell you the hardest truths about yourself.”
I ask Glass if that might be why neither sister struck me as particularly likable. “People who know each other well in times of crisis aren’t always kind to each other. They’ve got each other’s number. These are like a slide show of the sisters’ most vulnerable moments.”
Slideshow…not a movie…that’s an interesting choice of words. Glass laughs. “Well, you’ll notice that nowhere on the jacket does it say ‘novel.’ This book in my mind is a collection of closely interlinked stories; in fact, some of them were written before Three Junes.” She says that sitting down with stories she hadn’t looked at in over a decade was both “appalling and gratifying.” “I could see how much my writing had improved, but I still wasn’t sure how to structure the book. I didn’t want o write a memoir, because if this book were a memoir it would have to be about solving the death, and that’s not what I wanted to do. In a way, it should have been my first book – but I’m glad it wasn’t.”
Glass believes that this tale of “heartbreak that’s incurable” will make readers feel “compelled, even if uncomfortably, to follow this story. It features deeply flawed, disagreeable characters who have to win you over – and those are my favorites. Fiction at its best is a great conduit of empathy. If you come out on the side of the character? That’s a triumph. Fiction doesn’t cure, but it does help you endure. When I say the heartbreak of my sister’s death is incurable, I really mean it. You never heal. All the novels I have loved the most are abut human endurance. How do we go on, after folly, regret, heartbreak…that’s what interests me.”
Since I agree with Glass that fiction shows this better than any other art form, I ask her what she thinks about the current state of publishing, and the future of books. “Wow, got a couple of hours?” she says. “I think that I think a lot of authors are really passive and don’t understand how the publishing industry works. There’s a lot of trickledown, and the distributors are a little hard up;some of them have no stock, because they have limited budgets and they have to spend money on the frontlist. Most authors don’t realize that it’s not up to the publisher what the distributor stocks. I’m really trying to understand what goes on. Maybe the downturn means more people will be reading, but I’ve seen more coming to readings and fewer people buying.”
Glass says that she’d like to think that people will always be readers. “One thing that I’m seeing…there’s a lot of incredible sophisticated writing going on for young adults. For example, I just finished The Hunger Game by Suzanne Collins, and it was terrific. But unless we make libraries seriously kid-friendly places, I don’t think we’re going to raise readers – and if we don’t raise readers, well…”
8 Comments
I try to maintain a relatively neutral stance about our Books of the Week; after all, I’m not reviewing them. I’m interviewing their authors! However, I do choose the authors who appear on this site, and I do tend to choose authors whose work I am interested in, regardless of my critical views on that work.
Welcome back from the Thanksgiving holiday, everyone! I hope you had lots of time to read something good. We’ve got a new book to give away — and a wonderful new author video right on its heels.