|
A Conversation with Elinor Lipman
Do women as smart as Alice Thrift (B.S. MIT, MD HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL) fall
for men like Ray Russo (traveling salesman without portfolio)?
I've got my dukes up waiting for that question. Yes, they do,
everywhere I look. It's the love her/hate him syndrome carried to an extreme.
Some readers get touchy about this, though: They want women on
the page to make good decisions, no missteps, meet and marry noble people, and
for the character to see the warning signs that are evident to the reader.
Ray becomes Alice's boyfriend through persistence and by default.
There's no one else, and he tries harder and knows a good thing when he
sees one. He's a little sleazier than the average inappropriate guy, but I
couldn't help myself. And I grew fonder and fonder of him as the story
progressed. Let's not overlook that Alice was an excellent candidate to
confuse good sex with love, and perseverance as devotion. Besides,
don't I say somewhere in the waning pages that this is a cautionary tale?
How did you decide to make Alice a graduate of Harvard Medical School?
I went to college down the street from Harvard Medical School and attended
enough mixers at Vanderbilt Hall to lose any awe I had of its residents.
Besides, Alice needed a very good school on her C.V. to make her
downward spiral more poignant and inexplicable.
You didn't name Alice's hospital....
Because there's bound to be a few hideously unsympathetic and philandering
surgeons on any given staff that will be seen as models for Alice's attendings.
I expect people to sidle up to me and ask, "Is Dr. Hastings based
on Dr. X at such-and-such hospital?" The answer is no; I made it all up.
I didn't want to make up a hospital name, though; I don't
think the world needs another fictional "Boston General."
Is there really an Einstein Drive in Princeton, New Jersey?
Absolutely. I found it on MapQuest.
Where did Leo Frawley come from?
I was at a friend's son's bar mitzvah and the most interesting person at
my table was my friend's hairdresser–male, Irish, straight-- who was one of
13 children and raised in Brighton, a working class section of Boston. Leo
the character popped up the next day. I knew Leo, in the sense
that I grew up in a Catholic city in St. Margaret's parish, where a lot of my
friends had siblings in the double digits.
What is The Pursuit of Alice Thrift about?
Friendship...and being rescued by it. But then again, I think all my
books are about friendship. And yearning. The more specific summary is: It's
about a woman, a surgical intern, book-smart but socially inept, and how she
finds her way through the world. I might mention Pygmalion... I
usually add that the challenge was to take a hapless, clueless, humorless
narrator and make her sympathetic and even endearing. A friend of
mine claims that I once said all my books are about "Who's sorry now?"
I don't remember saying that, but I liked it a lot.
There are two mothers in The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, neither
mother-of-the-year material.
Absolutely correct. I have a much better time writing difficult mothers than
sweet ones. I found a quote in Carol Shields' biography of Jane Austen
that may apply: "...Mothers are essential in her fiction. They are the
engines that push the action forward, even when they fail to establish much in
the way of maternal warmth." Alice's mother has a penchant for the
psychiatric and wants to be her bottled-up daughter's confidante. And
then there's Mrs. Frawley, Leo's mom, at the far end of the maternal
continuum–no tête-à-têtes or unbosomings for her. Just the
opposite: Don't ask/don't tell.
Was Ray really faking it? Or was there something there?
Don't blame Ray. I muddied the emotional waters because I grew
fonder and fonder of him as the story progressed, and began to think, Maybe
he means it. Maybe he really loves Alice. But I had put a
frame around the story that was its raison d'etre, Alice saying at the
end of the first chapter, "This is about the weak link in my own
character–wishful thinking–and a husband of short duration with a history of
bad deeds." I wanted to be faithful to my opening, which meant that
neither Alice nor I, in the end, could succumb to Ray's charms. Of
course I wanted the reader to wonder all along if Ray was sincere. And yes I
think there was something there.
So we're not talking about following any outline, then?
Can't do it. It takes me months to come up with an idea for a new
book , so when the opening sentence or the premise finally suggests itself , I
just want to sit down and get going. I'm constantly puzzling over what
comes next, what will my character do today and tomorrow, which leads to some
trial and error, but also brings in an element of surprise–organic surprises,
we hope; nothing that strains one's credulity. Eventually, with
every book, I make notes that will help me bring down every ball that I've
thrown up in the air. My notes for Alice in the waning weeks of the
writing said, "Bring back Mr. Parrish....Parents come to Boston...Mary?... A
final word about Hastings.... Restage wedding.... ‘Have I mentioned that this
is a cautionary tale?'...Epilogue. " I saved that piece of paper.
Your husband's a doctor. Is there any part of him in Alice?
A lot-- but almost purely vocabulary. He can rattle off, "Herniated nucleus
pulposus," and not hear it as funny. Because
he's a radiologist, he knows every bone and every inch of the human body, so
he came in handy, as did his Grant's Atlas of Anatomy. He's
actually very funny, but he has a clinical bent that makes him say, "I was
febrile and diaphoretic," instead of "I was hot and sweaty." When
Ray had his alleged vasovagal reaction, my husband was the one who suggested the
cause: straining at stool–and smiled when he said it.
How did you choose fudge as Ray's career?
My husband and I were once spending a weekend at friends' ski house.
Our son was 5 or 6. The friends, parents of three,
provided a babysitter whom they'd met at the ski lodge and had used
before. The kid arrived, a teenaged boy, kind of scruffy.
My husband asked if he worked at the lodge. Yes. Ski
instructor? No--the snack bar. "What do you do in the off-season?" my
husband asked, unhappy already. "Concessions," he answered. "My family
travels around the northeast and sells fudge at carnivals." He
might as well have said, "We're vagrants and child molesters."
My husband took me aside and said, "We can't go out tonight."
That episode came to mind when I needed a trade for Ray, which, shall we
say, didn't inspire confidence.
Where did Sylvie Schwartz, tough cookie internal medicine resident, come
from?
I had an across-the-hall neighbor my sophomore year in college who was
brassy and smart and much braver than I was in all social matters. And
prematurely sardonic. Though outrageous, she was always entertaining, and
underneath her bluster and bravado she had a very big heart.
Is there anything else you want to add?
Maybe a word about alleged happy endings. And for this I'm quoting Carol
Shields again, my literary hero, in her latest novel, UNLESS: "I have bundled
up each of the loose narrative strands, but what does such fastidiousness mean?
It doesn't mean that all will be well for ever and ever, amen; it means that
for five minutes a balance has been achieved at the margin of the novel's thin
textual plane; make that five seconds, make that the millionth part of a
nanosecond." I love that. I don't believe readers should be left
unsatisfied, with characters staring into the abyss, for the sake of literary
coolness.
|
