{"id":4446,"date":"2011-08-01T00:10:40","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T05:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2015-03-25T21:00:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T03:00:37","slug":"an-interview-with-jean-mcgarry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/4446","title":{"rendered":"An Interview With Jean McGarry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jean McGarry is the author of six books of fiction, among them the novel <\/em>The Courage of Girls (Rutgers University Press) and the short story collection <\/em>Dream Date (JHU Press). Her most recent short story collection <\/em>Ocean State was published in 2010. Her 2006 novel, <\/em>A Bad and Stupid Girl (University of Michigan Press), received the University of Michigan Fiction Prize. Her short stories have appeared in <\/em>The New Yorker, <\/em>The Yale Review, <\/em>Boulevard, <\/em>The Southwest Review, and others. She served as chairwoman of The Writing Seminars from 1997-2005.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Given the deep interiority present in so many of the stories in the collection Ocean State<\/em> would you share a little about your process? At what point does the linear narrative structure enter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: That\u2019s a good question. You know Henry James, when he wrote the preface to Roderick Hudson,<\/em> his first novel, talked about the struggle of writers\u2014between the plan for the novel and the actual as its going on, the struggle between the direction the plan wants to go in and the way the actual writing is going. For me it\u2019s a similar kind of struggle but there is no plan, I don\u2019t start with a plan but I do think you put your finger on it, the interiority, the textured mosaic-like quality of the moment, there\u2019s that and then how do you get to the next moment? How do you move the story to the end? But I don\u2019t struggle with that anymore I just let whatever the moment I\u2019m writing about fill in and then I\u2019ll usually take a break and write the next day and when I read that, I\u2019m free enough of that, of the intricate net to move, to be able to move to the next. So maybe it\u2019s the mechanical passing\u2014you can read faster than you can write so when you read it it\u2019s the launching to the next. But I\u2019ve always also felt that the real action of the story happens on the really microscopic level. It happens in the little tensions in an individual sentence, it creates something in the reader\u2019s mind\u2026 it\u2019s supposed to be something in the characters but actually it\u2019s the reader we want to excite, so it\u2019s the reader who sees those little things. I think that drama in the story is the transfer of energy from sentence to sentence with those interesting breaks where suddenly you move ahead in time or maybe there is a change in POV.\u00a0 The other thing I was thinking of in regard to some of my stories, I think you start off a story with a tone and you know the tone you want to end with, does that sounds right to you?<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Meaning that there would be some sort of change in tone?<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: There would be a change, there would be an intensification, there would be a reversal\u2014we just don\u2019t fully know, you don\u2019t know what the end points going to be in terms of event, but, I know, well I started out at 20 and I\u2019m going to 30, I\u2019m going to 45.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: So sort of like the ultimate vibe or conclusion\u2026 I\u2019m thinking of \u201cWelcome Wherever He Went\u201d it definitely ends you with a completely different…. Tons of time has passed, but also the feeling where he ends, although in his mental consciousness I don\u2019t know how different it is\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Well that\u2019s a hard one for me to talk about in this light, I guess an easier story to talk about\u2014it\u2019s an easier story\u2014is \u201cThe Night Before,\u201d where a woman is trying to give herself a good nights sleep because her life is going to change tomorrow and I think the first sentence there is \u201ctomorrow is the first day of elegance\u201d and what I hear in that sentence is the idea that there\u2019s a shattering of illusion ahead. The character starts out thinking that she\u2019s going to be disappointed in some way but you have to keep both going. You have to keep the illusion going and whatever is going to come in. I guess once I got the sister in there, and the mother, I thought, this not going to be the story where there\u2019s a big fight at the end or she\u2019s going to decide not to get married. I guess what I figured out when I was working on the story is that the whole life of that family is going to be clarified by the end of that story. The life to come is something else, the day of elegance and everything that follows, but the life that these three characters have already lived is going to be not only exposed, but maybe intensified because this woman is gone, she\u2019s leaving and they\u2019re all going to try and pull her back in.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: It\u2019s funny that you would say her being pulled back in in that moment, because when I was reading that story I felt so much sympathy for these other two women.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Yeah it\u2019s true. Well that\u2019s another form of energy in a story, how the reader feels about the characters. I think one of the tricky things that fiction writers often do is they\u2019ll make the main character the least sympathetic of all so that the reader is wishing and hoping against that character in some way, wanting him or her to be thwarted.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Going off of some things you mentioned earlier today. In many of the stories in this collection I noticed a good deal of familial lineage present. Many generations of one family are often represented within a single piece. In the same vein, great spans of time are often leapt over, which I think is really interesting, in particular as you called it the antithesis of the epiphany story. I\u2019d be curious to know if this sort of branching is in any way related to your psychoanalytic background, as far as that the causal relationships that exist between family members are more dramatically seen as they are developed throughout time therefore that\u2019s why your stories span longer periods of time rather than simply a single day or span of weeks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Your question is illuminating because it\u2019s making something clear to me that I didn\u2019t realize. I think one of the other reasons the stories are longer or include more time, is because they\u2019re really about more than one character. They\u2019re truly familial. And I think maybe an epiphanic story really has to center on a single character, moving toward that point of astonishment, so maybe the psycho-analytic aspect is that the character is never alone, they\u2019re not only surrounded by the people around them but they\u2019re surrounded by all the people who\u2019ve passed too. I really hadn\u2019t thought of that, but you\u2019re onto something, that\u2019s good.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Like leap-frogging from generation to generation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: I think I\u2019ve always felt that I was a little bit unfair to my characters because I learned a lot from Joyce and Joyce really wanted to expose, he was always so angry and I think I came to a point where I thought, where I wanted to you know, not handle them with a greater gentleness but I just wanted to give them a little more scope. And I think it had to do with psychoanalysis, but I also think it had to do with that I wanted to write more than about an individual person\u2019s pathway through life. I thought more about the group and their relationships. Not\u2014a love relationship, is it going to be a success or not? But all the texture and knotting that happens between two people over time or between more than two people over time, so it wasn\u2019t an individual\u2019s triumph or failure or anything, and I guess this goes back to your thoughts on interiority, if you\u2019re going to do that you\u2019re not going to have as clear a plot line because you\u2019re going to take away the fictional element for this person where everything changed this night, because actually when you\u2019re talking about a group of people it\u2019s going to be very different things for each one of them. I remember a student in class talking about the story \u201cTransference\u201d and how it didn\u2019t have that traditional arc because it wasn\u2019t about a singular patient. It\u2019s about Dr. Broad in the course of one day.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: I feel like I had a similar experience reading that story. I was caught off guard\u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: You thought it was going to be about Isabel?<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Right and it wasn\u2019t. And when she left I was watching her leave for a couple of pages before I was like wait? Oh\u2026but then I ended up getting caught up with him. Once I realized what was actually happening it became more interesting. I feel like if it had stayed with Isabel it would have become sensational in a way, like how are you going to fix this? I want to relate it to reality TV in my mind. How will you fix this incredibly damaged thing that I\u2019m watching? Which is troubling.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Well obviously between the two of them there\u2019s a lot of combat because she\u2019s this girl with a lot of rage in her and he has a lot of sadistic ideas about what happens in treatment. It really was going to be like reality TV, it was going to be rough. That would be sensational, one day she came in and just started breaking the glass things he had on the wall. Those kinds of things do happen.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: That sounds terrifying. \u2026 Speaking of point of view. I noticed you generally use a close third. I noticed while reading the stories in \u201cOcean State\u201d that \u201cDream Date\u201d is the only story told in first person. Was it a conscious choice to have this particular story stand out in that way? How do you decide the point of view to follow? I know some writers will try out different points of view\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: I had no choice. I don\u2019t have that wonderful moment of deliberation, I\u2019m already in. You know I think it must happen as I imagine the characters and the character\u2019s world and once there I don\u2019t really have any wiggle room to think, well maybe I\u2019ll try it here. I very much start with the first sentence. If the \u201cI\u201d is there as it was in \u201cDream Date\u201d then I could stay with it, but I never could introduce it after the fact. One of the strange things that I do, and I don\u2019t want to keep on doing this because it\u2019ll get to be a mannerism, is I usually title a book, a whole book with a title that I\u2019m going to use for a story after the fact. So I titled my last book Home at Last<\/em> and in my next book there\u2019s a story called \u201cHome at Last.\u201d So that\u2019s a strange use of title. The title in some ways suits the book, but in some ways galvanizes me to think of, well what\u2019s the real story that goes here? It\u2019s been really fun to do that for some reason or other, it\u2019s almost as if there\u2019s a little life left in that title, or that now I understand what it means.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: When putting together a short story collection, what process do you typically follow? Do you ever feel a need to create additional stories to fill in gaps thematically?<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Yep, I do that but it\u2019s really a lot of fun to put together. Even though I know that readers are going to do their own thing, they\u2019re going to start reading this and then go back here, that\u2019s fine too, but I love the idea of passage from one story to the next. So I think of my story collections as being organized, not just as oh here\u2019s what I happened to write this past five years. Like having \u201cFamily Happiness\u201d first and \u201cOcean State\u201d last.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Why did you order them that way?<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Well some of it is kind of instinctive but I didn\u2019t have a title for the last story. The two most recent stories in Ocean State<\/em> were \u201cOcean State\u201d and maybe \u201cFamily Happiness.\u201d And a writer\u2019s dream is always the concept of getting better, I mean it\u2019s not always the case but you do think\u2026 And these stories, well \u201cFamily Happiness\u201d is so layered, so many layers of time and \u201cOcean State\u201d is such a strange story that I guess\u2026 and they were the most recent so I thought this is a frame that could be very powerful. And then there are some stories, I\u2019ve always had an interest in experimental fiction so some of the stories are much stranger, there are elements of fantasy or I don\u2019t know what you would call it but they\u2019re not real stories. So I always have to figure out well where am I going to put these that are so different.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: None of your stories feel entirely traditional and I couldn\u2019t quite put my finger on it when I was reading and I would think, this seems like a traditional story and yet there\u2019s something about it. The closest I was able to explain it in my mind was that it was a reverse Raymond Carver where you have this clean language where it feels clean and simple, but rather than describing someone say, sitting at this table and you\u2019re getting an exterior scene, you\u2019re getting a completely interior scene.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: That\u2019s a very good description.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: So that it\u2019s almost this planned intricate puzzle, so that I\u2019m going to tell you five facts about someone but they aren\u2019t five facts that are going to lead you immediately to a conclusion about them you have to make your own understanding of them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: That\u2019s exactly right. And I think what happens is that because they\u2019re on different registers, the facts are on different registers, they aren\u2019t all just what the person looks like and sounds like, they\u2019ll go away from that and have something to do with what they\u2019re thinking about so you wont be able to consolidate it.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: You\u2019ve talked about stacking metaphors. Other repeated themes I noticed in this collection were cleansing, industriousness. This idea of creating a family where there was no family. The art models all on one page, the tree of life, the doctor\u2019s patients from \u201cTransference.\u201d I\u2019ve been interested lately in the idea of metaphor taking over the functions of God, in so far as creating a sense of order out of disorder. Do you find that through your writing life there have been repetitions in theme? Are they latent or involved in your conscious thought? General themes that cycle over the course of years or that you\u2019re perpetually interested in?<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: What do you hope is the answer to that question for your own writing?<\/p>\n

Interviewer: I\u2019m not sure I know. I thought it was interesting how you talked about how you\u2019re now writing about things you used to write about 25 years ago, but in a new way, in a new light.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: I\u2019m always glad when things come back. And I\u2019m always surprised too. One of the fun things about putting together a collection of stories is seeing where you\u2019ve been and sometimes it\u2019s daunting because you think I haven\u2019t been that many places but then you see in ecstasy I haven\u2019t been that many places but I\u2019ve been there again and again. I initially thought of this collection as a collection on craft. There was a fascination on sewing, with sculpting, with painting, not craft so much as technique but craft as far as devotion to a process, how people rescue themselves. I think of the \u201cTree of Life\u201d where this guy has been just a mechanical part of his family\u2019s life and his work life, but has always had this tremendous brain and sensibility. But at the end of his life he decides he\u2019s going to learn how to draw, not drawing to learn how to draw, he\u2019s drawing because it\u2019s giving back to him what these vital times in his life were that he wouldn\u2019t get to see otherwise. I love that. That there would be a possibility for people this way, some kind of discipline, study, absorption that would give them something back that other things never do. So I thought, except in \u201cFamily Happiness,\u201d a lot of the characters are really interested in objects, as in \u201cGold Leaf\u201d or they\u2019re going to draw and even in \u201cOcean State,\u201d the man, he has an artist\u2019s point of view. It\u2019s bringing all the women characters in his life together in one. Because to me that\u2019s amazingly hopeful to see that and I\u2019ve been trying to encourage it in myself. When people think about life trajectories they think in terms of falling in love, as a rectification or growing up and becoming educated but it seemed to me there could be another possibility that they could have an urge to do something which would be very rewarding to them but it would also reflect back on who they were. It seemed to me, like when you say that metaphor became like God, that seems to me a real possibility, it doesn\u2019t seem sentimental like you\u2019re offering yourself some kind of salve.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: I\u2019ve visualized the inside of my mind as different things throughout the years starting in high school and it never struck me anything significant until recently I started thinking, well the world is so infinitely vast and amazing in so many ways and perhaps metaphor is just a way to\u2014not to tie it down\u2014but to make it stacked or clearer or\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Well the logic of cause and effect is exhaustive. So this could be some other way, it can\u2019t simply be the psychoanalytic idea that fantasy comes out of childhood, it can\u2019t simply be that. There must be some other rubric we can use to say, look at it this way. But to go back to your question, I think those are the things I\u2019ve written about: family and so on. So I don\u2019t know if I have more to say on this, but I\u2019m very interested in those subjects. I think the subject I\u2019m interested in now is ambition. I have a novel about an art historian who cannot accept the fact that he\u2019s not a great artist and what kind of distortion that creates in his life.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: Sounds tragic.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: It\u2019s also comic.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interviewer: Do you fluctuate between working on short stories and novels or do you simultaneously work on things?<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: No I am not a simultaneous person, I am a one thing at a time\u2014I\u2019m in the middle of this story about another analyst but he\u2019s much more of a human being. I feel like he\u2019s a human being, Dr. Broad wasn\u2019t entirely a character, I was too nervous. A psychoanalyst is fun for a character because you have them as a character and then their patients are your characters. It\u2019s vertigo. What I think is fascinating about the psychiatric field is that they think or hope that they\u2019re offering some kind of solace but we don\u2019t feel the same way. Maybe we\u2019re trying to make sense of the character\u2019s lives but we\u2019re not offering anything.<\/p>\n

Interviewer: You mean offering something to our characters\u2019 lives?<\/strong><\/p>\n

McGarry: Yeah. I think I\u2019ve felt considerable character guilt over time. You can\u2019t seize them up in your hand and say this is who I think you are. They\u2019re made up so you don\u2019t really owe them anything, but you owe the people they\u2019re based on some kind of hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean McGarry is the author of six books of fiction, among them the novel The Courage of Girls (Rutgers University Press) and the short story collection Dream Date (JHU Press). Her most recent short story collection Ocean State was published in 2010. Her 2006 novel, A Bad and Stupid Girl (University of Michigan Press), received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[23],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-19I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11805,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions\/11805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}