Guests
by Aryn Kyle, May 12, 2010 11:10 PM
Describe your latest book.In general, I think that authors are probably the last people who should be describing the content of their books. I have a very difficult time separating myself from my work enough to be able to discuss it intelligently. It feels a little like being asked to describe my neuroses or my fantasies or my fear of bridges (yes, bridges). But I'll take a crack at it. My new book, Boys and Girls Like You and Me, is a short story collection. I feel kind of strange referring to this book as "new" because many of the stories were written and published years ago &mdash the oldest story in the collection was written when I was 22. Because most of the stories were written long before I realized they would one day have to live together inside a book, it wasn't until the collection sold that I began to think about how they related to each other or worked together to create a larger arc. The consensus from the world seems to be that the book is about women and girls, about their choices (mostly poor), and their desires (mostly dangerous), and their decisions (mostly ruthless). Most of the stories do focus on women and girls, but now that I can look at the book as a whole, rather than just an assembly of pieces written over a period of time that represents approximately one-third of my life, I have a slightly different sense of how they all add up. To me, what almost all my characters have in common — more than gender or poor decision-making skills — is a longing for intimacy. I think that what connects these stories to each other is the characters' desire to connect and the (often misguided) choices they make to achieve such connection, connection which almost always comes to them in unexpected ways from unexpected sources and is, across the board, fleeting. Because intimacy, true intimacy, is — I think — almost always fleeting. Which is what makes it so valuable, so desirable, so worth the risk and the pain and the wreckage. What fictional character would you like to date, and why? Hmm... Darcy seems too obvious a choice, but I have a thing for brooders, and also, he had a really nice house. Rochester — another brooder — had an equally nice house, though I've had enough life experience to now understand that the crazy wife in the attic cancels out the prime real estate. Rhett, of course, was sexy as hell, but a scoundrel with a soft spot for prostitutes is the last thing I need. In general, it's the Men Who Will Mess You Up, the Heathcliffs and the Vronskys, who catch my eye (don't judge, but in college, I was a little swoony for Satan in Paradise Lost). Which is why I'm both shocked and delighted to announce that my current book-crush is an honest-to-god Nice Guy. I just finished Teddy Wayne's novel Kapitoil and am absolutely smitten with its hero, Karim Issar. He's one of the most endearing and lovable characters I've ever read — smart, sensitive, kind, and (forgive me for finding this a turn-on) he judges people for using poor grammar. Every woman I know who has read Kapitoil has a crush on Karim. My friend's mother read the book and was so taken with Karim that she baked cookies for Teddy Wayne and sent them to him in the mail. And while there's no way of knowing for sure, I feel like that probably never happened to Tolstoy. Writers are better liars than other people: true or false? I can't speak for other writers, but I'm the worst liar I know. My voice rises, my face freezes. My hands flutter uselessly at my sides. Sadly, my problem is not that I won't lie, but that I can't lie, which can make life complicated. To compensate for this debility, I've learned how to find the palatable truths within lies, something I can believe enough to prevent me from stuttering or bursting into tears while I'm saying it out loud. For instance, the lie, "I loved your poetry reading — especially the part where you did interpretive dance to your brother's suburban hip hop music!" becomes, "What a performance! I've never seen anything like that before!" In a way, I think it's possible that my inability to be intentionally false has been a great help to my writing. It's taught me that there's truth inside of every lie — it's just a matter of perspective, of finding the right angle from which to see it. What is your astrological sign? If you don't like what you were born with, to what sign would you change and why? I'm an Aquarius, and though I don't know much about astrology or put a great deal of stock in it, I read my horoscope almost every day, and I've always appreciated that my sign has a song from a popular Broadway musical. Describe the best breakfast of your life. This one's easy because, mostly, I despise breakfast. Even the word breakfast makes my stomach tighten like a knot of rope. I think this is a hang-up from my middle school days, when I would get so anxious and neurotic in the mornings that I would throw up, and my mother would drive me to school while I writhed in the fetal position, crying and clutching my abdomen and begging her not to make me go. It's hard to add an omelet to that. That said, I once had a breakfast in Belgium that I still dream about. I was on tour for the Dutch translation of The God of Animals, and my boyfriend and I stayed at a bed and breakfast in Antwerp. We spent the night smoking a joint we'd brought from Amsterdam and watching John Wayne movies in French. Neither of us spoke French or had seen these particular John Wayne movies before, but that turned out to be no kind of hindrance whatsoever, and we guessed at the plot points and filled in our own dialogue, talking in bad French accents and laughing so hard I thought I was going to break. The next morning, we sat in a giant bay window, our bodies sore from laughing, eating smoked meats and cheeses, fresh fruit, and soft-boiled eggs served in those cute little egg cups, and watching the Belgian girls walk to school in their deconstructed uniforms — enhanced with striped socks and neon scarves, crazy jewelry, and black lipstick — all of them laughing and singing, all of them smoking cigarettes, all of them under the age of 14. And I sipped my coffee and slurped my egg and thought, for the first time, that maybe I wasn't meant to be American. Why do you write? You might as well ask me why I breathe
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Guests
by Aryn Kyle, March 30, 2007 1:32 PM
Yesterday I was in L.A., where I have not been since I was nine. The weather was beautiful, the air smelled like flowers, and I was staying at the hotel from Pretty Woman. I was really hoping that Julia would be in the lobby when I got there, but no such luck. She's probably busy with the twins. So today is the final blog, and even with all my initial apprehension, I must admit that I'm going to miss it. It's given me something to do on airplanes, which is always welcome. Tomorrow, I will be back in Missoula. It will be nice to pet my cats and sleep in my own bed again. Also nice to have a little time to write. This has not been the most productive year of my life as far as the writing goes. I've worked on some short stories, which is great. And I've thought about a second novel. I've thought about a few second novels. I've saved a document on my desktop: Novel2. I've even written something in the document ? I've typed my name in the upper left-hand corner. It's all downhill from here. My boyfriend is out of town this weekend, which means that, should I choose to write, I can do it in my natural state without worry. I live in sloth when I'm working. Absolute sloth. Dishes don't get done. Trash is not taken out. A nest of unopened mail and partially read newspapers forms on both desk and floor around me. I love it. Sadly, these habits were developed during a time when I lived alone. Now that my living situation has changed, it has been brought to my attention that some of my writing practices are, apparently, irksome to others. Like how I forget to change the litter box when I'm working. "We can't use the upstairs bathroom," my boyfriend recently told me, referring to himself and his children. "The smell of litter box is making us gag." Picky, picky. Again, let me remind you: boyfriend, two children. My life is not without compromise. I have learned to work in the midst of simultaneous television watching and electric guitar playing. I have cleaned countless messes made by people other than myself. I have tripped over skateboards and scrubbed mud out of the kitchen sink. Okay, so the litter box hasn't been changed in a week and a half. Can't they just breathe through their mouths? Luckily for all of us, I have not had much energy for writing lately, and so have mostly spared the people around me from living in filth. Not writing is something I'm very good at. I'm an expert at finding ways to distract myself. Email is great for that. So is the gym. And don't even get me started on YouTube. My most recent distraction has been learning (well, trying to learn) French. The God of Animals sold in France and I got very excited. I've never been to France before and since I wasn't getting much writing done anyway, I figured, what the hell? Let's learn some French. I bought one of those gi-normous, expensive cd-rom things. (Do those really work? Really, anyone, have they ever?) The problem, I suppose, was not with the program itself, but, as usual, with my own expectations. I need to go to France and be witty and charming, to be able to talk about literature, for god's sake. I've been doing the program for several months and let's just say that I'm a long way from being able to discuss the complexities of contemporary fiction. Right now, I'm operating more on this level: Le chapeau rouge est plus grand que le chapeau bleu. (The red hat is bigger than the blue hat.) Somehow, I suspect that this sort of rhetoric will not win points in either wit or charm. But believe me when I say that the whole of the time I'm in Paris, I will, at every turn, be watching for a small blue hat to appear in the same landscape with a larger, red hat. Well, my plane is about to land, which means that it's time to wrap it up. I was going to try and leave you with something really profound and sensitive. Instead, I leave you with this little treasure that I stumbled upon while not writing: Thanks so much for reading, everyone. I've had a
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Guests
by Aryn Kyle, March 29, 2007 11:36 AM
Because my novel is told from the point of view of a twelve-year-old girl, I've been getting a lot of questions lately about my own adolescence. And while I'd truly prefer to not think much about it now that it's over, I suppose it can't hurt to make a few comparisons. The truth is that very little of the book is autobiographical. I didn't grow up on a ranch, didn't have sister, didn't have a mother who never got out of bed. Still, I had my dramas. Maybe I didn't have it as hard as my narrator, Alice. At twelve, she is dealing with poverty, isolation, abandonment, guilt. At twelve, I was dealing with gym class. Not exactly the stuff of great literature, I know. But trust me when I say that it was deeply unpleasant. It has been the bane of my entire existence that I am not athletic. If it involves strength, speed, coordination, or throwing/kicking/hitting-with-a-stick some type of ball, I can't do it. You should try harder, you might be thinking. Well I have. And trust me, I can't. (Just so you don't think that I am entirely inept in the physical-ability department, I must point out that I have a savant-like aptitude for the following assortment of unlikely activities: ping-pong, kite-flying, Dance Dance Revolution, and candlepin bowling. I'm not kidding. If you could see the way I took to each of these, you'd suspect me of being a prodigy.) Sadly, these things count for nada in the average seventh grade gym class. I don't know if these eagerly repressed years flash vivid in your mind, so let me take you back to seventh grade: Everyone cool is good at gym. Everyone. Here is me in seventh grade: tripping, falling, getting hit in the face with a volleyball. All year long, I prayed for the dance unit, mostly because it was far less traumatic than units like "football," "gymnastics," and "running-the-mile." Also, it came with the added bonus of not requiring me to change clothes in front of my classmates. Thinking back on it, I can't really say that the dance unit did much to enhance my life in any significant way. Let's just say that if I'm ever at a party where people suddenly break into the Virginia Reel, I'll know what to do. My point, though I'm being slow in making it, is that even the easiest adolescence is pretty wretched. I had a good home life, friends I liked, teachers who were, for the most part, pretty nice to me. But I was still miserable. School was awful. The boys were mean and the girls were meaner. I was shy and awkward and couldn't do pull-ups. Also, I thought I looked really good in neon pink. So for all those wondering about my adolescence, there you go. It sucked. Then it was over. Let us never speak of it
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Guests
by Aryn Kyle, March 28, 2007 11:28 AM
Last night, I read in Denver at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, one of my favorite bookstores in the world (along with Powell's, of course). I went to college in Fort Collins, and my friends and I would often drive to Denver to attend readings at the Tattered Cover. It was sort of surreal to be back as an author. The last time I was in the store was about six years ago. My college roommate and I drove down to hear Margaret Atwood read. On the way, we stopped to have our fortunes told at Psychic Readings by Kay, which was next to the highway in a little house under a big neon sign. We told each other that we weren't going to take it seriously. We were mostly curious what sort of readings one could get by the side of the highway. We thought it would be a kick. My roommate went in first and came back to report that it had been a big success: Psychic Kay had told her that she was going to fall in love and travel the world and make lots of money. Then I went in. Kay studied my palm for a few solid minutes, then pursed her lips, leaning forward to get a closer look. "Have you been practicing witchcraft?" she asked. "Um, no." "Well," she said. "You have very dark energy around you. Someone has put a curse on you." This seemed entirely unlikely. I was an English Lit. major. I worked part time in a bookstore. Who would be cursing me and why? My manager at the bookstore sometimes got disgusted with me for forgetting to clock back in from my lunch breaks, but I couldn't imagine that this would inspire him to turn to the dark arts. I pulled my hand away from Kay. "What kind of curse?" She shook her head ? the news was not good. "Your energy is blocked," she told me. "You will be stagnant, unable to move forward in love or work. You will be a failure." Even as I was reminding myself that I didn't believe in any of this hokey roadside psychic crap to begin with, I could feel myself starting to panic. Blocked? Stagnant? Failure? "Don't worry," Psychic Kay said and patted my hand. "I sell magic stones. They will lift the curse." Magic stones, it turns out, do not come cheap. Kay's cost between three and five hundred dollars, depending on how quickly one wanted one's curse lifted. But the bookstore job paid minimum wage, and I had to eat and pay rent. I could not afford magic stones. So I paid Kay my fifteen dollars for the reading and she showed me to the door, shaking her head at the hopelessness of my situation. After that, my roommate and I drove the forty minutes to Denver in near silence. It wasn't that I believed in curses or magic stones or Psychic Kay. But her words had shaken me all the same. I was a few months away from graduating from college. I'd applied to three MFA programs, been rejected by two, and was still waiting to hear from the third. I was in a relationship that was not going to last. At the time, I couldn't admit this to myself or anyone else. But still, I knew it: the relationship was ending. And Psychic Kay, she knew it too. She saw it. Not in my palm, but in my eyes. I was edgy and nervous and scared to death of what was just around the corner. What a perfect opportunity to unload some magic rocks. Enter Margaret Atwood. I was fourteen when I read The Handmaid's Tale. It was the first book I'd ever read that really got inside my skin. When I was finished with the book, I remember thinking that the world looked different, that it was wider, bigger, more open in someway. It made me want to pay attention. It made me want to write. She read from The Blind Assassin that night at the Tattered Cover, then took questions from the audience. I don't remember many particulars, just that she was funny and self-deprecating and a little odd. My roommate and I stood in line to get our books signed, and I tried to think what I should say to Margaret Atwood when it was my turn, how I could ever begin to explain how important her writing had been to me, how important it continued to be. I wanted to be eloquent and concise and sincere in my gratitude. Instead, I handed her my book, paused for a moment to get the words just right, then said, "I love you." She cocked her head slightly as she signed. "Thanks." "No," I told her. "I mean, I really love you." Beside me, my roommate covered her face with her hands. Margaret Atwood handed my book back and put her hand over mine. "I really love you too." As we crossed the parking lot to our car, my roommate turned to me. "Margaret Atwood just told you she loved you," she said. "I know!" She thought about this for a moment. "She totally lifted your curse." A week later, the third and final graduate school accepted me into their program. I moved to Montana, where I wrote my first short story, where I fell in love. Was this the work of Margaret Atwood's magical powers? Probably not. But just in case: Margaret, wherever you are, I still love
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Guests
by Aryn Kyle, March 27, 2007 10:51 AM
Spring has sprung in my hometown of Missoula, Montana. Or, at least, that was the case when I left yesterday. Given the schizophrenic tendencies of the current climate, Missoula might be buried in snow by now. But at the time I boarded the plane, it was definitely spring. This pleases me to no end. I moved to Missoula about six years ago (grad school), moved away three years later (job), then moved back (boyfriend). Missoula is a healthy, apple-cheeked kind of town. Everyone bikes and hikes and skis and camps. I don't do any of these things, and sometimes I look around at all the polar fleece and North Face and I feel sort of inadequate. I keep waiting to catch the bug, like any day now I'll walk outside, look up at the mountains, and feel some deep, primal need to scale to the top, then shoot down on skis. So far: no. The only real excitement I've had with nature since I've moved here was when I saw a mountain lion skulking across my neighbor's back yard. The excitement was short-lived, as the lion, on closer inspection, actually turned out to be a big housecat. Of course, I only learned this after alerting neighbors and waving a few small children back into their homes. To be fair, it was a really big cat. I love Missoula. It's adorable, charming, etc. The old church where Norman Maclean's father preached is still standing (I walk by it every time I go to the Big Dipper for ice cream). In the summertime, people ride their bicycles along the river and drink beer outside under red-striped awnings. I'm not kidding; it's cute. But like all adorable, charming, etc. towns across our beloved country, it has its problems: 1) The Pony Express I don't care when you need it where, how much you're willing to pay, who you're willing to bribe: if you live in Missoula and you are sending it today, it will not get there tomorrow. Period. I don't understand. We have an airport. Our roads are paved. But there you have it. However important it is, it's just going to have to wait until the day after tomorrow. 2) The Getting To and Departing From Flying in and out, as anyone who lives here can attest, is a bitch. Forget for a moment that we live in a valley, which makes both take-offs and landings occur at angles and speeds that defy human understanding. Forget for a moment that only wee, tiny, tinker-toy airplanes fly here ? I'm talking planes without restrooms, planes in which the co-pilot, who usually looks about seventeen years old, constitutes the "crew." These are hardly worth mentioning when one considers the fog. Fog, you say, I know fog. No, friends! You do not know fog. Not as we, the people of Missoula, Montana, know fog. Ours is not a good-natured, likeable fog which rolls off the sea or plains. Ours is a dangerous, flesh-eating-type of fog that packs like a slab of concrete between town and sky and makes (here is where my rant comes full-circle) a small airplane filled with twelve-or-so increasingly anxious passengers, a pubescent co-pilot, and a silent/stoic captain utterly impossible to land. Instead, the plane circles for an hour, then lands in Helena. Helena is a lovely place. But it is a two-hour's drive from my house, my cats, my beloved bathtub, and last ? but clearly not least ? my car, which waits like an obedient dog at the Missoula Airport. "Beauty must suffer," my grandmother always said. Missoula is really pretty. 3) The Winter Yes, if you like to ski, it's just fine. For the rest of us (me) it can feel at times, well, a tad bit oppressive. Call it my desert-upbringing: I can only go so many, many months without seeing the sun. Unending stretches of slate-gray sky make me feel like the terrorists have won. Like finding out that after all this time, they really did just hate our freedom. But if you should find yourself in my neck of the woods, here are a few things that must not be missed: 1) The Orange Street Food Farm My neighborhood grocery store, and perhaps the strangest place on earth. The head cashier is named Mad Dog (he has it tattooed across the back of his neck, lest one forgets). He's speedy and friendly and knows all the produce codes by heart. Last Halloween, he somehow managed to get his front teeth knocked out. I keep wanting to ask for the story, but I worry it might be rude. 2) The Oxford Bar It's open all night. You can still smoke inside. The cash register is behind a caged window. And they serve brains. Honest to god brains. You can also buy cheese by the slice (it's that yellow, individually-wrapped-in-plastic kind of cheese). Just in case you're ever wandering around Missoula at three in the morning and find yourself with a quarter in your pocket and a sudden hankering for a slice of cheese. 3) The New Skate Park It will probably not come as a surprise that I, myself, do not ride a skateboard. Even so, the New Skate Park (it has a real name, too) is one of my favorite additions to Missoula; others include the New Play Wave and the New Wine Bar. The New Skate Park has brought so much joy to the youth of Missoula that it's impossible not to love it. Drive by on a sunny day and they're all out there, sitting, skating, drinking their Big Gulp sodas. To kick off the era of the New Skate Park, Tony Hawk came to town with his million dollar vert ramp. I was out of town that weekend and have no idea what a million dollar vert ramp is, but it was, as legend goes, impressive. Of course, these are just a few of Missoula's minor draws. There's also all the skiing, camping, hiking, and biking. If you're into
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Guests
by Aryn Kyle, March 26, 2007 10:46 AM
The first thing I think you should know about me is that I have a cold. It isn't a god-awful cold ? on a scale of 1 to 10, I would rank it at about 6.5. But it's still terribly annoying. I am beginning a week of getting on airplanes and giving readings and talking to strangers about my book, a week in which I need to be bright and witty and engaging, to sound good on the radio and look okay on television. At the moment, I'm a little worried: My nose and eyes are red and runny. When I talk, I'm so congested that I sound like a man. Let the book tour begin! My point: I'm looking for remedies, those miracle cures you learned about from your great-grandmother who brought them over from the Old Country. Over-the-counter cocktails, herbal teas, concoctions made with roots and cider vinegar ? lay 'em on me. I'll try anything. Now that I've gotten that self-serving tangent out of the way, I should probably also mention that this is my first experience with the exciting world of blogging. Hard to believe, I know, considering that you can't swing a stick these days without knocking over six bloggers. At least. But somehow, I have managed to fall behind the trend. I don't even have a MySpace account. I only first learned about blogs a few years ago when I heard that a girl I went to high school with was keeping one. Curious, I looked it up. Mostly, it was filled with graphic descriptions of her various sexual escapades interspersed with photos of herself in tight clothing. (To be clear, that is not the route I intend to take here.) Anyway, so scarred was I by my introduction to blogs that I have pretty much avoided reading them ever since. So when, a few months ago, I learned that I was going to participate in the Powell's blog, I was a little worried. I had no idea what to do or where to begin. "Think about it this way," a friend suggested. "Writing a blog is just like keeping a diary. That anyone can read. Try to be funny. Talk about current events ? the funny ones." "What's been funny lately?" I asked, and she thought. "Ford died," she said finally. "Could that be funny?" So you see what I'm working with here. I'm starting from zero. My dear friends have been no help whatsoever. I couldn't possibly write about my sex life for five days, even if I wanted to, and I don't have anything humorous to say about the late President Ford. "Just be yourself," my friend added. "But, you know, interesting." Sadly, it has recently been brought to my attention that, aside from writing a novel, I have not done much that constitutes "interesting." If there is one thing I have learned from the book tour, it's that I need to get some cooler hobbies. People keep asking what I do when I'm not writing and through a series of trial and error, I have learned that "pace around my house worrying about the fact that I'm not writing" is not the answer they're looking for. Also an incorrect answer: "I sometimes watch America's Next Top Model." I blurted this out the other day in an interview when I realized that the silence following the question What do you do when you're not writing? could not possibly last another second. I was trying to be funny. As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. It was pointed out to me that instead of watching America's Next Top Model I could be doing something valuable with my time, like reading Dickens or learning how to ballroom dance. Now, I have read Dickens, and, as lovely as I think ballroom dancing is, it's not the sort of activity that would really fit seamlessly into my current lifestyle. Even so, I agonized over this interview for days, wishing that I had that moment back so that I could say something smarter, hipper, better. Look, I would love to be able to claim that I study Finnish politics or go spelunking on weekends, but it just isn't the case. The truth is that this past year has been one of the most personally demanding of my life. I sold my book, which was great, then moved in with my boyfriend and his two children. Anyone who has lived through the early stages of cohabitation will probably back me up when I say that it makes things like learning how to ballroom dance seem fairly, well, non-pressing. Instead, I've been having family dinners, carving jack-o'-lanterns, attending choir concerts and piano recitals, decorating the coolest Christmas tree to ever grace the planet (don't even get me started on how fabulous our Christmas tree was). In between all of this, I write, I go to the gym, I make long phone calls to my friends, and I worry that I don't write enough. Also, I work on not beating myself up for saying something stupid or sounding less than genius-like in front of strangers. That said: I watch America's Next Top Model. Every week. And when I'm going to be out of town, I record it. So there. Judge me. Okay, I am now off to nurse my sad little cold in the hopes that I will not arrive in Seattle looking like Typhoid Mary. I intend to wake up tomorrow completely recovered, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and brimming with funny, interesting things to
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