Writing the Ordinary As Strange
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PHYLLIS HERFIELD Elizabeth McKenzie: Here’s a moment from your story Writing the “Go Back” in the collection Black Glass: “I can remember a lot of fires and storms in Indiana when I was growing up, Saint with Book, 2004 but what I remember is that they were never big enough. Oil on wood panel, 10 x 8 in Ordinary No matter how much damage they did, I was never satis- fied.” Do you think this is a clue as to what it takes to be As Strange a writer? A conversation with Karen J. Fowler: That’s such a good question. I do think that as a child, I craved a certain amount of excitement Karen Joy Fowler and that some of that came from being such a big read- er. The books I was reading were all about children who had great adventures, so I always felt I was on the brink of something that never quite arrived, or never quite turned out to be as big as I wanted. As an adult, it’s now very, very clear to me that I don’t want any adventures in my life. The best possible life is the one I have, where I read about adventures, but I don’t actually experience one. Although Karen Joy Fowler lives in Santa Cruz, California, and was I do still like a big storm. It’s very exciting when the coast an early friend of Catamaran. In the spring of 2013, we gets all whipped up and the trees are lashing back and published “Primate Study,” an excerpt from her soon-to-be- forth. As an adult, of course, I’m more aware that someone released novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, is probably taking some real damage at their house and I which was eventually short-listed for the Man Booker Prize should not be rejoicing in the wildness of the weather. Re- and won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Fowler’s work ally, growing up has spoiled all of my innocent pleasures. has received much acclaim over the years. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, was a New York Times Notable Book and E.M.: What was it like to be an eleven-year-old from Indi- won the Commonwealth Medal for the best first novel by ana and wake up one day in Palo Alto, California? a Californian. Her second novel, The Sweetheart Season, was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s third novel, K.J.F.: It was grim. There were a lot of things going on Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner in my family at that same time—in my eleventh year. My Award for Fiction. The Jane Austen Book Club was a New father took the job that brought us to Palo Alto with a cer- York Times best-seller and Notable Book. Fowler’s short tain number of expectations about what the job would be. story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award Those were not met, and they were not met catastrophi- in 1999, and her collection What I Didn’t See won the cally. My dad was a scientist and he was brought in to do World Fantasy Award in 2011. She is the cofounder of the research. He assembled a team, convinced a number of James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the current president of the other people to leave their jobs and to come with him. Clarion Foundation. This was his first experience with corporate America; he’d Though it’s often remarked that Fowler moves between always worked in academia before. So when his team genres—literary, contemporary, historical, and science fic- didn’t get the results that corporate America wanted, he tion—what’s consistent is the wit, richness, and complexity was stunned to understand that he was to change his re- of her work, making her one of the finest writers of our time. sults, that he was in fact to get the results they wanted, not to do the science with integrity. He couldn’t comply with this. One day, he and his team came to work and the locks had been changed, which COURTESY THE ARTIST CATAMARAN 95 is how they knew that they were all fired. He felt tremen- E.M.: Your work is marked by defamiliarization. You up to a moment or lead away from a moment, and that cer- had everything I wanted. Soon, there was a prowler men- dously responsible for all these people he had convinced make the readers see ordinary things as strange. Is that a tainly, just in terms of my own conception of what they’re acing the property. Also, more dogs. Juliet was pregnant to join him. He went into a serious decline. place where you find the spark that ignites a story for you? about and what their structure will be, that they are—this at the time, so soon after she arrived, there was a litter of That was going on at the same time that I was trying is not true of every story, but enough of them, I think— poodles. The book has a lot of information about how to to deal with having gone from, in all modesty, being a very K.J.F.: Yes, very much. There are a number of things that they’re about a shock, a moment of shock, either for the train dogs and how to clip poodles. I loved it so much that popular, bossy, running-the-school sort of person to some- are so constant in our lives or that are so familiar to us that reader or for one of the characters. I often quite prefer if I just kept getting it out from the library and getting it out one who was just seen as strange and also very young. An we haven’t taken that step back to look at them carefully. it’s the reader who’s shocked instead of the characters. from the library and getting it out from the library. Finally, eleven-year-old in Bloomington, Indiana, was not nearly as To ask ourselves why. Why that? When did that start? Cer- But I just cannot really talk about novels because I my parents gave it to me for my birthday. About three old as an eleven-year-old in Palo Alto, California. Basically, tainly, there are a number of things in our cultural and haven’t figured out how to write a novel yet. I’ve spent a months later, I brought it home from the library and my I just shut up because every time I opened my mouth, I political lives that seem as if they could be otherwise and lot of time teaching short stories and thinking about short mom said, “Did you forget that you own this book now?” said something that drew unwanted attention. There were yet are not. I spent a lot of my upper education studying stories, much less about novels. I said, no, I remembered, but it had just been sitting on bright spots. I had a best friend I adored. other cultures. I think that’s also a defamiliarizing thing if When I write a short story, I’m pretty much in control, the shelf since I stopped checking it out, and I worried But there was a lot of tension all around me and a lot you . There’s a quote, and I don’t know where it comes I feel, at most moments. I know what I want to do and I that it was lonely. of unhappiness. Still, I believe, without any way to test it, from, that no science fiction writer has been able to create know how I want to do it, and I know when I think I have that I wouldn’t be a writer if I hadn’t gone through that an alien life form as alien as Chinese culture was to the done it. All of that confidence vanishes when I write nov- E.M.: You were the guest editor of The Best American Sci- experience, that that experience made me pay attention Europeans when they first encountered it. Doubtless the els. I just can’t keep the scope of them in my head or the ence Fiction and Fantasy 2016. What’s the state of science to people and people’s reactions; just the fact that I wasn’t opposite is also true. structure or the movement in my head in the same way. I fiction and fantasy now, what did you see there? the one talking anymore, that I was the one listening. So The quote is not intended to say anything about Euro- recognize immediately what you’re saying about my short hard as it was, I would not change it. If I could go back, I peans or the Chinese. It’s about the paucity of the imagina- stories. I will have to think a long time about my novels K.J.F.: Well, this was all pre-election. I think anything I would like to fix my dad’s life, but my own life does not tion of writers. But one of the reasons I liked studying other and why you feel they’re smooth and rounded. I expect it saw or noticed was completely erased in November. But need fixing. cultures and one of the areas that I was often focused on has something to do with plot. in the distant past of last year, there was a lot of interest in was the first-contact narrative and the misunderstandings a lot of the things that science fiction has been interested E.M.: Many of your stories and novels are haunted by dis- that people had at the beginning.