You Might As Well Live: The DPA Questionnaire
Bex O’Brian
Imagine your own Round Table. What famous person, dead or alive, would you dread being seated beside?
Andy Warhol. I recently read parts of his diary which I found dreary. He didn't even bother to write them himself but dictated them to his secretary. Details about lunch with so and so with no depth or thought. Also, he only liked famous people, and even more horrible, he wouldn't desire me. The whole point of a good dinner companion is to flirt. Lastly, I love to eat. I can imagine him pushing his plate away, bored. I've never pushed a plate away in my life.
Which writers leave you weak with admiration?
Jesus, how that's evolved. When I was young I remember being blown away by Barry Hannah. Now, does anyone remember him? Do I? No, not a word. Then it was the old greats. Stendhal, Flaubert, Tolstoy. Then the new greats. Bellow, Roth. Now, I can barely think about reading such books. Not sure what happened. But it's easy to say who now leaves me weak with admiration.
Deborah Levy, Penelope Fitzgerald, Edna O'Brien, Anna Burns, and Virginia Woolf...always Woolf
DP wrote drunk, what are your secret writing habits?
Same.
Why the hell do you write?
Writing is a failing in imagination on my part. My mother, father, first husband, present husband—all writers. I just fell into line. My mother always told me there are nurses and patients. I was a nurse, she said. Which, I suppose, means I shouldn't have been a writer. I'm dyslexic, scatterbrained, and I'd rather be in the kitchen cooking, yet somehow by the end of the day there are pages. It beats me.
Who is your best reader?
My sister, Sophie. Her silence says all I need to know. And, of course, my husband. But not so much because of him reading me, more me reading him. I've learned a shit load. His sentences, his thoughts, his pacing. I wouldn't know how to write without him.
Do you keep books nearby for when you are stuck?
The women from above. Woolf, Fitzgerald. I need only to read a few lines from Offshore, The Gate of Angels, or Mrs. Dalloway, and I'm off and running.
Derivative. Shallow. Just plain awful. How do you shut up your inner critic?
I rework it until the inner critic shuts the fuck up.
Would you give your left arm to have a bestseller? Your pinky finger? An ear? A fingernail?
If we are giving up body parts, I'd rather win the Booker Prize.
Dorothy Parker was a cracker jack wit but she never managed to write a worthy novel (Sorry, Big Blonde). Are we born to be good at one genre?
My sister, Sophie, says my essays are my most relaxed writing. But I’ve published two novels with a third on the way. So there must be a novelist in me somewhere.
Abigail Thomas
Imagine your own Round Table. What famous person dead or alive would you dread being seated beside?
Well, here’s my first problem. Just the idea of a Round Table fills me with anxiety. I have nothing interesting to say, especially to people like me. Writers. Unless it’s not a Round Table, but people just hanging out talking. Then I’m fine. If I felt braver, or bitchier, it might be fun to sit next to somebody famous whose work I abhor, or who never shuts up about himself, but at the moment I can’t think of a single writer I either love or loathe. Give me a minute.
So whom do I loathe. Well, for a long time it was Lawrence Durrell with his Alexandrian Quartet and all that intellect, but then I read the letters between him and Henry Miller and that changed my mind. Besides, he wrote two sentences I have never forgotten from Prospero’s Cell, the book he wrote about Corfu, “The taste of olives is as old as the taste of cold water,” and the first sentence of that book, “ Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu, the blue really begins.” Those two sentences have stuck in my mind for forty years or so. I also wouldn’t mind sitting next to Rafael Sabatini because the first sentence of Scaramouche is “He was born with a gift for laughter and a sense that the world was mad,” But this isn’t answering the question and I am so sorry. I have a thing for first lines.
Which writers leave you weak with admiration?
Who leaves me weak with admiration? That’s easier. WB Yeats, Grace Paley, William Carlos Williams, Isak Dinesen, CS Lewis, Dorothy Parker, George Herbert, Josephine Tey, Thomas Hennen, Gerald Durrell, Saul Bellow, Joyce Cary, Larry Brown, and Harriet Doerr. My god, Harriet Doerr. Lewis Thomas was no slouch either. (ed. note, Lewis Thomas is Abigail’s father)
DP wrote drunk, what are your secret writing habits?
I have written drunk and I have written sober. Not sure what the difference is. Thing is, when you’re onto something, you’re writing all the time. Just walking around the room muttering, you are writing. Staring out the window with nothing on your mind, you are writing. I can’t answer that question. Cigarettes used to be a must, now I steal the occasional butt from my daughter or pick one up off the ground. Happily, I no longer need to be drinking.
Why do you write?
Why do I write? For clarity, and to stay sane. And for fun, the hardest, best kind of fun. God, there is no high like it.
Who is your best reader?
My best reader was my friend Chuck Verrill. If he liked it I knew it was good. If he didn’t I went back to the drawing board. My daughter Catherine is a terrific reader as is my sister Eliza Thomas and my friend Linda Gravenson. I owe them. A lot. But I miss Chuck every day.
Do you keep books nearby for when you are stuck?
The one book I always have handy is the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. When I’m stuck there is often a reason or a word that stands in the way of what I need to know to get moving again, and if I look it up I sometimes find the answer to a question I didn’t think of asking. When I was writing A Three Dog Life, which was about my husband’s accident and his traumatic brain injury, and I had moved to Woodstock to be closer to the place that would take him without drugging him up, after a year or two I found myself with a life I was loving. We sabotage ourselves. I suddenly felt terribly guilty, I had built this life on his accident. So I looked up guilt. Nothing illuminating. Survivor. Nada. Other words I’ve forgotten. Then finally I looked up ”acceptance.” One if its roots is “a thread used in weaving.” My life changed on that dime. The thread might fray, the thread might break, but you have to keep on weaving.
Derivative. Shallow. Just plain awful. How do you shut up your inner critic?
I shut her up a long time ago when I learned you need to write badly to get to the good place. Nothing is wasted. So I write badly until I get it right. Born to be good at one genre? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’ve written three books of fiction, four of memoir, another in the works, but that’s because I’m hooked on figuring out what the fuck I’m doing, what the fuck I have done. But it might be fun to do fiction again. I keep being haunted by a pregnant dalmatian. Maybe it will show up one day.
Would you give your left arm to have a bestseller? Your pinky finger? An ear? A fingernail?
What would I give up to have a best seller? Nothing. I just want to write a good book. It would be lovely to have it sell well, but that’s not really the point.
Rebecca Johnson
Imagine your own Round Table. What famous person dead or alive would you dread being seated beside?
Be careful what you read. Growing up, I was a ballet dancer and I worshiped George Balanchine. I just loved the way he’d pair these freakishly talented young women in black leotards and haunting music by composers you don’t normally hear about (Hindemith!) but I recently read Jennifer Homan’s biography of him–Mr. B.--and now I kind of loathe him. He refused to let women choreograph and he diddled these poor girls who were decades younger than him and, to cap it off, he may have poisoned himself with Mad Cow disease taking some weirdo supplement to restore his sexuality!
Which writers leave you weak with admiration?
Oh, so many. Too many to name. Once I start naming, I’ll start to worry that I left someone out, so, no, I cannot. I do tend to prefer women over men. I once interviewed a briefly famous writer in the 1990’s for the NYT Magazine who dismissed Jane Austen as “the muffin lady.” I never got over that.
DP wrote drunk, what are your secret writing habits?
Coffee, Facebook, Online Bridge. Oh, wait, those are my secret non-writing habits.
Why do you write?
If I don’t write, I feel like my life is utterly meaningless. I mean, it is anyway, but writing gives me the illusion that I have done something worthy. Also, it allays a deep existential loneliness at the core of my being. I don’t really think we’re meant to be happy, but writing well is the closest I ever get to that elusive state of being.
Who is your best reader?
My mother. She was an English teacher, an incredibly astute reader and a talented writer. Plus, she loves me so there’s that. I mean, I can tell when she doesn’t like something. Not from what she says but the long pause–“I read your piece….”
Do you keep books nearby for when you are stuck?
I’ll just grab random things off the shelf. Right now, I have a copy of Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout sitting here. I love that character and Strout has a wonderful, deceptively simple voice as a writer. She can do no wrong. But I am just as likely to grab Edith Wharton, Julian Barnes, Alice Munro, William Faulkner (no, not really, I just said him to make me sound smart and quirky).
Derivative. Shallow. Just plain awful. How do you shut up your inner critic?
This is a huge problem for me. I often find myself thinking, Oh who cares what you think? It’s awful. If I could take a contract out on that bitch, I would!
Would you give your left arm to have a bestseller? Your pinky finger? An ear? A fingernail?
I would hate to have a bestseller. I really dislike being the center of attention. Just filling out this questionnaire has been a torture.