Generally Horrible Questions: Kathryn Harrison

For anyone who's bothered to read more than one post on our little blog here, it should come as no surprise that we're both huge fans of Kathryn Harrison's writing.  Her book The Kiss helped to define the contemporary confessional memoir and established Harrison is one of the premier writers at work today.  With her new novel Enchantments, we took the opportunity to reach out to Harrison and she obliged us with an interview.  Enchantments tells the story of Rasputin's children, who go to live with the Tsar's family after their father is murdered.  The Tsarina Alexandra hopes that they possess some of the healing powers of the Mad Monk in helping her son Alexei--nicknamed Aloysha--cope with his hemophilia.  Though the girls aren't mystics, Marina (nicknamed Masha), the older of the girls, becomes the friend and confidante of Aloysha and tells him stories to distract him from the pain of his disorder and the uncertainty of survival during the Russian Revolution. We asked Harrison about books, Russian history, Rasputin, and her works.  If you like smart, talented writers, you should be reading Kathryn Harrison.

Generally Horrible Questions: Kathryn Harrison

1. What's the latest book you’ve read that you just can’t stop talking about?

I’m working on a biography of Joan of Arc, so all the books I’ve been reading for the past year have pertained to her, or to her time and place. I’m surrounded by stacks of them: translations of the transcripts of the trials that sent her to the stake and posthumously reversed the guilty sentence; interpretations of what it means to hear and see angels; history books like Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages; cultural anthropologies such as Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe by V. R. Hotchkiss; old standards on religion & mysticism—Frazier’s The Golden Bough, Wm James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by …. books that fascinate me but that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to another reader. [On the contrary, this is a reading list that would make a terrific syllabus for a college course--one we'd like to take.]

2. Your historical novels are incredibly rich in detail. Is it true that The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, and even Enchantments are in some way tied to your grandparents?

Yes, I was lucky to have been raised by grandparents whose very different early lives unfolded in exotic places. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know stories my grandparents told me, stories that will inform my writing forever. It began when I was very young, at bedtime, in the dark, when I was falling asleep, that liminal time, consciousness slipping toward the fantastic, toward dreams. And as an only child, who spent a great deal of time alone, I entered those landscapes when I was awake and daydreaming, there were no other children to distract me, to pull me back into the present world.

3. The Kiss was recently re-issued by Random House. Originally published in 1997, how do you imagine it would be received and reviewed if it were to just be released in 2012?
I think it would play out the same way again: different journalists, reviewers, but the same basic response. What’s different now?

I remember bumping into Molly Haskell about a month into the original publication, and when she asked how I was doing I admitted I felt bewildered by the whole fracas, and that I’d imagined the quality of the writing would have protected me from critics anyway. She just laughed and said, That’s the very thing that’s making them angry—because it’s too well written. It’s a book they’d like to dismiss, but they can’t.

I hadn’t understood that—I’d worked to make it true, but I didn’t see the price of succeeding: anger. Not from everyone of course. It was strange, as a writer, to be told it was a topic that wasn’t for literature. Not for a writer like me to own.

I think it would still be a book they couldn’t dismiss. It would still make people angry. I hope it would. 

4. I’ve read _______ and I am so ashamed?
There is no book I’m ashamed to have read.   

5. I have never read ________ and I am so ashamed?
There is no book I am ashamed not to have read. A few I wish I could read in the original language. Especially Japanese novels.

6. Which of your books would make the best movie?
Exposure has been optioned, over and over, and there has been interest in The Seal Wife. Those two strike me as more easily translated into film.

Directors have asked about rights to The Kiss ever since it was published, but I never considered selling that book. Too easy to sensationalize, to destroy the control I exerted over the subject.

7. What book or author would you recommend for the first-time reader of Russian History?

Father Grigory Rasputin

Off the top of my head? Maybe Hoskings’ Russia and the Russians. There’s so much Russian History. One could start closer to our own time, with Pipes’ Concise History of the Russian Revolution. It might be more fun to read Massie’s biographies of Romanov Rulers; he sets the context so well that it’s a form of reading history.

8. Where you able to find or read any of Marina Rasputin’s memoirs?
All of them. Dreadful. Whitewashed portraits of her father. But who could blame her?  

9. The character of Masha in Enchantments is a Russian version of Scheherazade. Which of her stories to the hemophiliac prince Aloysha is your favorite?
Perhaps the courtship of his parents—Alexandra’s cloud. And I had fun with the coronation, the chance to transform an outright disaster/tragedy into a spectacle different from the historical one. In terms of the life she was trying to eclipse, I felt the tsar’s cutting down the trees in the way that he did was one of the more successful metaphors. I felt satisfied (well, almost) with that scene.  

Rasputin's daughter is the woman with the crop.

10. Rasputin’s daughter lived an incredible life before and after the revolution. She was a cabaret dancer, a lion tamer who travelled with the Ringling Bros Circus, and even survived a bear attack in Peru. Do people live those kinds of lives anymore? Can we blame cable television…please?
I’m happy to blame television for many things, but I don’t think it can kill the imagination, or the spirit, of adventurers. Or even of discriminating viewers. The particulars might change—circuses not being what they used to be, for example—but there will always be extraordinary lives. (And there is great cable TV. A couple of my favorites: Six Feet Under, Twin Peaks—better than most movies.) [If not for Twin Peaks Liz wouldn't talk to logs....]

11. Liz or Gianna?
I have to go with Gianna because she’s not as tall. [Hath not a giantess eyes? Hath not a giantess hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a shrimpy one is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? ...And beside, the correct answer is always Liz.]

12. Perhaps we are mistaken, but is this the first time you’ve ventured into the realm of magical realism?
I think so, yes. Although I can point to antecedents in Poison.

13. Worst job you’ve ever had?
At seventeen, in a nursing home, as glorified candy-striper. Drastically depressing.

The Romanov Family

14. Do you think there’s a version of a contemporary Rasputin influencing a country’s leader today in the way that the mad monk impacted Romanov Russia?
Probably, but I don’t know who. [We nominate Gianna for this role.  She would make a great womanizing, prophetic, cult leader--fully worthy of assassination.]

15. Favorite of the “Golden Era” of Russian literature: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Pushkin, Bulgakov, or Chekhov?
I return to Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita more often than to any one book by the others, but I do love Gogol and Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy is a bit too rational for my taste—I prefer the feverish, and the playful, and the impossible. [And we love giant, talking, devil cats!]

Liz's Week: A Recap

Okay, I just sent a text message to Gianna warning her that I was feeling punchy and planned to post something to the blog.  Her response?  "Ok!"  That's support.  I know that usually I'm the less outrageous of our duo, but I am procrastinating from packing for a move next week, I haven't slept in days, the super-bright full moon is freaking me out at night, and I have enough allergy medication in my system that I'm getting dizzy when I walk around.  Oh, and I'm watching Twister on TV even though I have nightmares about tornadoes but I A) will watch anything with Philip Seymour Hoffman, and B) I want Bill Paxton to be ripped apart in a storm.  Maybe this is the time it will happen.  Cross your fingers.

Did I mention I'm procrastinating?  I'm moving in five days and making real progress.  This is the picture of my living room I sent to my pal/colleague Stacey yesterday:

And this is the picture at this moment. (Yes, that's Helen Hunt contemplating the death of her father years earlier as the monster tornado approaches the movie theater.  She's an Academy Award winner, you know, but I think this is as good as it gets for HH.)

Anyway, this is a book blog about our adventures selling books, and it's been awhile since we posted anything about our jobs as reps in the Book Land trenches.  This week I sold to three accounts in Houston, and I also drove around the publisher for Random House Audio and RH Travel, who was in town giving talks about travel books.  I'm not making this up--the publisher for a division of Random House uttered these words: "We want to be in your blog!  We love it!"  Right.  I've seen Jerry Maguire.  Everyone loves Jerry's mission statement until Bob Sugar takes him to lunch and fires his ass.  I will not be dining with RH supervisors at any point in the future.  My point is that people who probably shouldn't know about this blog are reading it, which makes me an idiot for telling this story.

Amanda D'Acierno,
VP and Publisher,
wants to be in the blog.

So on Thursday I gave a book presentation at a school parents meeting.  This event was scheduled at the beginning of the year by a woman who'd seen my dog and pony show at a school book fair luncheon last November.  Random House is actively encouraging reps to give presentations and perform direct-to-consumer marketing, so in theory my participation with the PTA gatherings is considered a positive career move.  I should say that I know next to nothing about schools in the Houston area other than that Rushmore was filmed at St. John's and my mother attended Bellaire.  Oh, and there's this other woman who saw my book fair presentation for the Briarwood School last year, found me on Facebook, friended me, and also has a kid at this school where I was giving my talk on Thursday, and she's referring to herself as "your biggest fan" and "your stalker."  She doesn't look like Annie Wilkes from Misery and she's never called me "dirty birdy," so I'm going to assume that she's not dangerous...but she is a nurse like Annie Wilkes.  (I watch too many movies.  This is what happens when you can't sleep and are procrastinating when you should be packing.)

Anyway, I knew nothing about this school.  The publicist traveling with the audio publisher, though, was all "Oh, Duchesne! The Catholic school!  That's where Chris Gillespie went to school."  Chris Gillespie works with Knopf and I think she's a Vice President.  She's smart and cool and I seriously hope she doesn't read this blog.  The point is that someone who's directly tied to the New York offices of Random House attended the all girls Catholic school where I was giving a book talk the following day.  I'd sent a list of summer reading type titles--my favorite books in hardcover from the spring and books new in paperback for book groups--weeks earlier to both the school contact and Georgette from Barnes and Noble who would be selling books at the event.  I didn't really think about the list after I sent it because they were all books I'd read and liked and were easy for me to discuss.

Here's a real conversation when I arrived at the school and ran into another woman who'd attended an earlier presentation of mine:

Mother of Duchesne student: Liz!  This is exciting.
Liz: Hi!  I'm so glad they'd let me do this.
Mother: We can't wait....you do understand that this is....well....
Liz: A Catholic school?
Mother: Some of the people are pretty conservative.
Liz: Gotcha.

Parents Association moms and the school head mistress.

What I was thinking, though, was "How is this PTA type gathering different from other PTA type gatherings where I've done my dog and pony show?"  The answer, of course, NUNS.  I have great respect for nuns because they seriously dedicate themselves to lives of service and the alleviation of suffering.  They are humanitarians.  I've met nuns in the hospital before, and occasionally sold books to them when I worked at BookPeople.  My presentations, though, tend toward the irreverent.  (My friend Elizabeth just had me call her house phone to see if she'd properly forwarded calls to her cell, and then mentioned that she's going out to fly kites with her family today.  I'd hate her except that I'm not exactly packing anyway.  Okay, I still hate her.  Also, Bill Paxton is going to survive.  This movie sucks.)

Nuns.  I wouldn't be dropping as much profanity, then.  (An aside, as if this entire post isn't just one long parenthetical statement--my stalker Facebook chatted with me the evening after the presentation and referred to the headmistress as S. NameOfNunICan'tRemember.  And I'm so unaccustomed to nuns that I thought the "S" stood for "senora," and I wondered how she could be a senora--a married woman--and still be a nun.  And then I thought that it's because she's married to Jesus/the church, which of course I was basing on my vast movie-watching knowledge of Catholicism and though this perhaps sounds disrespectful I don't mean it that way.)  Georgette from Barnes and Noble introduced me to the 35 or so women sitting on folding chairs in a building that was once the maintenance shed but was still nicer than my high school gym.  Oh, and Georgette told them that Zorro the cat weighs 75 lbs.  He's not a puma, for crying out loud.  He's just a little pudgy.  Also, one of the reasons I bought a house was so that I didn't have to fill out another apartment application and state that my pet weighs less than 25 lbs.  It was too close for me to not feel like I was lying on an official document.  As I mentioned, though, I picked the books weeks earlier and didn't think about them...and then I was talking about them.

(I've now flipped channels to Memphis Belle because I love David Strathairn.  Did you know that every member of the plane crew was ranked as a sergeant or higher?  That's weird right?  That there aren't privates?  Heh.  Privates.)

I love Harry Hole.

One of the books I was discussing happened to be Jo Nesbo's The Snowman.  I've presented this title before because it's the logical follow-up for people who read Stieg Larsson.  Also, it's typically a hoot discussing this title because the main character--who's Norwegian and I'm sure his name is St. Aloysius Gonzaga in Norway--is named Harry Hole.  It cracks me up.  Harry Hole!  It's a full book, in fact it's a whole series of books, about Harry Hole.  Are you following me here?  I said "Harry Hole" at an all girls Catholic school in front of 30 PTA moms and at least 3 nuns.  I am absolutely certain that people were praying for my damned soul on Thursday night.  Senora HeadMistress seemed to recover, though, and came up to me afterward to discuss another book I'd presented, Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison.  I did not mention that Kathryn Harrison's first book, The Kiss, was a memoir about an incestuous affair with her father.  See?  I do have restraint.

This is what I do for a living...for now.