Lauren Groff
Presented by: Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Ten Evenings
When: 7:30 p.m., Feb. 20
Admission: $15-$35
Where: Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland
Details: 412-622-8866 or pittsburghlectures.org
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Updated 2 hours ago
There are no overnight successes in publishing. No one suddenly appears fully formed, and becomes a critically acclaimed author.
That's true of Lauren Groff, who appears Feb. 20 as a guest of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Ten Evenings series. She had published two well-received novels and a short-story collection before “Fates and Furies” was released in 2015. Years of hard work and relative anonymity dissipated with the story of Lotto and Mathilde, who meet in college and seemingly have a perfect life and marriage. Infused with references to mythology and Shakespeare, the novel was nominated for a National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award for fiction. Amazon.com named it the best book of the year, and former President Barack Obama said it was his favorite novel of 2015.
Groff recently answered some questions from the Tribune-Review via email.
Question: You're still touring to promote “Fates and Furies.” Do the characters Lotto and Mathilde linger — are they still active in your imagination?
Answer: Whenever I finish a book, I go through an intense mourning process between the delivery of the manuscript and the publication itself. Those months or years, I work through my grief, and by the time the book is in the world, I've come to terms with never again finding myself alone in the presence of my characters. Because I write so many extra pages that don't appear in the final work, when characters stay alive, they stay alive in those private, intimate, internal spaces that only I know about.
Q: Your books and writing in general have always earned good reviews, but “Fates” seemed to garner extraordinary attention. Most novelists don't get a chance to be interviewed by Charlie Rose and Seth Meyers. Was there any point during the writing of the book that you suspected “Fates” was extraordinary?
A: It's probably not worth writing something if you find that you're not afraid, throughout the entire writing process, that the thing you're working on is going to fail spectacularly. I thought I was writing two novels, actually, books that can be read in either direction, which is such an unmarketable idea that deep down I was sure I was never going to sell the books, and I just had to write the project for myself. I'm as surprised as anyone that this book did well. It's a very strange book and a very literary one, qualities that tend to alienate a large readership, not seduce one.
Q: You are known to write drafts in longhand. Does the physical experience of pen/pencil on paper do anything specifically for the work, or is this just a habit?
A: Writing longhand absolutely changes the work. I slow down, focus intensely on the sensory aspects of the scene (paper and ink are textured and have a scent to them), and the physical posture of writing longhand is an intimate one, as opposed to the body's pushing-away position when one writes on the laptop.
Q. The descriptions of Lotto's childhood in Florida and life in Manhattan in the early '90s are especially rich in sensory details. It's almost as if the reader is transplanted to these places and their smells, their sounds. Is it essential for you to take readers to the locales in your books?
A: It's important to me to evoke scenery in as much sensory detail as possible because our surroundings have a deep and immediate effect on our emotional lives. You can play the same scene on a mountaintop or on a beach, with the same characters and emotional situations, but because of where the characters find themselves, and their physical limitations, the scenes are going to unroll radically differently.
Q; Do you feel any pressure, with the success of “Fates,” to follow up with something as equally extraordinary?
A: Oh, well, you always hope, and I'm writing a book right now that feels urgent to me. Whether it will one day feel urgent to a reader is out of my control at the moment. I'm just doing the best I can on a daily basis.
Q: And, one fantasy question: You're given carte blanche to cast “Fates” as a film or play. What's your dream cast?
A: It would be an opera, and it'd be scored by Nico Muhly, with puppeteering by Basil Twist and Mathilde played by a countertenor. Beyond that, I'd be delighted just to see it happen.
Rege Behe is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.
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