October 31, 2004
QUESTIONS FOR CHRISTINE SCHUTT
Prize Fight
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

What is it like to be attacked by your fellow novelists for having written a novel that reportedly sold only 100 copies? Thomas McGuane said publicly that the National Book Awards underwent a ''meltdown'' by selecting finalists as obscure as you.

It surprises me very much. It surprises me that Tom McGuane could damn my book without having read it. And by the way, ''Florida'' has actually sold at least 1,099 copies.

The critic John Leonard suggested that a prize winner should be someone who has put in time and paid his dues.

I am 56. I have taught literature at a girls' school in Manhattan, Nightingale-Bamford, for more than 20 years. My first collection of short stories was titled ''Nightwork'' because I wrote it at night while I was divorced and raising two sons. How else can I pay my dues?

All the finalists in fiction this year are women. Do you think this has anything to do with the response you're getting?

Would they be doing this if we were five unknown men?

What do you think the award should stand for besides, obviously, literary excellence?

I do think you should honor some work that is trying to be a clean, hard object.

That could describe a washing machine.

True, it could. But what I mean is that a piece of writing should be hard and clean in the sense that there is nothing extraneous about it, no feathery adjectives.

You initially published with Knopf, which is known for its devotion to serious fiction, but ''Florida'' was published by a small academic press.

I was hoping that Knopf would take it, but they didn't. It was Gordon Lish at Knopf who bought my first stories, and he was fired before the stories came out. I think publishers are afraid of taking a risk on something that is different.

But ''Florida'' is not so radically different. It tells the story of an orphaned girl who finds refuge in books. Why, do you think, have orphans been such a powerful presence in Western literature?

Well, what is it to be an orphan? It's always to have to say ''please'' and ''may I?'' You are always spending the night at someone else's house. You don't want to make a mistake, or do anything wrong, or ask for too much.

You yourself seem timid, but in your short stories in particular you take on such bruising events as incest and dead bodies under beds.

There is a story of mine that has always upset people. It is called ''What Have You Been Doing?'' and it's about a woman who teaches her son how to kiss.

Is it based on actual experience? Have you ever kissed either of your sons amorously?

My older son, Nick, was very much an actor, and he did things that sometimes sort of shocked me. Sons forget their size and their bodies.

Are you saying you actually kissed your son? I'm horrified!

No, no, I never did that. I once tried to teach him how to dance. When you write, you always make it a little bit bigger and bolder than it is in life.

That's a relief.

I can be very bold and brave and nasty on the page.

Better on the page than in life! What did your sons, who are now in their 20's, think of the story?

They just laughed. It's wonderful having boys, isn't it? They're very forgiving of their mothers.

Yes, certainly more forgiving than the American literary world.

It doesn't matter what anyone says. If the work is good, eventually it will be found. I used to imagine that my work would be discovered after I am dead, but it's much nicer to be recognized in one's lifetime.



The New York Times > Magazine > Questions for Christine Schutt: Prize Fight