TCV: Why did you choose to do a thesis in creative writing?
CL: For me it was the natural choice. I came here knowing that I wanted to do creative writing. I had been speaking with Blanche Boyd [the college’s writer in residence and a professor of English] since my junior year of high school about the program and the way she runs things. As to the thesis, I wanted to come away from senior year with a solid collection of work, something that I could put down on a table and say I did this, this is done, this is what I went to school for [with three authoritative thumps of the table].
TCV: So you have a professional interest in fiction writing?
CL: Absolutely. In a beautiful ideal world, yes [lingering over the first syllable of “beautiful”]. At 16 I started writing for McSweeny’s, Dave Eggers’ publishing company. I had a two year contract to write non-fiction, mostly narrative, personal essays. At Conn the emphasis is on the short story. I liked this because I had always been driven towards fiction, even when writing non-fiction. In a way fiction is truer, and the idea of that truth always interested me.
TCV: Is truth a theme of your project?
CL: Not intentionally. As you write a lot of stories you find the themes that you subconsciously repeat because you are obsessed with these things.
TCV: What obsessions found their way in?
CL: I’m highly inspired by comedians. Take someone like Steve Martin, who can be so funny and then so smart and serious. That marriage has always been interesting to me. It’s something that I aspire to achieve in my own work.
Andy Kaufman said that what he worked for was purity of reaction in his audience. Whether that meant laughter or anger, the purity of the reaction was primary. That’s something that I strive for as well.
The title of my thesis is Thrill of the Chafe: and other Tales of Stubborn North Americans. Many of the stories deal with Americans who are set in their ways and confronted with some reason to change. Also, white bald men show up frequently in my stories. One of the stories, for example, is about a fictionalized, washed up Billy Joel. I was interested the idea that a white man in this society is supposed to be at the top of the heap, but he might not recognize his own decline, might not recognize that he is fooling himself. And this is not just men. One story is about a woman in the Ozarks that imagines she’s royalty as she spends her days sitting in a lawn chair on her concrete lawn. I think that one of the saddest and funniest things is when people can’t recognize who they are, while they stubbornly hold onto a mistaken identity.
[Here the conversation turned to the author Nabokov]. Nabokov is one of my top, top. Take Lolita. Humbert Humbert is a pervert and a bad guy, but he is so funny. His humor is attractive even while we are aware of how perverse the whole situation is. This is the kind of humor I’m interested in, the kind that is shot through with sadness.
TCV: How do you work? Pen? Pencil? Computer? Do you draft?
CL: I always carry around a couple of notebooks, a different one for each bag. I take notes throughout the day. When I feel I have a story, I type out the notes in a document called “notes” in the same form that they are in the notebook. I make a new document for the story, and write and edit on the computer.
TCV: I don’t write down everything and then draft. Draft. Draft. [three more thumps]. I work the sentence while I’m chugging away. I can’t let a paragraph go unless I’ve tuned it right…And it always feels like it could use a little more tuning. One of the first pages of the thesis has a list of alternate titles which is covered with my notes and scribblings. This is to represent the sort of editing and self-critical work that went into this project.
CL: I read each of my stories out loud about fifty times. Every line. Blanche calls this “ear training”. By hearing yourself, or Blanche, or other students read stories out loud, you learn to catch with your ear what’s good and what’s not. I have to shut myself away while I do this, for everyone else’s sake, more than mine. To other people it sounds like you are reading the same weird line over and over, which I guess you are [mutual chuckle]. But you have to listen to it like music, you have to make sure every note sounds right to you. If there is one “and” out of place, it disrupts the rhythm of the entire story.
TCV: What has Blanche done for you?
CL: The best thing she can and has done for me is to kick my ass, and you can quote that. If my work isn’t as good as she knows it can be, she’ll say “give me better, because I know you have it in you.” I had a story last year that was well received [it won a prize at the college and was a finalist for a national prize at John Hopkins]. Blanche will warn you, in these situations, not to get “one-story-itis.” She will knock out the fear of writing something new. You’ve written a good story, great, now write the next one. Do the work. Do the work…. Blanche has two rules: “Is it good? And, does it matter?” I am firmly in the Blanche school of thought. To me, these are the only two things that there are. Overall, I really can’t thank her for everything she has done for me.
TCV: Are you happy with the product?
CL :Wittgenstein said, after one of his books was published at only 75 pages: “as to the shortness of the book, I am awfully sorry for it…if you were to squeeze me like a lemon you would find nothing more.” I use this as an epigraph. Which is not to say that there is nothing more in me, but what I have to say for these stories, I’ve said.
TCV: What’s next, in life?
CL :Next fall I have an internship with Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update. Beyond that, the goal is to never stop writing. In a perfect world, I would write for SNL. But I’m highly superstitious so *knocks on wood* knock on wood. •
