Karen Joy Fowler: Wit's End
Book Club Guides
May 26, 2009. Karen Joy Fowler, author of Wit's End, takes some time to chat with Queenie C about her novel.
Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Joy Fowler
At
one point in the story, Maxwell asks a female reporter: if there was a way you could live forever, would you? My question to you is the same.
Not
unless everyone else got to, too. I'd be willing to add a few years though.
Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Joy Fowler
Rima's
father once asked her: "Do you want to be remembered as you were? Or better than you were?" What would you answer?
I
would like to be remembered as someone who generally strove to BE better than I am.
Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Fowler
"Ice
City" was described as a place where the mind went to be free; an imaginative setting. Where is your Ice City?
If
I have one at all, it's probably my childhood. That means on Maxwell Lane, in Bloomington, Indiana, circa 1958. I am outdoors rather than in and
it's early evening so the fireflies are out. It's possible I'm on my stomach in the grass, watching an anthill. Or up in a tree, reading a book,
but then it's daytime, not evening.
Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Fowler
Addison
mentions in the story that part of real life makes its' way into a fiction book. Is there a part of your real life in this book?
There
is a part of my real life in every book I write, including the ones that take place in 1873. My impulse when I write is not an autobiographical
impulse. I'm not trying to tell my own story; I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to be someone completely different from the person I am.
But in order to do that, I have to cross over on emotional moments that make sense to me, so there will always be small experiences and reactions
that are my own. Or those of my family and friends! I'm a magpie where stories are concerned, always collecting the things people tell me or I
overhear out of general interest, but also for possible use.
BCQ: "Addison had always maintained that eavesdropping was a professional obligation." Do you find yourself eavesdropping and then using it in a story?
Karen Joy Fowler: Repeat the last part of my answer above. Yes, I eavesdrop, which is so easy in this world of cell phones. An overheard
bit of conversation appears in Wit's End when two women talk about sparkle.
Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Joy Fowler
I
am dying to know: What is the significance of Tilda's snake tattoo? It was brought up many times throughout the story.
In
my mind, the tattoo is the symbol Tilda has chosen for getting clean and sober -- the snake shedding its old skin. Plus, in the first story I
ever sold (though not the first I ever published), one of my characters wore a snake bracelet coiled around her upper arm.
Apparently I find snakes decorative.
Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Joy Fowler
Book Club Guides: Interview with Karen Joy Fowler
Can
you tell us anything about your current or future writing projects?
I
am working on a book about psychologists and chimps. I have been working on this book a very long time. So at this EXACT moment, I'm taking a
break from it and trying to write a ghost story involving Edwin Booth, the great Shakespearian actor and older brother to John Wilkes Booth.
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