by Fannie Flagg
SV: The Oatman Family Singers are a real treat. Given the obvious gifts of black gospel singers, the world of white gospel music is a new one to many of us. What got you interested?
FF: I was always very aware of gospel groups. I remember seeing a white group on television in Birmingham, Alabama, and they always seemed so happy. As a matter of fact there was one group I especially liked called The Happy Goodman Family. But then white gospel music has always been around in the South and the Midwest. Its roots go all the way back to the 1800s and started with the Shape Note Singers. It was sung in most rural Protestant churches and continues to this day. Many famous country, western, and rock ’n’ roll singers started with gospel. Elvis Presley was a huge fan of the Statesman Quartet and used to attend all their concerts. Some say this is where he got his wiggle. Gospel singers were moving and jumping around on stage long before Elvis. Now, thanks to Bill and Gloria Gather, the wonderful white gospel groups are bigger than ever and are appearing all over the country in concert and sell out everywhere they go. Not only in the United States but all over the world. I attended a Gather Gospel concert in Anaheim, California, and an entire basketball arena was packed to the rafters.
SV: This story opens in the 1940s. Do you feel especially nostalgic for that time? Do you believe that the end of World II produced in many people a childish optimism? A foolish euphoria that all would be well? Or do you find yourself yearning for an era with just a little more room for cheer, or with a little less carping and sniping, one with less fear of the future?
FF: When I started the book, 9/11 had not yet taken place and at the time one of the main reasons I wanted to write it was that I felt our country was going through a particularly negative period. Personally, I was saddened and depressed by the way the media, books, movies, TV, etc., were portraying only the dark side of our history. I also hated it that these dark and negative images were being seen all over the world. We seemed to have little appreciation for our country and how lucky we were to be Americans. It alarmed me that young people and the world really might not know that for a lot of people the experience of growing up in this country was a positive one. I do think it had a lot to do with the period after the war and the ’50s. It was a particularly wonderful time to be an American child; at least it was for me. I just wanted to remind myself and the world not to get so caught up in all the negative and forget the positive. And yes, I suppose I was nostalgic for that period of time, and I am so grateful I was lucky enough to have been young then, when the world seemed so much more positive and the future looked so much brighter. But having said that, I am also in awe of the present and the progress we are making in medicine and technology, etc. Not that the progress in technology is helping me much. I am still having trouble using a fax machine and I haven’t as yet mastered e-mail.
SV: Do you get many of your story lines or characters from the past? Are you rewriting the past to make it more like you wish it was, or do you try to set it down as it was, from your vantage point here and now, surrounded by rainbow?
FF: Yes, I do like to write about what I know and I only know the past. And as most of my stories are based on mostly true stories and my characters are combinations of people I know, I do tend to write about the past. I try to make it as real as I remember it, and in memory things always seem better or worse than they were, but I suspect I have a tendency to make them better.
SV: What chance does the present have against the rosy recall of those years back then? Or is there no competition between then and now?
FF: No, I don’t think so—every era is different. The future will be better in some aspects, worse in others.
SV: Did children’s books or teachers or librarians contribute to your storytelling urge?
FF: When I was very small my parents read Heidi to me and I had a wonderful sixth-grade teacher named Mrs. Sybil Underwood, who used to read us Nancy Drew stories. I am sure that helped. By the way, Mrs. Underwood still lives up the street and I had dinner with her just the other night. We both had shrimp. But I think going to work with my father, who was a motion picture machine operator, and seeing as many movies as I did as a child, really sparked my love of stories and my interest in people and their lives.
SV: Do you come from a family of storytellers? Was there one person who filled your memory with tales? Or was it part of the atmosphere, not confined to your family? Somehow, a reader might get the idea you did not grow up surrounded by glum, laconic types.
FF: My father was a great storyteller. As a matter of fact my mother used to get mad at him because he could tell such sad stories so convincingly that I would sob for hours. But he was extremely funny, as was my grandmother.
SV: You’ve had extensive experience in television, theater, and movies, yet there is a sense that you were meant to be writing books the whole time.
FF: I think you are right because I am the happiest when I am writing. I did not like acting that much and never knew why until I started writing. I was finally doing what I was supposed to be doing. I am one of those lucky people who got to have two careers and the best was saved for last.
SV: Several of the female characters in your novels start out strong and continue to be so, while others gradually emerge into their full strength. Do you feel that a characteristic of some notable women is to start slowly and then come on full tilt? Is there a touch of the meek inheriting the earth in that?
FF: Well, yes. I think the women I write about tend to be late bloomers, but then women my age and older were socialized differently from men. Men were encouraged to achieve and succeed early in life. I think it took a woman longer to figure out on her own, usually without much encouragement, what she really wanted to do. I think the young women of today have a better handle on what they can do and do it sooner. As far as the meek inheriting the earth, I don’t know if that is true as a concept. I think the meek may inherit a happier and calmer life somehow. Ambition comes with a lot of excess baggage.
SV: Didn’t your mother once demand that you never be seen with a frying pan in your hand, as if you knew what to do with it? Was that loving law laid down the reason why you grew up eating in restaurants? And did you do your first writing in them?
FF: When my mother noticed I was signing up for Home Economics in high school she said with alarm, “Oh no, darling, don’t ever learn to cook or they will expect you to do it!” My mother discovered cafeterias very early on in my life and so I had very few home-cooked meals. I was an only child and my father worked at night and so my mother and I did eat out a lot. I enjoyed it. I still do. I write in restaurants and many chapters have started on a napkin.
SV: I somehow suspect that organization is not your strong suit. Characters, yes. Sheer storytelling, dialogue, subtle everyday poetry, comic timing, yes. But chapters, outlines, transitions, that sort of thing doesn’t hold out much appeal for you. Care to organize an answer?
FF: Organization? Isn’t that like the Elks Club or something?
SV: What devices do you use, if any, to prepare for writing, or once you are well into a book, to stay with it? I heard once something about hanging chapters on a laundry line.
FF: When I am preparing for writing a book I do a tremendous amount of research. I write notes everywhere and on anything and then when I think I have done enough I transfer all my handwritten notes, if I can find them, to the computer. On this last book I wasted an entire hour trying to figure out why I thought a certain kind of bread, eggs, and a can of floor wax should go in the book, only to discover it was nothing but one of my old shopping lists. And it is true that I do use a clothesline down the hall to hang my chapters on. As I said before, I find that I do things backward from most writers. I tend to write a chapter at the end of the book or in the middle before I write the beginning, and the clothesline helps me keep them in some kind of order. I even read magazines backwards. I suppose being dyslexic has caused this or else I am Chinese and just don’t know it.
SV: I know that you tend to
disappear into a book and cut off the outside world while in one of your own making. Do you read other fiction while writing, or do you swear off the stuff?
FF: Yes, when I am writing I do cut myself off from everything and just live in the world of my story. I try not to even read the newspaper or watch the news.
SV: Do your stories surprise you? Did you ever start out to write one thing, one place, one time, and find yourself writing about another? Do your characters tend to run away with you?
FF: Yes, my characters never seem to do what I want them to. They are like bad children and do not mind me at all! In this book Hamm Sparks showed up and wanted a bigger part than I had intended.
SV: How do you feel when you start a book?
FF: Excited, scared, wondering if I can do it.
SV: And when you finish?
FF: Great! Even better! I love book tours and I finally get to have lunch with real live people again.
SV: You have some nice touches in Rainbow where characters almost exchange lives. For example the little blind songbird who yearns to see or at least travel the world and the itinerant girl whose idea of the full life is to stay at home. Do you think that many of us would like to exchange lives? Or live at least two? Is this just restlessness or envy or the potential thrill of the unknown life never lived? We are all celebrity-struck while maintaining stoutly that we wouldn’t trade places for the world. Or is it just garden variety schizophrenia?
FF: The grass does always seem to be greener somewhere else, doesn’t it? I think it is just human nature to want something we can’t have or to wish we were somewhere else or somebody else. I know when I was younger I often wished I could live parallel lives. As I recall when I was about ten I wanted to play violin in a symphony orchestra, be a nun, a famous ice skater, play piano and sing in some smoky little cocktail bar in Paris, be married to an Italian and have six children, and here’s the real stretch, be an English professor at Oxford University. But the truth is I have barely managed the one life I have. And I am happy to say as I have become older I am perfectly content with who I am and where I am. A very wise person said, “We are exactly where we are supposed to be.” I don’t know who the wise person was, but I tend to believe that more and more as the years go by.
SV: You consistently show how much you care for your characters. You may laugh at their antics but you never really stand above them, looking down. It’s more like standing beside them, looking on. Where does your feeling for older people come from? And for female friendship? And for strong, not always silent, men?
FF: I’m lucky enough to have a lot of friends, both men and women, and enjoy them thoroughly. As it so happens, many are older than myself. Being an only child, I was around adults for most of my young life. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I felt entirely comfortable with my peers, not until they were grown people I could relate to. I still tend to find older people much more interesting. They have so much to tell about and have lived through so much and know so much more. I am waiting to become old and wise. So far I’m older but seem to be none the wiser.
SV: The roles you’ve played are quite varied. You can’t be said to have been typecast. Yet in your novels, you have set a new standard of your own so that other writers’ books are being compared to your work. How would you describe a Fannie Flagg novel?
FF: I don’t think I can describe my own work. I don’t even know what my style of writing is. I don’t even know how I do it. So I am the last person to ask. I am still baffled by the entire process. I still don’t understand how something that was only in my head and can’t be seen can become a book, a solid object that you can pick up and carry around.
SV: Your books have been printed in fifteen different languages. How do you feel about that? How do you think people’s reactions to your novels in Europe or China, etc., differ from those in America?
FF: First of all I am still so amazed that anyone other than Americans understands my books. It is so funny to see them in strange covers and printed in so many different languages. I asked a French friend who had read the French version of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe how he was able to understand the story and he said France has small towns just like every other country. I suppose no matter where you live people can relate; language may be different but by and large human nature remains the same the world over. As far as their reactions, judging from the letters I receive, they seem to be the same. Only the reviews may be different from the ones I get here, mostly because the foreign viewers do not know me as an ex-actress and tend to review the book only. Most American reviews and articles still mention that I used to be an actress and appear on television.
SV: Your work has taken you to many places. Are you a good traveler?
FF: I am a wonderful traveler, as long as I do not have to get on a plane. I hate to fly. Not only am I a white-knuckle flyer, I always feel like I have been sucked through a vacuum cleaner backwards and shot out the other end. Needless to say, I love motor trips and the train.
SV: If you weren’t writing novels like Fannie Flagg’s, who would you most like to write like?
FF: Certainly someone who writes much faster than I, more like my friend Sue Grafton, who pops out a book a year. I am in awe of that! You may have noticed I am a very slow writer.
SV: Yes, I noticed. You are working on your fifth book at present and if you had a theme or a certain outlook in your writing that seems consistent, what would that be?
FF: I suppose that there really is such a thing as true love, really nice people, and good friends, and sometimes there are happy endings. I speak from experience. As I get older I am much happier now than I ever was as a young person, and my life has turned out to be better than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams, and as you know I have a pretty good imagination!
SV: When you are at work do you talk to yourself?
FF: Not yet.
SV: So far all of your books have landed on the bestseller list. What is your take on the idea of so-called serious fiction versus popular fiction? In your opinion is one more preferable to the other?
FF: I would say that I am very serious about trying to write popular fiction. Blame it on my Southern upbringing but my preference is to write books that as many people as possible will enjoy.
SV: Sooner or later, every popular writer discovers the art of the self-interview. If you were talking to Fannie Flagg, what questions would you most like to be asked, and have answered?
FF: Aha! I have always wanted to do this. “Miss Flagg, does writing come easy for you?”
FF: Are you kidding? Writing is the hardest thing in the world for me. First of all, I am easily distracted—if I see a leaf fall off a tree, I lose my concentration—and I am cursed with the ears of a bat. I can hear a car door slam two miles away, so I have to be locked up in a completely quiet place and sit all by myself all day. I hate to be alone!
FF: If writing is so hard for you, then why in the world do you keep doing it?
FF: Believe me, I have thought about this for years and I suppose I write for the same reason painters paint, or photographers take pictures. I want to stop time, capture a moment, a day, a year, and keep it forever. That, and the fact that my editor continues to bug me about my next book.
SV: Speaking of that, how important is an editor to your work?
FF: Of no importance whatsoever. I really don’t need an editor; after all, I do all the work myself. Okay, just kidding, Sam! I have been lucky enough to have the same editor for the last eighteen years. He knows me very well and understands when to push me and when not to. But mostly he helps me manage fear. It is terrifying to write a book, particularly when you know your publishing house is waiting on it. His guidance and patience have been and continue to be invaluable. Besides that, he knows grammar, spelling, and all that good stuff.
SV: What is your next book?
FF: I am working on a small Christmas book.
SV: Have you finished it yet?
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The novel starts in the immediate aftermath of World War II. How does the period compare with the times following more modern wars—Vietnam, Gulf War, Desert Storm, etc.?
2. In what ways is Bobby the typical pre-teenage son? Does he differ in any important details? Does his active imagination hamper him, confuse him, or fuel his ambitions?
3. In what ways is Neighbor Dorothy a good neighbor? What makes her such an effective seller of her sponsors’ products or services?
4. Does Neighbor Dorothy speak through the silences surrounding some farmers’ wives—the silent or the working-all-day husband, for example. Or the limited view the nation had of housewives at that time? Or perhaps the distance between towns and cities and countryside? Was this the loneliness that can come with working alone in a house almost all the time?
5. How does Dorothy succeed in making small events into larger ones—an anniversary, the birth of a kitten, some honor bestowed in school or church, one of the ordinary recognitions?
6. Is the humor in the novel satire—or not?
7. How does Hamm break out of the tractor salesman category?
8. How does he use his salesmanlike skills to win the young woman who becomes his wife?
9. Hamm eventually takes on a mistress and advisor. How does Vita not fit into the usual Other Woman mold? We see their relationship grow—but what of that between his wife and his mistress?
10. With all the evidence of “dysfunctional” families these days, why do some marriages in the novel work out so well?
11. Why do you think the author begins the novel with Tot, the voice of one of the minor characters?
12. The Oatman family of gospel singers: Do they reveal a “hidden” aspect of American culture (hidden, that is, unless you grew up with such entertainments and forms of worship)? What other pockets of American life are almost invisible to white, middle-class, urban Americans?