Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth
Page 28
Q: Some writers have said that they “see” a book in their head, and in this case your main character is an art historian. Do you have a visual relationship with writing, or do you discover the story more literally through writing it?
The characters and settings are so vivid in my mind that I get confused at times, and think for a moment that fictional events I’ve created really took place. It’s amusing to me when that happens. I see the story in my mind before I begin to write, or else I see it unfolding as I write. ■
Q: In interviews you’ve said that Maya’s character and some of the events of the book were composite experiences. Do you like to write about your life or do you shy away from it in fiction?
I never know what small or large event will be recreated in my writing. I’m continually surprised by all the little things that surface and are just right for a story. But as soon as a detail from what we call real life enters fiction, it’s entirely transformed and stripped of its context. Fiction will always be that: artifice and construction. We have to interpret real life, too, as we go along. Any memoir I write today will be entirely different from one I’d write in ten years. Our perspective continually changes, and events take on new meaning. ■
Q: In Montreal’s old Victorian triplexes, the landlords traditionally lived on the ground floor while their tenants occupied the top. As an adult, Maya lives on the top floor of a house with three flats and keeps the middle one empty—a move partly explained by a need for quiet, but one that potentially feels richer and more relevant to the story. Can you comment a bit on the theme of independence and community that runs through the book?
The themes in my writing take shape on their own; they reflect my personal obsessions. But I don’t think about those obsessions as I write, I only know they’ll make themselves heard. It never ceases to amaze me how organized our unconscious is. But as a reader (and I’m not a privileged reader by any means), I’d say that Maya’s empty apartment is there for Rosie and for Anthony, that she doesn’t want anyone to take their place, that there’s a missing part of herself or her past, that her father and other victims haunt it, that she’s afraid of closeness, that she identifies with transients, that the apartment represents a shadow self, that she’s impractical and generous, and so on. But as a writer, I just knew that she’d keep that apartment empty. I try to shut off the analytical reader in me when I write. ■
Q: The lesbian in fiction has often been portrayed as an outsider who sheds light on the world around her, as in Radcliffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. At what point did you know or decide that Maya would be a lesbian? Do you think it’s significant in the friendship she has with Rosie? (And could the two women have been straight?)
This novel began as what is now a small scene in which Maya and Tyen meet on a winter night. Those two characters just came to me, and their sexuality was a part of who they were, as were their missing and half-missing mothers. But there is also that familiar chain in the novel: a character loves someone who loves someone else who in turn loves someone else (until Tyen breaks the chain). Maya rejects Anthony because she isn’t attracted to men, and that’s crucial to the plot. I came up with these characters so long ago, I no longer remember exactly how it all came to be. I have practising gay characters in all my novels, including the ones for young readers, though sometimes their appearance is brief. Who is not gay? Who is not an outsider? It’s only a question of degree. But yes, I think Maya is more sensitive to all the possibilities and impossibilities of life because of her sexuality. It all seems to fit in, miraculously. ■
Q: At the end of the book, there is a switch to the second person. Can you explain how you came to make that decision from a writer’s perspective?
I was thinking of that section as a type of J’accuse. Maya needs to tell Anthony what he did to them all. This is her moment of confrontation. It’s not first person distanced into second that you find in wonderful Lorrie Moore—this is more literal. That confrontation has to take place before Maya can move on and forgive. ■
Q: For a book with so much pathos, Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth has a lot of humour—especially in the depictions of consumer life, such as the revolutionary arrival of hair conditioner in the fight against tangles (“It’s mindboggling,” Maya’s mother says). Do you make a conscious decision to comment on the times we live in, social and cultural, or does it just slip in?
These are things that just fit in with the story. I bought a Teen magazine from 1967 on eBay to see what Rosie was reading; it was a blast. “Mindboggling” was reported to me by the son of a survivor about twenty-five years ago. I had no idea why it stayed with me when entire years have vanished, until I used it for Maya’s mother. Then I knew why I’d retained the memory. My experiences with hair conditioner sum up my entire adolescence, but there’s no room to expand on that here. The text for the ad came from a library microfilm of Vogue; I wanted to get it exactly right. Everything goes back to the emotions that various artifacts and ideas have evoked. ■
Q: What other books and authors do you admire? Do you seek out other writers on subjects you’ve tackled—such as historical fiction—or do you read work that’s as unlike your own as possible?
The list of books I’ve enjoyed is so long I’ve never tried to assemble it. I like writing that sets out to do what all artists try to achieve: to find a way to convey our sense of the world as truthfully as possible, which means taking on its complexities. I’d need several lifetimes to read all the great works out there, especially since I like to read books I enjoy over and over again. I’ve never understood the concept of “guilty pleasure,” by the way, when it comes to reading. Why would people feel guilty about the sort of writing they enjoy? It’s odd. I can’t imagine reading for any reason other than pleasure. Listening to a book read by a wonderful actor heightens that pleasure. As always, I digress. ■
Q: In spite of the humour and its tender way of looking at the world, this is a book that cannot escape the sense of tragedy that shaped it. Was this a sad book for you, or was it ultimately about redemption?
Writing is work, and I think the work aspect takes over, and sadness has to be set aside to some extent. As a reader, I do find some books very painful to read (in the case of Browski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, for example, I could only manage two pages a day), but art is ultimately comforting for me, and I hope for my readers. ■
Q: Family has an interesting role in the novel, and it seems to seal in the characters so tightly. Do you think an individual can ever be a blank slate, or will we inevitably bear the legacy of time and of past events through our family ties?
One of my teachers used to quote Flannery O’Connor as saying that if you survive your childhood you have enough to write about for the rest of your life. We absorb everything around us, especially when we are young, and we’re shaped by the mythologies that prevail in our families and cultural background. I’m trying to write about my years on the kibbutz these days. The project is expanding to ridiculous proportions. I have to figure out how to rein it in. ■
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Some books are driven by character, others by dialogue, and some by plot; this one is grounded in all three, but has a number of particularly strong themes as well. What spoke to you the most—the character of Maya, the book’s insights into human experiences, the descriptions of settings and an era—or something else?
The Holocaust has initiated many artistic responses in the form of books, films, poems, and works of art. How does this one stand out from other works in its philosophy and approach to a complex subject?
In the Levitsky household, Maya’s mother and grandmother virtually wait on her hand and foot. She explains that their generation would do almost anything for the next one, almost as if filling in the hole left by their own suffering: “It was bad enough I didn’t have a father, cousins, uncles, aunts, more grandparents; bad enough that we were poor—at least I would have an easy life,” she says. Do
you think Maya’s life is easy?
As a child, Maya longs to find a community—and throughout the book she does find it: at the unorthodox, hippie-run Camp Bakunin; in her friend Rosie Michaeli’s house; at the school where she learns Hebrew; and at the local pool. Do you remember the first time you found your own community? How much do you think the plot of our lives is shaped as a result of looking to belong?
Through the parts of Maya’s upbringing that we see, she has an uncomfortable relationship with sex and sexuality, but she also has a relatively open relationship with her body—for instance, she isn’t too shy to strip naked in front of Patrick in order to make the sad boy laugh. What do you make of that?
The book has an interesting perspective on sanity and on mental illness. There are characters who seem level-headed (Dr. Moore), and others who seem disturbed (Mrs. Levitsky). Later on, we learn that sanity may be more of a mask than it seems. What do you think is the book’s ultimate pronouncement on mental health?
This is an extraordinary book with an extraordinary ending. How did you feel when you got to the final chapters? Was the story settled in your mind or did you find yourself continuing it in your head?
In many ways, this book is a tale of survival—mental, physical, and social—in the face of extraordinary events and personal tragedies. What do you think makes some of us “survivors” in the different senses—mentally, sociologically—and others not? Compare Patrick, Rosie, and Maya as youths and adults: do you think Maya has come through more or less all right?
As the book ends, we see Maya reflecting on some of the most defining relationships in her life. Ultimately, who would you say has been a more important figure for her—Rosie the love object, or Anthony the torn soul?
Table of Contents
Cover
Epigraph
Author Bio
Also by Edeet Ravel
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
The Eighth Year of the New Millennium, Common Era
Eikah
Acknowledgments
A Penguin Readers Guide
About the Book
An Interview with Edeet Ravel