Forum / MaryAnne Kolton interviews Kathryn Harrison in the Los Angeles Review of Books

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jun 12, 12:36pm

  MaryAnne is doing quite well and moving in ever-widening circles.

  http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=689&fulltext=1&media=

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Jun 12, 03:20pm

  It's a great interview. Enjoyed.

• 
  Julie Innis

  Jun 12, 04:02pm

  wonderful interview, masterfully done.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jun 12, 07:15pm

  Yes, I've been watching for this interview since MaryAnne teased it in the Writers group at Facebook a few days ago. In the process, I found my way into the great website that is L A Review of Books. From the interview:

  MAK: How do you answer those who would say you should have written the personal books as novels? That you did not have to expose your family in the way you did, and did so only because someone encouraged you to do it, or because there was more money to be made in disclosing the personal aspect of the stories.

  KH: Well, you're asking about one book, really, aren't you? The Kiss. Not that I haven't written other things that are personal, and have invited judgment, just that that book is the real lightening rod. I don't listen much to "those who would say" whatever they say. I strove for years, and failed, to win my tormented young mother's love and admiration; then, to keep what I believed was my father's love, I gave him whatever he demanded. I emerged from my father's grasp changed: I understood that my desire for love had cost me my integrity, and, as I hadn't ended my life, I would live it differently. Even if, as my father told me and I believed, no one would ever love me. I knew, at great cost, that what I understood about myself was more important than what anyone else might think or say about me.

  I tried writing the story as fiction — Thicker than Water, my first novel — and discovered, too late, that I had betrayed myself again. One of the motivations for writing The Kiss was my increasing discomfort over having presented the story of what happened between me and my father as fiction: I'd done as society dictates a daughter should: I'd said, in essence, "I made it up. It didn't really happen." But it did. And that's an important difference in this case. To me, it was.

  . . .

  Great job, MaryAnne!

  I have not read Kathryn Harrison's books at all. A friend who reads both Harrison and me (since I was 21) compares us, though not due to writing lengths or life story. There must be something: style? I don't know, but it seems it's time I try her, Ms. Harrison.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Jun 12, 07:34pm

  I had not read any KH until I saw this interview, which is wonderful. I especially relished the stories attached to your dialogue and to the lives off and on the page. A fan of Freud's writing (especially his style, perhaps less his ideas) I had to smile at your calling him "the flawed father"...I don't agree with the assessment that he's been discounted, but I'm glad "Freud+" (as in "Freud, Jung & Friends") received the novelist's nod...this also put me on the track of "Enchantements", which reads beautifully (I opened the book on my Kindle) and I'm looking forward to reading it. I've spent most of last year writing a magical novel, too, and I can connect to the thick web that lies beneath the lightest spells. Thank you.

• 
  Joani Reese

  Jun 13, 12:14am

  MaryAnne: This is precise, interesting, and well-crafted. You are an excellent interviewer. I love how you get into both the work and the artist's life. You're my hero.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jun 13, 04:28am

  MaryAnne asked me to respond and tell you all she greatly appreciates your lovely comments and your continuing support.

  Thanks!

• 
  Doug Bond

  Jun 13, 06:38am

  Yes! MAK...I stumbled onto a review last Fall in the NYT by Kathryn of "Why Read Moby Dick"...I'll save you some pages...just read her review: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/books/review/why-read-moby-dick-by-nathaniel-philbrick-book-review.html
  I love the way her mind works...Moby Dick is indeed the American Bible (attrib.-Philbrick) but this line zings: More capacious than ponderous, “Moby-Dick” has the wild and unpredictable energy of the great white whale itself, more than enough to heave its significance out of what Melville called “the universal cannibalism of the sea” and into the light. Melville challenged the form of the novel decades before James Joyce and a century before Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace.

• You must log in to reply to this thread.