Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
JMW: This is Jean Marie Ward for buzzymultimedia.com reporting from the
2011 Nebula Awards weekend. With me is Ms. Connie Willis, the
multi-award winning author of such books as "Belle Weather," "To
Say Nothing of the Dog," "Lincoln's Dreams", and her current
Nebula-nominated books "Blackout/All Clear." Welcome to
Washington, Ms. Willis.
Connie: Oh, thank you. I'm excited to be here.
JMW: Great. The scope of your work [inaudible 00:00:40], you managed to
write heart-wrenching tragedy and hysterical comedy. How do you
manage to get that breadth?
Connie: Well, I have thought a lot about this, and of course,
Shakespeare is my hero in all things, and Shakespeare did both
and he didn't seem to see any contradiction in doing both. I
think the reason why I didn't see a contradiction is that there
isn't a contradiction. That tragedy is not actually the opposite
of comedy. That tragedy and comedy alike on the same side over
here, and it's nihilism, maybe, or a meaninglessness, or a
pointlessness that's on the other side.
Tragedy says the world is a terrible place that we can have
personal victories within, even if they're little victories
within meaninglessness, and comedy says we can have bigger
victories. Communication's possible, love is possible,
connection is possible, which is what Forrester says. Only
connect. Then the opposite of that is, it's all meaningless and
there's no point in even trying.
So, I sometimes go for the comic and sometimes the tragic, but I
always feel I'm operating in the same area that humans can have,
we have - it's a difficult world. But I guess my favorite quote
is, "The world is a terrible place, but shot through with beauty
and courage." I would add to that, and laughter so to me they're
not contradictory, and so sometimes I'm working on one end of
that little spectrum and sometimes the other end. Sometimes like
in the new book, "Blackout/All Clear," I try to do kind of both
at the same time.
JMW: Yeah. Well, you have so many characters at play in both those novels,
and without giving any spoilers - the mere fact of the time
travel seems to be one of the things that's doing it.
Connie: Yeah. Right, it's a chaotic system and the time traveling is
adding a whole other layer of chaos.
JMW: Yeah, and it's a chaotic environment.
Connie: Right.
JMW: Because you're back in World War II, as you were in "To Say Nothing
of the Dog."
Connie: Right.
JMW: Though there it was played for laughs, which is kind of hard.
Connie: Yeah. It's hard to find anything funny in war, although the
British did a really good job of it, and that's one reason I
think I was attracted to it. All those contradictions that
horrible things were happening and people didn't know if they
would see their friends tomorrow. But at the same time, they
were keeping their sense of humor and using their sense of humor
to cope with this terrible situation.
So, I think that's why I love the blitz so much. If you'll
notice all the periods of history that I'm drawn to are periods
that have that sort of built-in irony.
JMW: Black Death?
Connie: Yes, Black Death, incredibly ironic, although it was difficult
to write. Somebody asked me one time when I was working on
"Doomsday Book", they said, "Is this going to be a comedy or a
tragedy?" I was like, "I don't think I can think of any way to
make the Black Death into a comedy." Maybe somebody can, but not
me.
JMW: Well, I have had pieces described as dark, and I say why? I mean,
they got out of it with all their body parts intact.
Connie: Right. To me there are happy endings, and then there are happy
endings. Some are small happy endings, and some just mean
survival and learning something, and other times there are
weddings and exciting things happening.
JMW: Even your happy endings, just in real life - well, again, giving away
nothing in "To Say Nothing of the Dog" - they go back and visit
people who are 100 years dead by the time they're starting their
Connie: Right, and become very, very attached to people 100 years dead.
JMW: Yes.
Connie: Yeah.
JMW: Or people who, by the time the book has opened, have lost loved ones
who feature in other stories.
Connie: Right. Yeah, and I think that is the tragedy. The sorrow of our
lives is that we're all mortal, and nothing lasts and it's
sometimes very hard to think of triumphs. But I guess I've
learned - what I learned mostly from Shakespeare is that he
started the comedies, and then he moved into the tragedies. But
then he moved back to the comedies. I think that no matter how
long Shakespeare had lived, that's where he would've stayed
because "The Tempest" is his last work, not "Macbeth", not
"Othello", not "Hamlet", "The Tempest" that, to me, tells me a
lot about his view of the world.
In "Blackout/All Clear," I have this character saying, "Is this
a comedy or a tragedy?", and they're not just asking about the
war. They're asking about, is history a comedy or a tragedy? Is
our life a comedy or a tragedy? I feel very strongly that it's
kind of both, but erring on the comic side. I think that somehow
the dark stuff, the sadness, and the losses, and the partings,
and the betrayals, and all those things somehow feel more real
to us. I think it's because they activate that lizard part of
the brain where the fear and the anger and stuff is located.
But I don't really think they're any more real than the moments
of joy and the moments of togetherness and weddings. I love to
end all of my books with weddings, if possible, with characters
coming together.
JMW: Yeah. It gives one hope.
Connie: Yeah. That's kind of the way I am, so that's what I want to
see.
JMW: Your science fiction appeals to me, because in many cases it's
grounded in contemporary life. Okay, time travel's a bit like
future.
Connie: Out there, yeah.
JMW: But things like "Belle Weather," which are also science fiction, are
very much based in our contemporary world. How do you marry the
concepts of science fiction and contemporary mainstream
literature?
Connie: That I didn't learn from Shakespeare. That I learned from
Robert A. Heinlein. He was the first science fiction writer I
read when I was a kid, and he's the one who better than anybody
taught us... Before Heinlein, it was all kind of like a
metropolis future. It was all high tech. It was all perfect. It
was all very mechanical. He basically figured out that when the
future arrived, it was going to feel just like the present.
That whether we could go to the moon or not, kids were going to
have to do their homework, they wouldn't get along with their
parents. There would be the creepy guy at school who picks on
you. He figured out that's an essential truth, I think, about
the world, is that whatever kind of somatic events you're living
through and whatever time you're in, the ordinariness of
everyday life will persist.
That's why, even though we're living in an astonishing high tech
future right now, it doesn't feel like the future, because...
JMW: We're here.
Connie: ...we're here. They couldn't find our hotel room key. We got
stuck in traffic, whatever. All these normal things happened to
us. So I think he more than anybody else figured that out and as
a way to write science fiction. So, I'm always copying Heinlein
when I write things like "Belle Weather". My characters are
always living through the ordinariness of the things that
frustrate and annoy them that we all have to put up with. Then
you can introduce the strange, new thing, and it feels like it
belongs a little bit more.
JMW: Feels like it's always been here.
Connie: Feels like it's always been here, yes.
JMW: What's your starting point for a novel or a short story?
Connie: The starting point is always the plot or the basic situation.
Let's take, suppose you were a total skeptic, and you were
abducted by aliens, something like that, just a situation. Then,
I construct the plot first, and then I bring the characters in,
whoever I happen to need for that particular story. I know a lot
of other writers work a different way. They start with their
characters and then move to the plot, but I can't work that way.
I love all my characters once I create them. But they basically
exist only because I need them to do this or I need them to do
that.
JMW: What situation is intriguing you now? What's next for you?
Connie: Well, actually, I want to do an alien abduction novel. Not that
there aren't a million abduction books out there, many of them
pretending not to be novels.
JMW: Yeah, there's that.
Connie: But I don't think anyone has really done a Roswell, Area 51,
cattle mutilation alien abduction novel that was also a romantic
comedy.
JMW: I like that.
Connie: So, that's what I will be doing.
JMW: Yes.
Connie: Yep.
JMW: Okay, another comedy. Yes.
Connie: Oh, yes. I worked for eight years on "Blackout/All Clear". I
was in the middle of World War II, and as hard as I tried, I was
in the middle of World War II. So, now I want to do a comedy.
JMW: Great.
Connie: Yeah.
JMW: Okay, anything you'd like to add to our viewers?
Connie: No. Just I love Washington, D.C. My daughter went to graduate
school here at George Washington.
JMW: Oh, great.
Connie: It was great to be back. We didn't do the Mall and all the
monuments. We've done those lots of times. This time, we went to
the zoo because I'd never seen the pandas, and we went to Ben's
Chili Bowl.
JMW: Yes. Okay.
Connie: Where I was horrified to see a video of President Obama eating
a half smoked chili dog in a white shirt and not getting it all
over himself, which must be why he is President and I am not.
JMW: Yeah. The man has skills.
Connie: He has real skills! I was like, "Wow! That's really
impressive." So, anyway, but he also has excellent taste. It was
a great, great chili dog.
JMW: It's one of our landmark eateries.
Connie: Yes. It was great.
JMW: It certainly is for many things, for tolerance, as well as for food.
Connie: Yes, exactly.
JMW: That's what makes it so special. Now, where can your fans find you on
the web?
Connie: Conniewillis.net, which is my official website, but which I
don't run, because I'm a techno-idiot. Lee Whiteside runs my
website and does a wonderful job of it.
JMW: How can you write science fiction?
Connie: I am a techno-idiot. I freely admit it. But I make this stuff
up.
JMW: That's a great way to end the interview. Thank you so much.
Connie: Thank you. Okay, great.