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The question is "Was 'Truth and Beauty' a hard book to write?" No, "Truth and Beauty" was
the easiest book I
ever wrote, will ever write, so helpful,
such a good idea. After Lucy died, she had been dead for about
three weeks and I
wrote that book just as a way of saying if I can make my grief my job
everybody respects my job, you know I'm working.
So I made my grief my job. I got a cookie sheet,
I put my computer on it, I went to bed, and I stayed in bed.
I wrote the book in about four months. I had all of Lucy's letters, her music, her
pictures, in the bed
I stayed in bed and it was really like the four months
shipper. I stayed as long as I needed to stay,
I wrote it all down. I put it someplace.
I don't know how people carry their grief. I don't have
any idea how you guys do it because honestly something happens to me,
I write it down and it's like I put a leaf in a book and I press it there. I
keep it there because I can't carry it
because when I was finished with that book, I had put the pain in the book and
I was really left with the joy
and what a great thing that is. My memories are
very, very positive and happy and I'm happy when I think of Lucy. I'm not sad.
There's my friend, Steve Almond,
writes for "The New York Times," wrote a great book about writing and
there's one page that just has this line-- "What should you write about?"
And the answer was "Anything you cannot get rid of by other means."
-Oh that's lovely. -I know.
The question was "What moment prompted me to write "Signature of All Things?"
This one didn't have one
aha sort of revelatory moment. This was a
very slow building thing.
I mean essentially it started because I got very passionate about my
garden
and I knew that I wanted to write about plants and I knew I also wanted to write
my monu-freakin-mental, epic, nineteenth century
novel of ideas that also had adventure on the high seas
and I couldn't quite figure out how to make that gardening novel
into that.
You know that the old adage there's only two stories that have ever
been told: that
you go on a trip or a stranger comes to town right and those are the only
narratives that there are
and women's stories generally have always been
a stranger comes to town because they don't leave.
You know Odysseus gets his big adventure. Penelope gets big weaving and unweaving
scene again and again and again
and so to be true to women's reality,
the first half of the book is devoted to that idea of what can a woman make
of her contained life that is magnificent.
So Alma goes nowhere and strangers come in and then I was like
"Oh, I'm puttin' her a boat!"
She's going to French Polynesia. Ahoy!
And there's my post-menopausal character on a ship
for the rest of her life and then she gets to be, as they say in "Breaking Bad,"
the one who knocks.
I've been telling people that the the motto of "The Signature of All Things"
at the lesson is that disappointment does not kill women
because one of the great themes of all novels
is that women cannot endure disappointment or betrayal or...
-And they must be punished for their mistakes. -They must be mercilessly punished.
-Mercilessly punished. -Particularly for sensual errors.
-Especially by Wallace Stegnor. -Or bad judgement and
they must be either rescued or ruined
as you've said and I don't know a single woman
I admire who's ever been either one of those things and we may have that
some time dreamt
or feared that either of those things would occur but most likely didn't.
The women that I know who are
wise and remarkable and powerful, who I admire, didn't get that way by stuff
working out.
They got that way by stuff not working out
and then using the amazing superpower of
women, which is to take disappointment and with alchemy, turn it into wisdom.
And then look back on their lives and say
"I didn't necessarily get everything that I wanted
but I got amazing things that I didn't expect
and I've lived with dignity and I'm really glad I did that journey
and it's been interesting." And that's the story that I wanna tell.