At the Femmes with Del and Louise (and Art)

Catriona Writes: This is exciting! We at Femmes Fatales have racked up a lot of miles on our collective writing journey and I for one sometimes feel like there's not much rubber left on the tires. So it's my delight to welcome a brand-new debut novelist whose book ON THE ROAD WITH DEL AND LOUISE is published today! (Well, except not really because Art Taylor might be a debut novelist, but he's a prolific and multi-award-winning short-story writer, with another fabulous story currently on the Anthony shortlist (again).) Nevertheless: femmes, frères, and friends - please help me smash a bottle of bubbly against Art's first book today

 

Art writes: Two questions have come up more than any other with regard to my new book, On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories—a book which is celebrating its official release date today. (Hooray! And thanks to Catriona McPherson for inviting me to blog here in celebration of the occasion. [Of course! I'm excited for this book and intrigued about . . . well, read on, folks -CMcP]

The first question I get is about that subtitle: What’s a novel in stories anyway? I’ve tried to field that in other venues, but short answer: six mostly self-contained tales (each with its own conflict and resolution) in service of a longer story, the more extensive journey of those title characters as they search for stability, for home, really for each other and even for some sense of themselves.

The second question is about Louise’s role as narrator: Why did I, as a male author, decide to tell the story from a female perspective? What were the challenges? Do I think it worked?

Maybe it’s best to leave that last question to the reader (and fingers crossed!), but the others have been pressed my way again and again. Chatting on the topic, for example, with J. Kingston Pierce for Kirkus and The Rap Sheet, I told him that “for one thing, women simply strike me as more interesting than men, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”

It’s the “more” that I’m trying to explore now, and what better place to do that exploring than Femme Fatales, right? [No argument here, frère - CMcP]

For background, it’s not just in the new book that I’ve tended to lean toward a woman’s perspective in my fiction. My first Agatha-nominated story, “When Duty Calls,” was embedded in the third-person perspective of a young woman caring for an aging military veteran, and another story that ended up winning both the Agatha and the Macavity, “The Care and Feeding of Houseplants,” shuttles between three points of view: two men and a woman in a love triangle. (More background: the original draft of that story had only the two male perspectives, until my wife told me that I really needed the third point-of-view or the story simply wouldn’t work; she was right on that, of course.) Two of my more experimental pieces, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and “Premonition,” are told in second-person—the “you” perspective—but each quickly pulls the reader into the very specific predicament of a woman in crisis and a crossroads. And “Parallel Play,” a story in the forthcoming Sisters in Crime anthology Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning, remains solely in the point-of-view of a young mother trying to protect herself and her child in increasingly threatening circumstances.

And then there’s Louise, whose voice dominates all her journeys with Del. He may be the one behind the steering wheel of the car most times, but she’s the one driving the storytelling—no doubt about it.

In that specific case, then, at least one answer: Louise’s voice was, to me, inseparable from the first story in the book, “Rearview Mirror,” and it was almost unthinkable for me to consider following the rest of the adventures except through her perspective. After the first story appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, I got a note from short story master Doug Allyn congratulating me and asking specifically how I’d gotten Louise’s narration so right. My answer was I wish I knew! Her voice came to me full-bodied, so to speak, and everything, everything fell out of it.

Maybe there’s a fuller answer in there too—getting inside the world of a character, any character, and living there—but I’m gonna wait a sec before coming back to it.

Pondering over the question took me in various directions, various reflections—some of which may be vaguely useful:

•  One of my own first favorite mystery series was Nancy Drew—but I never liked the Hardy Boys at all. So what drew me to one versus the other? And how did all that reading become formative to my own writing? I’ve pointed before to Nancy Drew as my own first crush on a fictional character, so there’s a little bit of attraction behind that, but also identification as well, of course—inevitably; it must have had an impact.

 

•  Growing up, even in elementary school, I had plenty of guy friends but always stronger relationships with many of the girls in my classes, and that’s generally continued straight through to adulthood. Have those connections and conversations affected (and effected too) the points of view that find their way into my storytelling over the years? The characters who draw my interest and whose predicaments dominate my time?

 

•  And what about my reading now? How balanced is my bookshelf among male writers and female writers, and then among male protagonists and female protagonists? And then a question spilling out of that clarification: what about those writers—so many—who write across gender lines anyway: Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey there in the Golden Age or Patricia Highsmith with Ripley amongst the dark heart of those noir masterpieces, and right up to today’s writers, maybe top on my list Tana French with her shifting narrators from book to book, character to character, but most of them male, and….

 

• And then another question out of that one, because, wait: Everyone who popped to mind in that last bulletpoint is a women writer writing male characters—and wouldn’t it be necessary to answer my question to also find out how often women writers get asked about their male characters? The truth is that I never really thought about that, about questioning women writing men, and yet I took is as quite natural that my own credentials to write from a female perspective might in question, so…. Whew, that’s a lot to tackle, yeah?  

Over cocktail hour this past week, I finally asked my wife, who’s also a writer, how to approach these topics, and she puzzled over my own question.

“It seems kind of a silly thing to ask about,” she said. “Why shouldn’t you be able to write from a woman’s perspective? Just because you’re a guy?”

“Well, a lot of folks wonder about it,” I said. “I mean, you know, authority, insider knowledge… I don’t know.” 

“Don’t you think that it’s our job as fiction writers to write about people other than ourselves?” she said. “To create full-bodied characters on the page, whoever they are. Male, female, different backgrounds, different values, different whatever.”

“Well, that’s true,” I said.

 “So just say that,” she said.

 OK. Will do. Plus, you know, those other observations and reflections that I mentioned too.

Thoughts on all this, anybody? I’m ready for conversation!

Comments

[catriona]

I was just talking to Steve Hockensmith on Sunday. He writes a female protagonist too. He said people who know *him* can sometimes hear her voice as the voice of "a big bearded guy in his forties" but in general no one has pulled him up.

[Art Taylor]

Such a fun anecdote about Steve, Catriona! And thanks so much for hosting me here in the first place. Looking forward to others' thoughts on this topic, since it's a question I've gotten so very often lately.
Art

[Charlaine Harris]

Congratulations on your first book, Art. I kind of remember what that felt like, and it was the most marvelous feeling in the world.

[Elaine Viets]

Congfratulations, Art. I'm a fan of your short stories and look forward to this first novel.

[Dean James]

Congrats on the first book, Art!

[Art Taylor]

Thanks, Charlaine, Elaine, and Dean! So much appreciate the good wishes here! (Still hardly believe it myself....)

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Yay, Art! This is fabulous..and incredibly exciting.

The voice is the voice. If it comes out right, who cares. It's part of the magic, or the collective something. WHich I am not sure is female/male. It may just be person. Except for the…well, huh. I was going to make a crack about something that would obviously only concern women. And then that turned out to be difficult to think of. So.

xxo

[Jim Ziskin]

Congrats, Art. I'm looking forward to reading this.

[Jim Ziskin]

Catriona tagged me on FB, asking if I had any thoughts. I do. I think writing characters is difficult. It's hard to find the right voice, especially in a first person narrative.

For my Ellie Stone series, I made the choice, naively perhaps, to write a first-person 24-year-old woman narrator, set in 1960. It's the best writing decision I've ever made.

A writer needs empathy more than anything else to write across gender. You've made great points above, Art. And your wife made even better ones. ;-)

Personally, I love reading good writing. And I don't care much who wrote it or if the narrator wears pants or a skirt.

Congrats again, Art!

[Art Taylor]

Thanks so much, everyone. Jim, I think you're right: empathy first, whatever the circumstances. That approach has led me in good directions in all circumstances.

And Hank! Curious about the "Except for the...." line, of course!
Art

[catriona]

Art - thanks for being here while ON THE ROAD WITH DEL AND LOUISE inches down the slipway. (Wait - wrong transport metaphor. Make that ... barrels up the on-ramp.)

[Dana]

Congrats, Art! Can't wait to read it!