8. In many ways, Laura’s perspective is absent from the novel. She is a character created out of “negative space.” Why did you decide to keep her voice out of the main narrative? Was it hard to exclude her from the central action of the novel?
I identify with Laura. Of course, it’s kind of like hamstringing yourself to leave a character you relate to out of a novel. But she’s there. I hope the reader might glean what she thinks of Eric, why she left him, etc., through the tidbits Eric reveals in the service of other things. But the novel isn’t really about why Laura loves or doesn’t love Eric. The novel is a love letter — Eric’s. It’s a long love letter that goes unanswered. I got sad myself writing the end of the letter/novel, when I realized that a “real” Laura probably wouldn’t even read it… Meadow will always remain connected to her dad, if only by blood, but Laura can wash her hands of the whole thing. Grown-ups can divorce each other. Kids can’t divorce their parents.
9. Given his actions as a husband, father, and a man, how sympathetic did you want Eric to seem to the reader?
After the first draft of the novel was done, I did a fair amount of listening to trusted readers and even legal advisees, listening for places where I might have gone a little nuts with my own fictional play. I have a dear friend who’s a lawyer, and we went through the draft scene by scene and she pointed out the things Eric does that would “mitigate” the kidnapping charges he’s faced with, and which things would “aggravate” those charges. At times, the law matched the moral barometers of my other readers. These were the same places where the readers said, “that’s unacceptable.” However, I must say that I didn’t want to write a book about which there would be consensus. I mean, I’m not trying to create a character about which easy judgments can be made, or upon which we can all agree. I don’t want to read such books, either. I’m not saying everything’s OK by me when it comes to human behavior. As a reader and a person in the world, I have my own limits for the acceptability or unacceptability of people’s actions. But a good book takes me much further into a moral question than I could go by myself.
10. What it challenging for you to write in a male voice?
I don’t think Eric is the “typical” male, but his voice came pretty easily to me. I hope he seems convincing as a man. The men in my life have mentioned that he does. I guess it’s just years of listening to them talk. My husband — who is a very reliable, law-abiding citizen, by the way — is really honest about men and male psychology. I think he let me into some of the secrets of the brotherhood.
11. How did you bring six-year-old Meadow to life, particularly since the reader only sees her through the eyes of her father?
Meadow initially felt like a dream to me, very abstract. But she grew as the book went along. I started to feel her stoicism. She took shape. Also, here and there, I stole lines of dialogue from my son. For example, he once defined “the soul” as the thing that “keeps the body up.” I could never have come up with that myself.
12. Why did you choose to use footnotes in your novel? Why not reveal these things in the body of the text?
Eric likes to digress, and occasionally show off his esoteric and maybe useless knowledge. For a while, I let him do this whenever he wanted. Then I realized that that’s exactly what footnotes are, places where the scholarly self can qualify and digress. The footnotes show Eric’s second, shadow consciousness as he’s writing. At first, that second consciousness tries to be all academic and cool. He uses the footnotes ironically to discuss theories of silence. He’s detached from his personal story, or at least he’s trying to seem like he is. But gradually, the footnotes turn personal. He stops talking about silence theory in the abstract and begins to talk about himself. The footnotes start to be anti-footnotes. He tries to keep them down, tries to minimize them, but occasionally they are the most honest things he says. The footnotes are just another facet to show Eric’s struggle, which is the struggle to tell the truth, the struggle to tell a true story.
13. The language in Schroder is often beautiful and poetic and sometimes at odds with the story you are telling. What is it about the use of particular language that aids in the telling of a story?
I was just debating with some students about whether the use of a “fancy prose style” makes a narrator seem more or less reliable. I think probably less. But I don’t come at writing that way. Any poetic lurches are born out of my writing mind, the mind that’s deep in concentration and imagination. John Updike once said that it is the responsibility of every writer to try and convey how the world “hits his or her nerves.” I think the poetic language in this book and my previous books is my attempt to convey the same.
14. Why did you choose to end Schroder when you did? Do you know what is next for Erik and Meadow?
I don’t know what’s next! I feel sad for them both. When I started writing the book, I had this somewhat unrealistic notion that this confession would give the two of them a clean start. I even thought that Laura would forgive Eric, and maybe she would realize that Meadow needed Eric in her life. I do think Meadow needs Eric in her life. Because he’s her dad, and you only get one of those. I think total estrangement is bad for the child. It’s too confusing. I have spoken to people who were estranged from parents and said they would have preferred some limited contact over total absence. Or silence. I guess I would hope for their family that silence could be avoided. I think that’s what Eric would want. That he wouldn’t become the new “unspoken” or secret shameful thing for his daughter. He’s come clean. And later, if he makes good, I hope they forgive him. I believe in forgiveness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank many who supported the writing of this book, including Emily Foreland, Emma Patterson, Libby Burton, Brian McLendon, and editor and believer Cary Goldstein. I honor here Wendy Weil, my beacon and friend, and my mother-in-law, Ellen Arnold Groff; I miss you both. I’m indebted to the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and Amherst College. For their expertise, I thank the Scott-Kunkel family, Mira Kautzky, Dan Hart, and Leah Rotenberg. For their insight, I thank Adam Haslett, Nam Le, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Jonathan Franzen, Youna Kwak, Sarah Moore, Judith Goldman, Daniel Hall, Catherine Newman, and Ted and Kathy Beery, as well as the works of Adam Jaworski. I also thank my family, Karina Gaige, Norman Cohen, Robert Groff, Ted Watt, my invaluable mother, Austra, my remarkable son, Atis, his baby sister, Freya, and most especially my husband, Timothy Watt, whose love, wonder, and literary spirit inspire every word of this book.
“Tired of Being Alone” words and music by Al Green. Copyright © 1971 Irving Music, Inc. and Al Green Music, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights controlled and administered by Irving Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
“The Terms in Which I Think of Reality” (7 l.) from Collected Poems 1947–1997 by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 2006 by the Allen Ginsberg Trust. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.