SV: Your work has taken you to many places. Are you a good traveler?
FF: I am a wonderful traveler, as long as I do not have to get on a plane. I hate to fly. Not only am I a white-knuckle flyer, I always feel like I have been sucked through a vacuum cleaner backwards and shot out the other end. Needless to say, I love motor trips and the train.
SV: If you weren’t writing novels like Fannie Flagg’s, who would you most like to write like?
FF: Certainly someone who writes much faster than I, more like my friend Sue Grafton, who pops out a book a year. I am in awe of that! You may have noticed I am a very slow writer.
SV: Yes, I noticed. You are working on your fifth book at present and if you had a theme or a certain outlook in your writing that seems consistent, what would that be?
FF: I suppose that there really is such a thing as true love, really nice people, and good friends, and sometimes there are happy endings. I speak from experience. As I get older I am much happier now than I ever was as a young person, and my life has turned out to be better than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams, and as you know I have a pretty good imagination!
SV: When you are at work do you talk to yourself?
FF: Not yet.
SV: So far all of your books have landed on the bestseller list. What is your take on the idea of so-called serious fiction versus popular fiction? In your opinion is one more preferable to the other?
FF: I would say that I am very serious about trying to write popular fiction. Blame it on my Southern upbringing but my preference is to write books that as many people as possible will enjoy.
SV: Sooner or later, every popular writer discovers the art of the self-interview. If you were talking to Fannie Flagg, what questions would you most like to be asked, and have answered?
FF: Aha! I have always wanted to do this. “Miss Flagg, does writing come easy for you?”
FF: Are you kidding? Writing is the hardest thing in the world for me. First of all, I am easily distracted—if I see a leaf fall off a tree, I lose my concentration—and I am cursed with the ears of a bat. I can hear a car door slam two miles away, so I have to be locked up in a completely quiet place and sit all by myself all day. I hate to be alone!
FF: If writing is so hard for you, then why in the world do you keep doing it?
FF: Believe me, I have thought about this for years and I suppose I write for the same reason painters paint, or photographers take pictures. I want to stop time, capture a moment, a day, a year, and keep it forever. That, and the fact that my editor continues to bug me about my next book.
SV: Speaking of that, how important is an editor to your work?
FF: Of no importance whatsoever. I really don’t need an editor; after all, I do all the work myself. Okay, just kidding, Sam! I have been lucky enough to have the same editor for the last eighteen years. He knows me very well and understands when to push me and when not to. But mostly he helps me manage fear. It is terrifying to write a book, particularly when you know your publishing house is waiting on it. His guidance and patience have been and continue to be invaluable. Besides that, he knows grammar, spelling, and all that good stuff.
SV: What is your next book?
FF: I am working on a small Christmas book.
SV: Have you finished it yet?
FF: (Long pause) I have to go now.
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The novel starts in the immediate aftermath of World War II. How does the period compare with the times following more modern wars—Vietnam, Gulf War, Desert Storm, etc.?
2. In what ways is Bobby the typical pre-teenage son? Does he differ in any important details? Does his active imagination hamper him, confuse him, or fuel his ambitions?
3. In what ways is Neighbor Dorothy a good neighbor? What makes her such an effective seller of her sponsors’ products or services?
4. Does Neighbor Dorothy speak through the silences surrounding some farmers’ wives—the silent or the working-all-day husband, for example. Or the limited view the nation had of housewives at that time? Or perhaps the distance between towns and cities and countryside? Was this the loneliness that can come with working alone in a house almost all the time?
5. How does Dorothy succeed in making small events into larger ones—an anniversary, the birth of a kitten, some honor bestowed in school or church, one of the ordinary recognitions?
6. Is the humor in the novel satire—or not?
7. How does Hamm break out of the tractor salesman category?
8. How does he use his salesmanlike skills to win the young woman who becomes his wife?
9. Hamm eventually takes on a mistress and advisor. How does Vita not fit into the usual Other Woman mold? We see their relationship grow—but what of that between his wife and his mistress?
10. With all the evidence of “dysfunctional” families these days, why do some marriages in the novel work out so well?
11. Why do you think the author begins the novel with Tot, the voice of one of the minor characters?
12. The Oatman family of gospel singers: Do they reveal a “hidden” aspect of American culture (hidden, that is, unless you grew up with such entertainments and forms of worship)? What other pockets of American life are almost invisible to white, middle-class, urban Americans?
13. Hamm’s politics seem to be a bit all over the place. He’s not a true conservative or liberal; he’s not a true demagogue or, on the other hand, a true blue Boy Scout, or without endless ambition. At what point does he leave off being a populist do-gooder and let ambition take over? Is the process gradual or sudden?
14. Because of the author’s attitude toward her characters and presumably the world, some might call this a feel-good novel. In what ways does she allow some of the harsher realities to creep in?
15. Is small-town life any better per se than city life?
16. Is the Midwestern small town indistinguishable from the Southern small town in Fried Green Tomatoes, for example?
17. The decade of the ’50s occurs in the middle of the novel. It was the time of the Eisenhower presidency, the end of the war in Korea, etc. For years, much of the intelligentsia portrayed those years as dull ones, uneventful, complacent, unremarkable. Later, there was a revision in opinion. They were special years of peace (despite the Cold War), stability, growth, etc. What is your opinion?