An Evening With Elizabeth Strout

Last Friday night, Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kittridge, My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible, spoke to a crowd of about 200 people at George Mason University.  Dressed smartly, but somewhat casually with her shoulder-length white blond hair thrown up in a messy ponytail, she opened with an anecdote about her first interview 20 years ago.  “I thought I looked nice.  The reporter said, ‘You don’t look remotely like what I thought you would.’”  She went on to say she hoped she was what we were expecting.  “Thanks,” she said, “for taking the risk.”

In contrast to Tayari Jones, who spoke two nights earlier and who focused on her newest book, Strout spoke from a prepared talk on why fiction matters.  “We don’t have a clue what goes on inside of our neighbor’s house.  We will only see things through our eyes.  There are always things we keep secret.  That space between ourselves and the world, that in-between is literature and poetry.”  Novels, she says, allow us glimpses into another person’s life. Reading a novel helps you know what is feels like to be another person; novels give one the ability to empathize.  An audience member asks about a related concept - point of view.  “Point of view,” she explains, “is like a camera.  It goes into a head and then pulls away, then zooms into another character’s head.”  

Although Strout never took a creative writing class, she says that, at her mother’s urging, she wrote everything down, becoming a keen observer.  She’s also a listener, noting the importance of language and the difference between what is said and what is experienced.  Her goal, she explains, is accuracy of language and emotional honesty. “Where else,” she asks, “do we learn about life but through fiction?”

When Strout gets specific about her work, it is usually in reference to Olive Kittridge, the episodic novel about a cantankerous Maine school teacher, the book for which she won the big prize.  Audience members ask a variety of questions about the book, including ones that touch on Olive’s unlikeability.  “I am not interested in whether my characters are likeable or unlikeable.  I am more concerned with whether they are honest,”  she replies. I am surprised that the discussion is so focused on this older book and want her to talk about her most recent two works, the second of which is a sort of sequel to the first, so when the floor is opened to questions, I jump up to the mike.  My Name is Lucy Barton, if you haven’t read it, is a slim little novel told in first person by Lucy, a young mother and wife who has an extended stay in a hospital for a seemingly undiagnosable illness. Her mother comes to visit and they talk about people from Lucy’s home town, a place from which she flees some years earlier.  The reader is left with many gaps in Lucy’s story, many of which are filled in the subsequent novel, Anything is Possible, which takes place in that home town with each chapter told from the point of view of a different person, including Lucy’s siblings.  I want to know about her decision to write two connected books. Strout says that she actually wrote the two books at the same time, writing scenes and moving them around on her table.  For example, when Lucy and her mother mention Kathy Nicely, Strout says she wondered whatever happened to Kathy and then moved around the table to write her story. 

I think people would have gladly engaged her in dialogue for another hour, but the hosts called time and the line for the book signing is already 25 deep by the time we get out of the auditorium.  Strout is both a gifted writer and an entertaining speaker.  It was a good way to spend a Friday night.