[Monidipa Mondal and Rohit K. Dasgupta]
Melissa Pritchard is the acclaimed author of three short story collections: Spirit Seizures, The Instinct for Bliss, and Disappearing Ingénue; three novels: Phoenix, Selene of the Spirits, and Late Bloomer; and a biography: Devotedly, Virginia: The Life of Virginia Galvin Piper. A favourite with both the readers and the critics, Pritchard has received many awards like the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, the James Phelan Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best fiction by an American woman and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Writers Voice YMCA, and Brown University’s Howard Foundation. She also teaches English, Women’s Studies and Creative Writing at the Arizona State University.
When we caught up with Pritchard during her last Calcutta trip on a January afternoon, we found her impeccably dressed, soft-spoken, irrepressibly optimistic and willing to share her experiences. Excerpts from the following conversation with her on her writing, work and everything else:
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On labelling and tags:
Romance novelist… oh, who calls me that (laughs)? My last book was a novel called Late Bloomer, where I did a satire of romance novels. I was criticising the clichés and conventions of romance novels. I was asking serious questions about love, romance and trying to exist in the 20th and the 21st century. But what happened was, when that book came out in the romance writers’ magazines, they thought it was a real romance novel and they loved it. They gave it five-star reviews. At bookstores, that book sometimes got shelved with romance novels and sometimes with literary. It didn’t help that the cover of the hardback was also a satire of the covers of romance novels, and it was a great confusion. It was a really weird feeling for me and my editor, and all the time I was thinking, ‘What in the world? I was trying to do the opposite!’
But that was just a quick tag, and it was a wrong tag, so it didn’t stick. There were reviews of Late Bloomer that did understand what I was doing, and many of the people who read my work now are of a literary mindset. Sometimes I’ve been described as a writer’s writer, meaning writers read me.
On the kind of people she writes about:
I have lived with a native American man for about five years. It didn’t go too well. And I partly wrote Late Bloomer to get myself out of that relationship. I have several good friends who are native American, whom I have spent a lot of time with. I’ve been to their rituals, ceremonies and Sundance seasons. I had got really involved in their culture for a while.
About Phoenix, well, there was a period of my work when I wrote frequently about people like myself who were fascinated by the exotically other, the different. I would go with assumptions or stereotypes into a particular culture, and they would all fall apart really fast. It’s kind of comedic, and a lot of times I write about the funny side of that, but at the same time it is sweet too, because the character needs that in a way of education.
On frequently lapsing into poetry in her Victorian spiritual novel Selene of the Spirits:
The narrative of Selene would sometimes go into italics. It was to show that there were other worlds of reality beyond the one she was stuck in, and judged and misinterpreted by. It was very real for her, and she floated in and out of those other realms of consciousness. But it was tragic otherwise, because she wasn’t recognised. Selene was a kind of a mystic, and I wanted to capture that mystical way of life.
On Disappearing Ingénue and forms of writing:
I just go with what I feel like writing, and I wrote a book of stories and took that to my agent, and she started sending it out to publishers. At that time short story collections weren’t selling, so she came back to me and said, ‘You know, I admire your work, But nobody’s buying it.’
Then we had lunch together, when my agent asked me, ‘What do these stories have in common?’
I thought about the question and said, ‘Well, they’re about the same woman. I just gave her different names and different families.’
Then we looked at each other, and she said, ‘Since the characters are basically all the same person, could you make them the same person all the way through?’
And I said, ‘Let me go home and think about it.’
I went home and thought about whether I would be compromising my art in doing this. I decided that I wouldn’t. So in two weeks’ time I had finished changing all these stories to one person’s point of view, and sent the manuscript back to my agent. Then two more weeks later, she called me and said she had just sold the book to Doubleday for six figures! That had never happened to me before, and it was because I had linked the stories. That made all the difference. Isn’t that weird (laughs)?
On the pressures of the publishing industry:
There is always this dance between writing and publishing where your book is based, you know. There are fads in publishing – it’s a money-making business. So your agent might try to tell you that if you write a certain thing you might have a better chance, like my agent did to me.
There is your vision, and there is the desire to get it out in the world. Sometimes changes are made in the process, and I often didn’t feel like it was compromising, because it made the work interesting in a way. That’s the most I have ever compromised. But I do find the expectation frustrating sometimes, because I try not to think about selling my work or how much money it would make. I remain really true to my art. What I want to write is the one freedom I have in life.
On her connection with India and the Daywalka Foundation:
I have wanted to go to India ever since I was in high school. It was a fascination. But my parents didn’t think it was possible then, so I never went, and the years went by. Then one day I was at a faculty meeting at the university, two-and-a-half years ago, when someone asked, ‘Who is interested in working with sex slaves?’
Everybody was a little freaked out at that, but I knew this was in India, and I decided to find out what this was all about. The person who spoke turned out to be Chris Carey of Daywalka, and we met for lunch, when he told me all about Kalam. I got very excited, so he invited me to come over to India, saying a bunch of them were going for a few months. I agreed, but well, the day I got on the plane there was no one going aboard but me. I had never been to India and I was kind of scared but I thought okay. But when I reached Kolkata, the people who then worked for Kalam picked me up from the airport; they had a big sign. And I had the most amazing, life-changing time here.
On the Kalam magazine that she had funded:
That happened because I was honoured by my school, Sacred Heart Schools Atherton – it was a convent girls’ school – as an alumna for what I had done, something my values reflecting the school’s values. Three of us were invited to come over and accept the honour. We had to get up on a big stage and give a speech. So I talked about Kalam and my experience of working in India. The school authorities presented me with a plaque of the Virgin Mary, very beautiful, and then they also gave me an envelope. When I opened it, it contained $500 for Daywalka, and I thought that was so cool. I sent that money to Kalam, and that’s how the magazine happened.
On writing about India:
One short story in my next collection is set in Delhi and it’s called ‘The Nine-Gated City’. I stayed in Delhi a couple of years ago at the Imperial Hotel, and I was working with these anti-trafficking people. I saw this divide between that part of me that loved the luxury of the five-star hotel and the part of me that wanted to do humanitarian work, and they were both there together. I wanted to write about that and ‘The Nine-Gated City’ happened. It’s a very long story – at 50 pages – and I believe it’s a very good story.
I sent the story out to a few journals, but most journals do not publish stories that are beyond 15 or 20 pages in length. So when I got back, I would always hear the ‘The Nine-Gated City’ was too long. So I decided that it would just be in the new book, and I was okay with that, when I got a phone call from a man who is the editor at the Agni magazine in Boston. Sven Birkerts is one of my favourite literary critics in the world, he’s brilliant, and I was excited to get his phone call. It was like god speaking to you! In the message he didn’t say anything, only gave me his email address and asked me to email him. So I right away sent him my email address and waited, and 10 minutes later came the reply, ‘I love your story, it’s fantastic. Great stuff! I’m taking it in the magazine for the Fall issue next September.’ This was thrilling to me!
On her writing and humanitarian work:
I’m kind of at a funny point right now, because both writing and humanitarian work take up a lot of my energy, it’s difficult to keep them going together. I have not just worked with Kalam but with children’s hospitals and all sorts of projects, and exhausted myself. Lately I’ve been soul-searching regarding it. Maybe I need to go back to my writing, because that’s what has given me any voice at all. I’ve been invited to places to speak and interact because of that. And my art is really important to me. I deeply believe in how art can transform lives. The power of art to change people, heal, inspire and give courage is just incredible. So I don’t want to give it up.
But I’m growing older, I only have so much energy, and I still haven’t decided what to devote that energy to. Should I just write, or should I do also humanitarian work? Writing fiction is very independent, it’s like freedom. I sometimes feel like just finishing the new book, settle down once I go home, see what’s going on in the news tonight, and so on. But I may have a chance to go to Afghanistan soon. I have a helmet, I have a flight jacket, I’m almost ready to go. (Melissa Pritchard went to Afghanistan from India, where she interviewed Air Force women pilots and members of Provincial Reconstruction Teams about their experiences there.)
On her teaching:
Teaching is my bread and butter; it puts food on the table. Teaching is an art too, and I’m proud of myself for doing it. But teaching is also tiring. When you teach a lot you give a lot of yourself. If I could change my life I’d probably not teach, or only teach workshops here and there when I felt like it. The academic world demands a lot from you. Right now I feel I still have the energy to write at least a couple more books, and I want to write them.
If these books are successful, then maybe I can do more humanitarian work. I don’t need much material in my life anymore. My kids have grown up. I spent a lot of years working as a single mom to raise them, when I took up teaching. It’s a lot of work. Actually, my dream is to be able to stop teaching. I can’t right now, because I don’t make any money writing, and so teaching’s what brings in the money. But I would just write. So maybe I should marry a millionaire (laughs).
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