T A B L E+T A L K What recent books will be future classics? Make your picks in the Books area of Table Talk A L S O+T O D A Y The Salon Interview: Ian McEwan By Dwight Garner (03/31/98) R E C E N T L Y Nadine Gordimer By Dwight Garner (03/09/98) P.D. James By Jennifer Reese (02/26/98) Stanley Crouch By Jonathan Broder (02/25/98) Martin Amis By Laura Miller (02/10/98) Toni Morrison By Zia Jaffrey (02/02/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INTERVIEW ARCHIVE R E V I E W S The Short History of a Prince By Jane Hamilton A meditative novel, set in Wisconsin, about a former ballet dancer trying to come to terms with his new life (03/31/98)		DOROTHY ALLISON | PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - You've given a lot of years, and too much of your health at times, to different causes. You worked too hard for a long time. Not too hard, just as hard as I could. But that's about masochistic self-destruction -- I didn't drink, I worked hard. And then you started to be able to set limits. I'm not terribly good at it. I am getting better. I started having pneumonia. The fifth time I had pneumonia, I realized that, in fact, I had to listen to people and make some changes. But it is very hard. God, it's hard. It is like changing the habits of a lifetime. I just did this writer's conference, and these beginning writers show up with those little brown envelopes in hand. Oh, God. And I am used to it and I have standards and sometimes I am pleasant and sometimes I am a little rude. But basically, I don't carry manuscripts home. I just can't. For one thing, my back won't handle it. The suitcase becomes too heavy. But I am not mean. I saw a couple of writers, when people came up to them with their brown envelopes, they went off, hysterical. That instant rage is because you said yes 25 times. The 26th time you have to beat the kid to death with his manuscript. Better to learn to say, "I can't read that right now." But there were a couple of times there when people showed up and tried to hand me manuscripts and instead of screaming I burst into tears. The people you work with will force you. You know, when you sign a contract and they give you money, it will come down to the time when they want what they paid for. They built their timetable around it, and they are going to kick your ass if you don't deliver. I also have to say no to doing benefits to the point that I am gone every weekend. My agent is my mama substitute. She will call me up and say, somebody called me from Touluca County and they said you promised to come and do a benefit for a battered women's shelter. Did you do this? Well, yes. And then she yells at me. And then she will help me make it happen. She forced me to limit it so that I don't do more than two a month. I just kept getting sick. It was the only excuse that I could give. Physical collapse is the only justified reason in my head for not doing these benefits when you can actually be of use. I felt that way about leaving New York City for San Francisco. I don't know any other way to put it, but I have got a strong bone in me to keep me alive. And in these situations, some little voice says, get out. Do a geographic. I left New York City to survive. You really felt that the amount of work you were doing there was that dangerous? Well, not just work. Let's not forget sex. It takes a lot of that to kill a person. Oh, you'd be amazed, you do it right. No, it was New York City. You send trash to New York City, we go so bad. I went so bad. I mean, in order to justify how much exhilaration and adventure living in the evil city was, I destroyed my immune system with overwork and, let's get real, using drugs to keep maintaining. I was basically doing huge amounts of coffee and other stimulants and drinking to get myself down enough to rest. And not sleeping. You can do yourself enormous damage. And it wasn't just activism, but also working at Poets and Writers, writing for the Village Voice. No, honey, it was going to readings. It was drink another cup of coffee because somebody is doing something interesting and I want to see it. And dating every piece of rough trade I could get my hands on. Oh, land. I near killed myself. But it was fun? Enormous passion, even in the work. Even in the most grody, awful work. I used to do the computer organizing at Poets and Writers, which was deadly, deadly, but also an enormous joy. When you've grown up thinking you are a worthless piece of shit, and well, when a piece of shit goes to New York and gets a job, exhilaration happens. I had so much guilt about being in a place where I was happy. Or almost happy. I'd call home, talk to my mama, talk to my sisters, and feel, thank you, thank you, Jesus, for letting me get here. And then the wave comes in of "I should be dead." I don't think people ever talk about how strong that wave is. Boy, it is a biggie. The guilt of getting the things you have always wanted? The guilt of being a survivor. You know, I hadn't gotten all the things I had always wanted. But just to get out of that world. And I have a lot of family that never had anything working, managing a convenience store and raising three kids. Although you make managing a convenience store into something positive in "Cavedweller." It becomes Dede's vocation, the one thing she's really good at. This is the kind of book that some people might think of as being a women's book, but what these women are after is never the romance, the pairing up, that drives most women's books. I can't write what I don't believe in. And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you. It helps a whole bunch, but ... I couldn't write that kind of romance. Do you feel pressure to tell a certain kind of story? I just did an interview with a gay paper in some unnamed Eastern city. We won't identify them. First the woman gets on the phone, tells me how much she loves my work. And then you can hear her taking a breath: "I don't want to offend you, but don't you feel that a lesbian writing about straight people the way you do is a betrayal of the gay community?" Oh, I forgot to ask you that! [Laughter.] I had this moment when I wanted to say, "Eat shit and die, bitch," you know? She had such a tiny concept of the community. I am sick to death of people who think that lesbians don't have family. People who think queer writers don't think large in terms of their own lives. I mean, I can't write purely about sex -- although it is a lot of fun. I don't think being queer is purely about sex. That is what they think. These young journalists are like 20, and they think that the gay story is coming out, sexual adventurism. Or the queer person in struggle with the community. They want you to write the vindication of queer people. So, no, I don't think it is a betrayal. I think it is an affirmation. I took a deep breath, and I did not scream at that child. Maybe little squeals. Like you said, there is always going to be somebody who is pissed off. What was it like seeing "Bastard Out of Carolina" made into a movie? It was very weird, frightening. I only sold it because I thought they wouldn't do it. I wouldn't have taken the money if I thought they were really going to make the movie. Everybody promised me that they never make the movies they buy the rights for. They never do. They never do. They did. I was terrified, because before Anjelica Huston came on, there were a number of different directors. There was the one that did "Mi Vida Loca." Allison Anders. Allison Anders. I liked her. We had a great time. We talked about illegitimacy and feminism and working-class families, and she was a hoot and a half. I thought, hey, this one is not going to make a movie that I will then have to kill myself over. But then she left and Anjelica Huston came on. Then I got scared again because I admire Anjelica Huston as an actress, but who knew what the hell she would do. Allison Anders is working class. She is in my territory. And Anjelica Huston is a long-legged movie star. Exactly -- so, ooof! She invited me down to her house. I had gone off to do a benefit somewhere, so when I flew in I was so exhausted I could barely see. She sent a limo to pick me up. And I kept thinking: Stay awake. Remember, all your friends are going to want to know about this. She was extremely reassuring. She talked about the book. She talked about Bone and Annie and Boatwright with an enormous passion. She started crying. So I was a little more hopeful. And then I met Jennifer Jason Leigh, who was equally passionate and sincere. They were both very sincere. They both cried. They both kissed me -- very soft-mouthed girls. But you know people with good intentions can still fuck up. And then they sent me the "draft" of the movie. And I just lost it. I had been worrying about the movie the way a novelist worries, which is about which parts of the story were they going to cut out. And I was worried about what they were going to do with the violence, that it would be a really gratuitous, offensive, violent thing that I would then have to hunt somebody down and kill them over. I had not thought about the fact that they were going to go to South Carolina. And that they were going to shoot in the countryside where I grew up. And that they were going to shoot in those houses. And that the landscape they were going to photograph was going to hit me like a car. I couldn't watch it. It had so little to do with the book. It had everything to do with my childhood. It completely ... I was just ... I couldn't. So I couldn't judge it. I hadn't registered that they were going to do it well enough that it was going to feel to me and smell to me like my childhood -- and make me want to go out in the yard and throw up. I've never heard a novelist say, I didn't like the movie because it was too true! But I can't say that. I can't think about it in terms of like it or not like it. I couldn't handle it. When other people would ask me about it, I would say I missed some of the family because a lot of the family story and all of the places in which Bone Boatwright has agency were gone. So it was, in many ways, the victim portrait that I had hoped it wouldn't be, but at the same time the violent scenes, and especially the rape scene, were done so well. So well it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was done exactly how I would have wanted it to be done. So, when all the bullshit hit, I was like, we're backing her. When Ted Turner decided the movie was too much for his cable channel? I said, we are backing her all the way. I said evil things about Ted Turner when reporters called and I praised her to the skies. Considering that you've always felt like such an outsider, who would have thought they'd make a movie out of one of your books? Well, it is a hoot. Your whole family gets excited. My family ... Let's be real about my family. They don't read. One of my sisters did read the book. I am now convinced that one of them didn't. I think she just looked to see if she was in it. So there was never any big deal about it. When the movie happened, it was a big deal. Relatives checked in that had not been heard from in this lifetime. Were they happy or were they ... They loved it! Isn't that a hoot? SALON | March 31, 1998