Q: Rapture is a very intense story that takes place entirely within
one afternoon, when two former lovers meet by chance and end up back in
bed. Where did you get the idea for the story?
A: I wanted to write about how two people, while being involved
in an intimate exchange--the most intimate one being sex--are able to
have such different things going on in their minds.
Q: Was it difficult to write a full story that takes place in such a short time frame?
A: It was originally going to be a very short story of about four
or five pages which would have suited the time frame, but, well, it just
got longer because I went into the character's minds. And the one
thing about thought is that it has a whole different sense of time, if
it has any sense of time at all. One could, in theory, write a hundred
pages about a momentary passing thought, if one went into all aspects of
how it came into being along with the history of the person thinking it
etc. So the difficulty in Rapture was stranding the reader in the one
place in real time, and reminding him now and then that the present is
moving, albeit slowly, along. But sex tends to keep people interested,
and I suppose that helps.
Q: Your description of the lovers' sex always seems secondary to the
stories playing out in their minds. Was it difficult to balance the
erotic scenes with the interior monologues?
A: The balance is really between the inner and exterior life.
Certainly some of the interior life is more erotic that what is going in
the bedroom. The conveying of the difference between the two is always a
juggling act, but very much the stuff of fiction. Every experience we
have, while being playing out in the world, goes through the filter of
our minds. And sex far more than people seem to agree upon. Yes, the
body can have a life of its own, but the body whether engaged in sex or
not always has a mind attached to it. And that interests me.
Q: Is it difficult to write a sex scene?
A: Of course! It's one of the writer's great challenges. As
William Gass said, "Words become embarrassed in front of sex." Also,
describing something so firmly rooted in the physical is always
challenging for a writer. Like pain, it's very hard to put into words.
And then there is something about making love which goes (mercifully)
beyond words. If you're looking for the better art form for conveying
sex, I would have to say that music seems to approach the depiction
better. But I'm not a musician, alas...
Q: A point you seem to be making with Rapture is that no matter how
intimate two people seem to be, they can still be oceans apart and not
even know it. In your last novel, Evening, the main character, a dying
woman who'd been married several times and had several children, was
largely unknown throughout her life by those closest to her. Why does
this emotional isolation, if that's the right description, interest you
as a writer?
A: We all have this isolation in varying degrees. There is so
much that goes on inside a person--it is the filter of all of our
experience in life--and so often it is not known by, or communicated to,
other people. I suppose it interests me simply because it is one of
the basic facts of our experience--the internal life is, after all, one
of the major terrains of literature--and also because the isolation can
be bridged. We CAN connect and be understood. It just doesn't happen a
lot, and it may not be happening when we think it is. Literature, and
art, can teach us something about this. Writing at all is an effort to
make that bridge, to, in E.M. Forster's phrase "only connect." And the
experience of reading, too, is a sharing of that isolation.
Q: If you've given the novel to friends and family to read, have you
noticed that men and women respond differently?
A: If I've noticed a difference, I would have to say that women
are more likely to respond with a smile, or shiver, of recognition,
while men might appear a little more distressed, and--how can I put
this?--sort of hopeful that the story isn't really so true. By the way,
men and women are, I think, more alike than different, but when it
comes to what goes on between men and women, a lot of the differences
which are there come into sharp relief.
Q: You recently completed your first collection of poems, Poems 4
A.M., which will be published this spring. Can you tell us a little
about the poems?
A: I've been writing poems for over thirty years and they were,
one might say, piling up. I thought it would be nice to clear them out,
to try to trim some of them into shape and let them see the light of
day. Most of the poems selected turn out to be about either trying to
find one's bearings in a perplexing world, or that old poetic favorite:
heartache.
Q: You've also written the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci's
Stealing Beauty. What was that experience like? Would you want to work
on another film?
A: I love movies and loved writing a movie and loved being on the
set and all of that. It was great, and working with Bertolucci an
honor. I've written a screenplay adaptation of my last novel Evening
which is now with my producers at Hart/Sharp looking for a director and
would love to keep working on movies forever.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm writing an adaptation for the stage, of a memoir called
The Little Locksmith by Katherine Butler Hathaway. It is the story a
woman who after a childhood illness which prevented her from growing
beyond the size of a ten year old, overcame the limitations of her
situation, (mostly the attitudes of those around her), and went on to
live a full life, becoming a bohemian writer in Paris in the 30s.