Know Your (Grown Up) Mighty Writers: Mary Beth Keane
Grew up: “About 20 miles north of New York City. A large percentage of people in my town emigrated from Ireland (with a sprinkling of Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans), including my parents. Almost all of my friends’ parents had blue collar jobs, something I didn’t think about very much until I got to college. This has influenced my writing in a huge way. I’m repeatedly drawn to characters who are very smart, but perhaps not very well educated and perhaps not all that articulate about their interior lives. I’ve never associated intelligence with occupation or advanced degrees, a point I want to make again and again. My fiction tends to feature large Catholic families.”
Kind of books I read as a kid: “Just about any books I could get my hands on, but I remember LOVING Anne of “Green Gables,” “Caddie Woodlawn” and “Little Women.” They are all quite long, and all feature a strong central female character. When the Harry Potter series came out I remember thinking that these were exactly the sort of books I would have been drawn to simply because they are so long. Handing an 11-year-old a 700 page book is the same as saying that the world takes that 11-year-old seriously, and I would have loved that.”
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“I’ve never associated intelligence with occupation or advanced degrees.”
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People who inspired me to write: “I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, so I can’t pinpoint who gave me the idea. I just remember feeling so moved by some books and stories that I wanted to be able to do the same thing: tell a story that stays with the people who read it. When I got to college I studied with Mary Gordon and she was the one who convinced me that being a writer didn’t have to be a fantasy. As long as I worked hard and kept at it I had as much a chance as anyone (she didn’t mention that this would also mean being broke… forever…).”
Books I read now: “Mostly literary fiction and I depend on recommendations from friends or various award. I tend to like the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, followed by the Booker, and so on. Sometimes I spick up a book simply because I like the jacket and the first page reads well. Right now I’m reading “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” and I love it. Some recent books I’ve loved are “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz, “The Secret Scripture” by Sebastian Barry and “Lark & Termite” by Jayne Anne Phillips. For a great short story I always look to William Trevor or Alice Munro.”
All-time author: “I think it’s William Trevor. There are times when I crave writing that is more innovative, and at those moments I look elsewhere, but when I want to count on a good read I go to him. He examines the most simple moments in life and makes them elegant and moving. A fifteen-page Trevor story is usually more devastating than any 400-page novel. From the perspective of craft I am amazed over and over at how efficiently he can compress into a single sentence moments and gestures that would take a lesser writer (like me) many pages to dramatize.”
Hardest thing about writing: “Right now it’s finding a block of hours each day when I can sit down and concentrate solely on writing. I’m no good at night, but that seems to be the only time I have entirely to myself so I’ve been trying to make it work.”
Writing makes me happiest when: “I find a rhythm and I know the writing is good. I’m even happier when the characters start doing things that surprise me.”
On becoming a good writer: “Write as much as you can and READ as much as you can. When you read something you really love go back and read it again. Try to identify the decisions the author made and how s/he put it all together.”
Mary Beth Keane lives in Philadelphia. Her first novel—”The Walking People” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)—was published in May. She is currently working on short stories and researching and writing another novel, which she hopes to complete by 20012.
