by Timothy Rutt
Pasadena’s own literary extravaganza, LitFest Pasadena, premieres Saturday at Central Park in Old Town Pasadena. It won’t be shy of local literary talent, including quite a few Altadena residents.
Among them will be novelist and Altadena native Michelle Huneven, whose third novel, Blame, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Huneven joins novelist Janet Fitch (White Oleander) in a joint interview about the writing life by Pasadena Star News editor and LitFest founder Larry Wilson.
We had a chance to ask her some questions:
So what IS the writing life?
It’s a mixed bag, the writing life. It’s what I’ve always wanted -- and be careful what you’ve wished for.
The challenges are using time responsibly, not playing online Scrabble, Facebook, online games, or in my case wandering aimlessly around the yard deadheading roses. Knowing what’s process and what’s pure sloth.
You just returned from teaching at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. You were also a student there, graduating in 1977. What’s that like, to return as a teacher?
It’s like walking right back to the same conversation. It’s just fantastic. It’s a place where fiction is valued and privileged, and there aren’t that many venues for that, where you can talk about it nonstop for as much as you want. The students range in age from right out of college, 24, to -- last year we had a 63 year old. This year, our oldest was 45.
What are the young students like? Their world is so about electronics and media. Or are these more book-focused outliers?
They’re outliers, but this was the first time a science fiction class was taught at the workshop. Of course, it was taught by a workshop graduate. Science fiction, fantasy, slipstream -- some of them are more interested in genre because that’s where the money is. Everybody got realistic, that literary fiction is not going to make them a living.
You’re a novelist of place -- location is very important in your books. What are you working on now?
I’m finishing my fourth book. It’s called Off Course, and takes place in the Southern Sierras and Pasadena. It’s good old literary fiction -- or you could say it’s a love story. It’s taken about three years.
And after that?
I always know what the next one’s going to be -- if I don’t have an idea for the next one, I won’t finish this one. I’m champing at the bit for number five: “I’ve gotta get this off the desk so I can go on to my real work, the fifth novel.” I always like the unwritten ones best.
Do you start with the end in mind, or does it unfold?
It unfolds. I have vague ideas and what always surprises me is that somewhere down the line it starts to look like a book. I’m working with what are essentially spider webs, the vaguest ideas, and eventually it starts to have its own existence outside of me, and starts making its own demands, and being its own thing -- which is never exactly what I wanted.
If a young writer wanted to pursue that calling -- besides going to LitFest, of course -- what would you recommend to her?
I would just say read all the good old books and plunge in. Keep at it. And join a writing group, because they make you put periods at the end of your sentences and make you finish them. And you get read, and you find out what works and what doesn’t -- very important.
What are “the good old books?”
Just the classics, I mean Don Quixote on. Dickens, Austin, James, Cather, the Brontes, Virginia Woolf, Trollope, Tolstoy. Chekov, don’t forget Chekov. And Shakespeare.
Why are you participating in LitFest Pasadena?
I’m actually really excited that Pasadena’s going to have a literary festival. I know that Jonathan Gold and Jervey Tervalon have been trying to get one going for years -- decades.
If a writer can’t give something to her own community -- I don’t know what I’m giving, exactly -- but writers need to support and be supported at home and this is like the great opportunity. I just think it’s really important to support community projects.
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LitFest Pasadena runs from 9:30 AM-4 PM on Sat., May 12, at Pasadena’s Central Park. Admission is free. For more information and a full schedule, go to http://litfestpasadena.org/
