NH Writers' Project

A Conversation with Francine Prose
by Kim Ponders

Francine Prose is the author of the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, as well as fourteen books of fiction, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. A distinguished critic and essayist, she has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ and The Paris Review; she is a contributing editor at Harper's and she writes regularly on art for the Wall Street Journal.

She will give a public reading followed by a reception and book signing on July 27 and participate in an onstage interview on July 28 at Southern New Hampshire University. The interview will be open only to SNHU MFA students and faculty, and to NHWP members. For details see the NHWP Literary Calendar.

Q: Your most recent novel, Goldengrove, is much more somber in tone than Blue Angel and A Changed Man. You said in an interview that you wrote it after the death of your mother. How was the writing process different this time?

A: I knew this wasn’t going to be like my other novels. When you’re dealing with a subject very close to your life, the urge is to say, it’s too hard, I can’t do it, it’s impossible. But Goldengrove wasn’t biographical at all, so I wasn’t writing about my own experience so much as reporting on feelings I was familiar with. The character’s family wasn’t my family, the story wasn’t my story, and when one thing is different, then really everything is different.

Q: Your characters often seem to surprise themselves (I’m thinking, in particular, about Vincent in A Changed Man)—do they surprise you, too?

A: Absolutely. I had no idea what has going to happen in that book. I thought the story was over before I came to the ending. I thought it would end with him not showing up, and then when I got to the end, it occurred to me that he needed to come back in and finish things.

Q: Vincent was an extremely compelling character. Did it feel natural being inside his head?

A: No! It was quite a challenge. But that was part of the reason I did it. The first thing I knew about him was that he would be intelligent. That came early on, but I didn’t know what was going to come next. I really don’t plan what’s going to happen. I wish I did—I’d get everything done that way.

Q: You mentioned somewhere that you went through 130 drafts in writing Goldengrove, and yet you’ve published four novels and several nonfiction books in this decade alone—how (and why) do you do it all?

A: I like writing, and it’s really difficult. Some days, of course, I hate and fear it. But it gives me a sense of accomplishment. If I’ve done it well, I feel really good about. But I’ll tell you, I’d rather garden than write at this point. It’s so satisfying—uncomplicated, in a way. And it’s hard work. But nobody’s looking over your shoulder to see if you’ve done it wrong.

Q: How do you get it all done?

A: I watch a lot of TV, too. But here’s an example: I had to go into the city for a meeting yesterday, and I took my galleys [of Anne Frank: the Book, the Life, the Afterlife] to read, which I’d been putting off. It’s a great use of my time. Plus, summer is great for writing, especially up here in the country.

Q: In Reading Like a Writer, you dedicate a whole chapter to Chekhov (and in Blue Angel, there’s that great early scene in which Swensen fortifies himself with a Chekhov quote during one of his disastrous writers’ workshops). Why is Chekhov such an important source for contemporary writers?

A: He’s extraordinary. Look at his work. He was an unbelievably compassionate human being, and there’s real story there. Just recently, I’ve been reading Dickens’s Little Dorrit. He’s a different writer than Chekhov, but he was a genius. His stories really grab you. I find that when I pick up a contemporary mystery, it’s usually boring. I find my mind wandering. But with Dickens, oh my God, it’s a page turner! And it was written for that purpose. So I tell my students they needn’t be intimidated by the classic writers. These are great stories.

Q: You’ve also said that for young students of writing, reading is actually more important than writing. Can you explain what you mean by that?

A: A friend of mine says, the better the things you read, the higher the standard you set for yourself. If you just grab the latest popular novel off the shelf, you’re not going to find yourself improving. Sure, maybe it’s impossible to try to write like Cheever, but why not set that as your standard?

Kim Ponders holds an M.S. in international relations and an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Her second novel, The Last Blue Mile (HarperCollins, 2007), has been hailed by the Washington Post, Playgirl, Entertainment Weekly, and Alma Magazine, among others. She teaches in the Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction and Nonfiction program at Southern New Hampshire University.