Podcast #104: Dana Spiotta on Good People, Heroes, and Writing
Dana Spiotta is the acclaimed author of novels including Eat the Document, Stone Arabia, Lightning Field, and most recently, Innocents and Others. She has earned a Guggeinheim Fellowship, NYFA Felowship, and Rosenthal Foundation Award, and has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. This week, for the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Dana Spiotta discussing good people, literary heroes, and writing with density.
Dana Spiotta at Books at Noon
Spiotta discussed the way that she creates dense prose, a process of backtracking and addition:
"Usually I write pretty blindly for a while. So in this case, I had the voice of this woman Meadow looking back. And the first thing she says is 'This is a love story.' And I thought, well okay this is a love story, but as I was writing, I realized the love story was about film and this woman, being an artist. You're writing to discover, and as you discover more... you start to see the connections, and then you start to see the shape. The way I work is I write and then I read what I've written and then I add, so I try to carry everything forward. It's a slow process, but it gets a kind of density, where even if you're a different storyline, you're reading everything that precedes it and adding and then shaping once you see the shape, being more deliberate about what you're leaving in or what you're taking out or what you're emphasizing. But ideally, your subconscious comes up with deep connections that lead you, rather than you schematically planning it out, which will never be as good as this organic process where it comes out of this weird pursuit you're doing, a kind of concentration."
Spiotta's characters are often morally complex. Her sense is that there are very few evil people and that instead she's interested in the way that individuals talk themselves into suspect decisions:
"We can talk ourselves into a lot of things. We're very good rationalizing beings, and sometimes, it's only later that we realize. I'm more interested in that than someone who's a bad actor. I don't think there are that many of them where it's 'I'm a bad person. I'm going to do bad things.' But no, 'I'm a good person. I'm doing this good thing.' And then maybe later you say, 'Maybe not so much. Maybe not really.' Or people do bad things. It doesn't necessarily mean they're bad people. People make mistakes."
Like many writers, Spiotta has had a love affair with the work of James Joyce. She recalled reading Joyce as a pivotal moment in her life as a reader and writer:
"I was writing in high school and writing in college, but it took me a long time to get serious. I didn't really start writing seriously until my late twenties. I was at the Evergreen State College, and I was reading a lot and wanting, but the difference between wanting and be able to write were so far. Honestly, this is going to sound really corny. But I was reading Dubliners and reading The Dead, and I had this epiphany. When I was reading the book, I started weeping and started thinking about the whole world and my mortality and how moving it was that this person could get me to this place. I memorized the parts of the story, so James Joyce is my hero. I teach Ulysses now at my university where I teach. Every three years, I'll teach it with the graduate students, and it really renews the possibilities of the novels for me."
You can subscribe to the New York Public Library Podcast to hear more conversations with wonderful artists, writers, and intellectuals. Join the conversation today!