Interview 2007-007: Katherine Taylor

The following is an interview with Katherine Taylor, author of Rules for Saying Goodbye (FSG, 2007).

Dan:

Thank you so much for taking some time out of your writing schedule to answer some very, very belated questions!

Katherine:

Are they belated?  In the Katherine Taylor world of deadlines, you’re right on time.  You’re early.

Dan:

First up, a question you’ll hate me for as I’m sure you get it frequently – your protagonist just happens to be named Katherine Taylor.  Coincidence?

Katherine:

It’s not a coincidence, but readers shouldn’t (and most readers don’t) make the mistake of assuming the fictional Katherine Taylor is in any way related to the real Katherine Taylor. 

Dan:

The rules for saying goodbye actually appear in the book, as chapter 14, and there are eleven of them.  Did you actually have the rules in mind when you began the novel, or did they come to you in the middle, or even towards the end of your process?

Katherine:

There’s a moment – like an epiphany – while writing a book when the structure all comes together.  The rules chapter was that moment.  They came to me somewhere in the middle of the process.  I wrote them quickly, in ten minutes or so, and suddenly the whole arc of the narrative fell into place.  At first I thought Rules For Saying Goodbye (the chapter) would be an instructional poem – I didn’t realize it had anything to do with the novel at all – I wrote it while taking a short break from the book.  Of course, when you’re working on a novel, everything has to do with the novel.  Everything.  My characters were eating soft boiled eggs, and I craved soft boiled eggs.  I spent a weekend eating and shooting and drinking champagne, so I sent Katherine Taylor off for a weekend of eating and shooting and drinking champagne.  When she got depressed and panicky, I’d get depressed and panicky.  Sort of like the method acting school of writing.

Dan:

Which of the eleven rules is your personal favorite?  Then, knowing your protagonist as well as you do, which do you think her favorite would be?

Katherine:

I like rule #2.  Avoid musicians.  It’s a rule I try to obey.  The fictional Katherine Taylor should have no favorites (they’re her rules, after all), but is probably partial to the last rule:  when you’re gone, be gone for good.  Throughout the book, it’s the only rule she consistently follows.

Dan:

So, your novel comes out, not long after you make a comment regarding the novel Indecision.  The author of said novel isn’t overly pleased and comments in print and you get prime space on Gawker.com for a bit of time.  Did this end up being a case of any press is good press in your mind?

Katherine:

The most important thing to come of that whole kerfuffle was this:  I learned not to read Gawker. 

Dan:

I caught a reading of yours this past July, and have to say, while you appeared extremely comfortable reading/performing in front of an audience, you seemed more than anxious for the Q&A session to end.  What is it about being questioned after a reading that gets you so on edge?  Also, that reading was attended by a rather large family member contingent for you – how different is it reading your work to family (and especially, as in this case, elder members of your family)?

Katherine:

After the reading component of a reading is done, I just want to get a drink.  There’s no part of me that enjoys that sort of attention.  I enjoy sitting at my desk and doing the work -- I see little need to talk it to death later.  A reader ought to interpret a book himself, without commentary from the author.  Also, talking about myself bores me, and about half way through a Q&A, I start to worry that it’s boring everyone else, too, and we might all have a much better time if we moved to the bar.

I enjoy reading to audiences stacked with my family & friends.  I know exactly how they’re going to react – there are no surprises.  My elderly uncle was in the audience that night in July, and he had asked me beforehand to please excise the f-word from the passage I planned to read.  I admonished him for trying to censor me, and then I excised the f-word.  I looked into the audience as I was reading and saw his sad little face and I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Don’t fuck his friends.”  My family is unrelentingly supportive.  I’m very fortunate.  I appropriate all their most painful and personal details for my work, so the least I can do, I guess, is refrain from saying “fuck” when they ask me.

Dan:

You have what is now just about the obligatory author website (www.katherinetaylor.com).  Has it helped you much in terms of publicity?  Do you get many emails via the site from your readers?

Katherine:

I get a lot of emails & freelance requests through the website.  I’m disgracefully negligent, though.  Obviously, that website hasn’t been updated since before the book was released.

Dan:

You did some blogging yourself earlier in the year over at one of my favorites, The Elegant Variation (beginning here:  http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2007/06/the_interloper.html). Did you enjoy yourself?  What about it surprised you?  What aspects didn’t you enjoy?  How much of a distraction was it for your writing that week?

Katherine:

I love Mark’s site.  I loved taking it over that week.  I’m an oldest child -- I like to commandeer the property of others for as long as it suits me and then relinquish it when I’m good and ready, which is practically the definition of guest-blogging!  It’s a lot of energy, a blog.  It’s always with you – for example, that week I read the paper differently, more in terms of what might be interesting on the blog and less in terms of just reading the paper.  Maybe a blog is like writing a novel that never ends – your whole life becomes part of it.   I don’t know how Mark Sarvas manages to keep up the blog and get his writing done, too.  I couldn’t.  I didn’t.

Dan:

You live in Los Angeles.  For quite some time it seemed as if there weren’t very many authors being published that lived in Los Angeles.  Boyle always came to mind.  Percival Everett was as well, but not nearly as many people (unfortunately) knew about it.  But, this past year, I’ve read books by Antoine Wilson, yourself, Everett, Richard Lange, Bill Bryan and Steve Erickson (who I suppose should have been added to the above notes with Boyle and Everett).  Is there a solid literary community in Los Angeles?  Is it developing, or did I just stumble on a bunch of writers who happen to live in a region?

Katherine:

There’s Meghan Daum and David Francis and Darcy Cosper.  Janelle Brown and Dawn MacKeen and Janet Fitch.  Virginia Postrel, Brian Doherty, Strawberry Saroyan, Aimee Bender, Marc Weingarten, David St. John, Terri Jentz.  I play tennis (year-round!) in the mornings with a thriller writer called David Angsten.  The list, as they say, goes on and on.  We have these gorgeous independent bookstores – Book Soup and Skylight Books and Vroman’s and Diesel and Village Books, to name just a few.   The literary community in LA thrives. 

The intellectual life of the city tends to take place in people’s houses, so outsiders don’t often get to see it.  You visit Los Angeles and you might end up someplace hideous like Orso or The Green Door or Mr Chow, where you’ll overhear the conversations that confirm all the stereotypes.  The other night I overheard someone – actually, ok, she was at my table – say proudly, and I am not making this up, this is a direct quote, “I go to the same colonics place as Brad Pitt’s manager.”  If you’re the sort of person who eavesdrops on other people’s conversations, and I am, sometimes it’s all you can do to get from Mr Chow to your car without committing suicide.  Literary Los Angeles is quieter than the rest of LA, but no less present.  It’s built of bookstores and dinner parties.  And morning tennis.

Dan:

Your mother lives in SE Michigan and you’ve spent long stretches of time in Northern Michigan writing.  What is it about that area that lures you back from L.A. time and time again?  Do you find your writing done during stretches in that area to be sufficiently different from your writing done during stretches in L.A.?

Katherine:

My mother was raised in Detroit but, much to her frustration, lives in Fresno.  I find I get a lot more work done when I don’t have all the distractions of home, so I escape a couple months a year (at least) to my parents’ cottage in Northern Michigan.  The summer days are 18 hours long.  That’s a long work day, and some summers I’ll write 15 or 20 pages a day.  In the winter, the little summer town is completely abandoned, so I get quite a bit of work done then, too.  I like the wilderness.  For certain periods of time.  After long I get too lonesome and have to come back to the city.

Dan:

You do quite a bit of freelancing, as well as traveling.  Do these just naturally go together, or have you been successful in finding freelancing jobs that help sustain your enjoyment of travel?  While traveling, even while working freelance jobs, do you continue to write fiction?

Katherine:

When I travel I rely primarily on generous friends with houses in nice places.  I’ve really just started freelancing in the past several months, since the book came out.  And yes, I am always writing fiction, even while working freelance.  I’m a miserable travel companion because I prefer to stay in my room all day and write, only going out in the evening, and then I’m ready to stay out late and carry on while everyone else is exhausted from museums and churches and that sort of thing.  It’s best for writers to travel together, I’ve found.  We tend not to bother each other.

Dan:

It’s my understanding that you have a slight addiction to watching poker on tv?  Still the case?  What is it about this that grabs your attention and holds it so well?

Katherine:

Dan, you’re revealing all my secrets!  Did I get drunk and tell you I’m addicted to TV poker?  Fortunately, I don’t have a TV, so TV poker is a luxury available only while staying in hotels or in other people’s houses.  There’s something quiet and meditative about TV poker, isn’t there?  Once I start watching it, I can’t stop.  I’ll stay up all night, flipping the channels, looking for more.  Like a crack addict inspecting the fibers of the carpet for more crack once it’s all been smoked.  TV poker has made celebrities of all these brilliant homely misfits.  I love watching those homely misfits.  I want them all to win.  Well, except that arrogant one with the black cowboy hat.  But even he has nice manners, which is very endearing.  Obviously I identify with these homely misfits on a deep and visceral level.  Except I don’t identify with being mathematically proficient.  Plus I always forget which is the spade and which is the club. 

Dan:

Did you really give up being a vegetarian because of a single restaurant and the sausages that they prepare?  Since that event, have you continued to occasionally eat meat, or is it only when you visit said restaurant?

Katherine:

I was a vegan for ten years.  But then my hair fell out.  So I started eating dairy, eggs, fish.  It’s a slippery slope, Dan.  I love those ribs at Phoenicia in Birmingham.  I can’t eat too many, though – my tummy gets surprised.  It’s not used to meat.  I’m not vegetarian-ish for any ethical reasons, I just don’t like the texture of dead animals.  I’ll eat bacon if it’s super super crispy and I don’t think too much about how a dead pig looks an awful lot like a dead human, and I’ll eat foie gras right out of the jar with a spoon.  I believe in the food chain.  I just prefer grains and vegetables.  As a vehicle for foie gras.

Dan:

I understand that while still in high school, you were able to sit in on a writing class that Steve Yarbrough was teaching in California.  Steve has always seemed like a really nice, generous guy – so was he the same kind of teacher?  What were you able to pull away form the class with in terms of your writing, at such a young age?

Katherine:

Steve Yarbrough is exactly the same in the classroom as he is on the page:  generous, warm, exacting, precise.  He’s got this straightforward nature and genuine kindness; the combination makes a wonderful teacher.   He’s rare.

I was 17 when I took that class.  I missed something like 160 days of high school my senior year, sitting in my car listening to English Beat and eating French fries and waiting for my 1pm class at Fresno State.  Steve taught me the very basics – the importance of detail, the importance of change in a story, that sort of thing.  Most significant was having someone like Steve, with his complete intolerance for bullshit, believe a 17 year old truant could turn into a writer.

Dan:

Lastly, if you were a character in Fahrenheit 451, what work(s) would you memorize for posterity?

Katherine:

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, A Moveable Feast.  Going Fast by Frederick Seidel.  The Face by David St. John.  Denis Johnson’s Jesus’s Son.  Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.   John Cheever’s Collected Stories.

Dan:

Thanks again, Katherine.  Many apologies for the five month delay on getting these questions off to you.

Katherine:

Your questions were wonderful, even the one about calling my protagonist Katherine Taylor.  Thank you, Dan Wickett.

Comments

[felicia]

Great interview, Dan! I adored Katherine's book as well, and she is a joy to chat with.
Cheers, Felicia

[Cheryl Snell]

I enjoyed this, too. I think I'll give the book to myself for Christmas.