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How to pronounce Anna Quindlen: kwind-len
In three separate interviews Anna Quindlen discusses her 2007 novel, Rise and Shine, her inspirational nonfiction book, A Short Guide To A Happy Life and her 2012 memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
In three separate interviews Anna Quindlen discusses her 2007 novel, Rise and Shine, her inspirational nonfiction book, A Short Guide To A Happy Life and her 2012 memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
Best-selling author Anna Quindlen takes us on a video walk through her New York City town house as she discusses Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake (2012)
A Conversation with Anna Quindlen about Rise and Shine
Scroll past this first interview to read a separate interview with Quindlen about "A Short Guide to a Happy Life".
Q: We love the premise of Rise
and Shine - two sisters, New York City, and two very
different career trajectories. In dreaming up this
novel, what came to you first: the sisters, the setting,
or Megan's on-air slip? And how did your storyline
evolve from there?
Anna Quindlen: I always begin a novel with a
theme. Black and Blue, for instance, began with
the theme of identity, Blessings with the theme
of redemption. Rise and Shine grew out of
constant thoughts about the disconnect in modern
American life between appearance and reality. The more
I thought about that disconnect, about how we've all
come to believe that what looks good is good, the more I
thought I should write about someone famous. That's
where the dissonance is greatest, it seems to me, and
the public interest weirdest. And then I thought that
the story would be best told by someone on the outside
looking in. (Yes, I have read "Gatsby." Many many
times.) That's where the idea of the sisters
eventually came into play: one the doer, the other the
watcher. And over time I realized that in doing that I
had given the story, which is essentially a comedy of
manners, greater resonance than it might have had
otherwise. I find that I almost always make the right
decisions for purely accidental reasons.
Q: Bridget and Meghan's relationship seems to strike a
realistic chord with readers - they are each other's
number one fan and critic. Do you have a sister of your
own, or any siblings? Did your experiences with them
help shape Bridget and Meghan’s relationship? How?
AQ: I have a sister and three brothers, who fall between
us on the birth order ladder. My sister and I agree
that our relationship bears little resemblance to that
of Bridget and Meghan. I am not that controlling, and
she is not that compliant. Perhaps the one aspect of
their relationship that is taken from our lives has to
do with our jobs. My sister is a public school
teacher. She makes far far less money than I do, and
gets almost no public attention for her work. Yet I
believe what she does is infinitely more important and
more difficult than what I do. And certainly that
mirrors Meghan's feelings about Bridget's job as a
social worker.
Q: Do you believe in the birth-order convention, that
the eldest child is a natural leader, who strives to
please others and can be controlling, while the younger
child is charming, but irresponsible, and looks to
others for guidance and discipline? Did the study of
birth order influence you in writing about the
Fitzmaurice sisters? Does birth-order ring true in your
own experience, or, do you think it's a bogus label?
AQ: Well, I recently got an email from a very irate
reader complaining that I was perpetuating birth order
stereotypes in a way I would never dare do about gender,
sexual orientation, and the like. So I'm more equivocal
about answering these questions now! But my experience,
as both the eldest in a large family and the mother of
three, is that certain birth order conventions
frequently apply. But maybe it's more useful, and
illuminating, to put it the way Aunt Maureen puts it in
the novel: that successive children fill the spaces not
already occupied. So if extrovert, or leader, or wild
child, or whatever is already taken by one of your
siblings, you may feel compelled--or free--to shape your
identity otherwise. That's certainly what happened with
the Fitzmaurice sisters.
Q: Do you share any qualities and/or characteristics
with Meghan? Bridget?
AQ: I am like both Meghan and Bridget. For years I had
the sort of laser focus that Meghan had, and I have some
of her rather cynical attitudes about the affluent
around her. But, like Bridget, I have always been
interested in trying to do something about the situation
of the poor and disenfranchised in New York and the rest
of America, in my case through the columns I've
written.
Q: There are several interesting male characters in the
book: Irving, the gritty cop, Edward, the smooth
operator, Evan, the seemingly reliable yet duplicitous
husband, and Leo, the upbeat, loveable young man. Who is
your favorite among them, if you can pick one? And what
qualities do you find most (or least) attractive in men
in general?
AQ: Most female readers of a certain age seem to fall
hard for Irving Lefkowitz. I can totally understand
that; we've had it up to here with the sensitive man,
and Irving is pure retro. He also really really likes
women, and he really likes Bridget. I assume the reader
shares that sentiment; I certainly do. But if I had to
pick just one male character in the book as my personal
favorite, it would be Leo. Some critics have suggested
that he's too good to be true, but I've met a fair
number of teenage boys like him: smart,
self-deprecating, truly inclined to do the right thing.
Obviously one of the reasons I love him so is that he's
based, in part, on both my sons.
Q: Your portrait of New York is loving, yet you see the
city–and its residents–for what they are. What do you
love about the city? What do you hate? Can you ever
imagine leaving New York, or is it home to you?
AQ: I made New York City a major character in this book
because I thought it would make my task as a novelist
easier. I've covered New York for more than 35 years as
a reporter and columnist, and I know from long
experience that it's a story teller's dream. It's so
polyglot, so vivid, so sharply drawn, that writing about
it is as easy as finding a cab outside the Carlyle (or
finding crack on certain corners in certain parts of the
Bronx). But like any great character, part of its
greatness, part of its power, is in its manifest flaws.
New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be
poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as
it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is
part of its identity. Yet it's a city, as the novel
makes clear, where affluence and want exist almost side
by side. I hate the ways in which the rich are too
often blind to their own conspicuous consumption. With
what some East Side women spend on Botox and fillers a
year, they could put a kid through parochial school,
which could change a life completely. What I love is
the flip side of that: that there is such enormous
generosity. And I love other things, too, of course. I
love that you can always get a decent Ethiopian meal. I
like the places in Central Park in which you can feel as
if you're on top of a mountain, not in the middle of
town. I like the way the subway can take you to the
beach in a half hour, then back to the roar and glare of
Times Square. New York is just more alive than any
place else I've ever been. People never really leave.
I can't tell you how often in promoting this book, in
Atlanta or Orlando or Minneapolis, someone has said to
me, "I'm a New Yorker." They may have lived elsewhere
for most of their life. But they're still New Yorkers.
Q: Meghan goes off the radar in Jamaica. What do you do
to “go dark” and have time for yourself to get away and
regroup?
AQ: We have a house that's in the middle of nowhere in
Pennsylvania. I spend the entire summer there. It's a
good place to write because there's really nothing else
to do. After the third time rowing across the pond in
the canoe, I think, well, hell, and I go inside and
work. Occasionally there will be a bear or eagle
sighting to break up my day. But it's pretty easy for
me to be off the grid in Manhattan, too. I'm not
visually identifiable as Meghan is, so I don't get much
attention in the city. New Yorkers are so accustomed to
the truly famous that they are very cool about it.
Usually they just smile. It's interesting for me to go
to cities that have a small clutch of well-known
writers. In those places they are a BIG DEAL. Here no
one cares.
Q: Have you ever had a career-defining moment, either
positive (like Meghan's first big scoop), or negative,
like Meghan’s on-air gaff? How did you grow from it?
AQ: I had one fairly substantial setback as a reporter
when I was much younger. There was the perception that
I had blown a major major story, although the truth was
much more complicated than that. But, like Meghan, I
came to understand rather quickly that the truth was
less important than the spin. The perception was that I
had certain glaring deficits as a reporter, chief being
that I could write a pretty feature but was a washout
with hard news. Over the space of several days I tried
to scope out assignments that could exorcise that
perception if I filled them in a satisfactory fashion.
In this way I became a member of the New York Times
City Hall bureau for two years. It wasn't my dream job,
but after two years of Council hearings, budget reports,
and the like, many of which ended up on page one, there
was no longer the sense that I couldn't do hard news.
Q: CNN anchor Kyra Phillips’ left her microphone on as
she chatted in the ladies room. What did you think of
this story, which broke the same week Rise and Shine
went on sale? Did you imagine such a thing could happen
as you wrote the book?
AQ: I always say that if you can imagine it, it can
happen. While several interviewers were skeptical about
Meghan blurting out an obscenity into a "hot mike," I
was certain such a thing was possible. Of course, after
the CNN blooper, interviewers kept asking me whether I'd
had it in mind when I wrote the book. Illustrating the
simple fact that even well-connected reporters don't
understand the nine-month lag time between finishing a
novel, and publishing one.
Anna Quindlen discusses A Short Guide To A Happy Life
This book was inspired by a commencement speech you
gave to a graduating high school class. Why did you choose the topic of
happiness, as opposed to more familiar topics, like civic achievement and
academic excellence? Is the advice given in the book something you think you
needed to hear at the same age in your life?
I know lots of people of great accomplishment who seem to take
precious little pleasure in that accomplishment. And I know people of
achievement who seem to have let friendship and family fall by the wayside. So I
believed that young people were growing up in a culture in which they heard over
and over again that they would want to accomplish great things but were not
hearing enough that they would want to appreciate the small ones. It's a lesson
I learned early in life, but which I've kept on learning. In fact one of the
things I said to the graduate was that they might not appreciate what I was
saying as they sat there, but that perhaps my sentiments would come back to them
at some time when they really needed them. Their parents, however, came up to me
afterwards and said they wished they'd heard this message many many years
before.
Throughout A Short Guide to a Happy Life, you mention many
people, but in particular your mother. Why do you think it was the loss of you
mother that taught you about true happiness, and how do you think you pursued
happiness before her death? What role does family and close friends play in a
happy life?
I have attended several memorial services in recent years at which
family and friends noted that the deceased has understood what really mattered
in the face of terminal illness. That's so sad. That's a knowledge we would have
long before we get a bad biopsy results. But of course I know that that's how I
understood the importance of living life to the fullest, from watching my mother
lose it by inches. She wasn't clinging to life so that she could write a
bestseller, or make a million bucks. She just wanted to watch the sun come up
one more time, or to hug my little sister, or to listen to "South
Pacific" on the stereo. And that teaches you something. It teaches you that
so much of what you take for granted is the bedrock of happiness. You know, one
of the most affecting scenes in any play for me is when Emily is watching the
mourners at her own funeral in "Our Town." And she asks the other dead
around her whether living people ever understand how wonderful life is. And one
of them replies, "That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud
of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To
spend and waste time as though you had a million years." I refused to live
with that inevitability.
Who are the people in your life who have informed your thinking on
what's important in life most?
Well, certainly my mother, who was a humble woman with a great
capacity for unconditional love. And now my kids. Because you can reexperience
the world through the eyes of your kids, whether it's the first time they catch
a fish or dive off the board, or read "To Kill a Mockingbird." I feel
infinitely more alive and aware of the world since I had children to show me the
way. I could never do enough to repay them for that. (And, no, honey, you can't
have a motorcycle!)
Several times in the book you quote writers, like Gwendolyn Brooks,
and you incorporate their wisdom about life into your own. Which writers and
books have influenced you the most and helped you to form your own philosophy
about living?
Reading is another thing that has made me more human by exposing me
to worlds I might never have entered and people I might never meet. Actually
it's poetry that more than any other form makes me feel the quiet overwhelming
joy that points the way to emotional satisfaction. Yeats, for example, whose
poem I used for the dedication to "Thinking Out Loud."
Elizabeth Bishop. William Carlos Williams. John Ashbery. Robert Lowell.
Sometimes you read a novel and it's like a symphony playing in your head, Anna
and Vronsky and all the rest, the rich Tapestry of Faulkner's language. And it
takes the one of two perfectly placed words in a short poem to pick out the
truth on the strings of your violin-heart. How's that for an overwrought
metaphor?
How has your own writing contributed to your happiness and
satisfaction with your life, both in a day to day way and in general?
There's no greater happiness than doing something every day that
you love, that you feel you do in a satisfactory fashion, and which both
supports and gives you time to support your family. I felt so lucky to have all
that. But I am also happy that it provides me a measure of immortality with the
people I love most. When I am gone my children will be able to sit down and read
"A Short Guide to a Happy Life" and remember me, and remember
what I cared about and held most dear. That's enormously soothing.
Beautiful, happy, and uplifting photos appear throughout A Short
Guide to a Happy Life, and they capture what you are saying perfectly. When
choosing these photos, what were you looking for? What role has art played in
your own life, and how do you think it contributes to the pursuit of happiness?
Louis Armstrong once said when someone asked him to define jazz, if
you have to ask, you'll never know. I just knew that these pictures belonged.
Call it a chemical reaction. Their emotional content just seemed consonant with
that of the book.
Many of these photographs are of beautiful landscapes or people
surrounded by nature. What role has nature played in your understanding of
happiness? Why do you think it is such an apt metaphor for rediscovering the
wonder of life?
There's an Emily Dickinson poem - now that I'm on the subject of
poetry - that ends with the words, "How much can come/and much can go/ and
yet abide the world!". That has something to do with it, that sense of
clinging to what will remain after we are gone.
In the book, you stress the importance of women realizing and being
thankful for being alive during such a healthy, prosperous and peaceful time.
Women now seem to have more opportunity than ever to pursue their dreams. Of
what importance are issues of womens' rights to you? Has your involvement in
women's issues in the community contributed to your own happiness?
I've been a feminist since I was a teenager, but originally it was
because I wanted to make the world a better place for me. Now I just rejoice in
the opportunities for so many. What could make you happier than to make a better
world, a world that is fairer, more egalitarian, that works better for all.
2002
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
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