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Erica Bauermeister talks about her first novel, The School of Essential Ingredients, romantic meals on cold nights, the satisfaction of buying locally grown foods and much more.
When did you decide to be a writer? Was it your dream since you were a
child, or did it happen 'by accident'? What made you feel you were ready to write?
I have always loved books and reading, and I wanted to be a writer from the time I was small. I read constantly and studied literature in college, and then graduate school. I taught literature, I wrote reader's guides to books (which meant I read thousands of books to select a far smaller number). All of that taught me a great deal about the beautiful machines that are books – their parts, the connections between them, the stroke of magic or imagination that brings them alive.
I think the reason I waited until I was 43 to start writing fiction, however, was that I knew from the time I was in college the kind of book I wanted to write – and that I wasn't mature enough to write it yet. I wanted to write books about the small, "unimportant" things in life – the ways we interact with each other as parents and friends and lovers and spouses, those subtle moments of miscommunication and grace – and I knew it took a lot of life experience to see those things with a perspective that could take those small moments and make them universal. I was beginning to think I would never be grown up enough to write what I wanted to write – but finally, I was.
How did you end up in Italy?
Moving to Italy was one of those "growing up" experiences that helped me to be a writer – honestly, I don't know if I would have written fiction if we hadn't lived there. We relocated for two years because of my husband's job, and I simply fell in love with the country and culture. Still to this day, when I return to Italy I am happy in a way I am nowhere else. It was not just the food or the sensuality of the language or the kindness I saw among family members – although certainly all those things were eye-opening for me.
What major cultural differences struck you when you were there?
I think the thing that struck me most was the feeling that the people around me were taking on only as much as they could truly take care of – the farms we saw, the houses, the families. People took care of what they had and they didn't overextend just to prove they were important. As a result, there was a peacefulness and beauty there that I find missing in the United States.
Tell us a bit about your agent: when did you find her and how?
Finding my agent was a very serendipitous experience. I just happened to be invited to dinner with an author who is very well-connected in New York (although I didn't know that at the time). She heard about the idea for The School of Essential Ingredients and said she knew exactly whom I should send it to. With her help, the manuscript got in front of the eyes of a wonderful agent. I know so many incredible authors who have tried for years to get representation, and I know how lucky I was. So when aspiring writers ask me what they should do, I tell them "say yes to everything" - every conference where you will meet authors and agents, every opportunity to meet other people in your field. You never know who will end up opening a door for you.
What do you think of self-publishing and the ebook revolution.
I am a complete addict of the real thing - I love the textures of a book in my hands; I need to feel when the end of a book is coming by the shifting weight of the pages in my hands. So for me, an ebook will never replace a real book. That said, I think anything that gets people reading is wonderful. I talk with people who say "my mother is reading for the first time in years because with an ebook she can make the type large enough to see" or "my son finally loves books." I think that is great. I also think it's wonderful that authors who can't or don't want to go through the traditional publishing route can see their work in print.
But we need to be very, very careful not to lose the independent bookstores in the process. They are the curators of interesting books that will change your life, and the lifeblood of the books that aren't blockbusters - without those stores we would be reduced to reading the same ten books that you see on the tables at the big box stores and on-line. Especially with the overwhelming influx of books that will occur with self-publishing, small bookstores are more important than ever and we have to make a concerted effort to support them.
Nowadays most writers need to self-promote themselves online, even
those who have signed with a reputable publisher. How much of your time do you dedicate to social media and blogging?
When someone tells me they want to be a writer, my first question always is "do you want to write, or do you want to be a writer?" because those are two different things. Both are wonderful, but in today's book world, they require different qualities. To be a writer these days means to spend roughly half your professional time NOT writing books. You are blogging, traveling, meeting readers, tweeting, doing Facebook posts and interviews, talking with book clubs. You have to like talking to people, in groups and individually. And if you're going to be successful, you have to be good at it – you can't just get up at a podium and mumble your way through 3 chapters of your book. It's a very tough climate out there and publishers will expect you to have a marketing platform.
Do you feel like it slows your writing down, would you prefer to concentrate on the writing alone, or do
you really enjoy keeping in touch with your readers?
I'm lucky because I have two parts to my personality – the quiet, reclusive part that loves nothing better than to spend a week in total silence with my characters, and a more public part that enjoys interacting with readers. For me, the two balance each other out and keep me sane. Too much writing alone and I go a little stir-crazy. Too much promotion and I lose track of the intricate beauty of the written word. So, it really helps to have a healthy sense of perspective and balance - something I am learning over time.
This interview was first published in lostfiction.co.uk by Lucy Hannau in November 2011, and is reproduced with permission of Lost in Fiction UK. all rights reserved.
A Conversation with Erica Bauermeister about her first novel, The School of Essential Ingredients
What led you to write this book?
In 1999, my family had just returned to Seattle after spending two years in
northern Italy. I found that I missed the food and being around people who
celebrated even the most simple meals. So, I took a cooking class. The first
night, we killed crabs. I'm the kind of person who takes spiders outside when I
find them in my house and it was a deeply unsettling experience. I had an image
of a young mother, Claire, and I began wondering what effect it might have on
her to kill something. In the end, her story wasn't at all what I expected. And
then I started thinking about all the different characters you could have in a
class, and started wondering which foods would affect each one – revive a
memory, create an epiphany, change the direction of a life – and that's where
the book came from.
How are food and cooking connected to the way we live our whole lives, not
just the time we spend in the kitchen or at the table?
The act of cooking provides us with an opportunity to slow down, to focus on
our senses rather than the speed of our world. I think we all want that, miss
that, in our everyday lives. The people I know who pay attention to those things
simply seem to be happier and more fulfilled, in the kitchen and out of it.
My children were incredibly lucky, in that they were 7 and 10 when we moved
to Italy and they learned that lesson early. They are both dedicated foodies and
truly creative cooks. My son just went to college and he inherited my college
blender. The funny thing is, he took it because he wanted to be able to make
pesto – a far cry from the margaritas and protein shakes it made in the early
1980s.
What are some of your favorite dishes to make and to eat?
I have been a cookie-maker since I was seven years old, and I love what the
smell of baking cookies does to a household. I am also a big fan of any dish
that requires chopping or stirring or simmering, particularly if my day has been
frantic and I want it all to slow down. Making risotto is one of the most
comforting activities I can imagine, just standing at the stove, adding chicken
broth a bit at a time, while people sit around the kitchen table and talk.
If you were to make a romantic meal for a cold winter night, what would it
be?
My favorite dish is a ragu sauce with Italian sausage and hamburger,
crushed tomatoes, onions, carrots, red pepper flakes and white wine. Simple –
and the white wine is a surprise every time. If you are cooking it for someone
before they arrive, the smell that greets him or her when you open the door is
amazing, so full of love. And if you are making it with someone, it can be all
about trading tasks and doing the whole kitchen ballet, which can be utterly
sensual.
But actually, the most romantic dinner I ever had was in college, when my
not-yet-husband took me to Griffith Park in Los Angeles and made fondue over a
pot of sterno (and yes, that part of the book is a wink in his direction).
Do you believe in recipes, or is it enough just to know food and fundamental
techniques?
I think cooking is a language, and like all languages, it's easiest to learn
early, although I am proof that that it is possible to learn later in life. The
women I met in Italy all had learned cooking as children from their mothers.
They approached ingredients as parts of a conversation; they knew how each
ingredient talked to the others and they didn't want a recipe to tell them how
much of one thing or another to add. They simply listened to the food. And while
I think that recipes can be very helpful – particularly in baking, where amounts
need to be fairly specific – I think that if we pay too much attention to
recipes we can lose track of our relationship with the ingredients.
If I am making a dish I have no experience with, I love to go on the internet
and find six different recipes for it. I particularly like Epicurious.com, where
people comment on how they have altered the recipes. I take note of the
ingredients, think about which ones sound intriguing, what I might add or
subtract, and then I play.
There's been a movement in recent years toward using local and organic food.
Where do you shop for this kind of food near your home in Seattle? Where should
people look for the best and least expensive local and organic produce in their
own areas?
I think there is nothing more inspiring for a cook than a farmer's market,
and we're lucky in Seattle to have many of them. I love walking along the stalls
at the end of summer and stopping to eat a sample slice of peach that just stops
you with its sweetness, makes you wonder why all life can't be that
astonishingly full. I am also an advocate of the organic-food companies and the
local farms that will deliver a box of produce to you on a weekly basis. You
never quite know what you are going to get, only that it is going to be fresh
and organic – which I think brings out a lot of creativity in cooks.
You had two good friends who died of cancer as you wrote this book. Also,
your father died of a neurological disease. How did these experiences influence
your story?
In 2006, two dear friends of mine were dying, and my father was failing from
a disease related to Parkinson's. There is a circle that surrounds people who
are dying, and to be inside that circle is a beautiful and horrible honor – as
the saying goes, there is no time for superficiality. My friend Karin asked to
read something I had written and I gave her a manuscript for another project I
was working on. One day we went out to lunch after her treatment and she looked
at me, all beautiful and turbaned and said, "I think you should write something
more from your heart."
After years of illness, within the space of four months, Karin, Heidi, and my
father all died.
I turned to the cooking stories, which I had worked on for years but had
never finished a single one, and I wrote. I finished Tom's story first. Neither
Karin nor Heidi are Charlie, Tom's wife in the book who dies of cancer. I had
written most of Tom's story years before either Heidi or Karin were diagnosed,
an irony that doesn't escape me. But the end of Tom's story became a place to
put the pain of losing them. And being able to finish that story was a gift –
because after I knew I could finish one story, the rest fell into place. So in
many ways, this is Karin and Heidi's book.
It is also my father's book. I grew up with a brilliant man, an engineer and
musician who loved me but rarely knew how to show it. The irony of my father's
illness was that it included a dementia that made him, little by little, less
able to use his astonishing mind and he began to live more from his heart. I
learned a lot about dignity and empathy and forgiveness being with my father as
he slid into death, and in the process it profoundly changed the book I was
writing.
This is your first novel, although you've written other books about
literature. How was the process of writing fiction different for you?
I remember once speaking with an author who had made a comment about her
characters in her presentation – how they talked to her and told her what to do,
etc. I was skeptical, and said so. I declared that no characters had ever talked
to me. She just looked at me and smiled this small smile and said "maybe you
aren't listening."
So I decided to listen. Carl was the first character who appeared in my
imagination, a man whose wife has had an affair, but who doesn't want to end his
marriage. He was such a wonderful man and I wanted to do him justice; I wanted
people to realize that his decision to stay in his marriage was something
complicated and loving, rather than a lack of will. It wasn't until six months
later that I had a dream about his wife, and I realized that she had actually
been planning on leaving him when she sat down at that kitchen table, but had
changed her mind at the last moment – and that that decision, too, was complicated and loving,
and gave their story a complexity I didn't know it had until then.
Writing Helen's story made me realize how powerful the concept of
interconnected stories can be, allowing the reader to delve deeply into each
character, and to be, in the end, the only person who truly knows all the
connections between them.
Are you surprised that your first novel has become a major title for a big
publisher? How did you go about getting it published?
Absolutely. Stunned. But one of the things I have learned is that as a writer
you need to say "yes" to every experience you can. In my case, I was very lucky
to say yes to a spur-of-the-moment dinner invitation, where I met MJ Rose, an
amazingly generous author, who introduced me to Writer's House and my agent, Amy
Berkower, who I swear can fly.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer? What experiences moved you in
that direction?
I have always wanted to write, but I realized what I wanted to write
when I read Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" in college (and I doubt very
much I am alone in that experience). I wanted to write books that took what many
considered to be unimportant bits of life and reminded people of their beauty –
but the only other thing I knew for certain back in college was that I wasn't
grown up enough yet to do that.
So I got a PhD in literature and wrote 500 Great Books by Women and Let's
Hear it for the Girls. In the process I read, literally, thousands of books,
good and bad, which is probably one of the best educations a writer can have. I
still wrote, but thankfully, that material wasn't published. I taught. I had
children.
It's been thirty years since I first read Tillie Olsen. I still believe, even
more so now, that paying attention to the small, unimportant bits of life is one
of the most important things human beings can do. And I believe that literature
that takes those things and looks at them with compassion has the ability to
feed people's souls – and that that is a goal worth having.
How did being a mother affect your development as a writer?
Having children probably had the most dramatic effect upon how I write of
anything in my life. As the care-taker of children, my life was one of constant
interruption – not the optimal environment for writing novels with traditional,
sequential story-lines. So I worked on other projects and learned to multi-task,
and when the children's demands were too many, we created something called the
"mental hopper." This is where all the suggestions went – "can we have ice cream
tonight?" "can we go to Canada this summer?" "can I have sex when I am 13?" The
mental hopper was where things got sorted out, when I had time to think about
them. What's interesting about the mental hopper is that when something goes in
there, I can usually figure out a way to make it happen (except sex at 13).
The mental hopper became a way of thinking and deeply affected how I write
now. All the characters, all those first details and amorphous ideas for a
story, the voices of the characters, the fact that one of them loves garlic and
another one flips through the pages of used books looking for clues to the past
owner's life, all those ideas go in the mental hopper and slowly but surely they
form connections with each other. Stories start to take shape. It's a very
organic process, and it suits me. So when people say being a mother is death for
writers, I disagree. Yes, in a logistical sense, children can make writing
difficult, because of the time they demand. In fact, I don't think it is at all
coincidental that my first fiction book will be published after both my children
are in college. But I think differently, I create the way I do, because I have
had children.
What do you hope readers take away from The School of Essential
Ingredients?
I always love it when a reader says "Now I'm going to go home and cook my
wife a real dinner" and you just know what that dinner will turn into. But
perhaps my favorite response was from an American reader living in a small town
in Mexico. She volunteers in a shelter for street kids, cooking them lunch once
a week. She said that even though the kids were obviously hungry, they wouldn't
always eat what she prepared for them, especially if it wasn't what they knew.
She wrote that after she read Isabelle's story in the novel, she cooked a real
Mexican pork stew and that the kids ate every bite and she got 83 hugs.
In the end, what I hope people take away from my book is that cooking can be
a sensual experience that slows down time, but that cooking is also about
thinking about other people. When we really cook for other people, we are seeing
them – who they are, what will make them happy, excite or comfort them. And when
we eat something that has been prepared, beautifully and especially for us, we
feel loved, taken care of, seen.
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.
Teresa Barker is a veteran journalist and book writer, whose collaborations include the New York Times bestseller The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, with Catherine Steiner-... (more)
If you enjoyed:
500 Great Books by Women
Try:
The Mother-Daughter Book Club
by Teresa Barker
Shireen L. Dodson is the Ombudsman for the United States Department of State (DOS). Dodson not only assists department managers and employees to resolve conflict arising in the workplace, she advises the Secretary of State ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
500 Great Books by Women
Try:
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