Kinks

Day three of my writing retreat. I just finished a long and intense new scene and don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Part of me is reveling in the successful uncovering of an additional psychological kink of which I was previously unaware–and the point of this revision is to expand the story, so a brand-new chapter is a victory of sorts. But the isolation of this hotel room is forcing me to spend every waking moment in the company of two truly fucked-up characters who, by the final third of the book where I’ve chosen to focus my work, are in almost constant pain.

It’s exhausting to deal with them so intensely. I can only manage a few pages at a time, then I have to walk away, creep back, throw down a paragraph, retreat, and so forth. The process is painful and discouraging at times. After all, isn’t this my darkness too? What does it say about me, that I’m capable of thinking this way. How can I write this kind of cruelty and inflict it on other people?

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I listened to a podcast last night. In it, an agent expresses the belief that writers are necessarily vain and self-absorbed, but also riddled with insecurities. I think he’s right.

A writer needs a wide assortment of flaws to get the job done.

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During my breaks from these two desperate characters, I’ve been looking at photographs. Just random bits of inspiration, small windows into the darkness. I’m obsessed with Aneta Bartos.

Cheerful, yes?

Comments are off for this one. You know how I love to chat. . .

The Color of Milk

Over the weekend I tried to write a bio. If you know anything about me at all, you’ll realize I’m a high school dropout with no credentials whatsoever and not a single accomplishment to my name, so asking me to write about my life is like asking for a page of lyricism about the color of milk. I drove out to the desert and sat for hours in the silence with my blank notebook in front of me and thought about how much time I’ve spent in my own head, the only sure escape from many an intolerable situation.

It’s strange to be at this point, to be asked to step out from behind the work and answer the cold-blooded question, Who are you? Who have you been?

Truly, no one. No one at all.

I became desperate eventually and sent back a bio that read like a litany of johns from the Mayflower Madam, because what is true of me is that my life has revolved around men. It always has and probably always will. Women are my sisters, one and all, but men are something else, more difficult and complex and tricky to deal with, harder to please, a wall of muscle I can never break through. I gravitate ineluctably toward the men most likely to inflict psychic pain when I fling myself against them. This is why I write the way I do–the fascination itself is my credential.

The bio was poorly written, with a wit born of shame, but I am sure as hell not going to volunteer the rewrite. I don’t want to think about me.

What’s your fatal fascination?

Interview with Catherine McNamara

Q: Congratulations on The Divorced Lady’s Companion to Living in Italy. The novel is a wonderful blend of fun and sexy plot with lyrical, literary prose. How did you find the voice for Marilyn’s story?

It wasn’t planned! I just started off with the title and first line. I knew I wanted to write in the first person for immediacy and intimacy, and I knew I had qualms about Italy I wanted to work through by seeing this place through a female visitor’s eyes.

I think she is a blend of women I both know and have imagined. I know I wanted her to be far far away from myself and my other writing. In that way she is curvy and yet hesitant (I’m skinny and these days I know exactly what I want), she hasn’t allowed herself much (I have probably demanded too much of others and myself), despite being a sexualised teenager years back (I was a saint then!). I think she is the voice of many a mother who’s become too passive, too neglected, too dull. She has accepted a life where the protagonists are other people – her teenagers, her philandering husband. In this book she returns to take up a rather kinky centre stage.


Q: And you wrote it in a chicken shed one summer. Why not the house?

Summer school holidays in Italy are long and stinking hot. My house is big and old with very thick walls but thin wooden floors you can hear everything through – snores, cereal in a bowl, more reruns of The Simpsons. I have four kids, three of them are male and there are often extra friends or cousins staying over in summer. Can you get the picture?

Plus the chicken shed is on the cooler side of the house, so far away that they could never find me. I had silence, just the breeze through the trees. It was bliss.


Q: Your descriptions of Marilyn’s initiation into the highly sexualized Italian culture are terrific. Right away she’s shopping for underwear. But she’s also terrified!

Compared to Australia and England (not sure about the US) there is a lot of eye-cruising going on. Always. I have friends who won’t go out into the street unless they are glamorously dressed. People – especially men – are not afraid to look you in the eyes and drink you up. It works well when you are older and given the illusion that you are still on the market. But worse if they are perving at your sixteen-year-old daughter!

I’m used to it now and generally ignore. It can be irritating if you want to have a lazy, don’t-you-dare-cast-your-eyes-over-me day. Or if you think how sexist it all is.


Q: There is an almost surprised sexuality that we see in Marilyn, a reawakening. Why does she need Italy to find it?

I don’t think women in the midst of their lives necessarily need Italy to revive their sexuality (although Italy is full of men who ride this notion). It is just that this is where I am living now, and after wading through a literary novel set in Ghana, a friend suggested I write something set in this country. It’s true that a great portion of Italian men pride themselves on their grooming and do dress well, and are very open to getting to know foreign women. So Italy – where a lot of flirting goes on – does provide a great stage for a sexual awakening such as Marilyn’s.

Q: The book is filled with colorful, eccentric characters. (I’ll admit to a fondness for Federico and a sudden desire to learn Italian.) Do you have a favorite?

This may sounds nuts but my favourite has to be Brett, the bi-sexual benefactor from Hong Kong. The fact that he has a merchant bank wife and a son called Percy, knows all of Europe’s leather haunts and yet offers poor homeless Marilyn a bed and employment – he still makes me smile. Probably too many Jackie Chan films and my kinky mind.


Q: What has surprised you the most about readers’ responses to the book?

That the sex factor, the weird club in Milan that Marilyn stumbles into, the vibrator scenes, just don’t seem to shock anybody. Even my seventy-year-old aunt!

Q: What did you need to change from your original concept in order to see this novel published?

Oh gosh, the concept never really wavered. My almost-agent said to tone down the sex because she didn’t know how to market the book. I think I did. Technically I also did a long run of 5am rewrites to clarify language, pace and detail. It’s so important to keep everything even. I did a lot of putting it aside, then concentrated revision. I was so pleased when I first met my editor and he said the book was well-written and wouldn’t need a lot of work.

Q: You have a short story collection coming out next year. Can you talk a bit about that?

I’ve been publishing short stories on and off for years between having kids and going in and out of the working world. I started with a new batch several years ago and was thrilled to publish well and receive good feedback. But I’ve always been told by agents or editors, Go write a novel then we can look at your stories. Or, I’m sorry but short stories don’t sell, couldn’t you turn these ideas into a novel? Luckily, there seems to be an upswing in short story collections and my publisher – who is an independent – is very supportive of my work.

The short stories are mostly set in Ghana, where I spent nine years before coming back to Italy. I am deeply interested in the effects of colonialism, the clash between developed and lesser developed worlds, cultural displacement, families. There is also quite a lot of sex and death! Without planning it this way, many of the stories are interlinked, as I just couldn’t let my characters go. I am really looking forward to getting this book on the road although I am dreading the long editing process – it is never-ending as you know!

Q: What advice would you give Marilyn over the Chenin blanc in Chapter One?

Hmmm. To any friend of mine who had just been dumped I would tell her to move away from her immediate surroundings for a while. Indulge. Experience. I would tell her to remove herself from the source of pain and examine herself when she is ready, but to look after her well-being first. Italy is always a good destination because on the surface it is not too contemplative, the weather is generally uplifting, and there are many beautiful vantage points (cafés, art galleries, gorgeous gardens, glamorous cities, the list is endless) to observe a people who seem attractive, vibrant bon viveurs. Also the language is not too difficult, the food and wine are soothing, and who can resist Italian footwear?

Thank you for having me Averil, and the best of luck with your new book!

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Cat’s fabulous book is available through the link below, but I also have two copies to give away–and you know you want to read more about Federico. Just leave a comment below, or email me directly if you’re feeling shy. I will have my semi-honest 10-year-old pick the names from a coffee can to determine the winners.

*** UPDATE  *** The coffee can says . . . Sarah W. and Mary Lynne are the winners of Catherine’s new book! Email me your addresses, ladies, and the books will be on their way to you.

Buying link

Twitter: @catinitaly

Facebook: Catherine McNamara

Snapshots

Over the past year or so, I’ve gotten away from picture-taking a bit. Most of my time now is spent writing, and when I do break out a camera it’s usually a 35mm or the big bad Hasselblad, followed by a long delay for the film to be processed and scanned at my favorite lab in LA. I’ve never been one for snapshots, I like to make a production of the whole thing. But my sister-in-law introduced me to Instagram, and I have to say, I’m hooked.

It’s basically visual Twitter. You take a pic with your camera phone, maybe add a filter or caption, then click it right into your photostream. Dead simple, and so much fun. I’m using it as a way to document all the changes in our lives at the moment, and to keep in touch with some fast-growing children who are much too far away. But you can use it for whatever you want. It’s social media for those like yours truly who feel pressured by the quest for a pithy phrase and can’t be bothered to tally their ’likes’.

Look me up, if you want. See my new toenail polish and Monday’s tofu lunch.

What are you experimenting with at the moment?

Curlicue

An office email went out, stating that I’d put in my notice and would be resigning my position as of 4/30. Drew and I agreed we would say it was because of my writing, that I have this deadline to meet, blah blah blah. Really, of course, we’ve been saving for the upcoming move to Oregon for over a year and my resignation has nothing whatsoever to do with the book. Still, you have to say something, and Drew needs to keep his job until we find a place to live up north.

All day long, people have been seeking me out in tight corridors and the tiny kitchen cubby when I go downstairs for coffee. Why are you really leaving? Did you get another job? Did you have a fight with X, Y or Z? What’s the real story here.

I tell them I’ve written a book, that I want to keep writing books and maybe selling them.

Without fail, a look comes over my co-workers’ faces. It’s the glazed, jammed-up expression of a listener who thinks the speaker is certifiably insane–the slow, wondering question (a book?), a self-comforting hand cupped around the cheek. I know the expression well, I’ve worn it myself. It’s the open-faced nod I give my boss when she crosses herself for saying goddammit, the placating aspect I adopt when my mother starts talking about Muffy dolls or my neighbor urges me to vote Santorum. It’s the invisible wall that suddenly assumes height and breadth and the thickness of a bomb shelter, between a mindset you understand and one that is completely foreign and utterly mystifying. I could not be any more odd to these people if I flashed my ass and revealed a curlicued tail.

We should have come up with a different story.

Who do you not understand?