Massachusetts, California, Timbuktu
by Stephanie Rosenfeld

List Price: $14.95
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 034544826X
Publisher: Ballantine

Stephanie Rosenfeld is the author of What About the Love Part? Her work has been published in The Missouri Review --- where she was recently named to their list of Ten Fiction Writers to Watch --- Northwest Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Bellingham Review, Willow Review, Other Voices, and The Cream City Review. Rosenfeld is originally from Manhattan and Salt Lake City and has also lived in Western Massachusetts and San Francisco. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University where she received a B. A., and the University of Massachusetts where she received an MFA in visual art. She has worked as a printmaker and a pastry chef, and now lives in Salt Lake City with her partner and her fourteen-year-old daughter.

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Q: Did you begin writing Massachusetts, California, Timbuktu with any particular image, character, or situation in mind? If so, what was it? Was there any person who inspired the character of Colleen?

SR: Massachusetts, California, Timbuktu was originally a short story. Readers of the story almost uniformly commented that they wanted to know more about the characters. So when I was casting about for an idea for a novel, I thought I would try expanding and exploring their story. I had the rudimentary structure for the novel from the beginning, and it mirrored that of the story: The family moves across the country, things go from bad to worse, and somehow Justine is okay in the end --- but not in any simple, Hollywood-ending kind of way. I had Justine's voice and the character of Rona in my head, though I saw almost immediately that Rona had to get more complex than she was in the fifteen-page story. I didn't know Colleen so well, and had to work, over the course of writing the novel, to discover her. Also, from the beginning, I knew that I would tell the story of then pioneers moving from east to west in counterpoint to the Hanley family's migration. Colleen is an amalgam of a few people I've known, though not very well, and, as such, she was the hardest character in the book to write. I knew what the shape of her life looked like from the outside, and I knew what she was going to do and say sometimes, but I didn't always know why, which is how I've felt about some of the real-life people I've known who've been in some of the same circumstances as Colleen. I had to look hard, in the writing, to discern her motivations, understand her thinking, not go over the top. I found it was a constant struggle not to make her an exaggeration, a caricature, compounded by the fact that Justine is telling the story in her voice, and Justine exaggerates. I felt, in the end, that I did take a lot of fictional license with this character. So I was surprised when more than a few readers told me, "I know someone just like Colleen."

Q: How was writing this novel different from the process of writing the short story collection What About the Love Part? Did you ever envision Massachusetts in another form, such as a collection of shorter pieces?

SR: It was harder, scarier, and took a lot longer. I'm sorry that I'm not very articulate on this point, maybe because I'm not too well schooled in what a novel or a short story is supposed to be, except from my own reading and impressions. For me, the difference was mostly the obvious:

The novel's a much bigger job, and thus a much bigger potential way to fail. It was intimidating, and it went on way too long, past the point that I wanted to keep working on it. That's what I didn't like about the process. What I did like was the freedom to ramble a bit, to explore and let go of the strict discipline that a story requires, to get every word and every sentence perfect. Also, I wrote What About the Love Part? in pieces, not all connected at the time. Which was easier in a way --- it's a relief to finish a story, get a breather, and then exciting to start something new --- but it's also harder, for the same reasons. It's hard to finish something and get that sort of anticlimactic feeling --- most writers I know don't like the time between projects that much --- and taking the first steps toward a new story is scary. And no, I never envisioned Massachusetts, California, Timbuktu as shorter pieces.

Q: The novel is told from the perspective of twelve-year-old Justine. How were you able to effectively evoke the voice of a child about to enter adolescence? Did you ever consider telling the story from a different point of view?

SR: I'm not sure how I was able to. Justine's voice was the first thing that came to me in the imagining of the original story, and I knew she would narrate the novel, too. It was easy for me to just go and go, speaking and thinking in her voice --- I could've written thousands of pages of it. Technically, I tried to keep it consistent and all that --- edit out all the pieces that sounded wrong, that were the adult me injecting my voice or my thoughts.

Q: Colleen Hanley is a multifaceted character who I found alternately endearing and enraging. How did you work to make her sympathetic despite her shortcomings? What do you think drives her decisions --- particularly those about men? How do you account for her desire to constantly leave and move on?

SR: Colleen was a hard character to write because, on the surface, her actions are just so aggravating. There's hardly anything she does that isn't nutty, ill-advised, or just plain stupid; and in the beginning, even I, as the writer, didn't understand her. At a certain point, when her actions were becoming almost antic, in a horrifying way, and she was starting to look more like a caricature than a real person, I had to stop and take my focus off what she was going to do in the book and instead track her emotional arc. That made me understand her a lot better: She's a person at the complete mercy of her emotions. Her motivations are largely chemical, which made her more sympathetic to me. Also, despite her shortcomings, I wanted to make it clear that in some way, she is a good mother. Obviously, she's not a good enough mother --- her children's lives are chaotic and scary, and that's a huge liability. But there's something about her: Even though it takes a sick form because of her depression, she takes the connection to her kids seriously, in my mind, anyway (the brief move to Hartford notwithstanding). First of all, the motivation of the whole move in the first place was to remove Justine and Rona from proximity to Dale's abuse. And the fact that she shares every detail of her life with them and takes them everywhere shows that she considers her kids her best friends. She's nice to them, and, though ultimately she can't break out of her own selfishness enough to make this meaningful, she's interested in them. Her fantasy of them being a happy little family comes from a sincere place, though she does nothing right in terms of fulfilling it. To me, Colleen's mothering remains a question: ultimately, she's failed. Her good-heartedness is canceled out by her terrible judgment. Her children have been damaged. But did she do the best she could? Her decisions about men are driven by an insecurity that comes from not having developed an interior sense of self-worth. I see this as a mental sickness. I see her actions around men as desperate rather than self-gratifiying and, because of that, am able to be a little sympathetic.

Q: In What About the Love Part? the relationship between a mother and daughter is also of paramount importance. How are Justine and Colleen different from Katrin and Abby in that book? What do you find most intriguing about the mother-daughter relationship? Do you think you'll continue to explore it in your work?

SR: I think Abby's a much better mother than Colleen is. I hope so, since a lot of that material is autobiographical. She missteps, but her moments of selfishness are more considered, and she makes corrections. Also, Katrin is younger. Her needs are simpler. You couldn't mistake her for someone able to take care of herself, let alone anyone else, which Colleen wrongly assumes with Justine. I'm not sure what I find most intriguing about the mother-daughter relationship. My interest changes, I guess, as my own daughter grows. Right now (she's fourteen) I'm thinking a lot about dependence/independence issues. Not in terms of writing, though --- it's just life stuff.

Q: The novel is interspersed with italicized passages that constitute Justine's "fictional" story about pioneer life. Why did you choose to add this narrative device to Massachusetts? What does this work represent to Justine?

SR: I chose to use this device for a couple of reasons. One, as readers of my short stories might have noticed, I have a little obsession with the Donner Party --- I don't know why (though I found, in my research for this book, that I'm not the only one). But I was interested in working more with that material. Second, I was worried about using a child's voice to narrate the whole book (actually, I'm pretty suspicious of people's objections to, or dismissal of, this form, which I surprisingly encountered a lot over the course of writing the book, but that's another question). I was worried that the voice might become tiresome. Using a parallel narrative was a way to inject another voice and add dimensions to Justine's voice because, after all, she is Zebulina. To me, the diary represents all the things that Justine knows, deep down, but isn't quite ready to face. Writing the journal is her way of working gradually toward the hard truth: Her childhood is over. Her mother's not capable of being who Justine wants her to be. But also, it's a way for Justine to realize another scary thing: She is strong enough to come through the ordeal. Even if she has no idea how, she's going to be okay, though there's going to be a big cost.

Q: Justine is consumed by finding a map and having some semblance of a plan for their journey. How does her attitude toward the "grand adventure" differ from that of her mother? As an author, do you have a map or outline when you begin writing, or are you more intrigued by the idea of adventure? Taking the metaphor further, do you have the destination in mind, but not the specific route?

SR: Justine, like most kids I've ever known, is not a big fan of change. What's in it for her? She's had enough experience of the "new life" idea to be justifiably suspicious of it. Her attitude's the opposite of Colleen's. She wants stability, not adventure. As an author, I'm more like Justine than Colleen, but I try to fight my natural tendencies. I usually don't start out with much of an outline, just a rudimentary map, with three or four landmarks. In this book, for example, they're going to hit Salt Lake City; winter in Massachusetts is going to be bad; Colleen's going to meet a nice guy and blow it. Usually if I start with a more specific outline, I abandon it immediately, but yes, without something of a plan, I'm prone to end up in my own personal Timbuktu, which is not a productive place. For this book I had a destination in mind from the beginning, but I'm not sure I will for the next one.

Q: Do you have any routines or rituals you adhere to while you're writing that facilitate the process and bring you inspiration and creativity? What are they?

SR: No, but I have many routines and rituals for sabotaging myself and making the process harder than it needs to be. I'm trying to take myself in hand, though, for the next novel and figure out how to make the process less painful from day to day. As for inspiration and creativity, I believe in them wholeheartedly and always hope they visit me --- preferably at 8:00 on weekday mornings --- but when they don't, which is more often than not, I just proceed anyway, try to be professional about things. I'm not saying any of this is good or preferable or conducive to excellence. I'm just more of a slogger than an inspiration seeker. It's probably a fault.

Q: Like Colleen, you're also adept in the visual arts. How does this area of expertise inform your writing? How does her creativity provide an outlet for her, and how does she use it as a crutch? How --- and why --- does she denigrate her own abilities?

SR: It's been a long time since I made any art, though lately I have been doing some craft projects that might qualify somewhat. I'm not sure anymore how or if my artistic background informs my writing. When I first started writing, I engaged in a lot of visual description, at least in the early drafts of stories, because that's what I was used to doing: observing the way things looked, trying to get to the heart of things that way. Also, I found that much of the artistic process was the same in writing as in visual art, so that felt like an advantage --- I sort of knew how to get through a project, from beginning to end: the toil, the evaluation, the revision, the realization (you hope) of the intention. I see Colleen's creativity as pretty much wasted, since she only uses it toward destructive ends --- i.e., pursuing the objects of her obsessions --- and doesn't spend any time nurturing her talent for her own sake, whether for enjoyment or employment. I think she's always denigrating her abilities because she is the poster child for low selfesteem: She truly believes she has no talents, though we can see that she does have talents. Perhaps if she recognized her talents, she'd have to face the scary task of doing something with them --- of following through --- and she's not ready for that, and may never be. She still thinks a man is going to come along and fix her life.

Q: In her own way, Colleen has just as much of an imagination as Justine does. Why do you think she invents and reinvents her life and the lives of her children? How do you do the same as a writer?

SR: Yes, Colleen's imagination is very fanciful. I think she makes plans to reinvent her life constantly as a way to avoid actually living in the present, which would require her to work on fixing her problems. The way I see it, she has no idea that her actions are disrupting her children, that every time she reinvents herself, she is wrenching them out of their lives, too. She doesn't think about that. She's very selfish, as I guess is obvious.

Q: At one point in the novel, Justine's imagination --- always her most reliable outlet --- shuts down. What prompts this? As a writer, have you ever had that occur? What steps have you taken to combat it? How is writing an outlet for you, as it is for Justine in the novel?

SR: Well, Justine's explanation for why her imagination shuts down is that the world around her has become pretty dismal: She hates her teacher, and everything about Massachusetts, and life at Marie's house; and the boys in school are picking on her. My thought about it, as I was writing, was that Justine's imagination shuts down because on some not-yet-conscious level, she's not ready to think too deeply about the things happening in her life --- perhaps her imagination, if she were using it, would lead her places she didn't want to go: toward the conclusion that her mother's downward spiral really is serious this time, and that the family's problems are much bigger than anything a child can fix. But, of course, her imagination hasn't really shut down at all --- she's writing the pioneer diary the whole time, creating a strong alter ego in Zebulina, without any consciousness that she's doing it, as a way of approaching the hard truths that are too difficult for her to look at directly, yet. And yes, as a writer, sometimes my imagination shuts down. I try not to combat it, which is difficult, and I am rarely successful at achieving inner peace when I'm unable to write. The best antidote for me is cooking --- long, repetitive processing tasks are best --- actually, not unlike the kind of things Colleen does when she's appearing particularly nutty: candying grapefruit peels, making ravioli from scratch. Not to imply I'm suffering from block, but I've been thinking about getting a chest freezer. . . .

Q: Are there any writers in particular who have influenced you and your work? Any books or authors you read for inspiration while you were working on this novel?

SR: Not exactly. I try to just read for pleasure and not be influenced. Probably impossible, but stylistically, anyway, I can't pinpoint any influences. Reading good fiction in general often inspires me to want to write. What probably inspired me the most in the writing of this novel were the various Donner Party narratives I read for research. Also, I read a lot of books featuring first-person child narrators, to see how others have handled this technique.

Q: Not exactly. I try to just read for pleasure and not be influenced. Probably impossible, but stylistically, anyway, I can't pinpoint any influences. Reading good fiction in general often inspires me to want to write. What probably inspired me the most in the writing of this novel were the various Donner Party narratives I read for research. Also, I read a lot of books featuring first-person child narrators, to see how others have handled this technique.

SR: It wasn't exactly tempting to provide a happy ending, but I felt at times that I was being urged to --- or at least to provide more of an ending --- to let readers know unambiguously that Justine and Rona were going to be okay and have a good life in the end. Members of my writing group, and other early readers, for a long time kept saying, "Colleen has to change." Everyone wanted her to "get better." I guess it's one convention of stories and novels that the main character or characters has/have to change, and I didn't want to dismiss the idea, since I had a lot of smart people helping me with this book, but somehow it didn't sound right to me, that all the main characters would change. It didn't sound like life. I wanted to provide a substantial note of hope in the end, which I had in mind from the beginning, and wrote toward with the characters of Justine and Rona --- and, especially, in Justine's diary --- but I didn't want the book to end up feeling unrealistic. I think I was trying to resort to some realism with this ending: It seemed very possible to me that in real life, a woman like Colleen wouldn't change as much as just cycle in and out of her depression indefinitely. Just to note: When I finished the book I thought (and still think) that I had written something ultimately very hopeful. I was really surprised when some people told me they found it depressing. I know that's probably more about my life view than about anyone's deficiency as a reader, though. And I'm not sure what Colleen's worst weakness is. That she spends so much energy putting herself down that she never really does anything constructive, maybe. She's built a monumental structure out of her insecurity, which her kids are forced to live inside, too, and that seems selfish.

Q: You leave Justine and Rona at a pivotal moment in their lives, where they are about to assert their own identities and independence. Would you like to write about the two girls in another novel or short story, or do you feel that your involvement with these characters is over?

SR: I wish someone else would write another book about these characters! I'd like to read it, but not write it. I am curious about how the two of them will grow up, but I don't think I have anything more to say about them. I do miss them, though.

Q: Colleen and Justine are constantly grappling with discovering their own identities as women. How do you think Justine will evolve as she grows older? How will Rona? As a woman writer, what challenges do you face?

SR: I think under the best of circumstances it's hard to discover your identity as a woman. I think things will be hard for Justine. I think she'll be lonely a lot, without a mother or a father. I think she's going to be pretty wary of romantic love. Here's a positive thought, though: I think she's going to be a good mother one day. I don't feel I face any specific problems as a woman writer, except maybe the problem that women across many professions face, which is that it's still basically a male-run world out there, and it's a constant struggle not to be marginalized, not to be trivialized, not to be held up against traditions you maybe never have bought into in the first place.

Q: What are you writing now? How did this novel influence that next project?

SR: Not to be cagey, but I can't talk about it yet. My writing's in a very fragile state right now --- if anyone looks at it, it might break.


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Excerpted from Massachusetts, California, Timbuktu © Copyright 2008 by Stephanie Rosenfeld. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine. All rights reserved.

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