White Oleander
by Janet Fitch
List Price: $13.95
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0316284955
Publisher: Warner Books
Janet Fitch was born in Los Angeles, a third-generation native, and grew up in a family of voracious readers. As an undergraduate at Reed College, Fitch had decided to become an historian, attracted to its powerful narratives, the scope of events, the colossal personalities, and the potency and breadth of its themes. But when she won a student exchange to Keele University in England, where her passion for Russian history led her, she awoke in the middle of the night on her twenty-first birthday with the revelation she wanted to write fiction. "I wanted to Live, not spend my life in a library. Of course, my conception of being a writer was to wear a cape and have Adventures."
Since then, she has had more than a few Adventures. In addition, she has published short stories in literary journals such as Black Warrior Review, Rain City Review, and A Room of One's Own, briefly attended film school in the director's program at the University of Southern California, worked at various times as a typesetter, a proofreader, a graphic artist, a freelance journalist, the managing editor of American Film magazine, and the editor of The Mancos Times Tribune, a weekly newspaper in the mountains of Southwestern Colorado. Currently, she reviews books for Speak magazine in San Francisco, and teaches fiction writing privately in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and eight year old daughter.
"White Oleander," the story which grew into her novel, was named as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 1994.
Interestingly enough, the story was rejected from The Ontario Review with a note from Joyce Carol Oates, stating that while she enjoyed it, it seemed more like the first chapter of a novel than a short story. It had not occurred to Fitch to extend the story, but she decided to take a chance on this advice and wrote her novel.
Her writing process is simple. "I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not," she says. "I never get inspired unless I'm already writing. I write every day, including weekends. For writers there are no weekends. It's just that your family is around, looking mournful, wondering when you're going to pay attention to them."
Her journalistic experience proved a vaccination against writer's block. "When I had the newspaper, I had to come up with 12 or 15 stories a week regardless of whether there was anything to write about. Someone would call me up and say, "My kid just caught a big fish, come over and take a picture of it." So you'd go take a picture of the fish and then interview the kid. What do you ask a kid who caught a big fish? "What kind of bait were you using? Where'd you catch it? What time of day was it?" I learned you could always write. You just couldn't be too perfectionistic about it."
But the artistry of her work, the lines that take the reader's breath away, were hard-won. "I could always tell a story," she said, "but I needed to learn the poetics of the literary craft." She found her mentor in the writer Kate Braverman, under whom she learned to work until she found the right word, the right sound.
Poetry plays a great part in her writing of prose fiction. "I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language. Their startling originality is a challenge. I like Dylan Thomas, Eliot, Sexton. There are parts of White Oleander which use cadences of Pound--whatever you think of Pound, there's a specific music to him. I like Kate Braverman's poetry and the late Donald Rawley's. A novelist can get by on story, but the poet has nothing but the words."
She is currently working on a second novel.
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How has the reception been to your first novel?
It has been great! I am really pleased with how people have been connecting to the book and to this world that I have sent out there.
Why do you think you became a writer?
Well it changes over time but I think the reason I started was I felt ignored, and writing was a way to make people see things from my point of view. Some say writing is an aggressive act. It imposes your perspective on another person and allows them to walk a mile in your moccasins, so to speak.
What writers do you come back to again and again for inspiration?
Well I am a Faulkner fan. I think my 'word-drunkenness' comes from him. I also like Lawrence Durrell because of his rich language, also his subtle understandings of people and their interactions. Malcom Lowry is one of my favorites too.
Did you have experience dealing with children in foster care in writing this book?
I talked to women who had been foster children. I had a research project called The Foster Daughters Project. Because you cannot talk to children due to society, I put up signs at schools and universities and asked for assistance. I received many calls from adults raised as foster children, and what was nice was that as adults they had some perspective on their experiences. I do research as I write. I do not do research first because the research would overtake the concept. I like to imagine first and then do research to see how true my imaginings are. Also you get details from the research that you really cannot imagine. I cannot make up certain details that you find in research. I also visited the prison I profiled in the book, the prison Ingrid was confined to. And the detail there: I could not ever think that up? for instance the horrible crows that I saw are profiled in the book.
Do you know what you are going to write ahead of time? How do you get your ideas?
I never know what I am going to write ahead of time. I have made the mistake of plotting a novel like a laundry list and it falls flat. I tend to write what I can see, a scene that I can see, and then I allow it to unfold. A teacher of mine, Kate Braverman says "You dance with the page and the page dances with you". I love that line - she is my fearsome leader.
Why should we read fiction? Why is literature important?
Oh wow! We read fiction or participate in any art form to become more human. Real art is not just about entertainment. It reminds us that we are here to understand and care about the human condition, to become more human. So real art peels something away from our surface. We are 'coated': it could be indifference that we get from getting battered around. Sometimes we get too thick of skin, and then we need art to peel it away and bring back our sensitivity. Fiction is needed because art is truer than life. Art distills meaning from experience, which is often hard to do in reality.
Some people are concerned with the effect of the Internet on literature. Do you have any thoughts on the impact of the Internet - will it change literature?
Yes, I think that the Internet has had a big impact on literature in the fact that people can find out so much more about books and authors. Also consequently it can cut down on people's free time to read. I know there have been experiments in interactive writing. But I think writing fiction is the least collaborative of the arts. I think fiction is the result of one person's mad passion.
Do you have a routine or ritual you follow when you sit down to write?
I read poetry before I write, and I read it aloud because the poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I read it aloud, that music is in my ear. Then when I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write (up) to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.
Do you ever suffer from writer's block? If so how do you avoid it?
No, I do not ever suffer from writer's block. I got over that when I worked as a reporter. I had to come up with 20 stories a week. You lose your professionalism: you have to get the story out, so you do not ponder the stories. I write a lot of drafts of stories - thank God for the computer! So no, I do not suffer from this malady. My suggestion is to just fill up pages with text. You need to put your editor in the closet and not judge your work yourself.
Can you describe the mother/daughter relationship as your book begins? Why was the daughter Astrid fearful her mother would "fly away"?
I think there is always the mother we know and the mother we do not know. It is hard for a child to see their mother 'whole'. Astrid senses her mother's restlessness. The daughter feels the reason her mother is in the place she is in - the crummy job and the crummy apartment - is because of her, Astrid.
Astrid says early on that "My mother was not the least bit curious about ME". Do you think this is a common, normal attitude in children today? Isn't that very sad?
Oh yeah. I don't think it is just today. I think people fail to see the coming person in their child. They feel because they see the child the whole time that they know the child because of close proximity. We concentrate on managing children and other people a lot, and that negates our ability to see them whole. Also children are much better observers of adults than adults are of children. People who are dependent are much better observers than those who are not dependent.
Do you think Astrid became stronger and less of a victim by her mother's sins?
I think Astrid was stronger when her mother was confined to prison. I think the fact that her mother was in prison was paradoxically a good thing for the daughter. It was good because she would not otherwise have a chance to become an independent person. Her mother was just too big and demanded all the air in the room. Also having a parent who is flawed is easier on the developing self, because seeing where your parent goes wrong gives the child confidence that there is another way to be. I think people who have parents they see as 'too perfect' have nowhere to go as far as progress.
What lessons does Astrid learn about life as she begins to understand her own sexuality and boundaries?
I think that Astrid learns from her mother that people are basically used for sexual or ego gratification purposes. Astrid sees her mother dealing with men as objects of gratification. And then when Ingrid falls in love with Barry, she sees people can fall in love with the possession of other people. From there it is a long, long haul to actually see someone for what they are and not what they can be used for. This is the journey. Through all her experiences she develops the ability to love and to risk loving another person in a world where loss is constant. I think this is the biggest lesson of all.
Can you relate the significance of the title White Oleander?
Oleander is a plant that grows well in the worst situations. It blooms in the summer when the weather is 105 degrees, so it is very tough. It is also very poisonous, and the color white is an ongoing symbol in the book. It is a symbol for the mother Ingrid who sees things very much in black and white. If you could say the darker side of white, which is the insistence on purity, she has a fanaticism with purity. I believe a quality that serves us well in the real world is the ability to embrace the various emotional tones of experience. And to insist that reality reflects some ideal, I think, is a dangerous point of view. This is the basis of some of the philosophical arguments of mother and daughter: do you impose a view on the world, or do you look at the world and see what is there. There is a frigidity or sterility in the absolutist view, which is the mother's view. Astrid is afraid of things that are white. She is afraid of milk. She sees in dreams her mother's white eyes. She sees the sky as a cataract over God's eyes etc. Okay I hope I answered that!
© Copyright 2009 by Janet Fitch. Reprinted with permission by Warner Books. All rights reserved.
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