The Bat Segundo Show: Sarah Waters II
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on May 26, 2009
Filed Under Bat Segundo, Waters, Sarah
Sarah Waters appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #287. To listen to our previous interview with Sarah Waters, check out The Bat Segundo Show #37.
Sarah Waters is most recently the author of The Little Stranger.
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Creeping into the dark shadows of fabricated identities.
Author: Sarah Waters
Subjects Discussed: Research involving poltergeists, country doctors, and other topics, lingering interests from The Night Watch, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, similar story elements across multiple novels, the limited elements of a haunted house story, dashed out four letter words, male consciousness in the postwar age, M.R. James, class relations and entitlement, job security, giant manses as characters, noun-heavy descriptions, science vs. faith, the eleventh-hour patriarchy in The Little Stranger, the value of empathy in relation to uncomfortable character qualities, character names, unintentional symbolism, Gyp the dog as a potential symbol of an Old World attitude, when a friend’s dog becomes menacing, writing about characters who could potentially live in the present time, the burdens of living memory and authenticity, on not drawing from real life, the KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON poster, tackling new genres, the paucity of contemporary ghost stories, and sustaining a cringe-worthy romance.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Waters: He’s about to turn forty.
Correspondent: He’s about to turn forty. But he’s very coy about this particular age. He’s constantly saying, “Oh, I can’t go up in there. Because I’m too old.” It’s nonsense! You’re forty years old. You could still — today, you could go to the gym.
Waters: Today, you could go to the gym. But of course, in the 1940s, I think being forty was being middle-aged. People were older in their style and, even physically, kind of older. So I was very mindful that he’s of a different generation than Caroline — the daughter. He develops a bit of a romance with Caroline. But he’s definitely on the way into old age. I think that’s part of his problem. He feels that he’s been this boy. This young boy of enormous promise. The working-class boy who really clever people have picked him out, singled him out. He’s actually had all the advantages. But all they’ve done really is to alienate him from his own class. And he’s never really lived up to that promise. And here he is at forty about to enter into the second half of his life, not really having achieved very much. Which is why, I think, his exposure to the Hall is so crucial for him. Because it does open up something for him.
Correspondent: But Seely is older than him. And he doesn’t concern himself with his age.
Waters: Well, everybody’s different. It’s not like — for me, I was very interested in the doctor’s individual take on things. So he is a man who’s slightly apart from his colleagues. He has these quite pleasant colleagues. But they are family men. He’s not. He’s a bachelor. He’s quite a lonely figure really. Which again is why he fastens on to the Hall. Which actually was a problem for bachelor doctors. That people would often leave the family doctor alone. Because they knew that he had his own children, his own wife to take care of, and they’d go to the bachelor doctor. And I think the problem for doctors was that they were at risk for giving too much to their patients. That they had to guard against that. And I think that, to a certain extent, that’s what happens to Dr. Faraday. He gets sucked into this extraordinary Hall with these things going on in it.
BSS #287: Sarah Waters II (Download MP3)
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Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
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