By Christine Rice
Christine Sneed is a prose stylist. In her short stories and novels she does with words what Patricia Barber does with jazz, what Buddy Guy does with the blues. There’s a refreshing delicacy to her language and plot structure and this careful attention to detail allows her to develop deeply intimate and intricate moments between characters.
Sneed’s latest novel, Paris, He Said, investigates the tricky relationship forged when two people – one an older benefactor, the other a young artist – become lovers. It made me wonder what I would have done, as a young woman, if the situation had presented itself. It made me ask, “How many artists would decline an offer to have the space and time to live and create art in a city known for producing great art?” But there’s a stipulation. Early on, Laurent tells Jayne, “What you do and what I do outside of the apartment, that is not for the other person to worry over.”
In Paris, He Said, Sneed creates an atmosphere rich with desire, insecurity, and possibility.
CHRISTINE RICE: At one point in Paris, He Said Jayne thinks:
Your beauty or plainness or homeliness–your eyes, your hair, your voice, your sadness, your feet, your hands, your nose, your thoughts, your fears, your fragile happiness. There are quiet parts in each of us that can only be gestured toward with light and color and shadow. This is one reason I am trying to be a painter.
Throughout the novel you explore the artist’s quest for truth. Are these “quiet parts in each of us” similar to the struggles you experience as a writer? To capture a moment or moments that others might completely miss? To explore your world? To communicate your angle?
CHRISTINE SNEED: You do have to learn to ignore the voice that’s somewhere in your head all the time (in my head, in any case 🙂 telling you that you’re not good enough, that what you’re trying to accomplish is never going to happen, or if it does, it’ll be uninteresting or clichéd, or…well, there’s no shortage of discouraging thoughts available to most of us, any hour of the day.
Even so, when you can ignore that rude voice, there are, at times, moments of serious communion with the muse or whatever creative force inspires you. I feel grateful to be among the community of writers and artists who are working today. I feel fortunate to be in the conversation, even if my part is very small. Feeling as if I’m doing what I should be doing with my life (which overall, I don’t doubt, even when assailed by negative thoughts) is something that keeps me moving forward, one sentence at a time.
CR: Actually, your part “in the conversation” is significant. You do a great deal of work (through readings and other events) to promote community. Your generosity toward other artists is appreciated in Chicago and elsewhere. That was pretty evident at your book release party at Women & Children First. That place was jam packed with admirers.
Consider this scene at Jayne’s gallery opening where she is thinking about people assessing her work:
This didn’t happen to me when I was in shows in the past, not as it has this time: I’ll be going about my daily business – putting on my shoes, combing my hair, eating an apple while looking out the kitchen window – when I remember that my work is hanging in a gallery a few miles from where I live. It is being subjected to the critical, sometimes hostile stares of the strangers who enter the space and stand in their high heels, on their bowed legs or flat feet, before my paintings, thinking that they could do what I’ve done. Or maybe more generously, thinking the opposite: they wonder where my ideas come from, how I’ll choose my subjects, and how I learned to paint a face that looks more brooding and melancholy on the canvas than it probably would in person.
I have heard the comment “I could do better than that” so many times – at galleries, museums, in reference to a book or short story. There is this fluid relationship between readers and writers but an entirely different relationship between artists and critics (although, with social media, the lines have been blurred). Critics have the power to support or trounce years of work with a review that takes them a few days or even a few hours to write.
CS: This relationship is a frightening one because some critics really do have a lot of power and are considered true arbiters of taste for the art and literary world; therefore, one bad review in a prominent periodical can mean that your book, film or art exhibition will not get any further positive attention and you will not receive more financial support – from your publisher, gallerist, patron, etc., which, needless to say, is devastating to most artists.
It underscores one of the many maddening aspects of the creative professions, namely, that a lot of what determines someone’s success is based on good luck (or bad), on a series of coincidences or whims – personal/emotional weather systems, to some extent – whatever you want to call them. I remember reading an essay written by an editor of an important anthology in which she said that if she’s having a bad day, she might discard a submission that she would have accepted on a different day. So much of what becomes popular or successful or profitable is based on intangibles such as an influential person’s mood on an important decision-making day.
CR: You explore the notion of leaving a legacy in this book and, too, I would say, in Little Known Facts (in a much different way). What do you find irresistible about legacy?
CS: Some of it has to do with the fact that a human life, in the scheme of things, lasts a heartbreakingly short period of time, and I believe that many of us hope to be remembered after we die. I can work out some of my feelings about this desire in fiction, and so I usually do write about at least one character who is consciously thinking about how to make a mark on the world in a meaningful, positive way. It’s also about kindness – how the point of any human life is, as I see it, about being kind to other people, about helping each other, and finding true joy in doing so. There shouldn’t be a quid pro quo agenda either.
As writers and artists, we are each other’s helpmates, peers, and allies. This is the legacy we can all reliably leave behind – the fact that our generous acts will ideally have affected the world in a positive way. It sounds New Age-y, probably, but I do think when you do something kind for someone else, with no hope of reward, that you’re changing the world: on a small scale, maybe, but it still matters.
CR: At one point, during her gallery opening, Jayne reflects on her and her mentor, Susan Kraut’s, journey:
That she felt as happy to be there as I did was immediately apparent, and also, I have to say, humbling. Here we were, looking upon concrete proof that it was possible to make it through the grinding sameness of most days, the self-doubt, the exhaustion, the worries that no one would ever be interested in your work again – all the feelings I had been living with on and off for the last twelve years, three or so years shy of half my life.
Are you able to enjoy those moments when the worry falls away? And then are you on to the next thing?
CS: I was moderately good, I think, at enjoying the publication of my first book in 2010, but since then, ironically, it’s been a little harder to relax and have a good time. It feels, in some ways, that the stakes are higher with each new book, and I have nightmares about reaching a point where someone will say, “We’re sorry, but your turn is up. We’re going to publish other writers now.”
I haven’t really been able to rest much at all, to be candid. I feel as if I should always be working on something – short stories, essays, a new novel manuscript. I hope to earn more of my living from writing, in the coming years, and not worry about scrambling for teaching jobs. I love teaching but not having a tenure-track position means that you’re not likely to have much stability. Perhaps this will change, though. I don’t know. I’m not good with uncertainty and that’s a problem, because if you work in a creative profession, you really have to be stoic in the face of the unknowns. This is something I think about every day. The writing itself, the hours at your desk, those are the touchstone, that’s where happiness has to reside.
CR: I was surprised and delighted by the relationship between Laurent’s daughter, Jeanne-Lucie, and Jayne. I loved that Jayne and Jeanne-Lucie became friends. I found it interesting because often women’s relationships are trivialized or women are set as rivals. Did you always know that Jeanne-Lucie would become Jayne’s friend or did this development surprise you?
Or maybe I’m asking how much you work off a novel outline? Do you know the overall scope of the book when you start writing or do you let characters and scenes develop more organically? Or a combination of both.
CS: In fact, I didn’t know they would become friends until I decided to rewrite the first draft of Paris, He Said. In the initial draft, they never became friends. As I was working on the second draft, however, I realized that they should be friends, and yes, this development did surprise me and I was happy about it. It seemed like it needed to happen. And I’m very glad it did.
CR: Despite myself, I ended up feeling sympathetic to Laurent. You set up his vulnerability over and over again. At one point, he says:
Kindness is not so common, you realize, as you leave behind childhood and move further into adulthood, with its treacherous landscapes, its ambushes from enemies known and unknown. There is also the aging body and the sense at times that you will be crowded out, or worse, trampled, by the sheer mass of other people alive at any one time.
Even though Laurent makes money off his protégé, he is also kind. How difficult is it to write about kindness, to develop kind characters? What tightropes do you have to walk?
CS: I’ve thought about the question of kindness quite often over the last several years, and I’ve realized that I don’t have much interest in writing about characters that are truly unpleasant and awful to each other. It’s much easier to write about kind people because I’m more likely to enjoy trying to get into their heads and see the world through their eyes. People who behave badly, in a criminal way, for example, just don’t appeal to me. There’s so much ugliness in the world, in the news every night, in every single newspaper, that in the tiny little place I’ve carved out to write and publish my work, I want my characters to behave with good intentions, on the whole (even if they aren’t always being faithful to each other – there have be some flaws).
As for walking a tightrope, I know there are readers who think some of my characters are unappealing, usually because they’re unhappy about the characters’ sexual choices, but they never act out of a mean-spirited impulse to wound their intimates. The truth is this: they’re not good about avoiding every temptation, which is something I suspect is true of most people (myself included).
CR: It would have been easy for you to cast Laurent as a smooth-talking, handsome womanizer. In PART TWO, you write from his point of view. Had you always planned on developing Laurent in that way? Or did that organically evolve as you were writing the novel?
CS: I wrote Laurent’s section when I rewrote the first draft of Paris, He Said (almost entirely – the two drafts were about 90-95% different). The first draft was all third-person from Jayne’s perspective, and it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to. As I was trying to figure out how to start over, I heard Laurent’s voice and knew that he had to be in there, and this turned out to be my favorite part of the novel-writing process (and the section I like best too).
CR: I’ve heard you mention the feeling, as a writer, of being spread too thin (am I putting words in your mouth? Or was it trying to manage distractions?). What’s the greatest obstacle standing between you and your writing? Or how do you carve out time to write between teaching and other commitments?
CR: At your book launch, you mentioned that, as a mid-list author, you need to produce. Can you talk a little bit about being a mid-list author? In other words, people look at mid-list authors and see that they’re published by big publishing houses and think you’re rolling in dough. Is that true?
CS: The advance is usually all the money an author will see for a book. If it earns out, you’re in the minority, and that’s something to celebrate. It’s also not a given that even with good reviews, your publisher will want to continue to publish your new manuscripts when you’re a mid-list author. I was speaking with someone in the industry about this a few months ago, and she said that today, given the fact that many presses are paying a lot of money for a tiny number of titles that they hope will become the next Da Vinci Code or Girl on the Train, some relatively well known (but not big-selling) authors are being published by small presses, even if they’ve formerly been published by one of the bigger New York houses.
Sometimes this works out well, but it’s hard to get attention for any book, and small presses don’t usually have much money for publicity, so the author has to do much of the work. It’s very stressful no matter who is publishing you, to be honest. That’s why writers truly have to love the process of writing because, among other concerns, you don’t know if you’re going to be able to earn much of your living from your books.
CS: I know that I’ll feel awful if I don’t sit down for at least 30-45 minutes every day to write. I try to sit down for at least an hour. Guilt, the anticipation of it in particular, is a powerful incentive for me to write frequently. I also know that I don’t feel sane if I don’t write regularly. There are days, for sure, especially during the school year, when I don’t steal an hour or two to write, but in this case, if I can put a couple of notes down in a notebook with an idea or two for something currently in progress, I feel better.
The biggest distraction, probably, is all the literary or other types of social events happening every day of the week in Chicago. I receive Facebook invites to one event or another very often, and I can’t get to nearly as many of them as I would like to. For one, my partner Adam needs attention, my parents and non-writer friends do too; I have to go grocery shopping and do laundry and read student papers and pay bills and get to the gym and write letters and emails – there are so many things to do every single day that committing to more than a couple of events each week is basically impossible, unless I want to figure out how not to sleep more than 3 hours a night.
CR: Years ago, I met a writer who lived in a Lake Forest family’s guesthouse. The family took care of his every need – rent, food, expenses. It took me a while to get my head around that. And he seemed very pleased with himself. Sadly, he never produced work.
Have you ever daydreamed about having a benefactor? If so, who might that be?
CS: I would love to have a benefactor, but I’ve never expected to have one – it just seems like such a pipe dream (and maybe this is why I chose to write about it in this novel; it was fun to imagine one’s dreams coming true, but then, I always seem to end up looking at the darker aspects of getting what you want when I write about a wish fulfillment scenario). I suppose the most realistic answer to this would be my parents – they are the likeliest suspects for this role, and I suppose, as I was growing up and then going to college, you could say that technically they were my benefactors because they paid for my tuition.
CR: This book also explores mentor/student relationships. How important have those relationships been in your writing career? In your life?
CS: I haven’t had a mentor in a traditional sense, but I’ve had supportive friends and teachers, beginning in high school with my English teacher Mr. Weber, and in college, the poet Roland Flint, followed by some of my professors in the MFA program at Indiana University – Maura Stanton, David Wojahn, Alyce Miller, and Tony Ardizzone, among them. Because I was a poetry MFA, most of the fiction I’ve written and published was written after I earned my MFA degree in the late ‘90s. But I’ve always felt supported and respected by my writing teachers. Their good opinion has meant a lot to me.
CR: Jayne negotiates the treacherous waters of living under Laurent’s roof. There are benefits and pitfalls to Jayne’s decision. What are the positives and negatives of having someone like Laurent in an artist’s life? In real life?
CS: I think the main pitfall that you’d have to worry about with a benefactor is compromising your aesthetic in order to please this person, which is something that factors into Paris, He Said’s plot. The positives are that you have the time and money to make art, but the negatives are, again, that you are artistically (and/or socially/intimately) beholden to the person in charge of the purse strings, to some extent. A safer equivalent is an artist’s fellowship like the Guggenheim or the NEA, but for those grants you still have to write a plan for what you’ll be working on during the fellowship period.
CR: In Little Known Facts and Paris, He Said, place plays a very important role. In a way, it becomes its own character. Can you talk about how place works in your creative process? How does place influence your characters, narrative, etc.?
CS: I don’t always know where I want to set a story when I begin a new story or novel, but in the case of Little Known Facts and Paris, He Said, from the beginning I knew that setting would be one of the key elements in each novel. In Paris, He Said, specifically, I set out, from the first word, to write a story set almost exclusively in Paris, because of my interest in France and the French language, which started in junior high school, when I took my first French class. As you can imagine, it wasn’t easy writing about a city that signifies so many important things to billions of people, and there was probably no small measure of hubris involved in my decision to set a novel in Paris.
Still, despite the challenges, I wanted to see if I could pull it off, if I could write about this mythic city in a way that would both engage readers and help me demystify some of its meaning and importance to me as a writer, tourist, and as a former student of French language and literature. Setting definitely affects my characters’ decisions too; in this case, Jayne goes to Paris because, among other reasons, she wants to be able to fulfill her artistic potential, and Paris seems an ideal place for this to happen.
Christine Sneed teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University. Her books include the story collection, Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry, which won the 2009 Grace Paley Prize and Ploughshares Zacharis Prize for a first book, and the novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts, the latter of which was a Booklist top-ten debut novel of 2013 and won the 2013 Society of Midland Authors Award in adult fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Ploughshares, Southern Review, New England Review, and a number of other journals.
Christine Maul Rice’s award-winning novel, Swarm Theory, was called “a gripping work of Midwest Gothic” by Michigan Public Radio and earned an Independent Publisher Book Award, a National Indie Excellence Award, a Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year award (finalist), and was included in PANK’s Best Books of 2016 and Powell’s Books Midyear Roundup: The Best Books of 2016 So Far. In 2019, Christine was included in New City’s Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago and named One of 30 Writers to Watch by Chicago’s Guild Complex. Most recently, her short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in Allium, 2020: The Year of the Asterisk*, Make Literary Magazine, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Roanoke Review, The Literary Review, among others. Christine is the founder and editor of the literary nonprofit Hypertext Magazine & Studio and is an Assistant Professor of English at Valparaiso University.