I love Garielle Lutz’s stories. Her sentences are deliberate and sinuous, sometimes cryptic but often very funny. I underline my favorites and can’t help but re-read them over and over. I was so excited she kindly agreed to answer some of my questions about her life, her work, and her new book Worsted.
Do you remember your dreams? Do you try to?
Sometimes, but they go to pieces so fast. I kept a dream-journal for a few weeks when I was in high school, but my mother found it and hit the ceiling. I grew up in a culture that had no use for the subconscious.
Where do you usually write these days? At home, or someplace else?
In my living room, on a Chromebook atop a decrepit laptop atop a sheet of plywood atop a couple of overturned plastic crates.
In an interview with The Believer, I liked when you said that reading and writing are “private, intimate, and unnatural.” Could you say more about why “unnatural?” Do you still think so? Is one more unnatural than the other?
I seem to recall somebody’s having once remarked that there are no words or sentences or paragraphs in nature, and something along these lines is most likely all I had in mind. I’ve come to admire the way a dog confronts a book, as just another thing in the world to bite into or lick or shove from one zone of the floor to another.
Who do you show your writing to first, if it happens to be a story that you decide to show to someone?
Nobody other than whichever editor I eventually send it to.
Do you ever write characters based on people you know or observe?
The people I know are too baroquely themselves for me to even attempt to get any words pasted over what they’ve got going. Most of the time, I myself feel like just a pale and tepid underextension of kooks I see on the street.
Do you make conscious choices about whether to write in first or third person, or does it just happen? I know you’ve talked about the “zeroth person” perspective. How does your choice of perspective relate to the zeroth person?
It just happens.
I noticed that many lists appear in Worsted, both within sentences and on a story level (thinking of “Rules for Tenants”). What appeals to you about lists?
It’s the plenitudes in them I’m in awe of. I’m a goner when the weekly supermarket circulars show up in the mail.
Do you make lists when you have things to do, like errands?
Yes, I didn’t always, but I do now. The lists are always on 3-inch-by-5-inch index cards that I fold in half before I get started.
Do you ever impose personal deadlines for yourself when you write or do other people do that?
I impose them myself and, when necessary, petition myself for an extension.
In that same interview with The Believer, you also talked about having to level with yourself when you were a young writer in an M.A. program in order to stop writing “drowsily lyrical ordeals.” What advice do you have for young writers these days, when it comes to leveling with themselves?
I always found it helpful to remind myself that I’d never be as good as other people, even people who would probably never get around to writing anything anyway.
What do you think about M.F.A. fiction programs?
I’ve seen plenty of evidence that they can succeed. Wonderful books keep coming out of Syracuse.
What made you want to get your M.A. when you did?
It was either that or admit that my B.A. hadn’t prepared me for any doings of an off-campus nature.
One of my favorite stories in Worsted is “You Too” and I’ve been re-reading it often. I’m particularly a fan of the paragraph that starts with “He went into me every night as far as he could go.” I liked that it was succinct and startling, graphic but abstract. Can you talk about how you constructed that story, if you remember?
I wish I could remember, but I wrote that story one unelating summer about a quarter of a century ago in a previous apartment where the privations were getting a little out of hand. The story seemed to come all at once, though I changed a word here and there a couple of years ago, after finding long-dimmed printouts of it in a box I’d forgotten about.
What is your favorite American city?
New York City, then Pittsburgh.
You’ve mentioned you tend to wander through stores and take long transportation rides, and it seems like some of your characters do too. What do you like about wandering around like that?
Stores are a good place to observe the population and the things the population seems to want to need. Now that I am retired, I ride a bus to Pittsburgh a few times a week to walk myself silly.
In “Written at Work” from Worsted, you wrote, “There had been a lot of guesswork in how we expected love to arise finally between us.” Do you think love is more trouble than it’s worth?
It’s the only thing that’s worth it. Especially when it’s unrequited and your time is running out.
Do you have any good love advice?
Keep outwardly quiet about it.
Are you a spiritual person?
Not in any of the acceptable or approved ways.
What is your favorite Eric Rohmer movie?
The Green Ray.
Would you like to see someone successfully translate your work? Or are you indifferent?
Yes, I would welcome that very much. I’m told that someone in Germany has been giving it a go.
Who are your favorite authors who wrote before the 1950s?
Jean Rhys, John O’Hara, S. J. Perelman.
What is your favorite Jean Rhys work?
Some days it’s Voyage in the Dark. Other days it’s After Leaving Mr MacKenzie.
If you had to enter an entirely different career field other than writing, what would it have to be?
Mail-order retail, and I am happy to report that an opportunity along those lines has just recently presented itself.
What do you like most about teaching? What do you dislike most about it?
I can’t remember what any of it must have been like.
In “A Low-Hanging Towel” I liked that line about students thinking of a class as a “thankfully forgotten part of the world.” Were there any classes in school you took that you wish were thankfully forgotten parts of the world?
I have thankfully forgotten just about everything I was ever taught. Most of it had never sunk in to begin with.
What publications have you been reading a lot of right now?
Flea-market New Yorkers from the sixties and seventies, when it was still a magazine that was seen but not heard.
In “Written From Work,” a kid tells the narrator, “You look aloned.” The line reminded me of how malleable language seems when you’re a kid, how it feels playful. Does your actual writing process ever feel playful or fun, while it’s happening?
In some moods, yes. I wish I had more moods like that.
What is your favorite story out of Worsted, if you had to choose?
The title story, I think. Either that or “She Who Is Still Within Reach,” which I wrote way too late for it to go into the book.
Buy Worsted from SF/LD Books!
Aurora Huiza lives in Brooklyn. She writes fiction and essays.