Joyce Maynard Loves Austin, Our Cowboy Boots [Texas Book Festival Interview]

You’ve mentioned in many interviews that you start in your life and then you come up with characters that are purely imagined. Secrets, silence and family are all very important in this book and I’d like to hear about your relationship to that, specifically to the story.

My parents were wonderfully, lively articulate storytellers. And every dinner at our house was always more entertaining than any show you’d see on TV. We’d talk about art, politics, religion, every single thing except that one unmentionable topic that really shaped our lives, which was that every night our father went into the attic and got drunk and every morning we’d wake up and pretend it didn’t happen. And I, I know in my personal life and in my writing life, that experience shaped a lot of my choices. That longing for openness and truth-telling and a belief that there’s nothing so scary as a secret you don’t talk about. The minute you put it out in the open, look at it, turn the lights on - it’s diffused. But if everybody always did as they should, our novels would be very short. So this whole story starts with parents not telling their children or each other or themselves something that happened. And it just takes years to come out.

Right. That actually segues nicely into the next thing I wanted to ask. The title The Good Daughters is sort of loaded for you. That’s a term you used to describe your famous New York Times mag piece, "An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life."

I didn’t even know I described it that way. I said I was a good daughter, probably?

In your memoir, At Home in the World, you called the piece “a quintessential work of a good daughter."

Oh my gosh. I didn’t even remember I did that. I was a very “good” girl, yes. I’m sort of putting that in quotes. I think that a lot of us are very burdened by the optimization to be good, to be nice, to please and to deliver to the people around us what they expect of us. That’s not necessarily the same as being true. So, for myself, I think I was probably talking about all the parts of my story that I didn’t talk about when I was a young writer. I published one whole memoir, 160 pages, ostensibly the story of my life. It didn’t include some pretty basic facts about what was going on in my life, including the fact that I grew up in an alcoholic family. But in the novel the phrase carries a different sort of weight. We look at what constitutes being good, and it takes decades. It took me a few decades, and I think it takes a lot of time to see who we are and be true to that person.

Absolutely. I was just wondering if that was a conscious choice.

No. You know when I tell a story, I don’t set out saying “I’m going to discuss this theme, or this topic.” I just want to tell a really great story. I create characters and I set them loose on the page and, as much as anyone who reads my work, there’s a version of me when I’m writing it wondering what’s going to happen next. I know that’s not true of a lot of fiction writers and a lot of fiction writers I respect and who I name as friends. But for me, I’m like my own first reader, and I’m writing a book I want to read and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I'm not sitting there thinking “What abstract topic shall I explore in this one?”

I’d also like to ask about the adaptation of your last novel, Labor Day, for a movie by Jason Reitman. You mentioned in an interview with Book Club Girl that the process of adaptation was like letting go. I’d like to hear about that process.

This is the second time that a book of mine has been adapted. And I should mention that I talk about this with great optimism, but until the camera actually starts rolling, (or whatever digital cameras do) nobody should ever think that the picture is actually going to exist. Jason Reitman talks in a very positive way about the fact that he is making this movie next, and I love it. This is the second time one of my books has been made into a film (the first was To Die For) and I think much as you have to let go of a child of yours - when she grows up and you send her out into the world - that’s what happens with the book. It becomes his creative endeavor, no longer mine. Mine was the book; his will be the movie. I have read his screenplay and I think it’s wonderful and it’s very true to my story, the story I wanted to tell. But I look forward to all the things that he does with it that I didn’t do. It’s a different medium. I think the best thing a writer can do when she’s finished with a book is write another book. I loved Labor Day, and it was possibly the best writing experience I ever had. I was just, you know, tears were streaming down my face. I kept writing, writing through the night, and I couldn’t wait to find out if they were going to be OK. I really mean that, I did. But that one’s over. I love and loved writing it, but I’m always looking to the future. What’s next.

What are you working on now?

I can’t talk about it, but it is a novel, it is another novel. I go back and forth. Whether I’m writing personal narrative, memoir or fiction I’m always trying to tell a really good story. I’m always a storyteller, whether the stories happen in my life or the stories I invent. The stories I invent should sound like a true story, and the true story I tell should read like a novel. I just want to keep you on the edge of your chair.

Yes, and the new edition of At Home in the World sort of gets to the tension in all of your work between truth and approval, especially in The Good Daughters, where the secret is what shapes a family. How do you feel about that tension?

One of the great things that about being the age that I am is that all the things you used to worry about, like “Will they like me?” are so much less of the picture. I had to accept a while back that not everybody was going to like me. And it’s good I accepted that, because that is the reality. People have judged and condemned me pretty harshly over the course of my life, especially when I stopped trying so hard to be a good girl. It’s a relief to know who I am. I know who I am; my friends and family know who I am, and I like to think so do a lot of my readers. But you can’t please all the people all the time or you’ll end up just, you know, being nobody, really.

I would like to ask a little about your relationship with your readers, because you're also famous for how accessible you are. What has that done for your work and what does it still do?

I grew up feeling like an alienated person, like I was alone in the world or alone with myself and my family. Out there, alone. And I think this comes from the whole alcoholic family story, and that I felt enormous secrecy and shame. If anybody knew what was going on in my house, they wouldn’t be my friend, they wouldn’t like me. And I wanted desperately to be liked, as I think young people always do. And so I didn’t feel like I could talk about some of the truest, realest parts of who I was. And over the years, I think it was the experience of very gradually giving voice to true experience in my writing (I was able to do it in my writing before I was able to do it in my life, probably) and hearing back from readers who said “You’re not alone, me too” that gave me so much encouragement. And I name my readers as one of my biggest sources of inspiration. It definitely takes up time, it takes up emotional space, but that’s also true of parenthood. That also takes up time and emotional space. It takes you away from your work but it makes you a better person for your work when you finally get there. I’ve learned so much from letters from readers and meeting readers, I’ve often thought I could drive across the entire US and never stay in a hotel because I have readers all along the line. Some of them are people I’ve been hearing from for thirty years. I meet them when I can. I’m sure I’ll meet a few in Austin. Last time I was in Austin, I met one and we went shopping for a pair of cowboy boots for me because I only had one pair of footwear. They’re my absolute best pair of boots. They’re my favorite. They don’t match everything, but once you put your foot in a good cowboy boot, there’s no turning back. That was actually one of the best investments I’ve ever made. I always feel strong and powerful and great when I wear them (and I wear them a lot), and wherever I go when I wear them, people call out “Great boots!” I expect on my trip to Austin, I will get myself a second pair.

Besides the book festival and shopping for another pair of boots, do you have any other plans while you’re in town?

Music, of course! Yeah. If I had my choice to try again, I would have been a singer/songwriter. So many of my favorites come from those parts. There are a lot of Texas songwriters that I’m a fan of. So I hope I get to hear some music while I’m in Austin, and I’m sure I will. Actually, when I describe what I’m doing in my writing, I try to do the writing equivalent of what certain songs do for me when I listen to them, which is to make my heart beat faster and twist my gut in a good or pleasurable way. All I can do is write a really moving story, so I hope I do. One of my sons is actually a musician who’s played SXSW the last couple of years. They’re kind of a funk/hip hop band. Last time he performed in Austin, he broke his nose jumping into a crowd.

Oh my god. He’s all right now, though?

Yeah, he’s fine.

I’m glad your family makes such good use of the town!

Yes, he gave very high marks to the hospital there. I’m definitely giving myself an extra day in Texas.

Is there anything else we didn’t get to that you’d like to mention?

I hope, I don’t know if you’ve read Labor Day, but I bet you’d like Labor Day. And because I am always thinking about people who don’t buy hardback books, Labor Day just came out on paperback. So that’s a very affordable alternative if someone wants to read a book of mine.