Charles Baxter
photo credit: Keri Pickett |
Charles Baxter's work includes five novels, most recently The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, and The Feast of Love, which was a National Book Award finalist and was made into a motion picture; four story collections, most recently Believers; a book of poetry, Imaginary Paintings; and three books of essays about writing, Burning Down the House, Beyond Plot, and The Art of Subtext. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Glimmer Train Stories, and Harper's, among other journals and magazines. His fiction has been widely anthologized and translated into ten languages. He teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota. www.charlesbaxter.com |
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In a number of scenes in The Feast of Love, your characters made amazing self-disclosures. I don't always believe a story where characters are revealing so much, but I did here, and it really worked. How did you pull that off? I imagined for myself a scene—let's say a bar around eleven-thirty at night, it's getting late. You know, the fans are rotating in the ceiling. Most of the people have gone and someone is sitting there, telling me things that are amazing and true. The way that an old friend may sooner or later open up to you and tell you some feature of her life that you've always suspected but waited years to hear from her. I think in stories and novels we often wait for that moment, signature statements, signature actions. David saying, "It wasn't that I hunted, I was a hunter. That was my essence. That was what I did. And in some sense it's still what I do." I think it's wonderful when characters open up themselves, because it's as if something that has been hidden has bubbled up to the surface and—because it's been hidden—it's a treasure. And you've waited to hear it. From an interview with Charles Baxter, by Linda Swanson-Davies | |