But you seem to solve that problem effortlessly. In Christie, for example, the central character is deeply flawed but she doesn’t seem to notice any shortcomings or contradictions in her behavior…or maybe just barely notices and is mildly uncomfortable about it.
This creates a kind of disconnect in the reader’s mind that allows the third person authorial voice to be sensed…even if the reader, I imagine, is mostly unaware of this. They are too wrapped up in the story. It makes your narrator multi-dimensional despite themselves. I wonder if, as a writer, you think much at all about this or it just comes to you naturally as a way to write. I know writers who think that this is a tough thing technically to pull off.
Caitlin Macy: I love the first person and I think the range can be marvelous as long as one is willing to “go unreliable.” I have a vivid memory of a high school English class, for which we’d read My Last Duchess. I hadn’t gotten it all and I remember the epiphany I had when our teacher read it aloud to us in this arrogant voice—the realization that there could be a distance between the author and the narrator, it was so wildly unexpected and I loved the idea of it. I had the same experience in grad school when we read the Aspern Papers. It’s such a chilling jolt somehow, because there’s a way in which as readers we start out assuming the first person is telling the truth and nothing but the truth. (Back to high school again: just before the poetry we’d read Gatsby; one wants to believe that all narrators are like Nick Carraway – morally unassailable.) When I wrote Christie I started out using a straightforward first-person…I had recently finished Ravelstein and I liked the idea of a first person story that was actually about another person and I thought I wouldn’t put the narrator into the story very much at all. But then of course she turned out to have a death-grip on it, and it was all about her. I wrote Annabel’s Mother later on and I knew from the beginning that I wanted to drop some hints that she wasn’t being honest with herself.
DH: Still on the subject of ‘Christie’, another way that a fuller contour is provided to your narrator is that she assumes the mantle, at times, of speaking for her whole social set.
DH: There are a couple of great OMG moments in your stories. Here’s one: In ‘The Red Coat’, Trish goes out of her way to cross the street so she can “accost”, her cleaning lady, Evgenia. This was so surprising…Trish has nothing of import to say to her. She is drawn to the more confident, at ease in her own skin, Evgenia, like iron filings are drawn to a magnet. Trish’s whole character is encapsulated in this minor incident. If you know how to look, a tiny event like this can tell you a lot. In NY, that’s all you get sometimes. Isn’t that right?
CM: I see a hell of a lot of examples of this kind of encounter in New York. I was once at a party and a woman came up to me and said, “So, what are you doing here?” There are a lot of egos that need stroking, a lot of immaturity and insecurity. Oftentimes you’ll just see someone taking advantage of a less powerful person by simply holding her captive conversationally. The interesting thing to me is that it’s often couched in very friendly, non-aggressive terms. Europeans are more direct.
DH: Again, in ‘The Red Coat’ Trish adopts a favorite restaurant as her sort-of pampering yourself hangout…it’s her own private retreat. But one day she goes there for a drink and is frustrated because the bartender seems to be ignoring her. Then she’s appalled really, when she notices that her cleaning lady, who is also an aspiring fashion designer, is at the bar with her friends and is receiving plenty of service. Trish feels violated. But how can she feel that she, like, “owns” the restaurant? This seems amazing to me.
CM: Trish suffers from an acute case of class anxiety; that her cleaning woman would be patronizing the same restaurant as she—and with more success – completely unhinges her because takes it as a direct insult to herself. (How dare she…?) It’s a tough world out there. It’s so completely different than it was 100 or even 50 years ago in terms of the seeming fluidity of class; there are many more superficial markers that one can attain with a few hundred bucks. At a book group I was invited to the other night, a woman told me about recognizing her best friend’s nanny in the adjacent chair at Frederic Fekkai. In the old days, presumably, nannies patronized their own hairdressers, or cut their hair themselves. These would have been Irish women, perhaps, living lives in service, and their employers would have been Rich People, not the more class-queasy meritocracy.
DH: In “Eden’s Gate’, a woman totals her prospects for happiness, or perhaps demonstrates that she has no capacity for happiness, in the course of what I’d have to call the nightmare dinner-date of all time. I’d love to talk about the details but I won’t. I’ll leave that to the reader to discover. But there’s a key to human character in your insight in these stories that the good life lies in letting personal baggage go. This comes up in ‘Eden’s Gate’ doesn’t it…that you are examining person
alities that find it hard just to have fun?
CM: Yes! Jessica is supposed to be on the brink of getting everything she’s always wanted (hence the title of course) but instead allows herself to be derailed by a sense of historic deprivation. She suffers from the contemporary American curse: her whole life has been geared toward attaining a wild level of success. Now, although she’s pretty much achieved it, she doesn’t know how to have fun, is incapable of enjoying herself, even in basic ways (ordering a good bottle of wine). Her boyfriend wants to show her the way but his warmth unsettles her and she picks a fight with him rather than let her guard down.
DH: In ‘Annabel’s Mother’ I felt that I was getting a lesson, along with Mrs. Kimball, in real class distinctions that were not going to bridged. The good Mrs. Kimball finally secures the services of Marva, an exemplary nanny who she has befriended in a children’s playground. But it turns out that this relationship is opaque in ways that make a real connection with Marva seem like an illusion.
When she tries to provide material help to Marva which is simple for her to do, she becomes estranged from her peers in the playground who think that is inappropriate. Also, there are those little telling incidents…Mrs. Kimball finds wrappers at her apartment that indicate that Marva has taken her child for fast food which she abhors. This reminds me of that impromptu meal in the short story “Spoiled” where the pampered Leigh eats a sandwich with high-fiber bread while her horse trainer, Mrs. Murray and her daughter eat Wonder Bread sandwiches.
But anyone can think that they are relating to someone, that they are closer to the people they know, than the really are. And that they know more about them than they really do. It’s just another way of being self-centered. Isn’t that true? Or should I pull back from this generality and say instead: “Don’t dilute the message of the story. This is all about class.”
CM: No, that’s a good point and I thank you for making it. I don’t think of class as some kind of Marxist endpoint; I like to use class dynamics to examine what are actually psychological and emotional issues in my characters. When someone has a relationship with a person from a different class, the interactions can bring out some of the less flattering elements of the person’s character (narcissism, as you say; obsequiousness) – weaknesses that she might keep hidden around her peers.
DH: Caitlin, thanks for your wonderful stories. I not only thoroughly enjoyed them but I feel that I profited from them as well. Last question: What does it mean to be spoiled?
CM: Spoiled children – and more interestingly perhaps – spoiled adults have an outsize sense of their own importance and an anger at the world for not behaving as it ought to, and they suffer from a profound insecurity that nothing they have has been earned.Thank you, Dennis; it’s been a pleasure.
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