We celebrate short stories on selected shorts, as you know, and we've listene...
stories, the Big Cat, which is fantastic. And the theme of the show is Home Records, Marriages
“that combust and that does happen in the story, but before it happens and then again after,”
there's just, to my thinking, so much texture to the way these two people are with each other,
as well as with a lot of extended family. So I always try to track for myself even as a reader
and a writer, where a story comes from, but it may be sort of like figuring out where a dream comes from. I'd love to hear about the genesis of it. I like your take on stories because I feel the same way. I'm not sure where they come from. Sometimes I can trace back details. It's set in many apolis. Some of the settings are real, the restaurant where they reconnect to the condominiums, which I've seen from the outside, and I just imagined. And then this relationship,
you can call everything that happens, the other all relationships, the daughter, of course. For me, I don't know if you feel this way, as a fiction writer, you can pull things from life and things that are not from life. I feel like it's our superpower. To have like a restaurant that you say is real, but a made-up metallurgic symphony of snoring, I like to think that you were just really excited when you came up with that. I was excited by the end, which is violent in a
lot of ways, but what's most violent is based on a man's dream state in which he's surrounded by the noise of women. I feel like the snoring stands in for the noise we make as women in so many ways that a Paul's men, a Paul's partners, you know, a Paul's people in the wider sense. That is a great way of thinking of it, and I'm already thinking of a million things, like women screaming and happiness at a restaurant, at a group of women at a table.
And it's always this gesture, come on, keep it down. Yeah, keep it down, and pause and
metal instruments with their teeth. It's so evocative. I was a pleasure to write those scenes. I really, it's fun. It's really funny, too. Oh, good. What was it like to hear the story read by someone who is not you? It's strange, I suppose, but it's also very satisfying. People emphasize work in places that you wouldn't expect, and the cadence of words is different.
“It's satisfying. I love hearing somebody else read my work. I think they do such a better job,”
although you read so beautifully. I like listening to books as well, and I think did I do a better job? There are so many wonderful book narratives out there right now. It's getting
more and more exciting. I know. I feel absolutely the same way. Yeah. So you've always written about
families, and the opening chapter of Love Medicine, I guess it started off as a short story, and it was about family members gathering on a reservation for the funeral of a no-gibway woman. Do you feel in your heart, your guts, or whatever that place is, like more of a short story writer, or a novelist, or do you not think that way? I know you're also a poet. Well, short stories came to me in the beginning, and it's harder to write them sometimes now. They come as more of a
wave of emotion, the way poems do. But now I've started writing into a longer form, and I really love doing that. Everything begins as a story, but extending the story, and not answering all the questions within a certain limited length. At the same time, when I have a story in an ending, I'm so excited about it. It just feels so gratifying to be able to bring a reader into a world immerse the reader, and then say, "Now you can leave." It really feels great.
“Do you always know which it is? What feels like the beginning of a novel versus a story?”
You somehow sort of know, have you ever had the experience of writing one, and it turned out to be the other? So many of the novels that I was writing in the beginning had stories embedded within them. So somebody would tell a story or there would be a series of narrators or somehow you would feel that this story was coming from a source within the novel, but it sometimes didn't have a lot of bearing on the novel, and then I started making the stories have more bearing or not using multiple narrators.
It last started writing from one point of view, which was a huge breakthrough...
think I would sustain a point of view over a novel, and when I did, I loved it, but it's very rare.
“I have to have a very powerful relationship with that character. It's like you have to be with”
that person on a long road trip. You have to be honest with that. It seems that way to me. >> Emerson, speaking to you from the passenger seat or whatever, and you can listen with one ear, you feel like you're getting these messages at any time of the day, and I usually jot them on pieces of books that are jotted on. Now I keep index cards handy because I've had daughters who buy massive quantities of index cards in high school, and then I'm left with massive
quantities of index cards. Once they're gone, so I have so many, and I keep them with me all the time. >> The index cards is a great idea. I do not use them. I just have little scraps, and they have been sort of meaningless. >> The index cards can go anywhere with you. You know, in a pocket, or whatever, a purse, and then you can number them and tape them into notebooks. >> This is good. Now I'm getting writing tips from Louise Erdrick, so I'm going to then say
fine, do you have another tip for us? >> Yes. Yes, and it's your tip, which is to write on whatever's handy, but then keep it, and I find that taping it into a notebook makes it real
for me in a way that is keeping the cards somewhere doesn't. My method is to always be working
out of specific dedicated notebooks. If I have a type of person who would go in a certain place, those little bits really add up. When you spend money, you don't realize how much all
“those little bits add the ad up a lot. >> The mind you're going, how did that happen?”
>> Not that you asked me for a tip or need one. >> I do. >> When I'm a kid, I just quickly from a mechanical perspective, assuming you do write on a computer of some sort, change the font when you're getting tired of your character. >> What? Of course, that's a great idea. >> And it's like Palatino 12. Oh, this is good. Is that a tip that you give students? >> I do, I do absolutely, because especially when you're in the middle of a long narrative,
as you were describing, you're with this person for so long, you're on that card ride, you're on that ride where the person is telling you everything, just perks you up. I think actually when you mentioned before, stories within novels, I was struck by that, I love stories within novels, in your novels and in other novels, because they seem almost like a wing of an apartment found in a dream, like you open us door, and it's another dream?
>> Oh, sure. Do you? >> This is my dream. It's not never an apartment, because I,
>> Well, a house, right in the Midwest, but it's always a house, and this is usually my house, or it's in a place that I used to live. I have dreams a lot about New England houses, and houses where I knew certain people, and then they come into the dream, do you have wings that you've never discovered in your apartment? Isn't that very New York fantasies, a wonderful fantasy? I think it's just more general than that, this desire for something, or maybe it's a hope,
I don't know if it's hopeful. Maybe it is. Does it happen when you're getting some
“where in your work, and then you have an unexpected space in your work or a secret space?”
>> I don't know. I have not made that connection, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were right. Does it happen for you around those times? >> I do can't, really. Maybe we'll pay attention up when it happens, but I feel sort of refreshed in some way, and as if there's this possibility, maybe it is about Newark. So you've brought Native American life into the center of American literature. Do you feel
a responsibility as a writer, or do you want to explore or love, or are they sort of interchangeable, or the same? >> It's the same. This was before being any one thing was, I don't want to say politicize because it really isn't, but it is sort of acknowledged in a way. You just were who you weren't, and I lived in North Dakota, I was a team, so much of who I am, and who I had become. I just accepted it, wouldn't go back and change anything. It's just that I didn't
expect it. Certainly, I didn't expect that I would be still writing or have anything published, or any sort of authority at all, or bring anything native writing into the center, as you said,
It's not me.
who has been essential to me, who has done this. >> Well, it's just a such a wonderful body of work,
“and a continuing, wonderful body of work. You own a bookstore in Minneapolis called Birchmark Books,”
and you're part of this great and powerful, uh, sorority of writer bookstore owners and patched Emma Straub and soon Lauren Graff, who is opening a bookstore in Florida. >> I didn't know Lauren Graff was doing this. >> Oh, yes, read about it. I'm really excited about it. It's just like, well, as you're reading, changed or expanded since you've been doing this, did you start reading different things because people were interested in them, or were you changing people's reading
for us at both? >> Well, because this is a bookstore with a particular native mission emphasis, what, what have you, I've certainly read more deeply in native literature, history,
“and methodologies than I would have, but at the same time, I'm just reading in a general way”
because we were a tiny place where we have, we're packed literally to the raptors with all sorts of books. I read more contemporary work than I did, but I listen to more classical work than I have. I've listened to so many books over and over that have really resonated for me. For instance,
I had never had the patience to sit down with cousin Bet, Bazax book. I would read it on long
locks, and some of these books that I haven't ever had the time to really delve into what I can listen to have been amazing influences, really good influences. I said amazing. >> Just change the font and, you know, I'll just leave to change the font on amazing. There you go. >> No, no, I do know what you mean, though. I find that reading a classic novel, rediscovering it, or even reading it like when you weren't a sort of teenage jerk in my case,
when you were forced into reading something. >> Yes. >> Yeah, now, reading it at the right time is so exciting. And I feel that way about contemporary work as well. I see a lot of galleys because they come into the bookstore, and sometimes I'll put one aside and pick it up in a week or two and it's an entirely different book. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm reading one by Ramon Alam right now. >> We have the same editor, Sarah McGrath. >> Oh, you did the same stuff. I'm dying to read that book.
>> Oh, you will love it. We're called entitlement. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. This one I like from the beginning, well, he's got such a handle on what it is to be young, hungry, easily influenced. But then again, trying to find a self. It's really, it's hard to find a self. It's hard. It's hard all your life to find yourself. What are you working on now? Blessedly, I sent away the copy-edited version of the manuscript. That's about farming. And I feel like nobody who's not been on a farm recently
is going to want to read it, but I hope they will. Because it's about farming. Farming used to be the central topic of books in the world, in the world. And so I decided, I would try it again because I grew up in a freely interesting farm environment in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. So it's a sugar-beat farming territory. And it's unlike what most people think of as a farm. >> I want to read that. >> That doesn't mean farming. >> Yeah, well, I want to know what you mean.
What's it called? >> It's called the mighty red. And it's about the red river. >> I feel like when I finish a novel, it's like I don't even remember writing it, it was such an ordeal. I want to forget it immediately. >> How do you do? >> I don't know how to make sure.
“>> Come on, that's it. >> I know. So do you feel the kind of lightness right now?”
>> Oh, I feel excitement because while I'm writing one book, I'm always getting excited about
some other book that I can't write. >> I can't wait to find out what that one is, too. Thank you so much for talking to me really. We're so happy to have your story on the show. I'm happy, too. I'm very happy. It's this story. I was delighted when I found out. >> It's a really good story. So I'm glad you love this one. >> I love it.
