Craft
In the Land of Difficult History (Part 2)
Elizabeth Lopeman on Trans Europe Express and Living (and Writing) Abroad
Part Two | (Did you miss Part One?) | (Prefer to read as one page?)
lizabeth Lopeman’s debut story collection, Trans Europe Express, is the fall 2014 release from Propeller magazine’s publishing imprint, Propeller Books.
Propeller: I can’t help but point out that though you feel lucky, your characters don’t particularly feel that way. Many of the stories are about women getting pulled into situations they can’t seem to extricate themselves from—there’s a sense in many of the stories of main characters who are physically or emotionally trapped. Do you have a sense that this situation of being trapped or blocked is a common fate for women? If so, why—and is there a way to avoid the traps, or at least a way to escape? Your characters seem to make attempts.
Elizabeth Lopeman: Yeah—well that’s really the human condition in a nutshell, isn’t it? We are all trapped. In our bodies and in our gender roles, and our roles in our families, communities, and nationalities. I’m a total escape artist. I think I have a little spiritual rat attendant, like Ganesha, who gnaws away what holds me back, including my own negativity. I’m working on this. At tempering my claustrophobia. And, when people, as they often will, try to peg me and put me in a box and categorize me in order to make themselves feel comfortable, I always think of that Eleanor Roosevelt quote: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” It’s always the small minds who hold back the progress of the world.
Propeller: I want to ask more about the role of art in your fiction. When did you start writing about art, in fiction or outside of it, and what kind of material do you feel writing about artists offers a fiction writer access to?
Lopeman: I guess I first wrote about art in art class in high school. My mother worked in art galleries when I was a kid and my family traveled. I was exposed to the French impressionists in Paris at a young age and I think the door of art appreciation, which was ajar, was thrown open with seeing Monet’s Nymphéas, and certainly Degas’ La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans has stuck with me. I loved the way the tulle and satin ribbon had decayed and been damaged through the years—talk about mood and atmosphere. And, in writing classes in college I was always trying to capture mood via descriptive language, still am, I guess. I try to curate salient details because it’s very much how I move through the world. I would say I’m a very aesthetic person and anything from a Francis Bacon painting to a putti in the Theatinerkirche, or a crumbling tile in the Cinque Terre can inspire wonder and awe in me, which in turn frequently inspires a story, maybe not a story about that place—but a story of fiction that replicates the spirit of the place or the painting, or the way an old Croatian bottle reflects the light in a bar—I’m fascinated by how that makes me feel and like to create characters who are sensitive to aesthetics and the mood of a place. Which brings us back to why I love Europe—it feels right. I love the bigness of the world—I’m a glutton for the astonishing power of the sublime. And my characters are usually caught up in a world that’s much bigger than they. Art delivers us.
Same goes for writing about art for articles and reviews, though the discipline demands a different format and voice, of course. The language is more academic, but the same in that the idea is to replicate the mood via a discussion of rigor, technique, and medium.
(Photo by Justus Tyrone Gooden)
Propeller: What do you think is most difficult about writing fiction that takes place in foreign settings?
Lopeman: I love fiction that incorporates foreign languages and I think it’s critical to creating the spirit of the people who populate a place, but writing dialogue is a delicate craft in English and so trying to do that in other languages is tricky. I would say that’s the most difficult part. I wouldn’t attempt a story if I weren’t tuned in to who the characters are, or how the place feels, or what it looks like, but I will regardless of how graceful I am in the local language.
Propeller: When you think about these stories and the years you spent working on them, which writers stand out as those whose work you looked to, or whom you found most influential—and what were you able to draw from those writers?
Lopeman: Marilynn Robinson for her grace. Sebald’s Austerlitz for reflecting the beauty in the unmoored state—I’ve read it seven or eight times. Bolaño for his teeth.
Propeller: Were there other things that kept you going? “Kept you going” is maybe awkward phrasing. I’m interested in a challenge that most writers without that magical object—a book with their name on it—feel, which is maybe just a sense of authenticity—that they are allowed to continue spending time on their writing, that this is a legitimate pursuit. You’ve been writing fiction for a number of years. How did you continue to make it a priority? Were there times when that challenge was particularly daunting? How did you sustain your creativity through the challenges?
Lopeman: Writing fiction is something I do reflexively. I used to paint, and I still would except that I don’t have the space at the moment, but I’m not a talented painter—it’s more therapy. My expression is writing fiction. Telling stories. And, I was a quiet child, not a big talker, and I think writing is another way of having my voice heard. If only by myself. I don’t know what “kept me going.” I don’t really think of it like that. A book with your name on it isn’t necessarily received in the world with great accolades and then you’ve arrived. Paul Collins once described to me the ephemeral nature of publishing a book. I guess what drives me is this deep desire to crystalize the beauty or poignancy or sublimity of our fragile experience in a perfect form—that’s what drives me. Of course I want my stories to be read and celebrated, but it’s the honing of the craft in order to produce a wonderful object, if you will, that makes me want to write fiction.
Propeller: This is your debut work of fiction. Propeller is a small, independent press. What has been most challenging for you about getting your debut book into the world?
Lopeman: Well, it’s just not reaching as many people coming from a small press. I’ve been in New York since September and there is a certain type of New Yorker who wants to know first thing who your publisher is, and if they aren’t familiar they immediately discount you because of the branding of the old publishing world. Which, by the way, is a slowly dying bastardization of what it represents to the old guard. And then there are the booksellers of course who also stick to the old formula. There are all of these vibrant small young publishing houses springing up these days—and it’s because they value literature and new voices instead of safely sticking to what they know sells. Or in other words, sticking to work that doesn’t require fresh thinking.
I read Francine Prose’s essay in the New York Review of Books about The Goldfinch, in which she argues that if Tartt’s book can win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, then America’s taste in literature has dampened markedly. I haven’t read The Goldfinch, so I can’t speak to Prose’s argument, but I think small publishers are in the business in order to give good work a chance, though in the shadow of massive publishing houses—but it’s a bit like alternative energy. We all know it’s better, but it’s easier to stick with big business energy. Just like it’s easier for bookstores to stick with big publishers—it’s only one order form to fill out instead of four.
Propeller: All of that aside, though, what has been best about publishing your first book of fiction?
Lopeman: I believe in my work.
Elizabeth Lopeman's writing on art and design has appeared in Sculpture, American Craft, FiberArts, and Bitch, and her fiction has appeared in Propeller and Drain. Trans Europe Express is her first book of fiction.