Curtis Smith: Your stories are often intensely real--detailing aspects of everyday life--yet many contain elements of a more fractured reality and looming elements of menace--UFO's, cold war Russians and Armageddon. What is it about this balance of ordinary and humble lives set against backdrops which contain hints of the extraordinary (which is often presented in very lyrical ways) that appeals to you?
Susan Woodring: I love the contrast I get by juxtaposing the commonplace and the unknown. I especially love how including a UFO obsession can make an “ordinary” housewife crackle with absurdity, or how the mention of the end of the world amid the small yet significant slights in a marriage creates subtext and an undercurrent of faceless, untouchable fears. Plus, I think real life is like that, simultaneously ho-hum and bizarre, and each person, no matter how ordinary he/she seems at first glance, contains these incredible glints of the extraordinary.
I also think that my including a bit of the otherworldly is a kind of marker in my growth as a writer. When I first began writing, I was really interested in portraying the poignant in the ordinary. My favorite story was Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing.” I was so impressed with how that story focuses on and yet also transcends a simple household chore, how subtly and artfully the ironing gives stage to the tortured uncertainties of parenthood. My first attempts at writing mimicked this method. Yet, as I write and fail and write and fail some more, I come to recognize the value of a story that is thoroughly imagined, that is not afraid to step a bit beyond itself, to call on the vast oddities of life as a human and life in this great, unknowable universe.
I so admire how in your stories, Curt, you call on every sense we possess to erect the worlds of your characters and their perceptions. Your stories go well beyond visual imagery to portray the physical realities of the worlds of your characters and beyond—we are often taken to a dreamlike, almost surreal place that is, through your detailing, utterly real. Many of your stories, such as “Killer,” “My Totally Awesome Funeral,” and “The Babies Cries,” press against the boundaries of reality yet don’t go all the way surreal. What advantages do you find in treading the line between realistic fiction and surrealism?
Curtis Smith: I think my answer would mirror yours in that I believe that we, as writers, are fascinated by many elements of surrealism—the lure of images we can’t fully explain, the irrational elements which both hex our lives and also instill them with a type of haphazard beauty. I believe that just beyond our powers of comprehension waits a whole inexplicable vein waiting to be tapped, one full of deep textures and pathos and humor.
The cover echoes the time period of the early 60s that plays a role in a number of stories. What do you find so fascinating about this time period?
Susan Woodring: I like to play with historical perspective and the way each generation sees itself and its world. The 60s and the other Cold War decades, with their ever-looming threat of advancing Soviet technology, mirror many of our own post-911 fears. Also, I think it’s interesting to work with dramatic irony from an historic angle. In my story, “Morning Again,” for example, the characters set out to view the Challenger launch and the reader, of course, knows the tragedy that lies ahead. The story, then, is about how witnessing it together will affect the characters’ relationships and their future as a family.
We all have connotations of certain events in our country’s history. The JFK assassination, for instance, was one of our most frightening national tragedies since it was such a surprise, and since we still, to this day, debate over who was and wasn’t involved in the crime. In that way, the assassination is as mysterious and as ominous today as it was then. I think that event, even for those of us who weren’t yet born when it happened, carries such a weight of uncertainty and the idea that one just never knows who or where one’s enemy is. I love the atmosphere of fear and the unknown that such events evoke.
A few of your stories are also set in the somewhat recent past, during the post-World War II years and in the late 50s. I notice that you often feature iconic figures: Godzilla, the small town sports hero, the Barbie cheerleader, the wise old college professor. What connotations do you think readers associate with these figures? How do these connotations influence the way you portray them or the weight you feel they carry in your work?
Curtis Smith: You’ve got to be careful. I never put grandparents in a story if I can help it—they bring too much weight, too many implied notions. There are types and then there are stereotypes. If I can settle into a type, a creature deserving of their conventions, that’s cool because it gives me a chance to plant the most familiar and innocuous seeds and then grow something new—or at least to portray a soul colored by my own sensibilities. I’m fascinated by a beauty’s darker turn or a coward’s chance to make things right.
One reoccurring image I discovered in Springtime on Mars was that of women--especially mothers and adolescent girls--in some sort of peril or moral crisis. Is this a conscious decision? Why?
Susan Woodring: Actually, it wasn’t a conscious decision at all, but then, my subconscious usually has the biggest say when it comes to my fiction-writing. That is not to say that I don’t think hard about my work, but that’s mostly in the revising stage. When it comes to getting a first draft down, so much of it comes from a place in my brain that I have very little control over.
Of course, it’s no accident that mothers and adolescent girls figure so predominately in my work—I’ve almost always been one or the other myself. A lot of what I write in my fiction is just about me working out my own issues. I remember being, as a teenager, vaguely fearful and not even certain just what it was I feared. In those days, it was a matter of figuring out how to behave in different situations, what was expected of me, and balancing those expectations against what I truly believed to be my rightful place in this world. As a mother, I have a whole different set of fears: fears of my own failings as a mother, fears of what sacrifices I have to make to mother well, and, then, a more general fear that is somehow linked to what a magnificent blessing it is to be a mother—to hold such a treasured gift is to also hold the possibility of losing that gift. This is not to say that I go around worrying constantly about my kids’ safety, but instead, I think mothers (and fathers) are maybe just a bit more aware of the dangers in this world. Also, the supreme irony and grace of parenting is this: the whole point of it is to do just that—to lose. Every lesson, every experience is about their growing up and moving into their own lives. My children, who are still very young, make these itty-bitty steps away from me every single day. It is both a joy and a heartache to watch.
Curtis Smith: My perspective has been altered by parenthood as well. I can’t decide if I view life now as something more fragile and dark—the lens through which I view the safety of my child—or as someplace brimming with an almost suffocating atmosphere of joy and wonder. And on a selfish note—I know fatherhood has made me a much better writer.
Susan Woodring: I wonder about how you feel about this balance of conscious and subconscious choices in fiction-writing, or whether you ever even make these kinds of distinctions. I notice that many of the stories in The Species Crown feature men who are damaged, to various degrees, from their own past actions and choices. In “Murder,” “The Real, True-Life Story of Godzilla!” and the titular novella, I found characters who are seeking, with different success rates, some form of redemption. Do you set out to write a redemption-themed story or do you find your characters naturally seek out new selves?
Curtis Smith: I love redemption. Not total redemption, but measured redemption, realistic redemption—redemption complete with flaws and regrets. I don’t think I always set out to write such stories, but that’s how many turn out. I think many of my characters find a type of salvation in accepting their demons, in understanding or—better yet—trying to understand the more elusive truths surrounding them.
A number of your stories end not with a tidy resolution but with what I think are rather beautiful and lyrical images—a woman surrounded by a bee swarm, a girl suspended in mid-air above a pool with everything important to her and her family hanging on this weightless and frozen moment, a woman backing out of a reunion that might bring her some closure. What do you look for in an ending image? What kind of weight do you expect it to carry?
Susan Woodring: Often, I’ll write a story with an ending image in mind. That was true of the swarming bees and the girl frozen above the swimming pool. It was especially true of the bees—I had this picture in my mind of a woman in a nightgown following a buzzing cloud of bees through a maze of corn, and I just couldn’t get away from it until I wrote the story. I hope these images do more to open the story up, allow for some resonance, than a more traditional clincher type of ending. I’d rather strike a chord of truth and duck out in a hurry than stick around and tell too much. Part of this comes from my distaste for the obvious. Part of it comes from my not wanting to completely unfold the mysteries of the universe; why not leave a little unknown?
I do think, though—I hope—that I leave the reader with a clue of what might happen next. For example, with the bee swarm, the woman is finally crying—previously, she’d been very distant-acting—and her husband, who has not known how to comfort her, is rubbing her back. I think that leaves them on a slight upswing even if all of the dots haven’t been connected. In many cases, also, I think the ending image demonstrates the sort of release the characters—and the story—are truly seeking, even if all of their questions are not answered. And, in life, I don’t think we ever really grasp life’s truths. I wonder who would want to? What would life be like if we all were self-realized, utterly satisfied people? The death of wanting to know, I think, would be worse than knowing.
Curtis Smith: I love the ending image, too. They’re the little lyrical bows we use to wrap up our stories. If we’ve done our job, we’ve given our readers a glimpse into another world and then ended it with a type of freeze frame shot that both distills the past and hints at the future. That’s one of the things I love about the form, especially in terms of our humanness—our lives contain only a few sweeping narratives worthy of novels, but there are countless stories all around us.
Susan Woodring: One of my favorite aspects of the stories in The Species Crown is how your endings are often a melding of the figurative and literal aspects of the story. Here’s my favorite, from “Beneath the Net:” “…your naked, pressed-together hearts beating like the wings of the sparrow she once saved, a creature desperate to leave the false trappings of this earth and return to the sky.” How do you plan for an ending like this that brings together the tangible and intangible—almost unspeakable—elements of the story? Or, do you plan? Any chance such a well-crafted, artful kind of ending just happens in the natural flow of story-writing?
Curtis Smith: When I write a story, I need an ending image in mind, a kind of anchor I use to plumb the depths. Along the way, I often discover new things, organic risings that rightfully lure me from my initial notions. I love the picture-in-words thing to cement a story’s ending. Any reader who’s stuck with me that long deserves a little ending flurry. Sometimes people ask me what happened next—to which I honestly answer, not trying to be flippant or coy—I have no idea. To borrow a cliché from the sports world, I try to leave it all out on the field, and when the story’s over, it’s over.
I admire the way you handle faith in Springtime on Mars -- in many stories it's an underlying yet quiet thread. In “The Core of Planet Earth” it takes a more central role, yet you handle it with an admirable subtly, the message carried in images and symbols rather than dialogue. What role does faith play in your work? How does your personal faith influence your fictional sensibilities?
Susan Woodring: Generally speaking, I’m suspicious of any kind of an agenda or a “special message” in a work of fiction. I worry that my imposing a theme or, even worse, a moral on a story will trample the life out of it. I’ve seen it happen in other works. This goes for any sort of moral or agenda: religious, political, environmental, social, whatever. I don’t want to write preachy fiction. That said, I do think whatever a writer’s beliefs are, they will—and should—seep into a story in the natural exchange of conscious and subconscious choices that is central to the story-writing process.
However, as I grow as a writer and as a Christian, I am finding ways to include intentional examinations of faith and God that feel sincere and that is, as you said, reasonably subtle. I’d rather open up questions about God than answer them directly. And, I’d rather show the true-life struggles of the believer than make-believe everything is easy for me as a Christian. I know who my Savior is, but that doesn’t mean I have everything else figured out. It doesn’t even mean I completely understand the mystery of salvation. In fact, knowing something is the opposite of having faith. The Bible says God is full of mysterious, unknowable ways, and our own hearts are deceitful. I believe sincere and constant questioning and examining are important facets to the real soul-and-heart-life of a Christian—this practice of wondering and coming to awe bodes me well in the art of fiction-writing as well. I think a good story asks more questions about life than it answers. A single spark of truth or insight is so much more illuminating when the writer doesn’t get too excited about it, but rather practices a bit of restraint.
I am struck by how organically and imaginatively the characters in your stories come to moments of stark understanding, often stating outright the specific glories and agonies that we each face as wearers of “the species crown.” For example, the ending note in “The Baby Cries” is a gorgeous observation on the nature of longing and loss, and there are several moments in The Species Crown where the narrator notes the materialistic trappings in our culture and the mind-numbing inanity of life. I love how he, in the course of his journey, comes to find a bit of hope in both himself and in the world. I wonder how you see your role as a fiction-writer when it comes to exposing certain truths or commonalities in the human experience. Do you see these moments of understanding to be in service to the story, or is the story there to frame these moments of understanding?
Curtis Smith: I have little business exposing universal truths. My life is a benign mess—I’m perpetually late, often forgetful or absorbed in thought. That said, I do see us humans as much more alike than different. We long to be loved and accepted. We desire to know and be known. I believe hope lies without and within—but we have to make some sort of connection between the two. I think this struggle for connection and understanding makes for the most illuminating and touching forms of fiction.
