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Overview
Emotionally complex, edgy, and funny, the stories encompass a huge range of tone and feeling. The wife of a couple who have lost a child comforts her husband with an amazing act of tenderness. A man who's been shifting from place to place, always finding the same kind of people--sometimes the same people in various configurations--tries to locate himself in the universe. An intricate dance of adultery brings down a marriage. A housekeeper experiences a startling epiphany while looking into her freezer one hot summer night. The long, humorous roll of a couple's "four-night fight" finally explodes into happiness.
Beattie has often been called the chronicler of her generation, and these stories capture perfectly the moods and actions of our world since the seventies: people on the move, living in group houses, smoking too much dope; people settling down, splitting up, coming to terms.
Margaret Atwood said of a previous collection that "a new Beattie is almost like a fresh bulletin from the front: We snatch it up, eager to know what's happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man's-land known as interpersonal relations." The new stories have the same power. A family secret is revealed in a strange and puzzling act that becomes understood only many years later. In an AIDS ward, certain questions take on special significance. A hostile eight-year-old and his father's live-in girlfriend move in fits and starts toward détente.
In prose by turns laserlike and lyrical, these memorable, evocative stories authentically recall the details and feelings of their time. But the truths revealed are--as in all fiction of the first rank--timeless.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781101971246 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 07/15/2015 |
| Series: | Vintage Contemporaries |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 496 |
| File size: | 838 KB |
About the Author
Hometown:
Maine and Key West, FloridaDate of Birth:
September 8, 1947Place of Birth:
Washington, D.C.Education:
B.A., American University, 1969; M.A., University of Connecticut, 1970Interviews
On Friday, June 12th, the barnesandnoble.com Author Auditorium welcomed Ann Beattie, who joined us to chat about her latest collection of short stories, PARK CITY.
Moderator: Welcome to the Auditorium, Ann Beattie! We are so glad that you could join us tonight. How are you this evening?
Ann Beattie: Fine, thank you.
Paul from New York City: I know you have been writing for decades. What was the first story of yours that was published, and where did it appear? What was that feeling like to first see your work in print?
Ann Beattie: I think the first story of mine was in the Western Humanities Review in 1973, and it was thrilling, though the magazine is long lost. It is in a box of mine somewhere.
Scott from Brooklyn, NY: What motivated you to finally assemble a "best of" collection of your work? How did you decide which stories to include?
Ann Beattie: Actually, a friend suggested to me, because of the number of stores I had, that it might be a good idea to do a selected stories. Knopf thought it would be better to do a new and collected stories, but they gave me my choice. I wrote an essay about what it is like that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review for May 24-30, 1998. You can look that up. It probably is on the Web.
Teresa from Hartford, CT: I like the characters in your stories because I feel like they could be neighbors of mine and I am eavesdropping on an important conversation or event. For instance, in your new story "The 4 Night Fight." Where would you say you draw your inspiration for characters? Do they resemble people that you have met or loved?
Ann Beattie: In that particular case, when I finished writing it I read it to my husband in bed, and after reading it aloud he said it is only fair that the husband get a comeback.
Colleen from Portland, ME: Why do you think that you are not primarily a novelist? What attracts you to the short story form?
Ann Beattie: I don't know that it is a question so much of attraction, because that would make it sound like I think primarly in form. I think it is more a quesiton of sensiblity. In the same way one painter would have an eye for color and another would have an eye for composition. It seems it is something innate that is your predilection.
Monica from New York City: Are you ever frightened that the stories will just stop coming to you?
Ann Beattie: Oh, sure. I can't really think of a writer that wouldn't admit to that. It doesn't help the anxiety not to admit that. It is not so much a thing coming to you like you have had an epiphany. I think you worry as a writer that things would slop by you or pass you by. It isn't a quesiton of pure inspiration. The aspect of hard work is up to you, and you can worry about getting lazy.
Greg S. from Toronto, Canada: I heard that your first story was published in The New Yorker when you were just 25, and that you wrote your early stories in about three hours! Is this true? Also, do you still produce at such a rapid pace?
Ann Beattie: Yes. No.
Sharon from Charlottesville,VA: How would you distinguish your eight new stories from the rest of the collection? How long did it take you to write these?
Ann Beattie: I think that -- not to say they or better or worse -- sylistically they are somewhat different. The title story is quite a bit longer, with a lot of exposition. It is just more articulated and fully developed on the page. One distinction, in my very early work a lot of things happen between the lines and off the page, and that is not as true now. And the rough draft of "Park City" took about three days to write.
Carol from Boston, MA: I just started reading PARK CITY and love your new stories. Especially "Going Home with Uccello." After I read this story, I wondered if it is true that girlfriends tend to overanalyze their boyfriends' faults or put them under microscopes when they are deciding whether to commit to them? In your story, the main character second-guesses her boyfriend and his intentions throughout. What do you think? What were you intending to say in this story? Thanks.
Ann Beattie: Well, she is understood in the story pretty well. On one level the woman has little more than paranoia. It is not that I am trying to generalize about the human condition. I am really writing about that particular character or moment. Not to be confused with an essay I would write on the topic. That is not what a short story is. It is not a disguised essay.
Hannah from Boston, MA: Do you think a common cord or sentiment links your stories even though you wrote them over so many years? Were there issues you kept coming back to? Did you want to address anything different in the eight new stories? Thanks!
Ann Beattie: I didn't want to address anything different in the eight new stores. After you have been writing for a long time, your personal preoccupations become part of your stories. I don't think there is a commom core in the sense you say. Any writer only knows what they know. All the stories in the time periods are about things that have puzzled me in some sort. The common denominator might be what motivated me to write the story, but I don't see a great unity in them.
Paul from San Francisco, CA: "Second Question" is a great story. Did you title it after you wrote it? It is so true that someone like Ned would still believe "it can't happen to me" even after watching a friend die. AIDS can hit anyone, it seems, these day. What were you trying to say in this story?
Ann Beattie: I never answer part 2. What I was trying to say was there in the story. There is no story unless it was what I have said. I have never titled anything before I wrote it, including this one.
Greg from New York City: Writer Andre Dubus said that he feels that it is harder than ever to get a first novel published now. What do you think of the publishing scene these days? Would you advise authors to try small publishers first?
Ann Beattie: That is a difficult question for me. I was so out of the mainstream when I was published, I just wouldn't know. It has never been easy to get a first novel published. I would say that in number the publishers are publishing the same as they ever did, maybe more. You may have more competition among your fellow writers. The problem is partly caused by a middling amount of expertise. There are many competent writers. When I first started I didn't have as much compeition. If you looked at the number in the Iowa Writers Workshop -- I would bet the number would be a lot higher. One of the qualifications are you are just up against stiff compeition. If the publishers want the best they can publish -- it is their pick. They have the power.
Scott from San Francisco, CA: What would you say is the greatest challenge of being a writer? Would you advise someone to go down that route today?
Ann Beattie: Well, to answer the second part first. If you are really going to be a writer you aren't going to seriously consider whether you are going to do it or not. It is so much a question of your own personality. Any writer who is doing so today isn't doing it because of someone's good advice. For the first question, I think it is probably a question of proportion. That is, trying to make sure I am not too subtle. That enough is on the page but at the same time not overstating anything or going on too long. You have to rely on yourself for this, but you are not all readers. Another challenge is not to think whether it really matters in this culture.
Simon from Athens, GA: How do your stories come to you? Do you jot down ideas or thoughts and then sit on them for a while, or do you just sit down and write?
Ann Beattie: One of the most interesting things about writing the stories is that once I do store things away I realize I use information I didn't know was there. I usually start with a visual image. That is a way of orienting myself to a story. I have to see it before I can hear it. If I have set the scene so that it is evocative enough, then usually it reveals itself to me, rather than me projecting onto it.
Greta from Wichita, KS: I know this is a difficult question to answer, but if you were to say you had one strong point as a writer -- although I love all your work and believe they are all strong! -- which element comes easiest or most naturally to you? For example, character, plot, description, setting?
Ann Beattie: Dialogue. I don't think it is my best, but other people do. For me what gets the story going is strong visuals. I usualy stumble not in dialogue but in narrative. If I had to say, I would say the tone of voice is my strongest suit. I don't think I sound like ohter writers.
Stephanie from Park Slope, Brooklyn: What is your title story, "Park City," about? Why did you choose to name this collection after that particular story?
Ann Beattie: I let Knopf title it. I came up with good suggestions. phrases from all of the work that had not been used as a title per se, and I sent a list of about a dozen. I finally spoke to my editor and asked what would the publisher like to call my collection, and she said PARK CITY. That was that.
Pamela from Washington, DC: I really love your prose and find your stories very insightful, especially regarding people's behavior and speech. The plots are often unsettling, though. Do you think a story is more effective if it makes a social commentary?
Ann Beattie: It may be evasive, but I don't think these stores out beforehand. If something doesn't happen in the course of the story that changes it, it doesn't get written about at all. All of the stories are like a train that has gotten derailed.
Reagan from Miami, FL: What do you consider your best story or novel and why?
Ann Beattie: I think ANOTHER YOU is my best novel. Certainly the most ambitious. It is complicated in terms of psychology, and the from it takes is complicated. That's from a tech standpoint. I have always been interested in people's secret lives. It wasn't till I wrote ANOTHER YOU that I realized I could reveal things that the characters didn't know. I want to write a book as though the characters themselves might have presented it, but at the same time becuase you the reader know more than the characters, all you can see is that they are telling the most true story they know, but you know perfectly well it isn't the real true story.
Elise from Brooklyn, NY: What are you working on now? Any new stories on the way? Thanks for this marvelous collection!
Ann Beattie: I am working on another novel, but I don't want to talk about it in advance, because like a lot of other writers I think that it brings bad luck.
Samantha from New York City: I see that you and Andre Dubus are signing together at the New York Barnes & Noble. Are you touring together also?
Ann Beattie: No, not really. We have two or three bookstore appearances together.
Nadine from Houston, TX: Do you think the literary environment has changed drastically since you first began writing in the '70s? How?
Ann Beattie: If you mean the culture as a whole, yes, I do think so. I don't think that the audience for serious fiction has disappeared, but I am convinced that there are different evolutionary stages in life. While reading is intesting to poeple in their 20s and 30s, they may not be interested later on. If you are talking about serious literature I think it is imperiled. Also serious critics who really can illuminate. Clearly this is no longer the age of Diana Trilling or Edmund Wilson or Jacques Barzun. There are many people who aspire to that position, but I don't think we do have as many Alfred Kazins in our midst.
Scott from Miami, FL: Do you read the reviews of your books? How do they affect you?
Ann Beattie: I always did read the reviews, and while I have had bad reviews, Michiko Kakutani's review of my last novel (in The New York Times) was so ugly that it has put me off reviews. I now feel I will look very quickly, and if my husband says it is essentially OK I will read it quickly.
Moderator: Thank you for joining us to chat tonight, Ann Beattie. It has been a pleasure, and we of course look forward to having you with us again sometime! Before you go, do you have anything else you would like to say to your online audience?
Ann Beattie: No, no general benediction. Thanks.