Lauren Groff, "Amaranth"
It’s December 18. Lauren Groff, author of Florida, can’t crack open a watermelon without wincing.
How would you describe your story?
LAUREN GROFF: This is a spare, slightly bleak story about gnawing hungers, and the denial and control of the body.
When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?
LG: I wrote it so long ago, for the (now sadly defunct) magazine Lucky Peach, that the person I was at that time is leagues away and nearly invisible against the horizon. It was a time of extraordinary intensity, I remember, and I wanted particularly to write about weird sex.
What kind of research went into this story?
LG: Very little research went into it, but I do remember that I was reading the all-time-great story writer Alice Munro straight through, and there was something about her energy that I was trying to pour into this story. As with most of my most important influences, Queen Alice is probably invisible here.
What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?
LG: There is nothing that a short story can't do; I think it's the most flexible, powerful of fictional forms. Great short stories have astonishing architecture and every line has to be as taut as poetry; there are things a bit looser in the novel, in general, and the architecture and the tightness of the line are a bit more relaxed there.
Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?
LG: I have a website that sorely needs updating: laurengroff.com. But I'd recommend going to your local independent bookstore or public library and ordering my books; I'm not personally interesting at all, but I would hope that my work is.
What's the best gift you've ever been given?
LG: There was a conspiracy between my first novel's advance, the editor who bought it, my husband who gave me his support, and the local university that has done everything in their power never to hire me, that gave me the gift of not having a day job. There were times that this gift looked more like a curse—in the U.S., health-care costs can cripple one, and I paid for an emergency C-section out of my pocket instead of via employer-based healthcare—but not having to go to an office or teach allows my books the time and freedom and naps and bouts of weeping and reading that they need to be written.
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