Author2Author: Kevin Guilfoile & Tom Morris

Longtime readers may recall that I shared a college class with Kevin Guilfoile, the author of the quasi-futuristic thriller Cast of Shadows. When he and I were thinking about who we might convince to do an Author2Author with him, we turned to a former Notre Dame icon with whom both of us were familiar: former philosophy professor Tom Morris. Kevin actually got to study under Tom; I was routed into another class, but I heard about his guitar-wielding pedagogical technique all the same. Tom eventually left academia to work as a corporate advisor, but he still keeps his hand with the books—his most recent work is as the co-editor (with his son, Matt) of Superheroes and Philosophy, an anthology that combines insights from contemporary philosophers and comic book creators into the themes and concerns underlying some of today’s leading comics titles. Because Kevin’s novel is also a blend of pop culture tropes and philosophical reflection, the three of us figured there’d be plenty of interesting things to talk about…I hope you’ll agree.

Kevin Guilfoile: In the terrific first essay of Superheroes and Philosophy, DC Comics’ Mark Waid describes the task of coming up with a more psychologically complex Superman for the 21st century, and his deliberations are fascinating. How was Superman affected by the knowledge that his home planet and his family had been destroyed? How was he influenced by the parenting style of Jonathan and Martha Kent? What about Kryptonian nature vs. human nurture? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

But isn’t there something of a conflict in these stories (in all modern stories, I think, but especially in comic book myths) between philosophy and psychology? Superman, after all, is a classic existential protagonist: It is not his extraordinary powers that make him a superhero, but his extraordinary choice–against great temptation–to use these powers for good. Hasn’t the example of Superman always been that the person we become is a choice? That, even though my subconscious substitutes food for affection, I refuse to eat that cupcake because the person I choose to be is two belt notches thinner? (The Kierkegaard Diet Plan! Eat that, Atkins!) If we replace free will with post-Freudian analysis, Superman becomes a more nuanced character, but is he still a real superhero to us?

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8 July 2005 | author2author |

Author2Author: Colleen Curran & Martha O’Connor (Bonus Round)

Colleen Curran: As a fellow first novelist, do you read your reviews? I’m finding this such a strange part of the process. I told my publicist, only send me the good ones, I don’t need to read the bad ones. And I like that so far. Luckily, the reviews have been really good. But I still don’t really find it a pleasant experience. And then there’s Amazon, B&N, etc. I think I’ve got some religious nuts on my tail or something on Amazon, so I’ve been avoiding reading that as much as possible. But my coworkers like to tease me with stuff they get off Amazon. Like yesterday at a board meeting, my boss, also a writer, was chanting, “Sinful thoughts! You write sinful thoughts!” I hit him and then we went for a beer. What’s your experience been like?

Martha O’Connor: I don’t read reviews, other than the quotes my publicist sends me for my site. I decided not to read them a long time ago, after I read the New York Times assessment of one of my favorite novels, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: “There are two equally serious reasons why it isn’t worth any adult reader’s attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.” To me, Lolita is one of the most brilliant novels ever written. It showed me what a novel could be. Of course, that review is not about Lolita, but about how much it upset the reviewer. Recently Claire Tristram, author of the penetrating, beautiful and provocative novel After, said something really interesting to me: “Any time you write about sex and violence in any context beyond the set-in-stone genre boundaries, you’re going to get weird reactions from people, and those reactions always have far more to do with them than with your book.”

My job’s to write. So other than the reviews that get passed to me for use on the website, or ones that come my way by mistake, I don’t read them and am keeping my nose in my own new book. One thing’s for sure… I’m getting a lot more work done that way!

Did you write your novel in chronological order from start to finish, or did you write pieces of it and shuffle them together later? What are the benefits to using this approach?

Colleen Curran: I’ve been writing short stories since I was fifteen and always wanted to write a novel, but the task seemed so huge and overwhelming, I had no idea how to start. I’d also been submitting short stories for publication ever since I was fifteen, but with no luck. I got rejected everywhere. Ten years later, I was ready to throw in the towel. I had a series of dead-end day jobs, but finally landed a good job where I was an online journalist. I was ready to quit fiction writing altogether and just write nonfiction. But I still kept sending out my short stories. In the first month at my new job, one of my stories got picked by Jane for their fiction fontest. Then, the same editor recommended me for a literary anthology, The Dictionary of Failed Relationships, where I was included with some of my favorite writers, like Susan Minot and Pam Houston. I finally felt like I had a fighting chance. After years of feeling completely outside of the publishing world, with no connections, no positive feedback from anyone, maybe I finally, finally had a chance.

Whores on the Hill started as a series of short shorts. I was a short story writer, so I felt like I could handle that. Also, my writing time was from five a.m. until seven thirty a.m. every morning before work, so the short form also suited my schedule. I didn’t write the chapters in chronological order. I was writing them all over the place. But it was fun and I was really enjoying myself. Ten months later, I had a draft done. I started looking for an agent. My dream agent, someone I couldn’t believe even asked to see the manuscript in the first place, read it in full and said the writing was “spectacular” but declined to take it because, he said, “well, it has no plot.”

I was devastated. I knew I needed to revise, but I had no idea how. I sat down and cut out 100 pages. I wrote 150 more. Any scene that didn’t move the plot forward? I cut it. Any scene that didn’t change or illuminate character? Reworked or rewritten. I changed characters, I changed the climax, I rewrote the ending seven times. I revised for six months, the hardest thing I’d ever done. I was miserable and stuck one minute, then elated and joyful when I’d make a breakthrough. Finally, I sent it back to the dream agent, prayed and crossed my fingers. He called, took the book and sold it in a week.

26 June 2005 | author2author |