Interviews — The Rupture

Helen Rubinstein's fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Ninth Letter, Salon, Salt Hill, Witness, and elsewhere. She is a member of Brooklyn's Trout Family of writers, and an MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where she is working on a book.

Her story, "Two Sisters," appeared in Issue Forty-One of The Collagist

Here, she speaks with interviewer Elizabeth Deanna Morris about doubling, perspective, and sibling fights.

Could you talk about writing “Two Sisters”?

My younger sister was visiting me in Brooklyn, and we got into a fight. The fight was about an omelet, but it was also about something else, and she accused me of always starting this same fight. While she was crying, I huffed off to my bedroom and realized she was right. That’s when I began to write “Two Sisters”—while weeping from anger and shame.

After that, “Two Sisters” became this fun place to return to when I was tired of whatever else I was supposed to be writing. It was more language-playful than the other work I was doing, and more image-playful, too. I played with it until I liked it (not always the case: often, I seem to play with my writing until I can’t stand it anymore). I don’t think my sister and I have had the fight since.

In “Two Sisters,” you do something really brilliant with point of view. At times, the reader experiences all three main perspectives,the I, the you, and the they. I love how this makes the reader feel that the narrator is telling them a story, in person, though it’s not just any story, but instead, a story that the reader should already know (“Now, you must have heard about the cold snap.”) Could you talk about incorporating this style into this story?

Thanks for describing that so kindly! I’m not sure exactly how deliberate it was—I don’t remember thinking about it before it happened. But as a reader and as a writer, I definitely think it’s fun to begin a story from one angle—here, omniscient third-person—and then introduce a kind of pinhole to see out of. I think of the “I” and “you” as pinholes: reminding us of their existence (which also reminds us that this is a story being told) anchors the third-person narrative in a sort of social space.

I also think of it as a way of breaking the claustrophobia of the third-person. I think I was trying to do something similar with tense in the first section, jumping around to break the claustrophobia of the present.

The Two Sisters seem to me to be the same (if iterations), in all of their appearances (even, in fact, when the crying pair meets with the laughing pair). I—and perhaps this is my own bias, since I am a sister—could even see the I/you interactions as two sisters. Could you talk about how these doublings occur? (Or, if you believe they occur at all?)

I do believe they occur! That was one of the best discoveries in writing this—how, though the specific details or settings would change, something in the sisters’ relationship remained fundamentally the same. The relationship is imbalanced, but it’s not clear (to me, anyway) exactly how, and neither of the sister-individuals is ever very clearly defined. I guess I was hoping that, by looking at the two sisters from so many angles, I might somehow hone in on two-sisters-ness, so that the relationship itself becomes the central character.

I didn’t know at the time I was writing this that Lydia Davis has written stories titled “Two Sisters” and “Two Sisters (II).” The fact that these exist seems to confirm the archetype, even if her stories are about slightly more specific sisters.

Could you give us a few reading recommendations?

Helen Phillips’s And Yet They Were Happy is an inspiration. Nicholas Muellner’s photo-essays Amnesia Pavilion and The Photograph Commands Indifference are mind-alteringly great. And Jillian Weise’s The Amputee’s Guide to Sex reminds me that good writing begins with having something to say. Joan Wickersham’s The News from Spain, Miranda July’s It Chooses You, and Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? most recently delighted me.

Also, I always recommend rereading Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street.

What other writings can we expect from you?

An alternate, semi-collaborative version of “Two Sisters” called “Sisters Trout” is actually coming out in Trout Family Almanac from Papercut Press sometime this fall. “Sisters Trout” was an experiment in taking all of another writer’s editorial advice as blindly as possible. The Almanac is a collaboration between a group of fiction writers from Brooklyn College’s MFA program called the Trout Family. All of the stories are loosely linked, and it should be juicy fun.

I’ve also got an essay coming out in Slice magazine’s Issue 13, and an essay just out in Best Women’s Travel Writing Vol. 9, reprinted from Witness. I wish I weren’t too superstitious to talk about less-certain expectations! But I am.

Justin Lawrence Daugherty, winner of the 2012 Gigantic Sequins Flash Fiction contest, runs Sundog Lit. "Nothing Out There to Save You" is a story from a novella-in-progress about Aurelio the Lizard-Boy. Another story from this novella is forthcoming from Metazen. Justin sometimes posts things to his blog at justindaugherty.wordpress.com.

His story "Nothing Out There to Save You" appears in Issue Forty-Two of The Collagist.

Here, Justin Lawrence Daugherty speaks to interviewer Joseph Scapellato about myth, comics, and the use of fragments in fiction.

1. Where did “Nothing Out There to Save You” begin for you?

The story began with the idea of Aurelio putting coins over his own eyes. This action has always intrigued me and it occurred to me that this was a great place to use it. All of the initial lizard-boy stories, this one included, started out as individual tales about this boy growing up with lizard features in an otherwise normal world. It quickly changed from that, but this story somewhat reflects that notion. From the coins-over-the-eyes thing, the man being asked to take the boy away was a natural thing and, then, of course, came the conflict within the man himself, asked to do this thing he might not be able to do.

2. Can you tell us about the bigger project that this piece is part of, and where/how this piece fits into it? (Did this piece play a particular role in the drafting of the project, overall?)

This piece is part of a larger novella, something that's been drafted and is awaiting my axe. The novella is an attempt at mythology creation, in a way, and also at analyzing relationships between the lizard-boy and his mother and (later) with a father figure. The first part of the book focuses on the mother-son arc and how that grows and becomes chaotic, even while (I hope) there's a thread of tenderness throughout the upheaval. This story is part of that first “book” within the larger work. This particular story acted as a way to give the lizard-boy his own bit of characterization, to move him away from the previously-connected story to the mother.

3. In several places, you make use of vivid sentence fragments:

The thrashing of a child, the instinct for life. The going-under, the near-death of almost-drowning. A throng of salmon, forming one solid body, under the boy, carrying him to the banks.

The coins on his eyes. The waking in the night, the coins falling, the man pulling him from his bed.

For me, the stacking of these fragments creates a montage-like effect—they cover a lot of time, quickly, and give what happens the feeling of having happened many times. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this technique—what were/are your goals with it? (And did it originate as a conscious/unconscious emulation of visual mediums [film, comic books]?)

I've always been intrigued by the use of fragments in fiction. Annie Proulx was the first author I noticed using the technique. I think reading more recent stuff by Robert Kloss and Matt Bell really influenced my use of this stacking of fragments, this attempt to create movement and, like you said, a recurring feeling, that this has happened before. With much of the writing early in the book, I was interested in a sort of dream creation, a sort of film-like experience where the action of the story moved as in a comic book frame (as you mention) or in a film.

It's funny that you mention comic books. As I got farther and farther in the drafting, the concept I had of the book began to take on more of this idea of a comic book narrative. I actually contacted established comic book artists about illustrating parts of it (with no response). This was after I'd been using the fragments and stacking, though, but the influence was always there.

4. As a reader, I really love the Aurelio-mother relationship—although she keeps hiring men to get rid of him, she’s “always lighting up” when he returns. It seems to me that there’s a mythic grounding to this—the abandoned baby that survives, that finds its way back to its parents. Was the mother-Aurelio relationship different in earlier drafts? In what ways did it surprise you as it developed?

I think the mother-Aurelio relationship really is the most important in the book. It was difficult to balance both the terror the mother experiences in relation to her child and the love she cannot shake. There's definitely a mythical grounding in this. So much of what I put into this book I approached with trying to create or emulate mythologies (whether ancient, in comic books, etc.). The conflicting approaches of the mother toward her son actually came right away in the early drafts. I wrote about this woman hiring men to kill her son, but quickly wanted her to have an overriding sympathetic quality, something that would ultimately salvage the relationship. What surprised me was the balance there and how natural I felt the mother's response to be – both of revulsion and love. It's extreme, of course, and I obviously know nothing of motherhood, but it seemed to me that any parent has moments of extreme love and then temporary annoyance or fear or disappointment or just conflict with their children.

5. What other writing projects are you working on right now?

I'm working on reworking this novella to be a grander, more “epic” thing, in a way. I am slowly working on a chapbook about an earthquake and the plague it unleashes, all set as the backdrop for a failing relationship between husband and wife. Always working on short stories. I have this novel thing rattling around in my head, too. Perhaps I'll finish something here soon.

6. It’s the summer! What knock-out writing have you been enjoying recently? Are there any upcoming releases you're excited about?

It is! I just completed a near-cross-country book tour and picked up a bunch of great stuff. Just finished Dylan Nice's Other Kinds the other day, which blew me away. So quiet and spare, and yet so fierce and heart-wrenching. I go back to Delaney Nolan's work constantly – she's a writer who's young and ferocious and unafraid and is really doing great work. Matt Bell's new novel is there and I'm working slowly through it, chewing on bits and pieces. Lindsay Hunter's new book. Laura van den Berg's. So much good stuff. I could talk about new books all day, forever. Fun Camp by Gabe Durham. I keep saying I'm going to finally go read Moby Dick. Soon.