Guide

Lidia Gualdoni - When did you write these tales? And where did you get your inspiration?

Patricia Duncker - I have always been interested in writing tales - that is addressing mythic characters, structures, classical fairy tales, especially after I read Angela Carter’s collection -Fireworks- published back in 1974. I began writing the first two in response to a commission. I was asked to write a tale taken from Ovid. Stalker is about the Rape stories in Metamorphoses and Sophia Walters Shaw is a radical take on the story of Pluto and Proserpina. I wrote them all between 1997 and 2002.

- I am interested in your writing: how did you work with the ancient classical texts like Metamorphoses?

I studied Latin and Greek at university and know the texts well. Ovid is a crucial author in the English tradition. He was very influential in the Renaissance. And we have had some recent smashing translations by writers like Ted Hughes. I love the energy and modernity of his work. And the fact that he frightened the Emperor. So he’s a writer I read - and find very inspiring.

- Don’t you think it would be a shame if some reader could not understand - and appreciate - this copiousness of your works?

I try to write in layers - I don’t care which layer the reader enjoys! Some – all ? It doesn’t matter. The reader is a guiest in the writers’text. I want my readers to feel welcome and at home. I cannot bear being patronised as a reader- so over explanation is right out.

- Did you choose and put your tales in order according any principle? It seems to me that they are arranged from the most “bloody” to the most amazing and ironic (even if I feared the worst till the last page of “My Emphasis”).

You’re right. The tales go from dark to light. So that the reader who reads them in order will gradually escape the dark world. The hinge story is ‘Moving’ which ends with an apotheosis. And I wanted My Emphasis to be a story about violence against women that was in fact a comic farce!

- At the level of the plots, sex and death are the thread that links all these tales and I recognise other basic ingredients of your works (like live and work in France and Germany). But, linguistically speaking, there is a great variety of tones, points of view and literary codes. Do you agree?

Yes, that’s true. One of my ambitions was to startle the reader with the variety of work possible - even while using first person narrative. I wanted the reader to find it hard to believe that the same person had written all those stories.

- Compared to a novel, which elements characterise a short story?

A short story or a tale should work like a ballad or a dream. The multiplying ambiguities of extended fiction are not there. Characters have no back story. They step out of a void and vanish into it again. Short fiction may be hard to read because of this element of shock.A short tale is written to be read in one sitting. It should - if it is effective- assault the senses. Then remain – like a string taste or an echo. A novel and its characters will go with you through a period of your life. A short story or a tale is a short sharp shock.

- Don’t you think that, sometimes, there is an ambiguity, in tales or short stories, that makes readers give an interpretation different from the writer’s one?

Reading is a radical, democratic process. If a reader has another interpretation it doesn’t matter. Who knows. They may be right. Or more accurate.The reader has to be free to inhabit the book. Obviously some interpretations are simply perverse! But then another reader will come along. And disagree.

- In literature, as in the real life, sex is often linked to death: which is, in your opinion, the reason of this matching?

Disaster! Why on earth should good sex be destructive? And I absolutely refuse the Wagnerian paradigm of death as the ultimate orgasmic union. As in Tristan and Isolde. I wanted my tales to subvert this idea- which is very deeply rooted in our culture. So the tales are sinister, satirical.

- Which female characters did you love most, or did you feel as the closest to you?

In my stories? I am very fond of the character of Henry ( Henrietta) in My Emphasis. She’s a lone wolf but she loves her theatre company. I liked her mad situation with the neighbours and her friendship with Mathilde. The female characters I admire most are inventive, comic. The one that scared me deeply was Sem in Stalker. She’s a murderous voyeur. She is the priestess of Zeus, the handmaiden of the patriarch. She exists, in all worlds.

 
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