Elizabeth Strout: Entrevista a un Autor de LibraryThing

Elizabeth Strout is the author of Amy and Isabelle, Abide with Me, and Olive Kitteridge, a collection of short stories revolving around a woman (Olive) and her fellow townspeople in a small town in Maine. Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge in 2009.

What's your personal library like?

My personal library is spread all around me. I would love to say it is organized impeccably, but that is not the case. Because I am so often pulling something from a shelf to check on how a particular story starts, or to see if I can find the line of poetry that has been going through my head, the books end up everywhere. Some I put back where they "belong," but many are lying around haphazardly. And I guess the truth is I like it that way. I seem to maintain a general sense of where they are, even as they get shuffled around. At one point I had a whole poetry section I kept separate, but many of those books have managed to go dancing with the others, I recently noticed.

What authors or books have inspired you?

So many books and authors have inspired me, I almost don’t know where to start. Reading the work of Oscar Hijuelos opened up a new way of thinking for me; his work is large and gentle and vigorous and in a rhythm unlike my own, so that is very good for me. I have relied on Alice Munro and William Trevor for years. Anita Brookner, for her exquisite sentences, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Hemingway. And the Russians, I adore them. Falconer, by John Cheever. Philip Roth and John Updike for their very different voices. I cried a lot reading Rabbit at Rest.

The small town of Crosby, Maine is almost as prominent a character in these stories as Olive Kitteridge herself. Your two other novels (Amy and Isabelle and Abide with Me) are also set in Maine—coincidence? What's your relationship with Maine?

My relationship with Maine is that I come from there. I was born in Portland, and my parents both come from long lines of Maine ancestors, so it is a huge part of my background. I have lived in New York now for almost half my life, and I love New York. But Maine seems to be in my DNA and so I have gone back to it in these first three books. It wasn’t a conscious decision to do so, it seemed I was tugged back there.

What's your favorite story in Olive Kitteridge?

I think my favorite story might be "Starving." Maybe also "Tulips."

Favorite character?

My favorite character is Henry. (Of course naming a favorite character or story makes me feel a little disloyal to the rest of them.)

You just won the Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge (congratulations!). Do you have a favorite Pulitzer-winning book?

I have a few favorite Pulitzer winning books. American Pastoral, by Philip Roth, Rabbit at Rest, by John Updike, Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, by Oscar Hijuelos.

It seems like Olive Kitteridge could have been written as a novel. What made you write it as short stories?

I wrote Olive Kitteridge as stories, rather than as a more traditional kind of linear narrative, because her story seemed episodic in nature. Again, this was not a conscious decision. I just wrote her in stories right from the start, understanding that she would present herself this way. And because I love point of view, I thought it would be fun to see her from other eyes in the community.

What's next? Do you have a new book in the works?

I do have a new book in the works. I’m always a bit nervous to speak of something that’s taking shape, but I will say that this book is a novel and that it involves New York City as well as scenes in Maine. So I am making my way down the coast.