The Work Room Interview: Rabih Alameddine on How to Read Like a Writer
Rabih Alameddine talks to Katie McDonough about his Work Room series How to Read Like a Writer
Katie McDonough: In a 2016 Electric Literature interview you were asked, “Who are the daring writers at work today?” In response, you named some of the writers featured in this craft seminar series, including Colm Tóibín, Aleksandar Hemon, and Claudia Rankine. “It’s both about adventurousness and craft,” you said. “What I like is someone who is giving me something that I haven’t seen before.” Why is that adventurousness, that newness, so crucial for writers to experience as readers?
Rabih Alameddine: Good question. I want to experience newness in order to be challenged. Now, one thing I discovered during this quarantine is that I also enjoy the comfort of predictability. I’ve read many books that did not challenge me but provided solace during these difficult times. However, that comfort can be dangerous for a writer, lulling one into complacency. I love reading daring writers who take risks. I’d even call them dangerous writers, always threatening both societal and literary status quos. In that sense, I’m a Kafkian: “We ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us.”
You know, frozen sea within us, meet axe.
We have to constantly look for new ways of telling stories.
KM: In that same interview you said, “I hate beautiful writing.” I take that to mean that you hate writing that is pleasing rather than powerful. But isn’t there a way for writing to be both beautiful and brave, and aren’t both important? Surely the work of the writers you’ve selected for this series falls under that category.
RA: Of course. I don’t really hate beautiful writing. I guess you can say I take it for granted. I worry when I hear readers talk about beautiful writing because I feel that when a story works, everything about it should fit together so smoothly that a reader hardly notices anything other than the story itself, at least not on a first read. Beautiful writing comes in all kinds of styles, but it’s effective only if it serves the story. Sometimes I think that the most beautiful writing is when you’re so taken by a story, you don’t even notice it, you don’t notice how utterly gorgeous the prose is until you read it a third or fourth time.
KM: Your novel An Unnecessary Woman came out years before the pandemic, but its main character, Aaliya, is living the sort of life many of us have been forced to take up in the past year: stuck in our homes with just our books—or paints or baking supplies or whatever it may be—to comfort us and pass the time. You’ve described An Unnecessary Woman as perhaps your most autobiographical novel, suggesting that you are naturally drawn to this kind of internal life. How has the experience of the pandemic confirmed or challenged that proclivity, and how can books be a means of both turning inward and reaching out, as you do through this seminar series?
RA: An Unnecessary Woman is my most autobiographical novel. I’ve always said that Aaliya is who I aspire to be, someone who is content with an internal life; she no longer cares if she is appreciated or what others think of her. I saw myself as somewhat of a recluse, maybe not as antisocial as she, but getting there. During the first few months of the pandemic, I felt something akin to ecstasy. I was by myself in my apartment, my usual fare, but now, I didn’t have to worry about someone coming over or having to go somewhere. I felt free. It was my habitual reclusiveness, but on steroids. The novelty wore off after a while and the weirdest thing happened: I began to realize that I missed people. Me, the grumpy one, wanting to be around people? It was a confusing time. A few months later, and I find out that not only am I a social being, but that my family and friends are my sustenance. This might have been obvious to everyone, to every sane person, but it wasn’t to me.
On the other hand, during this long quarantine, I was often reminded how much other writers and their books have kept me company all my life, how much solace they have provided me. I can stay in my apartment and travel the world, meet all kinds of people, and soar. Who needs a broomstick when I have a good book? I was telling a friend this when she suggested that having a group of people talking about reading, and in particular, how to read, would be helpful to many, that we could have a group reading, but on steroids.
KM: The description of the seminar series begins, “There is no better method of learning how to write than studying the works of masters.” But each session goes beyond simply reading or studying the featured work; you also peek behind the curtain and ask the writer directly about their thoughts and choices while writing. In the sessions you’ve completed so far, with Colm Tóibín and Yiyun Li, have you found that your assumptions and interpretations matched the writer’s intent, or were you surprised by what they revealed? How important is it to seek out this kind of behind-the-scenes information from writers, versus allowing the art to speak for itself, in whatever way our minds receive it?
RA: My assumptions and interpretations never match the writer’s intent. That’s half the fun for me. I always tell everyone that whenever I think I know why a writer did something, I turn out to be wrong, always—wrong, wrong, wrong—and just as important, everybody else will be wrong too. The whole idea behind the seminar is to ask questions, not to find answers. By questioning why a writer does something, a reader begins to discover her own writing process, and just as important, what we find out is that instead of finding answers, we deepen the mystery. Let me answer the second question to show what I mean.
How important is it to find out the behind-the-scenes information from writers? Not very. Readers have been reading books for generations without knowing anything about the writers. I’m a big believer in letting the art speak for itself—a book being a connection between writer and reader and at the same time, a thing separate from both writer and reader. Yet, and it’s a big yet, like most readers, I have an insatiable curiosity. I want to know. I used to worry that if I knew too much about how a writer achieved a certain effect, I would no longer be entrapped in the magic of a story. I was wrong. One of the first things you notice during the seminar is that a writer knows quite a bit about how she does some things, but what she doesn’t know is far greater. We learn a great deal figuring out why a writer made this decision or that, and at the same time, we sit in awe of the things that we’re unable to figure. The best line so far was when Yiyun, who is one of the most precise writers I know, came out and said, “Oh, no. I write out of bafflement.”
Love me some bafflement!
KM: The upcoming spring series includes sessions with Claudia Rankine, Nathan Englander, Aminatta Forna, Edwidge Danticat, and Dave Eggers, who’ve collectively worked in just about every genre there is. Why is it helpful for novelists to read poetry, for essayists to read plays, for poets to read journalism—for writers to engage with genres other than the one(s) on which they themselves are focused?
RA: One of my great “bafflements” is why so few poets read novels, and why fewer novelists read poetry, and really, no one reads plays. I wonder sometimes whether this is more of an American phenomenon since I’ve found that European and South American writers tend to have a wider range of reading habits.
Why is it helpful for writers to engage with other genres? Because you’ll have more to steal from!
Seriously, though, I find that to keep my writing fresh, I must engage with all kinds of new ideas, and those arrive in different forms. The most amazing developments in American literature right now are happening in poetry. There is a coterie of young poets who are changing the language we speak. If we’re not reading poetry, we’re not participating in this world of ours. Again, I believe writers have to continually search for new ways of telling a story. Aleksandar Hemon, one of our best novelists, recently published a memoir, My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You, that is a series of short prose poems even though no one thinks of them as such. Claudia Rankine revitalizes her writing by tackling a different form with each book. Engaging with the work of great writers, no matter the form, re-energizes one’s writing. It’s one of the main reasons I do these seminars. By engaging with participants and writers, I always hope to re-energize both my writing and myself.