Subject
Nabokov's "Lolita" and Camus' "The Stranger" served as models of
novels ... (fwd)
novels ... (fwd)
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From: Sandy P. Klein <spklein52@hotmail.com>
http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-bktalk3130897feb16,0,5944421.story?col
=ny%2Dfeatures%2Dprint
TALKING WITH VALERIE MARTIN
Who Possesses Whom?
A WRITER IMAGINES THE BALANCE OF POWER AND OPPRESSION ON A LOUISIANA PLANTATION
By Dan Cryer
STAFF WRITER
February 16, 2003
Manon Gaudet is one tough cookie. But then, the heroine of Valerie Martin's new
novel, "Property" (Doubleday, $23.95), had better be, because her husband is one
helluva tyrant. He treats his wife little better than his slaves.
The time is 1828, the place a Louisiana sugarcane plantation. If you're looking
for nice guys, try Martin's previous book, "Salvation," a biography of St.
Francis of Assisi. Monsieur Gaudet doesn't even bother to hide the fact that
Manon's servant is his mistress.
At least there are no non-human rats in this novel. "I usually have rats in
them," the author says wryly of her six other novels. "I get a lot of grief for
that. Good for me. Left those rats behind."
Martin's novel is not only a portrait of a loveless marriage but a sharply
observed meditation on the oppression of women even ! as they oppress those
"beneath them." In order to do so, it vividly re-creates two primitive
institutions: a plantation menaced by slave revolts and a squalid New Orleans
plagued by cholera and yellow fever.
This is vintage Martin territory. The "powerful magnetism" of "full-blown,
lyrical Romanticism," she has noted in an interview, has shaped her recent
novels, such as "Italian Fever" and "Mary Reilly." Tempering influences are a
cool, spare style and tightly constructed plots.
Martin's father, John Metcalf, had what one might think of as a romantic career
- he was a sea captain - but for his daughter it mostly meant that he was absent
for months at a time. "When I was small, he was a very mysterious character,"
she recalls. "He never liked children much, so it was just as well that he
wasn't around."
The man who commanded ships hauling cargo from New Orleans to Vietnam or the
Philippines or Spain once dreamed of being a writer himself. For his daughte! r,
the craft was "the only thing I was good at." So while teaching at various
colleges, she has published seven novels, two story collections and the St.
Francis biography.
The 54-year-old writer says "Property" grew out of one of her earlier novels,
"The Great Divorce." One of that book's main characters, the so-called "cat
woman of St. Francis," was a plantation mistress charged with killing her
husband after, rumor had it, transforming herself into a leopard.
"I had great fun with that," Martin says, "because various reviewers thought it
was an actual Louisiana legend. I totally made it up."
But this was only one plot strand in a book otherwise set in contemporary New
Orleans. This time Martin wanted to focus on the antebellum period itself. So
she pored over histories and such primary source materials as slave narratives
and journals kept by their masters.
She was struck, first, by what had been a decidedly missing element in her
southern educ! ation: the frequency of slave revolts. But she had no desire to
go over the same ground well-documented by Toni Morrison and other
African-American writers.
"I was after, in some ways, bigger game: the interior life, the consciousness of
somebody who accepts the right to own slaves as a given, an unquestioned
premise," Martin says.
Her shrewd choice is to give Manon a strikingly unsentimental voice. As much as
we sympathize with her plight, we are appalled that she has not a shred of
sympathy for those who cook and clean for her. Nabokov's "Lolita" and Camus'
"The Stranger" served as models of novels with unsympathetic narrators.
Like most of Martin's novels, "Property" is fairly short. "I like compression in
writing. I don't like using too many characters," she explains. For this novel,
especially, she felt readers would remain only so long with "so furious" a
narrator.
Yet in fewer than 200 pages, Martin is able to summon up historical landscape! s
her readers have never seen. "Whenever I write about the past," she says, "I'm
always looking for details. What kind of cloth were their clothes made of? Where
did they get water? What does it mean to die of cholera? So I'm not so much
interested in the politics - though this book is clearly about politics - but
the nuts and bolts of what their world was like."
For most of her adult life, Martin has lived far from her hometown. She's now a
resident of Millbrook in Dutchess County. But she will return to New Orleans
within the pages of a memoir she has in mind.
"How I Lost My Religion" will recount the experiences of an Episcopalian girl at
a Catholic girls' school. "Like all New Orleans girls," she says, "I had an
interest in saints, and most of us had altars in our houses and statues and
stuff. I still have my statues.
"Catholicism is fascinating to me because I think when practiced religiously
it's a wonderful thing. I know very devout Catholics whom! I admire in every
way, but I'm not one, and so there's that conflict.
"It's sort of like the romanticism-versus-realism attraction for me. I think of
religion as a kind of romanticism. Though it's very appealing, I don't think
ultimately it's for me."
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-bktalk3130897feb16,0,5944421.story?col
=ny%2Dfeatures%2Dprint
TALKING WITH VALERIE MARTIN
Who Possesses Whom?
A WRITER IMAGINES THE BALANCE OF POWER AND OPPRESSION ON A LOUISIANA PLANTATION
By Dan Cryer
STAFF WRITER
February 16, 2003
Manon Gaudet is one tough cookie. But then, the heroine of Valerie Martin's new
novel, "Property" (Doubleday, $23.95), had better be, because her husband is one
helluva tyrant. He treats his wife little better than his slaves.
The time is 1828, the place a Louisiana sugarcane plantation. If you're looking
for nice guys, try Martin's previous book, "Salvation," a biography of St.
Francis of Assisi. Monsieur Gaudet doesn't even bother to hide the fact that
Manon's servant is his mistress.
At least there are no non-human rats in this novel. "I usually have rats in
them," the author says wryly of her six other novels. "I get a lot of grief for
that. Good for me. Left those rats behind."
Martin's novel is not only a portrait of a loveless marriage but a sharply
observed meditation on the oppression of women even ! as they oppress those
"beneath them." In order to do so, it vividly re-creates two primitive
institutions: a plantation menaced by slave revolts and a squalid New Orleans
plagued by cholera and yellow fever.
This is vintage Martin territory. The "powerful magnetism" of "full-blown,
lyrical Romanticism," she has noted in an interview, has shaped her recent
novels, such as "Italian Fever" and "Mary Reilly." Tempering influences are a
cool, spare style and tightly constructed plots.
Martin's father, John Metcalf, had what one might think of as a romantic career
- he was a sea captain - but for his daughter it mostly meant that he was absent
for months at a time. "When I was small, he was a very mysterious character,"
she recalls. "He never liked children much, so it was just as well that he
wasn't around."
The man who commanded ships hauling cargo from New Orleans to Vietnam or the
Philippines or Spain once dreamed of being a writer himself. For his daughte! r,
the craft was "the only thing I was good at." So while teaching at various
colleges, she has published seven novels, two story collections and the St.
Francis biography.
The 54-year-old writer says "Property" grew out of one of her earlier novels,
"The Great Divorce." One of that book's main characters, the so-called "cat
woman of St. Francis," was a plantation mistress charged with killing her
husband after, rumor had it, transforming herself into a leopard.
"I had great fun with that," Martin says, "because various reviewers thought it
was an actual Louisiana legend. I totally made it up."
But this was only one plot strand in a book otherwise set in contemporary New
Orleans. This time Martin wanted to focus on the antebellum period itself. So
she pored over histories and such primary source materials as slave narratives
and journals kept by their masters.
She was struck, first, by what had been a decidedly missing element in her
southern educ! ation: the frequency of slave revolts. But she had no desire to
go over the same ground well-documented by Toni Morrison and other
African-American writers.
"I was after, in some ways, bigger game: the interior life, the consciousness of
somebody who accepts the right to own slaves as a given, an unquestioned
premise," Martin says.
Her shrewd choice is to give Manon a strikingly unsentimental voice. As much as
we sympathize with her plight, we are appalled that she has not a shred of
sympathy for those who cook and clean for her. Nabokov's "Lolita" and Camus'
"The Stranger" served as models of novels with unsympathetic narrators.
Like most of Martin's novels, "Property" is fairly short. "I like compression in
writing. I don't like using too many characters," she explains. For this novel,
especially, she felt readers would remain only so long with "so furious" a
narrator.
Yet in fewer than 200 pages, Martin is able to summon up historical landscape! s
her readers have never seen. "Whenever I write about the past," she says, "I'm
always looking for details. What kind of cloth were their clothes made of? Where
did they get water? What does it mean to die of cholera? So I'm not so much
interested in the politics - though this book is clearly about politics - but
the nuts and bolts of what their world was like."
For most of her adult life, Martin has lived far from her hometown. She's now a
resident of Millbrook in Dutchess County. But she will return to New Orleans
within the pages of a memoir she has in mind.
"How I Lost My Religion" will recount the experiences of an Episcopalian girl at
a Catholic girls' school. "Like all New Orleans girls," she says, "I had an
interest in saints, and most of us had altars in our houses and statues and
stuff. I still have my statues.
"Catholicism is fascinating to me because I think when practiced religiously
it's a wonderful thing. I know very devout Catholics whom! I admire in every
way, but I'm not one, and so there's that conflict.
"It's sort of like the romanticism-versus-realism attraction for me. I think of
religion as a kind of romanticism. Though it's very appealing, I don't think
ultimately it's for me."
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*