The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup
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Stephen Ambrose
Children's Authors
Stan and Jan Berenstain |
Susan Orlean: Unveiling a cast of 'extraordinary' characters
INTERVIEW BY JULIE HALE
According to Susan Orlean, the art of writing is a little bit like free association. The author of four nonfiction books, including the best-selling The Orchid Thief, Orlean claims no allegiance to outlines or diagrams, the methodologies to which writers so often subscribe. "There are times when I certainly envy people who do that because it seems like a more deliberative and rational process," she says during a phone interview from Boston. "For me, a big part of figuring out a story is actually sitting down to write it. When I do a lead, for instance, I'm always surprised to see where I began. You figure that at some subconscious level you've sorted through the information and that particular lead is what came to the fore. If you hadn't written it down, you might not ever have realized that it was important." However intuitive and indirect, Orlean's writing process has proved immensely fruitful. Her newest book, a collection of magazine pieces called The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters With Extraordinary People, spans 12 years of her career as a journalist. Sifting through more than a decade's worth of material to compile the collection, Orlean decided to do a book of personal profiles. The genre is the house specialty at The New Yorker, where she has worked since 1992. Refined by pioneers at the magazine like Joseph Mitchell, A.J. Liebling, Lillian Ross and John McPhee, the personal profile is a form that Orlean appears to have perfected. "It's funny because I'm constantly asked if I want to write fiction and 99 percent of my reading in my own free time is of fiction," Orlean explains. "But when it comes down to doing my own writing, I really couldn't make this stuff up. I wish I did have the imagination to dream up some of these characters." Indeed, the notorious, the classy, the trashy -- you'll find them all in The Bullfighter, from Bill Blass, the quintessential American fashion designer, to Tonya Harding, "the Charles Barkley of figure skating." While the pieces in the book are all very different, presenting a disparate cast of characters -- some famous, some not -- in a variety of locales, the overview of America they provide gives the collection a definite cohesiveness. The stories are cultural snapshots, pictures of a shifting landscape that, taken together, form a mosaic of America. "My desire, and certainly the way it was arranged, was to try to have the feeling that you were hopscotching through the country with the ability to drop in anywhere and look into a life," Orlean explains. "I really did want the book to have that feeling of being a bit of a kaleidoscope and have the different pieces resonate with each other as much as possible." Sometimes peripherally, sometimes directly, Orlean looks at race, class and gender, at trends as temporary as Tiffany, the disposable pop singer whose career was man-made -- literally -- by her manager and at fads like the Steve Urkel doll, a toy based on a television character. Whether she is writing about an African king who drives a cab in New York or a clown named Silly Billy, Orlean captures the culture clashes and media moments, the ironies and instances of unforgettable history that comprise lived experience. From these everyday materials, she composes poetry. In her hands, something as mundane as a list of names can take on an incantatory quality. Using the raw data of life she creates stories that seem timeless, narratives that resonate beyond their first and second readings, and have the makings of myths. Again and again, what she presents in these pieces are not just facts, but the bigger truths that lie behind them. "I think there's a real challenge involved in going out into the world and trying to see what's there," Orlean says. "The challenge of reporting and exposing myself and the reader to other lives sort of overrides everything. It's a very important part of what I do and why I care about what I do." A sense of the author herself, a humble, inquisitive narrator who is genuinely interested in her subjects, colors many of the pieces in The Bullfighter. As she appears in these stories, Susan Orlean seems sensitive, human and, above all, game. This is the lady reporter who lets Colin Duffy, the subject of "The American Male at Age Ten," use her as a human target for his slingshot. This is the big sister who hangs out with the teenaged Maui surfer girls, driving them to contests and sleeping on the floor at their slumber party. Entranced by her topics, Orlean is also a curious novice who isn't afraid to ask questions. At times simple and childlike, at times complex and sophisticated, these inquiries often reveal as much about the writer as they do about her subject. "I try to ask the questions that if readers didn't feel self-conscious they would want to ask," Orlean says. "I think it's the way little kids are. They'll go up to a person and ask them a blunt question -- something that, as adults, we are told not to ask -- and yet those are often the real questions that people have in their minds. It's a bit of a quirk in my personality. I'm not uncomfortable asking those obvious but somewhat sensitive questions." A sharp sense of humor is part of what makes her narrative persona so appealing. (One story, "Show Dog," opens with this unforgettable line: "If I were a bitch, I'd be in love with Biff Truesdale." Biff, the reader soon discovers, is a boxer.) To put it simply, Orlean's stories wouldn't be the same without her. "It's such a natural part of the way I write," she explains. Orlean's presence is always gently felt in these stories, and there are long stretches of text in which she is absent. This is a bit different from her last book, The Orchid Thief, a tale of obsessed flower collectors set in South Florida and told with a greater degree of subjectivity. The Orchid Thief was Orlean's first sustained, book-length narrative, and she appears in it more consistently. Writing herself into her own story made perfect sense in this case: The Orchid Thief is, in part, a look at the author's own process of discovery as she explores the shadowy regions of the sunshine state. Participating in her own narratives will take on a new meaning for Orlean next year when the filming of a movie version of The Orchid Thief begins. The project is in the hands of some heavy-hitters. Movie giant Jonathan Demme is producing. Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, director and screenwriter, respectively, of Being John Malkovich, are at the helm of the new film. Apparently Kaufman has concocted a subplot about a screenwriter who becomes obsessed with a photograph of the author Susan Orlean. Fiction or fact? Art or reality? Orlean herself isn't sure. "I've never met Charlie Kaufman," she says. "But his character in the movie does become obsessed with my character in the movie. It may just be a literary device. I met with Spike Jonze, but I didn't ask him about it because I sort of thought maybe I didn't want to know the answer." Casting for the movie has already begun, with plans for Meryl Streep to portray Orlean on the big screen. Nicholas Cage will play Charlie Kaufman and Chris Cooper, who starred in American Beauty, is slated to portray John Laroche, one of The Orchid Thief's creepier central characters. For Orlean, in a sense, the movie will complete a full-circle, the spin of which seems to have left her feeling a little dizzy. "I can't even tell you how weird it is," she says. "I think I won't really be able to absorb it until I see it happening. It is simply too bizarre." For now, the author is at work on her second book-length narrative, a story that will require new levels of participation from Orlean: she will be singing along with a gospel choir in Harlem. "My presence in the book will be a little more explicit this time," she explains. But can she carry a tune? "I love to sing!" Orlean replies exuberantly. "I haven't sung in an orderly fashion -- except in the shower -- since high school, but it is something I love to do." Perhaps a compact disc will follow.
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