Interview by Ron Fletcher
"We seem to have about five basic themes," says Anne Lamott. "Everyone has written about romantic love and everyone has written about loss. The one that I keep returning to is friendship.
"We are saved daily by the love and acceptance of friends -- people who get to know us over time and, miraculously, don't
run away screaming."
What Lamott locates in the company of others today she initially unearthed in a world of words as a child.
"I can't explain the sense of relief and salvation I experienced when I discovered what existed in books," said Lamott with zeal. "This happened at a young age for me, and literally gave me a new lease on life. I would have been so burnt by childhood and the teenage years without the sanctuary I found in the written word.
"I could go into my room and open a book or a notebook, take a deep breath, plug my nose, and enter into this world. It was and still is a mystical experience."
Yet without work the mystery remains the sole property of the world of one. And Lamott knows that writing's greatest reward lies in the act itself. Beyond the haunt, mock, and challenge of desk-tethered days exists a singular satisfaction.
"Novels require stamina," said Lamott, comparing the experience to walking a tightrope. "Each step requires so much in terms of focus and concentration. What could be more exciting, and trying, than living in that sense of the now and putting your most intensely concentrated self on the line? It's both the price and the gift of writing."
The concentrated self on the line in Crooked Little Heart finds expression in an array of characters.
"I have to admit that just about every character in the novel is some facet of myself," Lamott confesses. "We have the handsome, depressed mother who is convinced her child will be swept away by the pterodactyls of life; the neurotic writer; the religious earth-mother; the slutty little acting-out person; and the kid who has experienced loss but remains resilient."
That kid is Rosie, the story's teenage protagonist whose childhood Lamott chronicled in her second novel, Rosie.
"Emotionally Rosie is very much who I was and how I felt in the world since childhood," explained Lamott. "She is somebody with a huge heart and gigantic anxieties, someone who has maintained her sense of humor despite experiences of grief."
"I feel great tenderness toward Rosie and all of my characters," added Lamott, "because they have helped me to find out who I am. They forced me to have a compassionate, almost sympathetic acceptance of those aspects of me that I would have just yelled at in the past.
"These characters let me in past the surface where we keep most people. They were not afraid to say that we're not doing as well as we appear to be doing.
"And on the condition that I be a trustworthy scribe, they allowed me to travel with them below the surface to a place of great riches," says Lamott, pleading guilty to a moment's melodrama.
Crooked Little Heart, the work of a trustworthy scribe, places Lamott in the company of the sort of author she most admires. "I love to read those writers who have learned to pay attention," said Lamott, "those who talk to people and listen -- to find out who we are and how we survive."
Ron Fletcher lives and writes in Massachusetts.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.