Babs Dionne is the undisputed queen of Waterville, Maine. But after a rival drug kingpin begins to threaten her territory and one of her daughters is found dead, Babs stands to lose her hard-won place at the top of the heap. We talked to Currie about the real Maine, the failures of modernity and ghosts familial or otherwise.
You began a wonderful interview with Maine writer Carolyn Chute (The Beans of Egypt, Maine) by asking, “Why do you write, why did you start and why do you continue?” I’ll ask the same of you.
Turnabout is, after all, fair play! So, in order: 1) I write as an effort to understand what I think and how I feel, but also to escape the prison of my own head—to experience, insofar as possible, what it’s like to be someone other than myself; 2) I started writing very young for all those same reasons, though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate them; 3) I continue writing because I am utterly mediocre (or worse) at every other thing in the panoply of human endeavor.
“Something that’s ‘savage’ is not often ‘noble,’ and vice versa. But Babs is both of those things, in life and in death.”
Maine has been in the literary spotlight lately, with many books set there. The Maine you write about, however, certainly isn’t the one that tourists write home about. As you note while describing a crucial event near the beginning of your novel, “The ocean that in so many people’s minds was synonymous with Maine might as well have not existed.” What lends the state such literary appeal?
It’s a good question that I’m not sure I have a good answer for. I think the Maine of the popular imagination—the lobster boats and rocky coast and charming accents—lends itself readily to certain kinds of stories, but to me, as to Babs, that’s not the Maine I recognize. Every place on Earth, I suppose, has its flip side, and that was the Maine this story needed to take place in—the Maine of endless forest and paper mills, of hard luck and hard people.
I love how Babs’ daughter Sis frequently reminds her son, Jason, “French is your superpower.” Did you grow up speaking French, and did it serve you well?
I don’t speak a lick of French (other than the curses, of course; somehow those always seem to get passed down), despite the fact that my father spoke only French until he went to school. That loss is a big part of my motivation for creating Babs in the first place. She’s a person who defends the language and culture she grew up with tooth and claw, even when it costs her dearly. In fact, she’d probably say that the fact it costs her is evidence of its worth.
You say that Babs “is a tribute to the spirit of my grandmother Rita, with whom I was uncommonly close.” Tell us more about her, and about naming another very important character “Rita.” I’m intrigued by a line near the end of the book: “Aunt Rita who, together with Babs, just about made one complete mom.” How might your grandmother have reacted to this book?
My grandmother was a deeply loving woman who also, I think, had to be hard in certain ways. And that’s the essence of Babs, the push and pull at her core: She loves so fiercely it’s almost unbearable, but she also can be vicious, often in the service of love. In the (still forthcoming) second book of the Dionne family saga, Babs’ own mother tells her, “Fathers can coddle their daughters. Mothers—we know too much.” This is something Babs very much took to heart with regard to raising her own daughters. And her best friend and adopted sister, Rita, was the woman Babs’ daughters went to for the softer kind of love that kids also need. Thus the line you referenced.
How and when did you decide on the title?
This speaks to Babs’ rejection of modernity, perhaps: I see her as a kind of noble savage, in a very positive way. She refuses to be influenced, let alone corrupted or broken, by the larger forces the world brings to bear on her. As such, she’s free to follow her “genius,” as the transcendentalists might have put it, wherever it leads. When you transpose the two words, though, in modern usage they seem almost antonymous—something that’s “savage” is not often “noble,” and vice versa. But Babs is both of those things, in life and in death, and I wanted the title to reflect that contradiction.
Many of my favorite writers are New Englanders who write about families rooted in one place: Cathie Pelletier, Howard Frank Mosher, Richard Russo and Elizabeth Strout. As a boy growing up in the Little Canada neighborhood of Waterville, Maine, how did you identify geographically? Now that you are an adult living in Portland, has that outlook changed?
I’ve been thinking lately about the ways in which modernity has failed us, and it occurred to me that rootlessness is one of those failures. Those of us who grew up in small nowhere towns, in particular—the greatest aspiration was to get out as soon as humanly possible and, I guess, live in some featureless, cultureless suburb. In this way, Babs’ determination to stay where her family has been for generations is a rejection of the hypermobility of modern times and the idea that you can’t really live unless you’ve seen the whole wide world. She’s happy with her tiny little slice of it, thanks very much. It keeps her plenty busy.
” . . . everything we do, as individuals and a species, will sooner or later burn. And I’m fascinated by our persistence in the face of this certainty.”
Waterville, Maine, is home to Colby College, and your town and gown encounters between Babs and the college trustees are marvelous. What was compelling about that dynamic for you?
I’m really glad those parts jumped out at you. I’ll answer indirectly by saying that after my first book came out and I read at Colby, I started by making a crack about how as a kid I had been asked to leave campus many times, but this was the first time I’d ever been invited to come to campus.
Tell us about the mysterious fox that shows up a few times. What about ghosts? Those that Babs’ daughter Lori sees add another dimension to the book. Have you ever felt the ghostly presence of your ancestors?
The fox and the ghosts function somewhat differently in the story, but both are born of my memory of the brand of Catholicism we practiced, which is a lot like the Catholicism in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s work. There’s a magic, a sort of pagan element to it, in which otherwise inexplicable or impossible things happen all the time and no one finds it strange in the least. What outsiders see as “magical realism” is just, you know, life. Of course there are ghosts. Of course there are demons. Of course there’s a fox that’s actually God. Why wouldn’t there be? Do we really think we know or understand anything at all about this life? About what is and is not? About the nature of the divine?
Another way to think about the ghosts in the story is that they’re dramatized grief. One of the chief features of grief is its omnipresence—it never relents and it rises unbidden long after the loss, but that’s hard to dramatize. Having a character in constant conversation with ghosts feels a lot like grief, to me. No one else can see or hear or feel it but you, and if it takes up too much space in your life people treat you like you’re crazy.
Read our starred review of ‘The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne’ by Ron Currie.
A large, apocalyptic wildfire burns at the end of the book, which seems like it could be laced with several layers of personal meaning: For instance, your dad was a firefighter and you have written about climate change and environmental concerns. In addition, you note that the Little Canada neighborhood that you grew up in is gone: “the culture, the religion, and the language have all but disappeared.” Was this fire symbolic of that disappearance?
For sure. Of course, everything we do, as individuals and a species, will sooner or later burn. And I’m fascinated by our persistence in the face of this certainty. Of all the many things this book is about, it’s also about that: how we take all our losses, and the certainty that more will come, and keep moving forward instead of just lying down in the street and calling it a day. It seems heroic, to me.
Your author photo reveals a prominent tattoo on your right forearm, a quote by David Foster Wallace. How did that come about, and what significance does that quote have for you?
I have a morbid habit of getting authors’ lines tattooed on me when they die; this one I had done shortly after DFW’s suicide in 2008. “I’d tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear.” It’s possible this wraps back around to the earlier question about why I write: to fight against solipsism, to try vainly to bridge the gap between my mind and others’. It’s the same reason I read. It’s all ultimately tilting at windmills, because we remain trapped in what Wallace called “our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms.” But we’ve gotta at least try to get out.
You’ve also been a screenwriter. Has that writing affected your work as a novelist?
I was already a believer in trying my best not to waste the readers’ time, to reward the effort and attention they bring to the story by making it a story that continues to demand their attention. Not to ask for it—to demand it. Screenwriting has, I think, made me even more cognizant of that. The form just doesn’t tolerate dallying or navel-gazing. Stuff has to happen.
I’m excited that this is part one of a trilogy. While it’s set mostly in 2016, the next one takes place in 1984. Why not write these stories chronologically? What about part three? (I’m hoping it takes place after 2016—I’d really like to see what happens to several characters, especially Jason.)
I’m glad you’re looking forward to more! Telling a story out of chronological order can be a way to make things blossom with new meaning. For example, in the first book we see the ghost of Babs’ husband, Rheal, a handful of times, and those moments are hopefully cool and intriguing in and of themselves. But when we get into the second book, in which Rheal is very much alive and plays a central part, suddenly those moments in the first book kind of explode with new layers of significance. I guess it’s a version of an Easter egg. And it also goes back to what I was saying about continuing to reward the reader’s attention—my ambition with these books is for someone who’s read them three or four times to still find new layers, new feeling and meaning, each time.
Photo of Ron Currie by Tristan Spinski.
