The Merrill Diaries, the latest novel by writer and
friend Susan Tepper published by PURE SLUSH BOOKS, tells of love and life and
being in your twenties and all mixed up. Merrill is a feisty young woman whose
yearning for love and adventure takes her around the world and in and out of
several relationships before landing where she needs to land. After reading The
Merrill Diaries, I had so many unanswered questions. I worried about Merrill.
So Susan and I had a little chat…
Susan, what inspired this remarkable
story? Tell us exactly where you were and what you were doing when the
character of Merrill popped into your mind.
I first wrote Merrill as a middle-aged,
multi-married woman for the Pure Slush anthology 'gorge'. I had to follow a
pre-set narrative written in that group novel, use the setting of the novel,
and follow after a story by Stephen Ramey. That Merrill became the
genesis of this current book. This book The Merrill Diaries wasn't my
idea. Matt Potter the publisher of Pure Slush and the 'gorge' book came to me
with the idea of an all Merrill book. He came up with the title. It was
winter, and I felt quite resistant. I wrote him back, "I can't live with
that woman for an entire book." He was quite persistent. He thought
she was a really funny and alive character in 'gorge' and he kind of wore me
down. But I knew I had to write her 'differently' in order to be able to do
this current book. I feel an author must have a strong relationship to the
protagonist for a book to work. And I didn't want to write about a middle-aged
woman and what that entails—I am a middle-aged woman, and wish I were still in
my twenties. All my writing involves some kind of wish fulfillment. What I
remember about the actual writing of The Merrill Diaries was that
it began during the fall of 2012, then my computer crashed, and I
finished it in my kitchen on my laptop. I think.
You open The Merrill Diaries with a reference to Merrill's mother and how
she would steal little things. To what extent has Merrill embodied her mother's
character as she grows into a grown woman?
Merrill's mother is like an
ever-present ghost in the book. When the story begins, she has
already passed along to the next life. But when alive, she was a strong,
take-charge kind of person. And I think an intimidating mother to both Merrill
and her younger sister, Nan. What the mother stole were other people's
histories, and thus, in a way, she stole their lives. Kind of how some
tribal cultures believe a photograph will steal the soul. Merrill picked up a
lot of her mother's resiliency, plus her mother's love for the finer
aspects of the material world. But at the same time, Merrill is a
contradiction in that she is always fighting off her mother, the little
'messages' from her mother that come into her mind as she tramp-steams through
her twenties.
I find your answer interesting, in
that it seems Merrill spends a lot of her young adult life trying to make her
own history. Is this largely a response to her mother's modus operandi?
Maybe. Or maybe it’s what all young
people do. Want their lives to be their own. I think that’s what teenage
rebellion is all about. A natural separation from the family and its value
system. Merrill has a rebellious nature. Some people are born with that. I’m
like that, so I guess I carried it over to her.
‘gorge’ was a lot of fun, to read
and to write. I returned to the two Merrill chapters in that book and found Merrill
remained the same in many ways—but also matured. What do you think Merrill
learned from her madcap adventures across the world when she was younger?
I find it so interesting you saw a
link between the young Merrill and the middle-aged Merrill. I don’t see it that
much. As for what she learned as she roamed the world— probably nothing she
didn’t already know. I think we travel and explore to confirm what is already
etched on us like a map drawn at birth.
Of all her men, which, if any, did
Merrill love?
I think she loved them all in
different ways. And in different degrees of love. Teddy, her first husband, she
loved the least. Merrill is a sexy gal, and Teddy fell short in the bedroom.
Eddie, the guitarist, was her sexiest match. At one point she says that things
might have worked out with Tom (her second husband) had the living situation
been somewhat different.
Why does Merrill have such a
difficult time committing to place—and person?
Merrill views the world as a huge,
lavish smorgasbord: food, people, places, lovers, husbands, ideas. I’m like
that. I have a voracious appetite for discovery which led me in many different
directions and careers. I guess I carried it over to her in the story. I wanted
her to have fun. I also wished to do all the things she was doing—when all I
was doing was sitting on a heating pad typing her story most of the winter.
Someone had to have some fun!!! As for commitment, that’s a hard question. I
think the men she chose didn’t measure up after a while. As I mentioned, she
might have stayed with Tom if she didn’t feel so isolated in the countryside.
She liked him and respected him. She also might have stayed with Eddie, if
(---) hadn’t happened. Circumstances intervened. Life can be that way. And
Merrill loves adventure. Some people are just born to it.
I really want to talk about the
ending, but without it being a spoiler for readers. So let me just ask you one
question—is this the watershed moment in Merrill's life?
Well, how can I answer this? Hmm...
let’s just say it ‘restored’ her in ways that needed restoring.
Let's discuss craft for a moment. This book enraptured me
for so many reasons: the character of Merrill, the originality of this
coming-of-age story, the settings. I laughed out loud in many places, and I
cried in others. But most of all, the writing itself has an effortlessness
about it, a transparency. You, the author, are never present. So I wonder: how
many drafts or revisions did this story take you? Because the voice is spot-on.
It's a good question, Linda, because
it covers more 'ground' than you would suspect. I started writing the book
feeling moderately good, though I had taken a horse fall last year and that
caused some back problems. Then, the day I was to travel to AWP in Boston, my
back went completely 'out'. I was literally bent in half that morning screaming
in pain. My husband threw a coat over my nightgown and carted me over to a
chiropractor-friend. I did not make it to AWP. From March until now, my back
has been in bad shape. I wrote the book in a haze of pain. I often thought I
couldn't finish it, but my husband prodded me on, saying, "You can do
this." So, in some ways I was not present. I wrote almost in a trance. I
just wrote and wrote and at the end of a writing period, had no idea what the
hell I had written. I just kept going.
There were places where I ‘mixed up’
things— such as the two Greek guys (the good guy and the bad guy!). I found it
in revision, thank heavens! I just didn’t know what I was putting on the page
and couldn’t remember my earlier chapters. I had to go back and re-read the
book several times, and clean up any discrepancies. I kind of add and subtract
on the ‘clean-up’ part in general, it’s my novel writing style.
Then at one point in the spring I
quit for a few weeks to try and regain some strength. Then I went back at it. I
think the reason you don't see the author anywhere in the writing is because
the author (me) was somewhat missing in time and space. I did a kind of
automatic writing. I have wondered if the book might have turned out
differently had I been feeling good. I believe the parts of the book where the
character is most vulnerable are points where I felt most vulnerable to the
pain in my body. I kind of transferred my physical and emotional space over to
Merrill. Let her take the hit for me. I don't know if it was cathartic, I just
know it's how I wrote this book.
I think Matt Potter was worried at
one point, because I had been sending him chapters, then I just stopped. But he
never said anything to me, never asked. I think if he had pressured me, I might
have totally caved and stopped writing. He's the kindest person and has a deep
regard for the feelings of his writers. So, anyway, I picked up the writing
again and started to send him more chapters. He wrote to me then, saying he'd
been worried and was relieved to see the book moving forward. Just that. I'm
really glad I wrote this book.
It also amazes me that I was able to
infuse quite a bit of humor, considering my own circumstances. But my family is
that way. We had some pretty dark times (as do all families) and yet we managed
to poke fun at situations, and we have laughed like crazy afterward. I think
this is a huge thing—being able to laugh off the pain of life. Merrill did that
in many instances, and that kept her going. So in that regard, she and I are
sisters in trauma. We're both survivors and we manage to keep our style thing
going. When my dad died, I refused to cry at the funeral because I didn't want
the cousins I don't like to see my tears. I cried buckets in private, but not
at his funeral. Merrill would do that too, I believe. What the heck—life is a
bitch. You have to be feisty and laugh off a lot of things to keep on going.
Yeah, life is a bitch. But life is
what fuels us to write. Tell me—what's up next in your life, writing-wise and
otherwise?
My greatest fear is that my back
won’t totally heal. I really need everyone’s good vibes on that score. I’m
still writing stories. I have a comic road novel completed that I’d like to see
published. It has a male protagonist. An excerpt was published in the new Thrice Magazine (READ HEREè Squirrels). I also have another unpublished
novel written about a woman who leaves her husband after a long marriage. But
if the genie popped out of the bottle and granted just one wish—my body back to
normal.
Susan, I will send you my best vibes for good
health. Thank you so much for this frank and insightful chat on The
Merrill Diaries and your writing process. Best of luck, and peace…
Susan Tepper is the author of The Merrill Diaries (a novel in stories) released this July by Pure Slush Books. She has also written two other published novels, a story collection, and a poetry chapbook. Her novel What May Have Been (co-authored with Gary Percesepe) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, 2010. Tepper has received 9 nominations for the Pushcart Prize. FIZZ her reading series at KGB Bar in NYC has been ongoing sporadically for six years. Tepper is a contributing editor at Flash Fiction Chronicles where she conducts the monthly author/interview series UNCOV/rd. www.susantepper.com
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