Set Me Free The Effects of Light About Miranda Events Press & Reviews Translations Other Projects Links Contact Mailing List

 

Q: I'm curious to hear if there are any particular parts of your growing up that helped you write this book.

MB-W: There definitely are. I have a sister, and I spent a large part of my childhood in Portland. But the biggest truth I drew upon was that of my family, a clan of thinkers and artists. I grew up thinking about art and culture from the time I was very small, because my parents taught me to believe that art is a beautiful and life-altering necessity.

Q: How has art's presence in your life helped you write The Effects of Light?

MB-W: One significant intersection lies in my having been photographed for a long time by two good friends of the family. There are ways in which participating in that photography has carried over into this book. For years I have been fascinated by the unique relationships that a photographer and her subjects can have. But, as soon as I knew what the novel was going to be about, I was also very concerned and protective of the pictures I have appeared in, and the artists who have made them. I needed to be sure that everyone—my family, the artists, and the readership—knew that I love the work in which I appear, that the character of Ruth and the people with whom I take pictures are very, very different, and that I in no way believe that photographs kill children.

As I tried to iron all this out, I dove into the writing of The Effects of Light and realized that the physical act of putting pen to paper was going to be a kind of philosophical journey. I wondered: would I still believe in the significance and beauty of art if the worst thing imaginable happened because of what a piece of art set into motion? The most exciting thing, for me, about writing this novel is that I figured out what I believe. I hope that the reader will similarly be transformed by the act of reading, that this book will help them examine closely their own prejudices and beliefs.

Q: What particular expectations would you like readers to examine?

MB-W: It's so strange that in our culture, art is reserved for the elite. I live in New York, and it now costs $20 to go to the Museum of Modern Art! Who can afford that? And even if you get in on a free afternoon, will you have as much fun there as you do at the movies? Probably not, because most museums are quiet places of enforced reverence; they aren't about having a good time.

I think that's just crazy. The whole reason art exists is to express what it feels like to be alive. And when you think about it that way, anyone, even a five-year-old, can tell you what being alive feels like: it feels like laughing, and talking, and being loud and angry and timid and messy. So the average person actually knows a lot more about art than he thinks he does. My hope is that people who read my novel will feel a little more empowered to listen to their own instincts, and to imagine a world in which thinking about art is an everyday experience that helps them define their own meaning in the world. I believe that that is what art is really meant to do: to help us cope with this crazy experience of being human.

Q: It seems as though what you've just described is, in many ways, Myla's journey through the book, to the point where she's able to take control of the meaning of her own life. Did you intend that narrative arc when you sat down to write?

MB-W: The first spark of the novel came with Pru's voice. But then Myla started to appear, and I realized that there was a whole other person who'd been left behind by tragedy. I wondered what it would feel like to have such a rich, thrilling childhood and then to become an adult without even a whisper of that richness in your life. Myla began, in my mind, as a character completely bereft of love. Because I'm an optimist, I knew that by the end of the book she was going to have to get to a place where she could survive. I think that happens just barely: the last scene of the book, spent with Samuel on the bench, is the first time you see Myla's mind relax. She's finally able to separate past from present. You know she's going to go forward, make her own memories, and get to live again.

Q: That scene is a good segue into the structure of the book: it's told from the point of view of the two sisters, in the very past and then in the very present. As the novel progresses, those narratives get more and more intertwined, until Pru's voice abruptly ends. How did that come to you? And where did the Proofs come into play?

MB-W: I'm actually very surprised that the structure works, because it was the first one I tried. I knew immediately that the book would alternate between Myla and Pru's points of view. Of course, what those early scenes actually said has changed, but the initial impulse seemed to work out.

As for the end of the book, it was very important for Myla to be left alone, to have the novel be, ultimately, about her. She's been so afraid to let Pru go, but once she does, once Pru leaves the novel, we miss her, but we also know that Myla's going to get along with the business of being alive. That's crucial. It's about putting the past in its place. In that last scene, Myla realizes that she can love her family by celebrating their ideas and her memories of them, without being completely subsumed.

The Proof sections didn't come until a very late draft of the novel, mainly because an early reader was frustrated that she didn't get to see these "controversial" photographs that everyone in the book keeps talking about. So I thought, well, I'm not a photographer, but I can try to use words to make the reader "see" the images for herself, so she can form her own opinions.

Q: Since you've finished the book, have you had any glimpses of what Myla is doing now, or where Ruth is?

MB-W: I have, but I want to leave that to the reader's imagination. My favorite way to read a book is to get to be an expert on it, to own the story for myself. We all have the experience of finishing a book and discovering something totally wrong about the way the author ended it. I wanted to avoid frustrating the reader like that, especially in the case of Ruth. Part of me wanted her to come back in the end, to explain everything and tie the plot together. But I knew that just wasn't realistic. What actually does happen is much more like life. And by the end of the book, Myla doesn't need Ruth to help her decode everything that's happened. Not unlike Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Myla realizes that she had the power in her all along.

Q: Myla is so surrounded by loss. How did you have the ability to write about that? Have you experienced great loss in your own life?

MB-W: I've experienced the terrible sadness that most young adults have known: of losing grandparents, as well as a few friends. But I also have experienced a very strange devastation, that is, as I think about it, not unlike the searing pain Myla feels when the rich world that surrounded her as a girl is ripped from her. As a child, I lived with my parents in a tiny village in Senegal, where I was fluent in the local language Mandinkakangho, ran around barefoot, and generally forgot my life in the United States. When I was six, we made the move back to the U.S. so that I could begin school, and it was a deeply traumatic experience for me. I have never been back to Africa, and it is a great goal in my life to do so. My life there haunts me, and even now, I'll catch a certain smell or taste and feel a deep longing to return.

Q: For this book, where so much of it is an imaginative act, and then there are other pieces that intersect with your own life, how do you strike a balance?

MB-W: As I just said, there certainly are pieces of emotion I've taken from my life and given to my characters. It's like I hand over some of the things I've felt and then see how they would experience them. But the bulk of the pieces of my life that are in the book are actually quite technical. Take the photography: I've been photographed, so I know what that feels like. I had lots of technical help from photographer friends of mine who use large format cameras. They shared some tricks with me so that I didn't have to learn to use an 8x10 before writing about one. I read books about art history. And I also spent a lot of time looking at photographs and examining my own reactions to those images.

The imagination was the much bigger part. I had to let go of myself and imagine how I would react if I were the person Myla Rose Wolfe and I had had pictures taken of me in the specific way that Ruth takes pictures of her. And here's where imagination really comes in, because Myla Rose Wolfe is a different person from Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, and so her reactions wouldn't necessarily be mine. Then I took it further: I imagined what it would be like to have a father who talks about image all the time, and a sister who loves the work of being in those pictures, etc., etc. Let me put it this way: for me, the process of writing a novel is like diving into a swimming pool. Your real life is the diving board, and then you jump off, into the swimming pool of your imagination. You say to yourself: what if? And then you dive.