Elizabeth Strout on Complicated People
In Conversation with Mitzi Rapkin on the First Draft Podcast
First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.
In this episode, Mitzi talks to Elizabeth Strout about her new novel, Tell Me Everything.
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From the episode:
Mitzi Rapkin: You open the book saying, “This is a story about Bob Burgess. He has a big heart. He does not know that about himself. He does not know himself as well as he assumes to.” Throughout the book, I felt like one of the points you were trying to make is that you never really know another person or yourself.
Elizabeth Strout: Precisely. That’s one of the main points, if not the main point. But that was a point that I was trying to dig at as I was writing this book. It’s like, you know, how well do we really know ourselves because we’re in relation to all these different folks, and they mirror back something slightly different to us each one. So how do we really know who we are and how we appear to others? And just as importantly, how do we ever really, really know another person? I mean, we do, and we think we do, but do we?
Mitzi Rapkin: Yeah, I’m always amazed. When I think about the own world in my own head, like there’s no way another person could understand that.
Elizabeth Strout: Well, exactly. I mean, I’ve always just thought we’re just such complicated people. I don’t think there’s a person walking down the street who doesn’t have you know many, many different things going on in different pieces inside their head. And I’ve just been desperately curious my whole life to know, what is it? What is it that’s going on in your head, understanding that I’ll never fully know, so I have to make it up.
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