Stewart O'Nan on Moderating Sentimentality
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 Stewart O’Nan about his new book, Evensong.
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From the episode:
Mitzi Rapkin: I think one of the things that can be really difficult as a writer is moderating sentimentality, especially as you’re aging, where the role of nostalgia is, and how you write it in a way so that you’re not telling the reader what to think. Does that make sense?
Stewart O’Nan: Yeah and the feelings that the characters have for what was and what is no longer. You can’t ridicule that, certainly, but you can let the reader understand that these are their feelings and their feelings alone, and that there’s always a counterpoint to that. And in having Emily and Arlene there – they disagree on everything. So, one way to undercut that kind of nostalgia, or over reverence for the past, is to have the other one comment on what they’ve said and sort of undercut it. I mean, all of our feelings, all of our nostalgia, everything is so personal to every person, but it has to be challenged. That’s one of the first rules, I think, of writing in POV, is challenge your characters deepest assumptions about themselves and about the world, and the world does that to us, right? I mean, we go out in the world, and we think the world is a certain way, and then suddenly you realize, oh, it’s not at all. And that happens throughout this book.
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Stewart O’Nan’s award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, A Prayer for the Dying, Last Night at the Lobster, and Emily, Alone. His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize. Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists. His new novel is Evensong.
Drew Broussard
Drew Broussard is a writer, podcaster, bookseller, and producer of creative events. He spent nearly a decade at The Public Theater before decamping to the woods of upstate New York, where he lives with his wife and dog.
