To read a Stewart O’Nan novel is to be immersed in a particular subculture with its own rules and limitations, and to watch the people in that group as they connect with each other and seek to make their way in a challenging world.
His latest novel, Evensong, focuses on the Humpty Dumpty Club, a group of older women in Pittsburgh who care for each other and help members of the community. Told in alternating viewpoints, the trials of Joan, Kitzi, Emily and Arlene as they age are handled with dignity and grace. The women’s participation in the Anglican church’s evensong serves as an anchor and a respite to their challenges.
AUTHORLINK: Tell me about your apprenticeship as a creative writer. Did you have a mentor who offered advice that you can share with us?
O’NAN: I started writing on my own, in my basement after work, using John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction as my guide. His explanations of point of view, psychic distance and sentence variation were revelations. I was also reading as much as I could, taking out the O. Henry and Best American Short Stories collections, trying to figure out how stories worked.
AUTHORLINK: James Dickey said the idea for Deliverance came to him as a vision of a man standing alone on top of a mountain. His job was to get the man off the mountain. Where did the idea for Evensong come from?
O’NAN: I was at a communal dinner at a farm, and the woman seated across from me told me how she and her single friends had formed a Humpty Dumpty Club to take care of one another, and immediately I pointed at her and said, “That’s my next novel.”
AUTHORLINK: Talk to me about the title Evensong, and why you selected it.
O’NAN: At first the title was The Humpty Dumpty Club, but somewhere in the draft work, I noticed how their devotion to gathering for Evensong each month created a natural calendar. It also seemed an apt metaphor for their shared faith in the face of aging, and for the book itself.
AUTHORLINK: What kind of research did you do to so vividly depict this community of older women friends?
O’NAN: I sent questionnaires to members of the club, and sat down with several for interviews.
AUTHORLINK: What surprised you most from what you found?
O’NAN: Two things that surprised me from talking with Humpty Dumpty Club members were that some members drop out and rejoin later and that over the years there have been several male club members.
AUTHORLINK: Talk to me about the choice to use multiple points of view and at times a “collective” perspective to tell the story. What did this give the reader that a single point of view could not accomplish?
O’NAN: I was drawn to the club because I’ve always loved a club book—The Joy Luck Club, The Jane Austen Book Club, even The Babysitters’ Club. It’s a way of showing the very different experiences the characters are going through at the same time while still staying connected with one another.
AUTHORLINK: Pittsburgh is almost a character itself. Talk about the importance of firmly grounding a narrative in place.
All four are lifelong Pittsburghers, and, like Emily, Alone or Henry, Himself, the book is a memory book. Naturally, at their ages, as they’re going through these changes, their view of the city is deeply and richly layered.
AUTHORLINK: What was your greatest challenge in developing Evensong?
O’NAN: Giving all four characters equal space, and trying to balance the two newcomers, Kitzi and Susie, against the recurring duo of Emily and Arlene.
AUTHORLINK: What writers influenced your approach to this novel and the quiet, compassionate, carefully observed way the story is told?
O’NAN: The great Barbara Pym meant so much to me, with her wry appreciation of the most reserved of characters. Also Elizabeth Taylor. Both are marvelous novelists of manners, and wildly underrated
AUTHORLINK: While the book deals with the many challenges of aging you managed to end on a beautiful, hopeful note. In these challenging times, what kind of hope can literature offer humanity?
O’NAN: Despite the difficulties life sets in front of these woman, they’ve been through so much else (so much worse), and they have faith. Above and beyond the church services they regularly attend, Evensong renews them. Recalling Faulkner’s Nobel speech, I’ll say literature offers us hope by showing how people endure—both moment by moment and age to age. We go on.
AUTHORLINK: What are your tips for young writers on staying encouraged?
O’NAN: My best tips for young writers on staying encouraged are: Let your love of reading feed your writing—read those writers and books that made you want to write in the first place; and, think of the characters and scenes you’re excited about writing.
AUTHORLINK: What are your tips can you offer on the craft of writing?
O’NAN: In terms of craft: Think bigger. Remember that the building block of drama isn’t the sentence or the perfectly chosen word but the scene. Set your big scenes big!
AUTHORLINK: Discuss what you are working on now.
O’NAN: I was just in Berlin for the premiere of the film of A Prayer for the Dying (it made the audience gasp!), and now I’m slowly, painstakingly starting a new novel. Who knows if it will flourish. Patience is all.
Stewart O’Nan’s award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, A Prayer for the Dying, Last Night at the Lobster, and Emily, Alone. Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists. He is also the author of several works on nonfiction, screenplays and film adaptations He lives in Pittsburgh.
