This week’s story, “F.A.Q.s,” is about a college student named Phoebe. She’s just returned to her parents’ home after breaking up with her boyfriend and, initially, is largely silent. Why did you want to write about this post-adolescent state of despair?
This story is part of a larger project about a multigenerational family. The first story I wrote about the Rubinsteins is called “Apple Cake” and was published in The New Yorker a few years ago. Since that time, I’ve been writing about different members of the family and their relationships. Each character interests me, and each stage of life interests me, but what fascinates me the most is the way that characters and stages rub off one each other. When I was a child, my art teacher told me that there are no pure colors in painting. There is no such thing as pure, unadulterated blue or red. Colors define each other. I think this is true of people, as well. So this story is as much about Phoebe’s parents as it is about her. We see Phoebe through their eyes, even as we see them through hers.
Phoebe has inherited a violin from her grandmother Jeanne, an event you wrote about in “Apple Cake,” which traced Jeanne’s final days as her family gathered around her sickbed. In that story, Phoebe makes a brief, but significant, appearance at the end. As you finished “Apple Cake,” did you know that you’d return to Phoebe and the violin? What’s it like to return to characters you’ve written about in the past?
I love to return to characters and develop them over time. Novels permit a continuous narrative of change, but a series of short stories is like stop-motion animation. You see characters in sequence at different points in their lives. After writing a story about the matriarch of the Rubinstein family, I thought it would be fun to write about someone quite young. Jeanne is facing death, and Phoebe is facing decisions about how to live.
Phoebe’s parents, Dan and Melanie, are anxious to know what, exactly, has happened in their daughter’s life, yet they don’t want to intrude. They spend a lot of time hovering—and disagreeing with each other about the best approach to take. Did you always know that they’d be anxiously hovering? Is that hovering fun to describe, or anxious-making in itself?
It’s a tricky balance when your child is no longer quite a child. What should you ask, or do, or say? And how do you face the fact that the answer is—not much? And, of course, parents don’t always agree on their approach. Long-married couples tend to think aloud when they are talking to each other. I feel for Dan and Melanie. They are real to me, and so I loved writing them.
The narrative shifts between all three perspectives, so that sometimes we’re viewing events through Dan’s or Melanie’s eyes, and at other times we’re most aware of Phoebe’s response. Are those shifts in perspective something you’re aware of as you’re writing? Do you plot them out? As Phoebe regains strength, she takes over more of the story. Is this something that you’d planned, or was it something that became apparent as you were writing?
The shifts in perspective came naturally as the story unfolded. I do make plans, but I change them as I go along. In some ways, Phoebe comes back to life in this story. The plot belongs to her—although she doesn’t realize that as first.
Phoebe is an only child, and she feels that she’s the person who kept the family together when she was younger, working as hard as she possibly could: “Math, poetry, physics, and violin had filled her days—especially violin.” How common do you think the rejection of a childhood music habit is?
I think it is common to give up an instrument—but what’s interesting is that those years of practice and lessons remain with you even after you stop playing. Phoebe played seriously, and music haunts her, along with memories of her grandmother.
In the story, Phoebe starts travelling from her home in New Jersey to Penn Station, in New York, and busking with her violin. It’s something that seems to happen without her willing it. Why did you want to show her recovering an interest in music?
I see Phoebe’s renewed interest in music as a return to herself. I was particularly interested in the way that music might take on new significance right now.
You recently published your latest novel, “The Chalk Artist,” which, in part, is about a teen-age boy who gets drawn further and further into the virtual world of an online game. Did you do much research for the novel? Do you see any connections between Phoebe’s retreat and that of Aidan, the boy in the novel?
Although Phoebe is quite different from Aidan in “The Chalk Artist,” both young characters are touched by art. Music comforts Phoebe. Virtual worlds empower and, at the same time, threaten Aidan. I am interested in art as escapism and revelation. And I’m interested in what it’s like to be young. It’s one of those F.A.Q.s: How do you grow up in this complicated world?
