Lorrie Moore isn't sure if she understands Understanding Lorrie Moore
Madison's brightest literary star releases her first novel in 15 years
Lorrie Moore prepares to get punchy.
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Lorrie Moore’s third novel, A Gate At The Stairs, begins on a college campus eerily similar to UW-Madison, where an undergrad named Tassie lives on a street eerily similar to Breese Terrace, and works as a nanny for the adopted child of a woman who owns a restaurant eerily similar to L’Etoile. The story eventually winds its way to the Middle East, and book’s release date—three days before 9/11—was no coincidence. Before Moore took a leave of absence from the actual UW, and left the real Madison to head out on a book tour (which includes a stop at the Wisconsin Book Festival Oct. 8 with Michael Perry), The A.V. Club talked to one of the country’s most celebrated writers about why she didn’t name the city in her book “Madison,” and whether or not the academic book Understanding Lorrie Moore understands her at all.
The A.V. Club: Your publicist says you’re preparing for a “grueling” book tour. Is there anything about a book tour that helps your writing?
Lorrie Moore: The publicist actually used the word "grueling"? Now I'm getting nervous. Usually only I'm using those sorts of words. It is occurring during a pandemic, which unnerves me. A tour does not help the writing at all as far as I can see—unless you were to write a story about it.
AVC: Has there ever been a good story written about a book tour?
LM: I've never even written a bad story about a book tour, but now you're giving me ideas.
AVC: Reviewers are saying that A Gate At The Stairs is set in a fictitious Midwestern university town, but to anyone who’s familiar with Madison, Wis., “Troy” is Madison. Why not just call it “Madison”?
LM: To say "Troy is Madison" is to rob Troy of its necessary inventedness. One has to read fiction as a place in the imagination where people do and have done certain things that then can be discussed separate from real life and assigned meaning that then may, in its separateness, have something to say for people back in real life. It's not reportage. That said? Of course Madison inspired many aspects of Troy. But Troy is not the state capital, for instance, which is a big part of Madison.
AVC: What are some things that make Madison a good or not-so-good place for a writer to live?
LM: People being nervous that you're writing about them. I'm sure that's why Thornton Wilder got out. I think he left early—like when he was 2.
AVC: There’s a new book out from the University of South Carolina Press titled Understanding Lorrie Moore. Are you hard to understand?
LM: Well, that's part of a whole Understanding series, so apparently a lot of writers need understanding.
AVC: If you’re the subject of something like Understanding Lorrie Moore, and you wanted to stop its publication, could you?
LM: Ha! I have no idea. I would have liked a better hairdo than the one on the cover, I must say.
AVC: In Understanding Lorrie Moore, the author says you use the name “Rafe” for one of the characters in your short story “Paper Losses” to “recall ‘strafe’ and evoke the idea of targeted attack.” Now if Ralph Fiennes wants people to call him Rafe, then he should just have the name Rafe, right? Did you really name the character Rafe to recall “strafe”?
LM: The book was written by a woman with a Ph.D from Oxford. Who am I to argue with her?
AVC: The author also says the main character in your story “Joy” avoids “sex, along with other exhilarating but dangerous pursuits such as waterskiing or surfing” because it “recovers and protects her stability.” Among the three—sex, waterskiing, and surfing—which would you say is the most exhilarating, and which the most dangerous?
LM: I don't think the main character does anything like that—at least that's not my recollection. Therefore I feel I'm allowed to dodge your question.
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