| Introducing Rosellen Brown
From Ploughshares in 1994
Rosellen Brown is full of contradictions. She appears friendly and
voluble, and admits she loves to perform in front of an audience,
but she considers herself shy, and claims she is crippled with discomfort
at parties. About writing novels, she says, “I have to struggle
with my almost total inability to tell a story,” although
in The New York Times Book Review, Michael Dorris—after
commending its literary merit—called her last book, the critically
lauded and best-selling Before and After, “an unabashed,
read-until-dawn page turner.” After publishing four novels,
two collections of stories and essays, and two volumes of poetry,
with another forthcoming, Brown still wishes she had become a musician,
able to deliver a “crystallized feeling that connects on a
visceral level,” complaining, “I get tired of trying
to be smart.” And Brown, a New Yorker–turned–New
Englander, a pure-bred Yankee, somehow became an avid Houston Rockets
fan, faithfully following the perennial chokers over twelve years
until finally, with Brown in the stands at the Summit, the Rockets
beat the Knicks to clinch the NBA Championship this summer.
But these sorts of discrepancies of character are what interest
Brown about people, and she has made it her life’s work to
explore the complexities of the human heart, the intricate and unpredictable
ways that ordinary women and men react to circumstances of fate.
“There’s no single truth,” she says, and would
never presume to offer one. “I take very seriously the idea
that novelists raise questions and don’t necessarily answer
them.” Rather, she only attempts to provide a measure of comprehension
for her characters’ actions, whether such insights are sympathetic
or not. “Novels are where we learn what it feels like to be
someone else, where we learn to be patient with ways of looking
at things that are not our own.”
Read the full profile at http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=3709
The Latest News on Brown
Winner of a Pushcart Prize (XXX) for her story, “The Widow
Joy.” Originally published in the magazine, Speakeasy.
(And also, reprinted on the DVD digital anthology.)
From the Cutting Room Floor, an interview excerpt not used
on the DVD.
Brown on Discovery
So much of what I do when I’m writing, and this isn’t
the case for everybody, is to discover what I’m talking about
as I go along. Some people know exactly what they’re doing.
I think it’s Joyce Carol Oates who says she has everything
worked out in her head before she puts pen to paper. No way I’m
going to be able to do that. I find out what is on my mind as I
write and I watch my characters solving problems, going deeper into
the situation that I put them in at the beginning. And I usually
have no idea where it is that they’re going to go. And you
would be surprised to know how many writers write that way. EL Doctorow
has a wonderful quote, I never have it exactly but it’s something
like, writing a novel is like driving in fog at night. You can go
only as far as headlights see, but you can get to the end of the
road that way. Which I think is a wonderful way to think about the
way I write. It’s like Robert Frost once said, if you know
how a poem is going to end why would you bother writing it. Which
seems to me absolutely, absolutely right.
Interviews with Brown:
A text interview with The Missouri Review in 1994:
http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=
An+Interview+with+Rosellen+Brown
An audio interview with NPR about writing and the writer’s
mother (also interviewed is Edwidge Danticat):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1006999
Snippets of Her Writing:
Scenes from Tender Mercies, including audio files of Brown
reading these scenes:
http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/poems/brown.reading.html
Brown reads from Cora Fry, from WBEZ 91.5 FM in Chicago,
IL:
http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/hb_feb05.asp
About the Movie "Before and After"
Brown's novel Before and After was turned into a movie
in 1996 starring Liam Neeson and Merly Streep.
A review of the movie, with reflections on Brown's novel as the
basis of the movie:
http://www.geocities.com/Pipeline/3225/Molina/beforeafter.html
A brief review from the NY Times:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=136116
"Why the Book was Better than the Movie"
http://www.midlandauthors.com/newsletter/4_1997.html
More Links of Interest:
A fan of Brown:
http://www.mosaicminds.net/all_booked_up_favorites
Brown’s quotation as recorded by Bartleby’s Quotations:
http://www.bartleby.com/63/98/4898.html
A review of Half a Heart from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette:
http://www.post-gazette.com/books/reviews/20000507review488.asp
Researched by CP Chang
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