Dale Brown
(from Radix Vol. 30:4)
Called
to Write: An Interview with Jan Karon
(page
2 of 4)
Radix: Because it’s who you are?
Karon: Yes.
Radix: So you’ve just finished the eighth Mitford book, Shepherds Abiding?
Karon: Yes, the next to the last. And the last is to be Light from Heaven in 2005.
Radix: Do you think your more recent books are the best of the lot? You’ve talked about learning to write. Are you getting better at it?
Karon: In some ways. Some people say the first book is their favorite. It’s like your first love affair, your first sweetheart, your first kiss. I mean it’s hard to top your first kiss. But, I guess In This Mountain would be my favorite, because it was such a struggle, a book of struggle, and I was undergoing some deep struggle.
Radix: Out of Canaan and In This Mountain are deeper somehow, it seems to me. Morris Love is a most complicated and dramatic character in Canaan and Uncle Billy’s eulogy chapter in Mountain is my favorite bit in all of your books.
Karon: I really love Uncle Billy, and in Shepherds Abiding, I spent a lot of time with him. I think he’s a wonderful guy.
Radix: Well, you haven’t been on Oprah yet, but this writing thing has certainly changed your life.
Karon: Honey, I just love Oprah. And this house is entirely Mitford, though I do worry about how big hits change people’s lives. I don’t keep up with the Oprah writers, however. I don’t read many contemporary writers. I’m afraid of them.
Radix: These are some characterizations of your work. Tell me what you think. “Reads like a small town newspaper.” “The most successful writer you’ve never heard of.” “Complete rendering of the American myth.” “Comfort fiction.” “Does justice to the real experience of most of us.”
Karon: I like that one.
Radix: “Reflects contemporary culture more fully than almost any living novelist.”
Karon: Can you believe the Los Angeles Times said that? That fellow has probably been so ridiculed that he probably doesn’t even work there anymore.
Radix: He was decrying the ascendancy of the Grisham genre. That’s a remarkable line.
Karon: Remarkable. Boy, don’t think we haven’t milked that one.
Radix: What about that “complete rendering of the American myth” line?
Karon: I think that was said by somebody who doesn’t realize that Mitford is real.
Radix: So they think of you as re-creating Leave it to Beaver?
Karon: Yes, exactly. All we have to do is get out there. I was raised in Mitford. I lived 15 years in Mitford before I came here. I am documenting what I have seen and experienced. And they say my books are set in the 1950s. No, they’re not. They’re set in the present day. I just don’t have a lot of televisions, fax machines, and cell phones in my books.
Radix: You do say that Mitford has to be worked at, that for Mitford to survive there has to be this effort made?
Karon: Right. You get from Mitford what you bring to it. If you have a giving heart, you’ll get it. I mean, you can’t miss it if you’re willing to look. You know, there’s Miss Rose in Mitford. She is really a pain in the neck. And yet, people have made a place for her. Remember how the mayor, Esther Cunningham, made sure she had oil in her furnace. Miss Rose was allowed to direct traffic. That soon ended because she became too feeble to do it, but some had wanted to get her off the street because it was bad for business. Now that debate was from a real circumstance in Charlotte , North Carolina . There was a man who could speak only in rhyme. He told me in rhyme that he had been dropped on his head when he was a baby. But he faithfully stood out in a median strip in the most exclusive section of Charlotte and directed traffic, and people wanted him to be there.
Radix: One critic says that Mitford is “out of step with America .” I don’t think anyone has referred to you as a satirist or as an ironist, but there’s some irony here. Sometimes you’re joking lightly as when you say the perfect parson is the guy who does 15 house calls a day and is always in the office. There’s a nice little joke. And you do satirize Tennessee fairly often as the land of the wild frontier. But there’s also a complex social commentary in your books. For example, sexuality is tied to spirituality, sexuality is the confirmation of the spiritual relationship in the world of Mitford. That strikes me as counter-cultural.
Karon: It is. Definitely out of step with the world. But the thing is, there are many communities that remain out of step with the world. My daughter and I were driving through Kansas , through those flat wonderful lands. And we would just take a side road, pop in, and see what we could find. Well, we found a diner, sat down, had a nice lunch, and went down the street to a sort of saloon. And there was a little farmer’s market, and it was Mitford. It’s there. People with the same values. I’m not saying that everybody in Mitford hasn’t slept together before they’re married. But Father Tim and Cynthia chose to wait.
Radix: And there’s a way in which we need to be told that’s okay? New York doesn’t think that sells, but you’ve proven that it does.
Karon: I like what you just said, that we’re just saying it’s okay.
Radix: One guy says Mitford is “just a nice Peyton Place .”
Karon: That’s an easy line because Peyton Place is a town that became famous in literature. I don’t find any particular meaning in that. You know there are some pretty nasty people in Mitford. There’s Edith Mallory and her driver who has fallen from grace. He used to be a nice guy. People liked him and would speak to him on the street, but now he’s a low-down dirty dog because he’s her henchman. But I don’t have many mean or bad people in my books, because I don’t enjoy their company. If you’re going to spend two or three days in their company, it helps to enjoy their company.