Roberta Allen
You are an acclaimed visual artist. You have exhibited worldwide with work in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bibliothèque Nacional, Paris, and other major collections. You are also widely published: you have written novels, articles, nonfiction books, and short stories. What inspired you to become a writer and to teach writing? Which art form takes priority in your life today and why?
I wrote my first short short stories around 1980. They just "came" to me in short bursts. A writer friend liked them and suggested I submit them to an anthology. They were published by Sun & Moon Press in CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION, which includes John Asbery, Walter Abish, Russell Banks, and other respected writers. Once I started, I LOVED writing. Not only did I love the work itself, but I loved the fact that I could do it alone in my apartment in Manhattan.
Everything in the artworld involved a million phone calls, visits, and mailings. Only about 10% of my time was spent making art. The rest was business. I did I think 22 solo exhibitions by 1981 in New York and Europe.
My art used language to redefine conventional signs, such as arrows and "pointless arrows," a concept I invented. I created my own perceptual schemes which were as true as the ones accepted by our culture, but demanded of the viewer a perceptual leap.
Writing fiction seemed a natural progression. The writing I had to do in the artworld about my work, which was very complicated to describe, taught me how to write. I had never considered being a writer because in my unconscious I didn't want to be better than my father, who never went past third grade: I had this epiphany in therapy many years ago.
Writing continues to be my passion. If I were not deeply involved in my own work and in the process of writing, I don't think I'd be a good teacher.
Your timed exercises in FAST FICTION are liberating. How did you arrive at this technique? Do you always use these methods in your own work?
A friend of mine thought I'd be a good writing teacher though I had not even considered it a possibility since I have no formal education. But I taught a semester at Parsons School of Design in 1986 after my first book of stories, THE TRAVELING WOMAN, came out to good reviews (it was also excerpted) in The New York Times Book Review.
At Parsons I invented my five minute fast fiction exercises for art students. I saw how frightened students were of writing and I wanted it to be as easy for them as it had been for me. So I chose a way for them to work that was as close as possible to my own working process. Stories just "came" to me. There was a lot of energy in them. But I had to be quick and jot them down otherwise I would lose them.
Using the timer with students came closest to the way I naturally worked. I never used exercises for my own stories. The topics, however focused the students' attention and the timer concentrated their energy.
Anyone who hears the title of your Playful Way series books might be surprised to learn you had a challenging childhood. Can you tell our readers about your background? How did your past motivate you to lead such a creative life?
I come from an extremely dysfunctional family. Drawing really saved my life when I was a child. It was the only pleasurable activity I was allowed to do. My mother and grandmother were obsessive-compulsive. They wouldn't let me get dirty or play with other children. They tried to keep me helpless and dependent. I didn't know how to tie my own shoes or wash myself when I was eight. I boiled water for the first time when I was eighteen and living in my own apartment with a girlfriend in the Village.
My father was a gambler and a depressive, who was often running from the Mafia or the Internal Revenue Service or both. But he always encouraged me to be independent and sent me to summer camp when I was eight-and-a-half, which changed my life. But when I was seventeen my father owed a lot of money to the Mafia. They had a hit out on him. He felt he had no way out. He committed suicide. Earlier in his life, he had attempted suicide twice.
When I was young, I wanted to be as different from my mother and grandmother as I could possibly be. I did things they couldn't possibly imagine much less do, such as going to Europe by myself and becoming a painter. My father had taught me to challenge myself and take risks. I identified with my father. His suicide, however, was the most devastating event in my life.
But I've always had my work, whether it was art or writing, to sustain me, and keep me centered. Others could wait to do their "true" work when they had enough money or time or whatever. For me, there was never any choice. My work has always been the driving force in my life, my reason for being, which tends to make long-term relationships rocky. This is not an easy way to live and is fraught with anxieties about money and security. But after so many years, I see that as part of the package I've chosen.
The sensuality of THE DREAMING GIRL combined with your clear, concise prose was hypnotic. I immediately lost myself in the jungle you described. Did any of your travels inspire this novel? Do you plan to write more novels in the future?
My travels have inspired almost all of my writing until now (with the exception of my writing guides). THE DREAMING GIRL was inspired by a trip I made to Belize. Wildlife Conservation Magazine sent me there to write an article. I was the first tourist at a howler monkey conservation project. Instead of kicking local farmers off the land, the project made them caretakers of the howler monkeys. (I believe it was the first animal conservation effort that didn't displace people). I stayed with a family there. It was a wonderful experience. Then I traveled all over Belize, which has wonderful rainforests. I am fascinated by life in the rainforests.
I don't know what I will write in the future. I'm too involved in my present project to think beyond it.
What is your favorite form of writing: short short (sometimes called flash) fiction, novels, essays, or nonfiction? Why?
I love telling stories in the broadest sense--whether they're short or long, real or imagined. I always like best the form I am using: right now I'm writing a memoir about my childhood, which is why I suppose I decided to reveal all those facts about my family in an interview. I think the memoir is the most difficult form to master.
Tell us about some of the trips that you've made over the years. What were your favorite places?
My trip alone to the Peruvian Amazon that I wrote about in my travel memoir, AMAZON DREAM, is the trip that dwarfed all other trips, before and after. (I wasn't really alone. I always hired guides and boats). But for a "fraidy cat" like me, it was a major achievement. I fell in love with the jungle and with the art of the Shipibo Indians. Challenges have always forced me to face the fears I internalized from my mother's and grandmother's upbringing.
My favorite places include The White Desert in Egypt, which has to be seen to be believed! (It was once a sea). Extraordinary white rock formations! Fossilized shells and coral strewn all over. I slept out in a sleeping bag below a sky full of stars. I felt completely safe. Next morning by my head I saw tracks in the sand of many creatures.
Bali was also wonderful. I lived alone in a bungalow in the rice fields. The Goreme Valley in Turkey is another favorite. I went there with a writer to take photographs for his book. Again, the rock formations and the houses built in the rock amazed me.
Though I went to Mali in West Africa to do a feature article on the Dogon people for The Sophisticated Traveler, the travel magazine of The New York Times, what stands out for me now beside the granaries and the villages built on the edge of the Bandiagara cliffs, is Timbuctoo and the wonderful adobe architecture in Djenne.
Parts of Western Australia where I stayed for 5 months on a fellowship from the State Museum of Perth were also breathtaking. I could go on and on. I think there was something wonderful to see or experience on every trip I've taken.
Some women are cautious about traveling alone. Any advice?
Now that I have a favorite place in the world (which I won't mention) I don't do so much traveling by myself.
But traveling alone now is so commonplace among women that I don't think they need my advice. It's mostly a matter of using common sense and listening to your intuition: If a place feels dangerous to you, it is. Sometimes, of course, risky places are unavoidable. I've always found in such places that the friendlier and more open I am (saying hello to everyone I pass, for example), the less afraid I feel. Also, if you are friendly, others don't pick up on your fear and so you are less likely to be victimized, though this may not always be true.
You teach private classes, are on faculty at New School University, and have taught writing at Columbia University. What is the most important lesson you have learned from your students?
That all writing is energy. Craft can be taught. But the energy behind the words is what's really important. Without that energy, writing is dead. I see over and over in students and in myself that when passion is there--even when the writing itself is weak--desire can push that writing beyond any limits. All that's needed is a fierce desire to write.
What are you working on now?
I'm writing a memoir called DIFFERENT: An Artist's Painfully Erotic Childhood. Writing this book is as challenging to me as any trip I've taken! It's amazing how many discoveries I'm making about the past! I started this book thinking: I know this story. But once you start writing, more and more memories come forth and you begin to see connections you never saw before. You begin to see what is behind the story you think you know so well.
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