In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Contemporary Literature 46.4 (2005) vi, 557-578


[Access article in PDF]

An Interview with Alice McDermott

Conducted by Charlie Reilly


Click for larger view		 Figure 1
Alice McDermott; Photo credit: Jerry Bauer
[End Page vi]

Few writers have become so quickly and firmly established in the literary pantheon as award-winning novelist Alice McDermott. Her riveting plots, intricate use of point of view, and vivid re-creation of the Irish American communities of the mid-twentieth century have earned her an international reputation and made her one of the most admired fiction writers of our time. The fact that during her twenty-year, five-book career her work has been respectfully compared to that of so many major authors testifies to her enormous skill and achievement. McDermott's descriptions of the suburban middle class have reminded critics of John Cheever and John Updike and have inspired my colleague J. Peter Williams to say: "Simply amazing. She's like Jane Austen with a club." Michiko Kakutani has identified in McDermott's work striking similarities to James Joyce's; Margaret Atwood has said her writings about the artist's imagination are reminiscent of Dante's and Proust's; and numerous critics have compared her novels to William Faulkner's and F. Scott Fitzgerald's.

Anyone who has progressed even a few pages into McDermott's fiction cannot help but be struck by her style—at times lyrical and metaphoric, at times fiercely descriptive. Perhaps reviewer Richard Eder best described the experience of encountering Alice McDermott when he observed, "Her realism is so blazingly accurate that it hurts. . . . Each distinct atom of reality splits under her artisan hammer and releases a world of wild, lost particles." Nor have her achievements gone uncelebrated. Her second novel was a finalist for the National Book Award, perhaps the nation's most [End Page 557] important literary honor; her fourth novel won it. McDermott has taught at the University of New Hampshire, the University of California at San Diego, and American University and currently is a professor and writer in residence in the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars program.

McDermott's first novel, A Bigamist's Daughter (1982), is an alternatingly amusing and disturbing satire of a twenty-six-year-old editor at a vanity publisher. On the surface, the novel takes to task such presses' exploitation of the dreams and silliness of aspirant writers. But beneath that surface is the tale of a neglected daughter brooding about an absentee father. Anne Tyler was among the first to recognize the author's extraordinary talent when she wrote: "McDermott sounds like anything but a first-time novelist. She writes with assurance and skill, and she has created a fascinatingly prismatic story."

That Night (1987), a finalist for the National Book Award, brought McDermott national recognition. From its electrifying beginning, McDermott describes a failed teenage romance in a manner that seems part ancient myth and part contemporary soap opera. In a nutshell, the book describes the attack of some young thugs upon a quiet suburban home. But the novel is distinguished by the fury of its prose and the intricacy of its plot. The descriptions of "the spectacular rites of hood courtship" and the pregnant heroine's horrifying suicide attempt alone make the book a success, but its intricate use of narrative point of view raises it to the status of a literary novel.

At Weddings and Wakes (1992) and Charming Billy (1998) relocate McDermott's novels from what might be any American middle-class environment to urban and suburban Irish America. At Weddings and Wakes tells the story of three generations of a confused and angry family and does so from the points of view of three children. Charming Billy, the National Book Award winner, brought the author international recognition. Again there is a surface tale, the life and death of an alcoholic named Billy Lynch. But beneath that surface is a stunning exploration of the horrors of alcoholism and the futile attempts of an Irish American community to cope with it. Equally important is the role of the removed, almost sardonic...

pdf

Share