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218 Valerie Martin Valerie Martin is the author of eight novels, three short story collections, and one work of nonfiction. She was born in Sedalia, Missouri, and grew up in New Orleans, where she attended public grammar school, a Catholic high school, and the University of New Orleans, from which she received a BA in English. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Amherst College. Martin worked as a waitress, a welfare worker, a clerk in a children ’s bookstore, and a high school teacher before turning to university teaching full time. She has taught at the University of New Orleans, the University of New Mexico, the University of Alabama, Mount Holyoke College, the University of Massachusetts, Sarah Lawrence College, and Loyola University in New Orleans. Her novel Property won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Franz Kafka Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Valerie Martin lived in Italy for three years; currently, she resides in upstate New York. Set in Motion, 1978; Alexandra, 1979; A Recent Martyr, 1987; The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories, 1988; Mary Reilly, 1990; The Great Divorce, 1994; Italian Fever, 1999; Love, 1999 (stories); Property, 2003; The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories, 2006; and Trespass, 2007 In your first three novels, the main characters are intelligent, educated women who live at the periphery of the active world. What fascinates you about these kinds of people? I don’t believe that women in fiction have to be active—or they should be active—in order to be interesting. The novels that I admire are often about women—and men, too—who are outsiders. There’s a classic appeal in the outsider as the central character of fiction, because that person is in the position to be the observer. People who are very active are not valerIe MartIn 219 as observant. They don’t see as much and they don’t often think as much. They’re too busy doing. These observers speak in voices that are low-key, intelligent, and rational about violently intense sexual experiences, about the lush New Orleans setting. How does this kind of paradox work toward the books’ overall effect? I like the contrast of someone who is rational and calm in a world that’s a little bit crazy, because I can lead this character into intense emotional states without the narrative becoming changed by that—without it becoming emotional writing instead of writing about emotion. When you look at the people who are not particularly emotional, there’s a real tendency to think, “Well, then they just don’t feel emotion.” Whereas, those who are constantly putting on a display lead themselves and the world to believe that they feel very strongly and deeply. But my observation of people has been that the reverse is true. I think my characters have to be sort of passive in order to be able to observe the things I want them to observe. If they were active, they wouldn’t know what they know. They wouldn’t arrive at the conclusions they finally arrive at. I think people set too high a premium on being active. I don’t particularly value it myself. I think if people would be a little more passive—in some areas, not all areas. Obviously, you should stand up for what you think is right, always. In some ways, I hope that this happens to my characters , that they finally are forced to do that in spite of their natural inclination not to. Mary Reilly certainly is a case of that. The narrator in A Recent Martyr, who is involved in a dangerous love affair, has to make a choice, which she tries to resist as long as she can because it’s much easier just to be passive. My idea of how to put a novel together is to take the character and put him under a whole lot of pressure and see what comes out. In a way, that’s how I find my characters. Given the private, recalcitrant natures of your characters, what do you think it is that compels them to tell their stories? I think it’s the classic guilt motive that so much of fiction is based on. Half, maybe three-fourths of all the world’s fiction is written with this notion: the narrator wants to explain “Why I did what I did.” Usually, it’s because they feel bad about...

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