An Interview with Robb Forman Dew

AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBB FORMAN DEW Robb Forman Dew Robb Forman Dew's first novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death, won the American Book Award. A sequel wiU be forthcoming next year. A portion of her second novel, The Time of Her Life, originally appeared in The Missouri Review and won the WilUam Peden Prize in Fiction. This interview was conducted by Kay Bonetti, Director of the American Audio Prose Library. The Prose Library offers tapes of American authors reading and discussing their work. For information contact AAPL at P.O. Box 842, Columbia, MO 65205. An Interview with Robb Forman Dew/Kay Bonetti Interviewer: Miss Dew, you've said that your Southern background is the source of your interest in the intricacies of family life. Could you elaborate on that? Dew: Southern famiUes tend to be extraordinarily involved with each other, not always in a good way. The influence of family, I think, is what makes a story. When you're a chUd you try to piece together where did that aunt come from, what uncle was that, how did this happen. I think I began to realize I was going to write when my family started to disintegrate. In realizing that it was an internal combustion rather than an outside force that broke the family to pieces, I began to have to teU a story about it. Interviewer: You seem to have avoided Southern settings, although Avery and Claudia Parks, Jane's parents in The Time of Her Life, are from Natchez. Dew: That's right. Claudia and Avery grew up together. They can't break away from each other; they're almost Uke siblings. It seems to me that the South's incredible heat bonds people together. It's a very sexual, sensual place. There's such luxuriant growth— the heavy scented air and decay aU around. There's something dangerous in the atmosphere. Interviewer: Is it also a glamorous place? Dew: I think glamor and decadence go hand in hand. Glamor is right on the edge of faUure. That's where Claudia and Avery are just skimming right along. They're intelUgent and irreverent— interesting, I think, to other people. I would Uke to know them, but I wouldn't Uke to know them too weU. The Missouri Review · 73 Interviewer: I was curious about why The Time of Her Life is set in Missouri. Dew: I Uved in Missouri for ten years during a very crucial time in my Ufe. I had my two children there. To me it is my home, reaUy more than the deep South, and I wanted to write about it because I care about it. Interviewer: It's obvious that Lunsbury is Columbia. Why did you change the name? Dew: The New Yorker asked me to. I had to change the name of the town in Dale Loves Sophie to Death, too. Interviewer: Is that a New Yorker poUcy? Dew: That's what they told me. But as a matter of fact, I didn't want to name the town Columbia for various reasons. I sort of invented the weather for example. It's amazing—letters arrive that say, "But we never had that ice storm ... it never rains Uke that... we never have winds from the west." On a subconscious level, too, if I name an exact town, I am locked into the exact facts. And that stops invention. Interviewer: The weather rang pretty true, for me. Dew: I was in Columbia during an amazing ice storm and the river froze over a long period of time. I have telescoped that into three days. I don't beUeve a river can freeze that quickly, but I decided it had to for the sake of my book. That's what I mean about inventing the weather. 74 · The Missouri Review Robb Forman Dew "No matter how much you would like to be separate from how you grew up, there is no escaping family. " Interviewer: An interesting tension between the poUtical consciousness and the purely private sensibiUty runs through both your novels. There's a funny scene where Avery has Claudia down on the floor, practicaUy strangling her and saying, "Who...