Illuminating Fiction

Amy Bloom: Characters That Won’t Go Away

92 Amy Bloom Characters That Won’t Go Away Amy Bloom started writing when she was thirty-four, after she had already earned a Master’s in social work and established herself as a psychotherapist. She is the author of two collections of stories: Come to Me, which made the short list for the National Book Award in 1993 and received the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award; and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Love Invents Us, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Bloom’s first book of nonfiction, Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude, is an exploration of the varieties of gender. Away, Bloom’s second novel, will be published in August, 2007. Amy Bloom’s success is legendary. Her stories are included in The Best American Short Stories 1991 and The Best American Short Stories 2002 and she has won a National Magazine Award. Other stories have appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and numerous other anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, Salon, Bazaar and Vogue. Bloom teaches at Yale University and lives in Connecticut. I spoke with her by phone. Sherry Ellis: Nadine Gordimer said, “Instead of simply pondering on a question, I will invent a story that encompasses the question and try to see how it is answered by people’s reactions and their emotions.” How do you create your stories? Amy Bloom: Well, that’s a great quote from Nadine Gordimer. I think I start with a moment or a character, somebody doing something, something that I can see suddenly, or I hear somebody say something, or I have an image. And then I want to provide information, I want to give my character opportunities to reveal who they are. Amy Bloom 93 Ellis: About the people you met and interviewed for your book of nonfiction , Normal: Transsexual CEO’s, Crossing Cops and Hermaphrodites with Attitude, you’ve written, “Fiction would have failed these people, so I chose the other.” How do you choose what medium you’ll write in? Bloom: Well, I almost always write in fiction, and that’s my story writing. And I did actually write a short story that was about a transsexual character and his mother. But I was going more for information or a point of view, something that I wanted to convey, and that led me to use nonfiction. When I’m writing fiction, it’s not because I want to show anybody anything. It’s because I want to tell a story, not prove a point. Ellis: How did you decide to transform your stories, for example “Sleepwalking” into “Night Vision,” and “Light into Dark” and ”Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines” into the novel Love Invents Us? Bloom: I think that there are some characters that weren’t ready to go away, and I didn’t want them to. They kept coming back and I kept being ready for them, and was happy they would come back. I don’t want to make it seem as mysterious as it sounds, but I felt I just wasn’t done with them and there was more story. And that was something clear to me. Ellis: In your novel-in-progress are there links to your prior work? Bloom: Only in the way that I write, really, nothing else at all. It’s a big novel that covers a lot of geography in a way that my other work doesn’t. It’s not something that’s mostly domestic, meaning internal and about people, marriages in some way; it’s very different than all of that. It’s very exciting. It has all the things that matter to me. My sons’ friend once asked, “What does your mother write about?” and they said, “Sex, love, marriage, death . . . like that.” That’s fair enough. So, it’s still like that. Ellis: How long have you been working on it and how will you know when it is done? Bloom: God willing it will be done at the end of February, because that’s when I’m supposed to turn it in. I have a pretty strong outline that I’ve been 94 Illuminating Fiction working with closely...