 The author of Footways talks about her book, her characters, the relationship between her novel and "real life", the mythology in her book, her career as a writer, her influences, and lots more.
Where did the idea for Foot Ways come from?
I don’t know. I can identify “pieces". I can tell you that I love to write in a state of “not knowing.” Knowing is for the critic side of me after the fact.
Where did the whole come from? I’m a Southerner, after all, though I can hardly be said to write “predominantly Southern.” Myth, tradition, the Bible, literature, music, archetypes . . . mingle in and drive Southerners more than most, assuredly—and drive Foot Ways. The hearkening to myth can be good and/or bad but is always fascinating. Myth is not just for children, never was; it was life-encouraging mostly, though it, in the remotest times, evoked literal sacrifice. The title Foot Ways is a pun that, in larger terms, encapsulates the footway/journey each of us goes in life, but even the specific “ways of feet” in the novella are huge by implication, e.g., encompassing every bogey man who ever frightened a child, every luring and seductive figure, every combatant of said luring figure (all who help mark the Devil’s foot in warning to the rest of us), and on and on. Myth endures; it’s now fully decked out in technology. The question in my work is how in informs and influences generations. How do those who give themselves to it deal with retribution? Can those who try to shut it out be fully human? The novella starts with the “modern-day” daughter who has imbibed myth from her cradle and birthright and has, unconsciously, educated herself in it. Yet, she is strikingly different from her mother, is both Polly Junior and not Polly Junior. It is her mother’s version of the myth—the myth in (one version of) flesh—who gives her that name. But myth is not wholly female, either. The son of Polly Senior’s mythical lover is Icarus-like in wanting the powers of his father. He ends getting that tantalizing verbal duplicity of fairy tales and genie jokes, but he has a chance at redemption in coming to the aid of Polly Junior. Her own jousting with myth (e.g., figures on a Toby jug) yields the reward of honey from Bee. Myth is never resolved, or it is not true myth, but the lives of those who open themselves to it are rich beyond measure.
Foot Ways seems actually to be three different stories told from three very different points of view. Was this a conscious decision, or was it something that developed on its own?
More than three points of view, I think, are presented—(1) the contemporary daughter, Polly Junior; (2) her mother, Polly Senior, who is at the core of the myth for her generation; (3) Dan Asher, the son who would be free of all that is mythical but desires the power of his father, the “MythMan” Asher Asher; (4) Asher Asher by indirection; and (5) Bee Burton by indirection. The daughter and son of the main incarnation of the myth (Polly Senior and Asher Asher/Mr. Rufe) interact, for one reason, to allow Dan Asher a kind of salvation. Bee and Polly Junior work their separate ways through myth and, in a sense, purify it to join at the end of the novella. A central point I wanted to make was the endurance of myth over time and despite adaptation.
The character of Mr. Rufe is so enigmatic, yet integral, to the overall story. He’s almost this mythical character. What does Rufe represent to you as the author?
He is mythical; hence my referring to him above as “MythMan.” His guise varies in each dispensation. On the simplest myth level, he is the Dark Lover who haunts women’s fantasies (and recurs so often in bodice-rippers!). He is also bound in with the foot imagery of the Bible, the sacramental washing of the feet. He is the lover in the Song of Songs. I happened to link him with Mary Queen of Scots, so he becomes the Scottish minstrel and itinerant “dancie.” He is what he needs to be for each generation (“Asher Asher,” “Mr. Rufe”) and for each individual who responds to him.
There is a tendency to look for something autobiographical in a writer’s work. Is there anything in the book that was borrowed from your own life?
Mr. Rufe spins from a man (of that name even), who used to appear periodically at our house when I was a child. He did read me Uncle Wiggley stories. He did have a dog named Doodlebug. I liked him; wondered about him; never found out anything about him; felt child-blocked, as customary, from adult knowing. Nothing was sinister. The sexual overtones derive from a one-time experience with a much older cousin. As is often the case for me, a poem (about Doodlebug) came first.
I’m sure other true-life bits appear, but another that comes to mind is the cat at the Burns home in Alloway, Scotland. My husband and I saw him on a trip there. I seem to recall, too, that some press or journal put out a call for stories that had something about “glass shoes” (as in the opening of Chapter 3). I had already written most, maybe all, of the novella by then but was struck by the resonations of the reference—all of us walking thorough the world in glass shoes—and took it on to the special shoes with which Dan Asher gifts his father.
Let’s talk about the “Annual Masonic Lodge Number Fourteen Spring Jubilee Barbecue and Chicken Stew Supper and Theatrical Performance Tribute.” What was the inspiration for that? And why is it important to the story?
Myth is communal and comes in epic form (e.g., Iliad, Odyssey, Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress), certainly, but, for most of us, it must accommodate the needs of everyday life and appear in a more mundane guise (e.g., “The Legend of John Hardy,” “Poor Little Nell,” “Laura Lee”). Such music, in a sense, takes the place of, certainly shares in the great Bardic tradition. The musicians “beat the Devil runnin’,” as in the ancestor tales that connect with the “Annual Masonic Lodge Number Fourteen Spring Jubilee Barbecue and Chicken Stew Supper and Theatrical Performance Tribute.” The takes on Communal Suppers/Communion are similar. The title of the “tribute” was sheer fun for me and was meant to convey the innocence and naïveté of the participants as well as the opposite end of the myth spectrum from epic.
What do you hope readers take away with them when they finish reading the book?
I hope they’ll share my admiration for myth in all guises, high to low, and a willingness to dwell in Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes [literary and all] faith” and Hamlet’s “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
You’re currently a full-time writer. When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer?
As I’ve indicated elsewhere, I was a “nerd unaware,” always known as a “brain” and a “writer.” In college, I was sidetracked from creative writing, which really, “of course, isn’t quite what one must do.” That divide, unfortunately, still obtains, with each side tending to sneer at the other. I’d always had an inkling that college professors had been a bit too adamant in dismissing their creative-writing comrades. I meant to see for myself. Well, my husband and I cruised around the globe for five consecutive years, at three+ months per trip, until the condition of the world (and the stock market) said us nay. I took a laptop with me, and that was that, though, with the turn to creative writing, I have not jettisoned the academic and still do a great deal of editing.
Who are some of your influences?
Any influences are unconscious; I try to make my own way. As an English professor, widely published in criticism, I was a reader long before I turned to creative writing. Thus, I do, certainly, pay honor to literary figures whom I admire; in Foot Ways, Donne, Bunyan, and cummings, as examples, are much “in play”; so is the King James Bible. My doctoral dissertation was on Milton; my primary fields are Renaissance and Seventeenth Century; my secondary, Medieval and Eighteenth Century; my minor, Philology and Linguistics. My academic books, as expected, are on Milton, Bunyan, and Carew, but, unexpectedly, on the contemporary writers Margaret Drabble and Anita Brookner. I wrote the first critical book on Drabble. After I turned to creative writing, I had the delight of teaching a poetry workshop with her daughter last summer in France, when I was participating in the Writers Abroad Conference as the winner of its short story competition (for a wry and satirical work on Patrick Swayze being kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq).
What was the best piece of advice you ever received as a writer?
I tend to rely more on negative learning, I think—on the opposite of what I’m told to do in the way of topic and/or procedure. I certainly don’t obey the bromides, e.g., write what you know; be accessible. But, then, my route, as you have seen, has been rather different. I was an academic writer/critic first, turned to creative writing late. I haven’t really been in the conventional venues to hear advice, have never had the advantage of being in (though I’ve taught) creative writing workshops (in which I try to do justice to the conventional wisdom).
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