Writing in Public: Nora Lange on matrilineal stories and what America could be
Plus Great American Novels and characters who appear fully formed
Readers, I am so excited to share another author interview with you today. I know it’s election day and maybe you’re not in the headspace to read anything right now. I completely understand. Bookmark this post and come back to it later because Nora Lange’s Us Fools is one of my favorite books of the year, and I’m going to come right out in say it: I need more of you to read it!
At its heart, Us Fools is a sister story. The book follows two sisters growing up during the turbulence of the Midwest farm crisis as well as zooming in on their present-day lives and crises. Bernie and Jo have a remarkably deep bond, very different personalities, and a shared passion for stories. Sisterhood stories are in right now, but I have really struggled to connect with or enjoy many of the sister books on offer right now. I think it can be challenging to write a story that depends on the juxtaposition between two or more characters and not reduce them to “types.” Not only does Lange avoid this trap in Us Fools, but she offers fascinating commentary on female archetypes in literature through Bernie and Jo’s ongoing exploration of women’s stories, both the lore of their own family line and the tales they discover in the pages of books.
The other element of Us Fools that I fell hard for is its distinct Americanness. I wasn’t always interested in the idea of particularly American stories, but after teaching Am Lit for many years, I love being able to situate new books in the ongoing discourse about what it means to tell an American story. Situated in the heart of the country during a moment of tremendous upheaval, Us Fools is looking both back and forwards at the America that was and the one that could be. Nostalgic but not reverent, evaluative but not moralizing, funny but not smug, the tone of the story perfectly encapsulates the novel’s key questions while staying highly entertaining.
I was so thrilled to be able to chat more with Nora about how she developed characters who still live in my mind long after finishing the book and to hear her take on the idea of the Great American Novel1. This interview is entirely spoiler free so you can enjoy it whether or not you’ve already gotten the chance to read Us Fools.
SH: Bernie and Jo are such distinct characters. We grow to understand them in part through their similarities and differences, but also as individuals. Did these characters arrive to you fully formed or did their individual personas grow and evolve as you wrote them?
NL: I will say, in a Walter Benjamin sense, that Joanne and Bernadette’s auras came fully formed. (I wonder if I’d have phrased it in that same way before having a child, or whether that sentiment is a very "post-child" one.) I understood the core of their nature, but that in of itself, while a strong feeling, is abstract and took a lot of further investigating and developing for the two sisters to be, to my mind, fully formed, That too seems like a misrepresentation, in that they continue to grow and to expand even now as I type this. They are out in the world changing as they may be written, but they are not “fixed.”
To me, much of this novel is risky, it’s form, it’s shadowing, it’s layering and patterning, and to your question—it’s characters. In many respects, they do not behave.
SH: The book is told through Bernie’s perspective, which I loved because it really showed where she focused her attention and what details she might have missed. Her parents, for example, remain somewhat hazy but Joanne is in sharp focus. Was the novel always entirely in Bernie’s voice and how did you determine which perspective to write from?
NL: I wanted to look up to something. And then there was Joanne Fareown. This understanding made it easy to decide on telling the story from the younger, Bernadette’s perspective. So much about the novel is about striving for something, reaching out for something, a promise at your grasp, a taste, a full love at the tip of your tongue, a future which could be bright and delicious—and Bernadette looks up to Joanne, and this subtly reflects Americans looking up to America, whether, in either case, that’s misguided is debated in this novel and is debated currently around tables.
SH: As we’ve already discussed, this is very much a novel about sisterhood, but I don't want to reduce it to that because you are also exploring motherhood in really interesting ways as well as daughterhood and what these girls have inherited from their female ancestors. Can you share a little bit about how you knew you wanted to explore these deep feminine familial bonds and why you think it's an important topic for a novel?
NL: I think any risk is worth considering. To me, much of this novel is risky, it’s form, it’s shadowing, it’s layering and patterning, and to your question—it’s characters. In many respects, they do not behave. To get to your question! In the case of inheriting ancestral lineages, the sisters in Us Fools not only inherit what was passed down matrilineally, but the legacies which belong to female figures of the past from Virginia Woolf to Tiny Broadwick to Philomela. This is important because stories do not close when we think we’ve closed them. They are living. And women, notoriously, have had to fight to find ways to keep those stories told especially when the risks could be deadly.
And women, notoriously, have had to fight to find ways to keep those stories told especially when the risks could be deadly.
SH: I used to teach American Literature and I'm fascinated by the idea of the Great American Novel. Us Fools seems very invested in understanding American mythologies and—without spoiling anything!—the last line of the novel is “America could be beautiful.” Can you tell us a little bit about writing a distinctly American novel?
NL: This is a novel of what America was, is and could be, and whether that is great—I don't know. But it is an attempt. (I think Percival Everett's James is a great American novel!)
SH: Can you give us a few books you recommend that are in conversation with Us Fools?
NL: Books to read, each very different from the next in every respect: Rachel Cusk Second Place; Ryan Chapman The Audacity; Nicole Treska Wonderland.
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Happy reading!
Sara
OMG! Even if you hadn’t recommended this! I have to read it-deckled edges and French flaps!!!😉