Edward Swift Interview: The Big Thicket, New York, the Orphic Journey, San Miguel de Allende, the Sierra Gorda, and more

From my Conversations with Other Writers Podcast, a new transcript, from the 2012 interview with artist and writer Edward Swift. 

>>Listen to the podcast here.<<

C.M. Mayo: Edward Swift is one of my very favorite writers. I didn't come across his work until fairly recently, however. We met in Mexico City— I think it was in 2009— at an exhibition of our mutual friend, the Mexican painter Mariló Carral. Because Mariló went on about it, I got myself a copy of Edward's memoir, My Grandfather's Finger. And I have to say, it was such a good read that every time the subject comes up I get ridiculously effusive, and I've recommended it to almost every writer I know, and lots of other people, too, and well— we'll be talking quite a bit about this very unusual memoir in the interview.

Edward is also the author of several novels: Splendora, Principia Martindale, A Place With Promise, The Christopher Park Regulars, Mother of Pearl, Miss Spellbinder's Point of View, and most recently, The Daughter of the Doctor and the Saint. I'm going to read to you a little bit from his website, edwardswiftartist.com.

"Edward Swift made his debut as a novelist in 1978 with Splendora, which the Houston Chronicle praised as one of the year's best comic novels. He has since written five other acclaimed novels, as well as a memoir, My Grandfather's Finger.

Of Splendora, The Washington Post says, "Splendora reads like an exuberant fairy tale about a young man's search for himself." And writing in The New York Times book review, Anne Tyler wrote, "Edward Swift has a particular gift for capturing the continuous low musical murmur of small town gossip. He knows how stories seem to grow on their own, drifting almost unnoticeably toward the mythical."

And of A Place With Promise— which received glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Boston Globe, and many others— in the Los Angeles Times Carolyn See (no easy customer, by the way), writes, "A Place With Promise is a dignified, stately, intelligent book, everything a novel should be."

[MUSIC]

C.M. Mayo: It's the morning of February 22, 2012, and I'm in San Miguel de Allende with Edward Swift, and you might hear some chickens crowing, and children playing, and I don't know what. We have a lot of sounds going on here, and that's just the way it is.

We're in his workshop by his house— and I'm going to ask a lot of questions about the house, because it has a great story. So Edward, I am so happy to see you! I am so happy to be here to talk to you! This is really a thrill and an honor.

Edward Swift: Well, it's a thrill for me too. What in the world do you want to talk about?

C.M. Mayo: What in the world do I want to talk about? You have so many books. You have so many books! The one I love the most is My Grandfather's Finger, because it's the first one that I read by you. And you have a new novel, The Daughter of the Doctor and the Saint. You have several other novels, Splendora, A Place With Promise, and other books. And you have such an interesting life. But let's talk starting with page three of the essay that you wrote for Gulf Coast.

Edward Swift: What's on page three? I have no idea!

C.M. Mayo: [Laughs] "Come In, Mr. Proust: Remembering Marguerite Young." This is one of the most beautiful essays by a writer about his mentor, about learning to be a writer, that I have ever read.

Edward Swift: Thank you. Marguerite Young was very special to me. I sought her out. I read her book and it spoke to me, and I knew immediately that I had to not only know her, but study with her.

C.M. Mayo: And you studied with her for a long time.

Edward Swift: Four years in class at the New School for Social Research, and outside of the classroom we remained very close for about six years. And I met her for coffee almost every week, sometimes twice a week, down in the Village in New York in a little place called Reichert's, and then later on in a coffee shop called Pennyfeathers. And I was one of Marguerite's children until I was about 35 years old.

C.M. Mayo: So this was in the '70s.

Edward Swift: Yes, the early '70s.

C.M. Mayo: Greenwich Village, New York City.

Edward Swift: Yes.

C.M. Mayo: A very exciting time to be in New York.

Edward Swift: Well, it was the very last of the bohemian period in New York. Bohemian life was still alive in the Village. Now it is not. It is far too expensive now for artists to be able to move into the Village, so it's become very gentrified and full of families, and Wall Streeters, and people with a great deal of money who can afford those old brownstones and old apartment houses that we used to live in that cost nothing.

C.M. Mayo: And now they're several million dollars.

Edward Swift: Now they're several million dollars.

C.M. Mayo: [Laughs] You wrote in this essay that the image of the whale was of supreme importance to her. Quote, "To be swallowed up by the world and regurgitated, reborn with enlightenment, that," she said, "is the way of the artist. Some of you go into the whale but never come out again. Some of you go in and come out, but haven't the slightest idea you've entered another room. You walk through the door without seeing the portal."

You've been an artist for many, many years. You have written book after book after book. Your know, most people want to write a book, and never write it. Or they write it, and then it's such a searing experience they give up. But you have kept at it, and kept at it, and kept at it, and you also make art. You really are an artist, decade after decade. Do you think it's being swallowed up by the whale? 

[CONTINUE READING]

Edward Swift in San Miguel de Allende: 

How to Build a House Without Losing Your Mind

Sonja D. Williams on Writing 

Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom

It's Not Like Making a Peanut-Butter-And-Jelly Sandwich 

But It's Not Rocket Science, Either, 

or: How I Made My POD (And You Can, Too)

Conversations with Other Writers Podcast Archives

A Conversation with Sergio Troncoso, Author of From This Wicked Patch of Dust

A new and, of course, free, podcast in the Conversations with Other Writers series:

A conversation with Sergio Troncoso on Chicano literature, the book ban in Arizona, the US-Mexico border, 911, writing for New York, blogging, the culture of reading, and much more.

>>Read my review of Troncoso's From This Wicked Patch of Dust and Crossing Borders: Personal Essays for Literal Magazine, reproduced by permission here.

>>About the Conversations with Other Writers podcast series

>>Listen in anytime to previous conversations with:
Michael K. Schuessler
Edward Swift
Sara Mansfield Taber
Solveig Eggerz

>>So what's up with the monthly Marfa Mondays podcasts? Just slightly delayed due to unexpected developments... two more, for August and September 2012, will be very posted soon. Stay tuned on the home page. Ditto the iBookstore interactive ebook, Podcasting for Writers.

A Conversation with Artist and Writer Edward Swift

So why, when, where, and how am I podcasting? Read all about my Conversations with Other Writers podcasting series here.

New podcasts:

Edward Swift, artist and writer based in San Miguel de Allende, on the Orphic journey, Marguerite Young, the Big Thicket, the wonders of the Sierra Gorda, My Grandfather's Finger, The Daughter of the Doctor and the Saint, on being an ABT flower man, his house designed by Jesus Zarate, among a whole bunch of other things! This one hour plus interview with one of my very favorite writers was splendid fun.

>>Listen in right here.

>>Previous conversations with other writers: Sara Mansfield Taber, Solveig Eggerz, and Rosemary Sullivan.

Also new:

Abbreviated podcast-- just Yours Truly talking about my translation of Francisco I. Madero's secret book of 1911-- of the PEN / SOL Literary Magazine Reading Series event, February 22, 2012 in San Miguel de Allende is now on-line.

>> Listen here.

Report from San Miguel de Allende

Think art colony + sunshine + pedestrian paradise (if you're wearing flat shoes, that is)... Oh, all the pink puffs of bougainvilleas against pure blue sky! I managed to reach escape velocity from Mexico City for a brief visit to San Miguel de Allende apropos of a reading of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which took place in the gloriously pink and coral-red Salon Quetzal of the Biblioteca, sponsored by PEN San Miguel and SOL Literary Magazine.

+++
UPDATE:
PodCast is now live at podomatic.com
+++

Thank you, Eva Hunter, for the introduction, and Bill Pearlman, for all you do to organize this splendid reading series. Lucina Kathmann and Edward Swift, it was a delight to see you there. Edward-- everybody listen up! -- has a new novel about to come out, and it features Nezahualcoyotl's poems and stunning cover art by Kelly Vandiver. Edward's novel is one I am eagerly looking forward to reading, for I am a must-tell-EVERYBODY fan of his extraordinary memoir of growing up in the Big Thicket, My Grandfather's Finger. It was also a happy surprise to meet my fellow Unbridled Books author, George Rabasa, author of The Wonder Singer, whose new novel, Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb, is about to come out this spring. And Mariló Carral, Marisa Boullosa, and Lulu Torbet, wonderful artists, I send you besos.

P.S. I'll be back in San Miguel de Allende later in February for the San Miguel Writers Conference, for which I'll offering the mini-workshop on "Techniques of Fiction."

Also of note: My amiga writer Gina Hyams will be giving a workshop on blogging. Check out her bodacious blog! For anyone interested in starting or improving their blog, this is a terrific opportunity.


And here's the Q & A that didn't make in time for the announcement in San Miguel de Allende's local paper, Atención:

Three Questions for C.M. Mayo

Q: Why did you decide to write about this period of Mexican history?

A: I was so surprised to learn that the mother of the prince of the title– Agustin de Iturbide y Green (1863-1925) – was an American. I am also an American married to a Mexican, one very distantly related to her mother-in-law, so I was curious to learn more about her, how she came to Mexico and what made her agree, at first, to collaborate with Maximilian von Habsburg. When I started to delve into reading about the period and about her, however, I quickly found so many contradictions, mysterious distortions and vagueness, that I realized her story, and that of her son, had never been properly researched. I also felt it is an important story, for both Mexicans and Americans.

Q: As the author of nonfiction books, two on finance and a travel memoir of Baja California, how did you make the transition to writing fiction?


A: I made an effort to learn the craft of fiction through taking workshops, reading books on craft, and then re-reading novels, not as consumer wanting to be entertained, but as as a fellow craftsman, actively noting, for example, how does Chekhov describe the snow? Or Tolstoy, a dress? Lampedusa, a dance? Flaubert, a sense of joy or despair? How do they handle dialogue, transitions, building suspense? And so on. It was really as simple– and as difficult— as that.

Q: Which authors have most influenced your writing?


A: For this novel, the most influential was Guiseppi di Lampedusa's richly splendid novel, The Leopard, which covers a similar period in Sicily. For the flexible narrative voice and language I learned from Henry James’s Portrait of A Lady and Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country and for structure, her tragic novel The House of Mirth. Contemporary influences include A. Manette Ansay, Kate Braverman, Bruce Chatwin, Ted Conover, Douglas Glover, V.S. Naipaul, and oh, so many others. Everyone in Mexico asks me if I’ve read Fernando del Paso’s Noticias del Imperio. The answer is, other than a very few pages which I translated for my anthology, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, no, and not because I am unaware that it is considered one of Mexico’s greatest novels. Del Paso covers the same period and many of the same characters, and I wanted to have a clear conscience that my novel is my own. So now I have to read it!

More anon.

Madam Mayo's Top 10 Books Read 2009

#1. Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille by Rosemary Sullivan
Read my review / profile of Rosemary Sullivan for Inside Mexico here.

#2. Tras las huellas de un desconocido: Nuevos datos y aspectos de Maximiliano de Habsburgo by Konrad Ratz
A crucially important new work by Dr. Konrad Ratz, Austrian expert on Mexico's Second Empire. Covering a wide range of previously unknown or only superficially explored subjects relevant to Maximilian's life and brief rule in Mexico.

#3. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
The mega-paradigm shift explained by a leading networks scientist in plain, if elegant, English. Though this book first came out in 2002, it's well worth reading for the light it shines on the current financial crisis.

#4. My Grandfather's Finger by Edward Swift
An eccentric, elegant, and unblinkingly compassionate memoir of growing up in the thick of the Big Thicket.

#5. The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper
A story every American should read.

#6. The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland
An epistolary novel that brings the French Revolution and not only Josephine, but many of France's most intriguing personalities to such life, it sometimes seemed hard to believe I was reading fiction. Gorgeous.

#7. Midday with Buñuel by Claudio Isaac
I was both charmed and moved by this poetic memoir by Mexican filmmaker and writer Claudio Isaac about his friendship with his mentor, the Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel, who died in Mexico City in 1983.

#8. Marcel Proust: A Life by Edmund White
Oh, writers...

#9. Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley
Mum and Pup of the title were William and Pat Buckley whom I-- and many millions of other Americans--- knew by their glamorous doings as chronicled in the likes of W. This is a headshaker of a memoir, but then it's about a very peculiar and supremely public couple, and by their son. Beautifully written. One of those few books that merits a re-read or three.

#10. Living by Fiction by Annie Dillard
What a splendid book. She's also a master of the intended diction drop-- which is sometimes hilarious.

---> Top 10 Books read 2008
---> Top 10 Books Read 2007
---> Top 10 Books Read 2006

The Texas Book Festival

One of the perhaps surprising things about a book tour is that it's not all about the book; it's about meeting other writers, learning about their books, and, in this uber-connected age, learning about their websites and blogs. So I'm back (as of a couple weeks ago) from Austin's fabulous annual Texas Book Festival, where I participated on a panel --- "Imagination sin Fronteras: Wrestling with Mexico"--- with my fellow novelists Jimmy Santiago Baca (A Glass of Water), Barbara Renaud Gonzalez (Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me?), and Luis Alberto Urrea (Into the Beautiful North), moderated by poet and writer Katherine Oldmixon (so yes, we "wrestled" with Mexico in the cavernous Senate Chamber of the Texas State Capitol, a more than somewhat surrealistic experience...). I've been on a panel with Luis Alberto Urrea before: he lights up the room, literally. Though I'd heard of their work, this was the first time I met Jimmy Santiago Baca and Barbara Renaud Gonzalez-- two wonderful writers. And I also met with my amiga novelist S.Kirk Walsh, who was just back from a stay at Yaddo, and novelist (and blogger) Sergio Troncoso, down from New York City, and poet Sara Cortez, and many other members, including founding member Nora de Hoyos Comstock, of Las Comadres. As a "Latina de corazon" (after nearly 25 years married to a Mexican and living, mostly, in Mexico City, and writing about Mexico and translating Mexican work, etc.) I felt very welcomed by Las Comadres, and seriously impressed by what this nonprofit organization has achieved: 15,000 + membership and a national Latino Book Club. I did not see Southwest Review editor, Willard Spiegelman, but I did grab a copy of his splendid new book, Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness. Documentary photographer John Christian, whose haunting show, "Un viaje a Uxata," wrapped up last year at the University of Texas, also made an appearance. One writer I was especially sorry to miss: Edward Swift. When I think of Austin, I think of his wry and playful spirit. Check out his book, My Grandfather's Finger, and his art gallery in San Miguel de Allende here. Playful: that's Austin. When I got on the plane (connecting from Dallas), the change in vibe was palpable. Most amusing sight: The Grim Reaper and a bumble bee, strolling arm-in-arm down Sixth Street on Halloween.

P.S. New schedule for Madam Mayo blog:

Monday: Books
Every other Tuesday: Blogs Noted
Wednesday: Guest-Bloggers or my own 5 links
Friday: News & Misc.

New features: you can now follow "Madam Mayo" blog via Networked blogs on facebook (see the widget over to the right) as well as Google (ditto).

And the comments have been turned back on.

More anon.

Edward Swift in San Miguel de Allende: How to Build a House Without Losing Your Mind

Definitely on my top 10 list of books read this year: Edward Swift's memoir of growing up in the Big Thicket in East Texas, My Grandfather's Finger (University of Georgia Press, 1999). More about that anon. He's not only a very fine writer, he's also an artist, and his works, like his writing, have a playful charm. Here's a portrait of the artist (taken by Yrs Truly last month) in front of his gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

He's not only a gallery owner, he's also homeowner and he has some wise things to say (read the article here) about building a house in Mexico and in particular working with such a talented architect as Jesús Zárate. Angular and light-filled--- and filled with his own art--- Swift's small house is surprisingly spacious. View more pictures of this remarkable house on Swift's website here.

More anon.

Artist Statement

What if novelists made paintings to show what their writing is all about? Seems to me this is the flip-side of the tradition of visual artists offering up an "artist statement." A few examples of the genre by painters:

Kelley Vandiver's Artist Statement

Holly Sears's Artist Statement

Edgar Soberon's Artist Statement

Alas, I'm a lousy painter. But if I could choose a painting to represent the way I think of my writing, or rather, its intent, I might go for Holly Sears's "Lift" or Kelley Vandiver's "Light Shown in the Darkness" or maybe Edgar Soberon's "Nightshade." Or maybe-- if a sculpture counts-- Edward Swift's "Alien Jumping Rope in a Party Dress."

More anon.