Fantastic Metropolis

Brendan Connell: But just to back-track—what did you mean by “satori-writing”? I know that a satori is a sort of Zen Buddhist enlightenment experience—but…?

Catherynne M. Valente: Yes, well, I live in Japan about three feet from a Buddhist temple. Satori is an enlightenment experience, a moment of union with everything. It’s my husband’s phrase. While I was writing The Labyrinth he said that it’s what I do when I’m really working hard—the world doesn’t exist for me, just words and hands. I think that’s a pretty common impression for writers, and I like the phrase. And I do think that my writing falls into two “voices”. One is the satori-voice, which is The Labyrinth, and the other is the more “conventional” voice—the one in which the fairy tale sequence coming out from Prime next year is written. The voice of The Labyrinth is deeper and truer to me, it is more intimately mine, but it can only tell certain kinds of stories, the dark, subconscious chthonic ones. Does that make sense?

Brendan Connell: Sure…. So, anyhow, you have another book coming out from Prime. I thought The Labyrinth was very fairy tale like, but, I guess the next one is more so?

Catherynne M. Valente: Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams is coming out later this year, that’s in the same style as The Labyrinth. But I have a series of books that Prime is going to be putting out next year that are very literally fairy tales, on the order of Arabian Nights.

Brendan Connell: How long did it take you to write Yume no Hon?

Catherynne M. Valente: Three days.

Brendan Connell: So at that rate you could write one-hundred books in a year, and still have two months for vacation.

Catherynne M. Valente: Ha… Some books come fast, some slow. It took me a year to write the first book of fairy tales. I tend to kind of save up material, like mulch. Then it all comes out in a rush when it’s ready.

Brendan Connell: You have written some critical papers also. One of them which is forthcoming is called The Sacrifice of Polyxena: Feminine Archetypes in Selected Ancient Greek and Roman Drama. What is that about?

Catherynne M. Valente: It’s an examination of the socio-political conditioning in Greek and Roman plays through an analysis of feminine archetypes. How gender roles are transmitted and reinforced by plays; co-authored with Dr. Linda O. Valenty. We have a second paper using the same method to evaluate different plays in progress to be presented at a conference this summer, which we may turn into a book.

Brendan Connell: So, sarcasm not intended, does gender play an important role in your writing?

Catherynne M. Valente: I suppose that depends on what you mean. Do I purposely write gendered texts? No. Do I use the word “gendered” in conversation? Yes… I feel that my books are feminine, but not in the lacy pink sense. I’m female. My work is intensely physical, and rooted in the body—so it does have a very thick, primordial femininity about it. And the fact that I am aware of gender issues in literature means that I am also aware of them in my own work. Yes, gender plays a role in that I am who I am, and I am a woman, I am not divorced from my body or my identity as a woman. But it’s not an agenda.

Brendan Connell: Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson both used “stream of consciousness” very effectively for the female voice. Dorothy Richardson seemed to indicate that it was the ideal way to writing feminine prose. The Labyrinth also has a lot of that sort of thing in it—I am not sure it is stream of consciousness—but it seems to be somehow related to it.

Catherynne M. Valente: I agree. Helene Cixous talks about this too. I’m not sure anything is the “ideal” feminine voice, no more than Hemingway is the ideal masculine voice. It’s how I write, and it certainly is dreamlike and strange-logicked.

Brendan Connell: Strange-logicked?

Catherynne M. Valente: Hey, it’s hard for me to define, too. Harder to define than to write!

Brendan Connell: Ok. I just thought it was some kind of literary term I was unfamiliar with.

Catherynne M. Valente: No, just me being grammatically whimsical.