For some writers, publishing a new work means planning the book tour and TV appearances. For Phyllis Barber, it’s about finding another edge... a precipice from which she can jump smack into the middle of yet more personal growth and self-discovery.
Her newest memoir Raw Edges is slated for publication in fall 2009 by University of Nevada Press. Therefore, the quest to reinvent herself begins.
Barber’s striking, statuesque appearance and gracious demeanor belie the fact that this award-winning author remains in constant state of transformation. However, one need only read her first memoir, How I Got Cultured; A Nevada Memoir, to experience her innate ability to delve into the psyche and soul for nuances of individuality. Her novel And the Desert Shall Blossom examines how culture and place influence identity. The School of Love, a book of short stories, reveals the soft underbelly of relationships. In addition, even Legs: The Story of a Giraffe, one of two works of juvenile fiction, explores with children the vulnerability of tenuously growing up on spindly legs.
This sensibility for establishing an authentic self underscores every line of Barber’s newest memoir, Raw Edges. From a writer who has journeyed from Salt Lake City to the Far East for spiritual nourishment, we get a rare glimpse into life’s most complex questions, expressed in Barber’s inimitable, soulful way.
Can you briefly describe the nature of your new memoir Raw Edges?
It’s a coming-of-age-in-middle-age story; the account of a bright-eyed young Mormon couple (myself and my husband David) who went through an agonizing process in our thirty-three-year marriage, sparked by differing matters of faith and subsequent infidelity. It is not a story peculiar to Mormonism, and I’ve written an account of two people trying to make a relationship work when they are at cross-purposes. Because of our Mormon temple marriage vow "for time and all eternity," we felt bound to our promise to make our family into a cohesive unit that could last for "eternity."
The story explains my coming to terms with my life when it was turning into something far removed from what I had planned. It’s a story about adapting and bending like a pretzel to make something work. It’s a story about depression and loss of esteem because of departure from the norms of my culture, resulting in an all-out battle for my own sense of worth and dignity. It’s a story about having to re-invent one’s self when one has been so attached to a particular mooring and definition of self and then it all seems to have been lost. It’s also a story of ultimate triumph after realizing that "Hell is being locked in one’s own personal narrative," as Margaret Atwood said, and breaking free and moving on.
You have written in numerous genres, one of the first being memoir. What brought you back to Creative Non-Fiction?
I very much needed to figure out a particular tangle in which I once found myself. Writing, for me, is a way of figuring things out. When I write, I can more clearly see my blind spots and blind alleys. Memoir fascinates me because I believe the deeper that one can dig into one’s personal story, the more resonance and universality there is with the stories of others. It’s tap root stuff.
What spurred you to write about this particular time in your life in Raw Edges?
This situation in my life loomed so large for me that I couldn’t write anything else until I wrestled this story to the mat. By writing this book, I have freed myself from my unwillingness to give up a precious, painful story that I’ve told over a thousand times to myself and others. It is a major challenge to really look yourself in the face and tell the truth about what you see there, not what you’d like to see.
In what way is this latest book different from what you have written in the past?
It’s probably a darker book from anything I’ve written before. I am dealing with the shadowed side of my usually upbeat personality and with some very real pain. It’s also a no-holds-barred book in which I tried not to shy away from the aspects of the story that wouldn’t present me in the most favorable light. My former husband David (who is now my good friend again) read the book and surprised me with very enthusiastic support. He believes people will be disarmed and moved by the genuineness of the writing.
I have a gut feeling that a book should give something to the reader, something authentic. I went to the Ground Zero in myself, and I didn’t want to back away from a not-always-admirable self I encountered in the process.
Many of your stories’ characters, both fiction and non-fiction, experience transformations that directly reflect cultural shifts in society. Is that the case with your latest book?
Definitely. I have been affected a great deal by cultural change. I grew up in southern Nevada in the Fifties, and moved to the Bay Area in 1964, when the Free Speech Movement and Free Love and Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll were experiencing a heyday. I can’t help but reflect that in my writing.
I went from being a very sheltered Mormon girl, even if I did live in Las Vegas in my teenage years, to marrying a young man whom I thought was a devout Mormon like myself. We moved to the Bay Area where he attended Stanford Law School, and I was exposed to Jerry Garcia (my banjo teacher at Menlo Park Music Store), Ken Kesey, and the Beat poets. This was a huge leap for me. It was "Leave it to Beaver" jumping into the middle of Haight Ashbury.
As a result, I have a division in myself: wanting to be hip and go with the flow, which often conflicts with having some very exacting standards bred into my bones. I wanted to be part of the larger world, yet I constantly had this maxim quoted in church running through my head: "Be in the world, but not of the world."
Who is your favorite character in all of literature, either your own or someone else’s?
Of course, Madame Bovary. And I loved the women in Jane Austen’s, Emily Bronte’s and George Eliot’s novels. In my own work, I especially love Esther in my novel And the Desert Shall Blossom. She is based on my paternal grandmother whom I never knew, and I imagined her from family stories I’d overheard as a child. I very much wanted to know who she was and of what she was made.
To steal a question or two from Bravo TV’s James Lipton… what is your favorite word?
That’s a toughie. I love so many of them. If I had to choose, maybe "amanuensis," which means one being employed to write from dictation. I like how the word sounds, and I sometimes like to think I'm writing from dictation from a source wiser than my own mind.
What is your least favorite word?
I think this would have to be "fuck." I’ve tried to like that word, believe it or not, but people use it so often when there are so many words to choose from. It’s a lazy, crude word.
The Journey of Self-Discovery Continues...
You have so much creative energy; you must be working on some project now. What can we expect from you next, Phyllis?
Currently, I’m working on something I am very excited about. I have traveled extensively, and in my travels have often worked with or observed people in what could be called "religious" capacities. I’m talking about Buddhist monks, Peruvian and Ecuadorian shamans, Goddess worshipers, Baptist preachers, among others. In the process, I became fascinated with people trying to connect with the Divine, or with Spirit, or with God; however one chooses to name the ineffable.
Now I am working on a collection of essays about these experiences and my interaction with monks, shamans, and the like. I have always been a seeker and will continue to be one, so I finally decided to accept that fact and point my writing in that direction.
I also have a young adult novel that was almost completed last fall, but the project was interrupted to edit Raw Edges. The newest book is called The Mystery of the Scar, and I will finish it up this summer.
Although endings are a necessary part of good stories, Barber seems to be equally comfortable with new beginnings. In a constant metamorphosis, her writer’s wings unfurl again and again to embrace life’s challenges and recount them with relish.
Coco Chanel once said, “How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.” Phyllis Barber continues to evolve this way… as a writer, an inspiration, and a person.
A Day in the Life of a Non-Fiction Writer
When asked about her daily creative process, Phyllis Barber provided several secrets to which she attributes her writing success:
New-Morning Energy
I like to write in the morning, when my brain is full of new-morning energy, sunlight, the prospects of a new day. Sometimes I like to write in bed with a pillow behind my back, using an automatic writing technique on a pad of paper; I’ll work with an image of some sort and let the language flow out of me without any editing or judgment as to its worth.
I like very much to work with paper and pen, though I’ve converted to the word processor through the years. I like what happens when time slows down and I have a pen in hand that moves when my fingers tell it to do so. It’s a different process than writing on a keyboard.
Getting Into It
Then I do my morning ablutions, followed by the Sun Salutation learned in my yoga class. I eat some yogurt and granola (or oatmeal). Then I go to my computer, where I usually work for four to six hours, with a few breaks to get up and walk around, which is supposed to be the healthy thing to do.
I can get very engrossed in what I am writing and not even notice how much time has passed. I print out a draft at the end of each session, and then read it the next morning and get an idea where I need to pay closer attention. Then it’s rewrite and rewrite. I love the process of whittling down my prose to its essence; though sometimes I think I work it to death, kill it off.
The Right Impressions
I often like to read William Faulkner or someone whose writing I consider to be exquisite as a warm-up before I do my own work. Sometimes that helps me enter the writing from a different plane… from different music, so to speak. Because I have been a musician since a very young age, I tune into rhythms and speech patterns quickly.
I also try to visit art museums and listen to a wide variety of music that help me fly in different flight patterns, if you will. I have been much influenced by music—its forms, especially. I have realized that I am a formalist/structuralist late in my writing life, and that would be directly related to the different forms of music that have become second nature to me. For example, there are themes and variations, such as sonata and impressionism. I sometimes even write as if my words are music.
One of my favorite stories is "Anne at the Shore," in my book The School of Love. It is a totally impressionistic piece of writing.
