Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Joining us today is Mary Mackey. Mary is the author of four collections of
poetry and ten novels. Some of her works have been published by small
literary presses; some have made The New York Times bestseller list. "The
Stand In," her most recent novel, is a hilarious look at the Hollywood
pecking order based on Mark Twain's classic "The Prince and the Pauper."
Mary, who is related to Twain through her father's family, published "The
Stand In" under her new pen name "Kate Clemens." While "The Stand In" was
still in manuscript, the film rights were optioned by director Renee De
Palma. She and De Palma have recently finished writing the screenplay.

Leading the conversation with Mary is Kathi Goldmark. Kathi is the author of
"And My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You" (a novel published by Chronicle
Books in 2002), "The Great Rock & Roll Joke Book" (with Dave Marsh), and
(with her author-bandmates) "Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom
Remainders Tour America With 3 Chords and an Attitude." She likes to think
she is ready for anything.

Welcome, Mary and Kathi!
  

    

I'm happy to be here, Cynthia, and looking forward to this interview. I
think I did one in Inkwell in about 1998, and a lot has happened since then.
  

    
You're so prolific, Mary.  I bet that includes new titles and travels.
OK, I know it does, because you've announced some of your book events in
the WELL news conference.  Looking forward to hearing all the details!
  

    
Where's Kathi?

Mary, I really enjoyed the book!  It was my first one of yours.

I'm glad to hear that the film rights have been purchased and the
screenplay is done, because all through the book, I kept thinking what
a fun movie this would make.
  

    
Mary, what drew you to the Prince and the Pauper? How is your tale
different from Twain's?
  

    
i heard mary (kate!) read from this book at Cody's in Berkeley.  great
humor -- the audience loved it.  can't wait to dive into my copy this
weekend.
  

    


I'm glad to hear you're enjoying "The Stand In." Right now one of
my major goals is to give people something to laugh about (in a
time when there's precious little).

I was drawn to Twain's "The Prince and The Pauper" for several
reasons. First, I'm related to Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens through
my father's family and my dad read P&P to me when I was so little
my pj's still had feet in them. I've always loved Twain's sense
of humor, his take-on-prisoners and suffer-no-fools attitude, and
his endless with. It's something I aspire to.

Also I loved the way he showed the different between the social
classes in P&P. As you probably know, Twain's novel is the story
of a little beggar boy who looks exactly like Henry VIII's son.
The two switch places.
  

    

So I got to thinking "Who are our aristocrats in America? Who are our
serfs?" I realized that our aristocrats--our kings and queens, as it were--
are either rock stars or Hollywood stars--people with money, fame, power,
and everything else most people only dream of. And who are our serfs? Well
there are lots of possibilities, but I thought community college teachers
might qualify. I've always admired their dedication and skill, and I've
always thought they should be paid a lot better. So I  created two
characters who look exactly alike and who switch places: Jayne Cooper, the
megastar who has never washed a dish in her life; and Mary Lynn McLellan, a
community college teacher who is so poorly paid she has to moonlight at a
big discount store. As an added attraction, I gave Mary Lynn stage fright,
so when she has to act in one of Jayne's films, she freezes like a deer in
the headlights.
  

    

by the way, I am the Queen of Typos. I meant, of course, Twain's take-no-
prisoners attitude and his endless wit (not with).
  

    
Hi gang, so sorry to join in late. My computer crashed, and I have been 
standing by, biting my nails in the wings, waiting to get back online. 
Mary, I adored your book: it's funny it's funny and real. I'd like to know 
more about how a serious writer of historical fiction comes to write such 
skillful comedy. Can you tell us a little about your previous books?
  

    

Interesting question, Kathi. "The Year The Horses Came," "The Horses At The
Gate" and "The Fires of Spring" (the three novels I wrote before "The Stand
In") were an attempt to recreate life as it might have been lived in Europe
some 6,000 years ago, before invading nomads introduced warfare as we now
know it. I spent years doing research about the European Neolithic period
(helped immensely, I might add, by the work of the late Marija Gimbutas),
and spent an even longer time crafting a story where the personal and
emotional lives of the characters were seamlessly integrated into the
historical research. This proved to be quite a challenge. My goal was to
produce something that had the literary merit of Mary Renault's "Persian
Boy," plus the good old fashioned story-telling  of "Clan of the Cave Bear"
or "The Mists of Avalon." Now these were, I hope, exciting books, sexy
books, books you could learn a great deal from; but except for some
scattered incidents, they weren't comic novels.


But my first commercially published novel, "McCarthy's List," was comic-so
comic, in fact, that at least one reader told me she was thrown out of the
library for laughing too loudly. So, I guess it's time to come clean and
admit that I've been a closet writer of comedy for years. Anyone who knows
me knows can tell you that I am constantly cracking jokes and making people
laugh. But for a long time, I've mostly been doing that in my poetry (for
example, my poem "If Love Were A Potato, I'd Probably Be Idaho").
  

    

What inspired me to return to comedy was tragedy. In the weeks that followed
the September 11th attacks, I was very upset. I became obsessed by those
horrible images of the World Trade Center towers falling and very worried
about my friends in New York and D.C. It seemed obscene to write fictional
tragedy when there was so much real tragedy in the world. Gradually, I
realized that what people needed-what I myself needed-was laughter, relief,
and some way to simply forget about it for a few hours, so I began "The
Stand In"-as an assertion of the joy that can exist even in the middle of
pain. It was an immense relief to be writing comedy in the fall of 2001. For
hours at a time I was able to put aside the grim realities and enter a world
where the worst that can happen to you is to be photographed under
florescent lights without mascara. This isn't to say that "The Stand In"
doesn't bring up some serious issues, especially about class in America, but
it's a vacation for the soul, funny, and, I hope, healing.
  

    

I loved the book, Mary, perhaps most because I could hear your voice in so 
many of the wonderful metaphors/analogies.  It's true - you're a past 
master at making people laugh!
  

    

I'm also remembering a couple of essays you contributed to 
collections...I was privileged to hear you read your contribution to "Dick 
for a Day" for example, and then there was the story of the  army ant 
attack in "I Should Have Stayed Home." Your marvelous sense of humor 
seems irrepressible, and in a world that will never be the same after 
9/11, that is as just about as life-affirming as it gets.

I'd like to know more about your take on the serious issues that are 
underlying, not only in your comedic writing, but in others' too--which 
brings us to the second part of the next question: why did you choose to 
do a modern update of Mark Twain's the Prince and the Pauper? What does 
that story (and author) have to say to us that is especially 
relevant to our time and place?  And, of course, to you personally?
  

    

"The Stand In" was inspired by one of those random chances that sometimes
result in an idea that keeps on developing in my creative consciousness long
after the initial event is over. While I was at the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts in 1998, I picked up a copy of "The Prince and the Pauper"
which I hadn't read since I was a child, and found it as funny and witty as
ever. But this time, as an adult, I also saw Twain's more serious agenda.
He's examining class, power, illusion, cliques, and a whole host of other
things that, for better or worse, oil the social machine. I've always been a
fan of Twain's writing, and as I read this remarkable novel, I realized that
I wanted to do the same thing for my own era. As I said earlier, I started
thinking about who the aristocrats of our society were: who were the princes
and who were the paupers. I filed this idea away in my journal and didn't
come back to it for a long time, but when I did the result was a novel which
was designed to be both serious and not serious at the same time. That is to
say, "The Stand In" is funny, fast-moving, and silly in places; but at the
same time, I created it as a comment on (and good-natured analysis of) class
in America.
  

    

In my previous novels I have dealt with serious issues like the value of
friendship, the need to foster compassion, the human position with regard to
other life on earth, the corrupting-and sometimes deadly--influence of
political power unrestrained by democratic principles, and, of course, the
position of women in society. I've always been a egalitarian feminist. That
is to say, I am a feminist who is interested in a society where men and
women operate as equals, real equals, both sexually, emotionally, and
politically. I am not under the illusion that, if women ran the world, it
would be a peaceful paradise. I think we need one another to be in balance.

Some of these ideas appear in "The Stand In"-but once again they run beneath
a plot which is hilarious and characters who don't always act like they have
all their marbles. For example, Jayne and Mary Lynn start out as adversaries
and end up as close friends; both characters become more compassionate; both
mature and change; both fall in love with good men who are their equals and
who treat them well. Actually, my favorite moments in the book are when the
women try to fake it: for example, the moment when Mary Lynn (the teacher)
tries to act in front of cameras and fails utterly, and the moment when
Jayne (the movie star) tries to teach a Freshman Composition class and ends
up defining a "gerund" as a "small fuzzy animal, which unlike a ferret, is
not illegal in  California."
  

    

I think those moments are wonderful. And I'm sure it's no accident that 
these weaknesses may end up reversing themselves and become triumphs.

I think of times in my own life when I've screwed up so totally and 
whole-heartedly, that a kind of inside-out success was achieved.

Tell me more about the "related to Mark Twain on her father's side" thing. 
What were you told about him (and this relationship) as a child?
  

    
Mary, I'm joining late as things are crazy for me at the office right
now.  I did want to say that I enjoyed "The Stand In" quite a bit.  And
I had some trepidation opening the book, I'll admit, because to me so
many Hollywood satires ring completely false.  (I do live and work in
Hollywood, though my particular job is only marginally connected to the
world of movie stars - it's more connected to the world of camera
rentals and crew members.)  But I thought the farce hit exactly the
right note - ridiculous enough to be farcical (sp?) but not ridiculous
in that straining-to-be-hip-and-failing way.  If I'm making any sense. 
(Was the Salome stuff a reference to Sunset Boulevard?)

As someone who has read "The Persian Boy" about 1,000,000 times, I
must say that I'm a fellow fan of Mary Renault and I'm now interested
in checking out your earlier works!
  

    

As for being related to Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens through my father's
family, I knew about it from earliest childhood. My grandparents and my
father spoke of it from time to time; we had a bag of letters from his
family (which were burned in a fire that also destroyed letters from my
great great uncles who went out to Colorado for the Goldrush); and my dad
read me "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" before I knew how to read. I
used to pretend I was Tom (the girls--even Becky--just didn't have enough
adventures for my taste). I think the main thing this knowledge did was make
me understand that ordinary people could be writers. It also encouraged me
to give fiction a try.
  

    

Also, when I became an adult and reread Clemens' works, I was struck by how
many of the customs he described were similar to those of my Kentucky
relatives. Twain's narrative voice could easily be the voice of my Uncle Wid
or my Aunt Ebbie or my Great-grandmother sitting in the porch swing after
dinner, swatting mosquitoes, drinking lemonade, and telling tale after tale.
I came from a Scotch-Irish background where the oral tradition was alive in
every sense. People often recounted scandals and tall tales that dated back
to the 1780s. Mark Twain tapped into that tradition. I think it's part of
what makes his narrative voice so powerful.
  

    

and Anne you are absolutely right: the Salome stuff is indeed a reference to
"Sunset Blvd." You're the first person to notice, so you get the "Perceptive
Reader Award." Way to go.
  

    
OK, as another way of reminding readers that this book is published under 
the name "Kate Clemmens" (not Mary Mackey) let's talk about the Twain 
theme a bit more. How are the main characters in The Stand-In similar to 
his characters? What traits did you change (or not have to change) in 
order to make these characters work in a contemporary setting?
  

    
miss mary mackey:

have you ever stepped yourownself barefoot on a banana slug?
  

    
oooops, meant kate clemens, up there...
  

    
Woops! And I just realized I made a typo spelling your name up there. It's 
one "m" not two...in Clemens.
  

    
mary, why did you choose a pen name for this book? 

and, I just have to repeat what I heard from my family many many times
in my youth:

    Scots are people, Scotch is drink.