|
 |
|
|
|
Arts and Leisure
The Wichita Eagle
December 7, l997
A LIVELY IMAGINATION
Author Susan Fromberg Schaeffer has been curious about other people's
lives since childhood.
By Susan L. Rife
Author Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's two most recent
books--The Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat
and The Golden Rope--are written in
the first person. But Schaeffer is neither a feline nor a twin. Rather she
is a woman with a vivid imagination and a deep sense of curiosity.
The Golden Rope, like many of her previous
novels, is a dense psychological study of what happens to the identity of
one twin when the other disappears.
The Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat is anything
but dense. It's a lovely forth of a novel, told entirely in the voice of
Foudini.
"It was a wonderful book to write," Schaeffer said in a telephone interview
from her Vermont home. "I had just finished editing
The Golden Rope, and whenever I finish a book
I sort of sit around in a miserable state, wondering what's going to happen
to it. I was in the living room, accompanied by Foudini. I said out loud
to him, "Well, you should write your life story." He didn't move. I said,
"Well, I'll write it down for you," and he picked up his head and looked
at me," she said.
Foudini is the 11 1/2 year old black cat who has been part of Schaeffer's
household since his early days. It was a cinch to tell his life story, Schaeffer
said. "Before I knew it, I was finished. It seemed so easy because I didn't
feel I had the authorial responsibility."
While Schaeffer was able to write Foudini's life story primarily from her
own experince in the household, The Golden Rope
required much more research.
"What I did mostly was to talk to twins," she said. "When I was in high school,
we had seven pairs of twins in our school. Then 30 years later I went to
a high school reunion and saw these two creatures who looked as if they'd
crawled out of Nosferatu. I realized that on some basic level these two hated
each other."
That understanding was a revelation to Schaeffer, who had previously thought
that being a twin would be wonderful. Her actual research was coupled with
simply a great deal of thought about what life would be like for a twin.
"Basically, that's what I've done with all my books," she said. "There's
no challenge to writing about my own life. Normally, it's the experience
that's alien to me that's interesting to me."
Schaeffer has been intensely curious about other people's lives since her
childhood, which she describes as very turbulent.
"My grandmother told me my grandfather threatened her with a gun," she said.
"My grandfather was the beloved person of my childhood, and I could not imagine
that he could do such things."
She remembers travelling on the subway as a child and looking over her shoulder,
expecting to see her grandfather lurking behind pillars. She was hurt, she
said, that she wasn't important enough to be followed and checked up on by
such a mysterious person.
"The doings of adults always seemed to me extremely fascinating, (but) they
never seemed to bother with the whys of everything. I grew up very curious
and wanting the whys supplied."
She began writing at an early age, and sent her first story to Ladies Home
Journal when she was 8.
"My mother still has it and is really proud of it," she said. "It came back
with this extremely beautiful rejection slip. I had never seen anything so
beautiful."
She stopped writing for a seven year period in college, but began again the
day after earning her master's degree and has never stopped.
"Right now I'm working on a novel that's going to be set in Japan. I'm working
on it more slowly than I ought to because at some point I decided I ought
to learn Japanese. Learning that language really does tell you a lot about
the way their mind works."
For example, she said, there are no personal pronouns in Japanese. "They
especially don't like the word 'I,' and that in itself is a major doorway
into their lives." |
|
|
