Interviewed by Matt Martin
When bitter winds moved the good times inside, Six Packs in the Park became Malort in a Bar. In its most recent incarnation, it’s gotten all devout. Suddenly, I find myself and Jessie Foley drinking Man-o-man-o-maaaaaan-o-shevitz grape juice, after Market Days, in the Mary Seat of Wisdom church parking lot on the far Northwest side of Chicago (we couldn’t get any further northwest — which is fitting. If you don’t believe me, look it up.) Jessie is fresh off of winning the Sheehan YA Book Prize and her novel, Carnival at Bray will be coming out at the end of 2014 from Elephant Rock Books.
MM: Things have been looking up since getting your MFA from Columbia College Fiction Writing Department in 2012. You’ve been re-tweeted by Neil Steinberg from the Sun-Times after your response to that New York Times article, you have been published in Sixfold, Salon, Great Lakes Cultural Review, here at Hypertext Magazine and The Chicago Reader, and then with the news about the Sheehan Prize and your first novel is coming out, OH. MY. GOD, Jessie! You’re on fire! You’re an English teacher at Taft High School in Chicago, you just got married, you just bought a house, and I can imagine that those adult responsibilities take up a good chunk of your time. Throw in the fact that you are a dirty, Irish Catholic, like myself, and that means that you like to imbibe from time to time, when you’re not pregnant of course, and that means you might get the “Irish Flu” every now and then. I would love to know how you manage to find time to write and what your process is like. Do you have deadlines? How do you stay disciplined with everything going on?
JF: If I find time to write it’s because I allow myself to be controlled by my constant sense of guilt. When a couple days go by and I haven’t written anything, I begin to feel like everything I’m doing in my free time that isn’t writing (watching Teen Mom 3 comes immediately to mind) is wrong. Then I feel guilty. And the only thing that assuages my guilt is writing. Speaking of the “Irish Flu,” my husband recently told me that whenever the great Irish writer Brendan Behan finished a manuscript, he would sell his typewriter and use the proceeds to go out drinking. That mentality makes sense to me: get your work done, then sell your typewriter and go have fun. But no matter what, you must always eventually buy a new typewriter and get back to work.
MM: You are an avid reader of everything and I know that you specifically love short stories. Alice Munro just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Talk to me about Alice Munro’s influence on you, and what her winning the Nobel means for the revival of the short story. I mean, when Raymond Carver published What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, the short story came back with a vengeance.
JF: You know, everyone keeps saying that the short story is in danger, but I just don’t believe that. I mean, you could easily argue that George Saunders is the best writer in America right now, and he only writes short stories. And Alice Munro? Come on. Read just one of her short stories and try to tell me that this form is becoming irrelevant. Please. Plus, the novel form has only been around for a couple hundred years, whereas the short story is an innate part of the human experience. Cave drawings were short stories, weren’t they? So I’m not worried about it. From a marketing standpoint, sure, short story collections are very hard to sell. If anything, publishers are looking for novel series. But novel series don’t win Nobel Prizes, do they?
MM: For all of the younger writers and students who are grueling away, finishing up their bachelors or masters in creative writing, what advice can you pass along once school is over, once the deadlines from someone else pass, and what it will be like in the world of writing that we find ourselves in the year of our lord 2013-14?
JF: Don’t elevate the idea of yourself as a writer above the grueling reality that you must spend all your free time (assuming you will have a job that actually pays you) writing. And, on a related note, get the fuck off Facebook.
MM: Okay, last serious one… What can you say about the place of literary fiction in the publishing world at large, do you think its something that can be both critically and financially successful (compared to the current popularity of genre fiction) and do you have any recommendations for our readers? Ya know, something that walks that fine line between genre and literary fiction?
JF: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides and Transatlantic by Colum McCann are two contemporary novels that jump immediately to mind as literary fiction that are impossible to put down. There’s a quote from the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club favorite that itself walks the line between literary and commercial fiction: “Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
MM: Why the Northwest Side of Chicago?
JF: It’s not as clannish as comparable south side neighborhoods, but it’s just as unpretentious. It’s not becoming gentrified or decaying–it’s just plain old Chicago. Most people who do the whole move-to-the-city-after-college-then-out-to-the-suburbs-when-they-have-kids thing have never even been here, and they don’t know what they’re missing.
MM: How many people in dago-t’s do you see in the summer in your neighborhood?
JF: Matt, I believe the politically correct term for that garment is “wife beater.”
MM: Gold crosses around their necks?
JF: Almost as many as statues of Mary with an eternal flame plugged in at the side of the house.
MM: Tattoos of anchors on their forearms?
JF: I’ve never seen one of those. We’re pretty far from the lake.
MM: What’s your favorite Irish dish?
JF: Irish sausage is much tastier than your standard Bob Evans-type patty. I also love Irish soup with brown bread. I love Mi Wadi–it’s kind of like Crystal Lite but better. When I got pregnant, I had to stop drinking 4+ cans of Diet Coke a day. So I started spicing up my water with Blackcurrant Mi Wadi. You can get it at Gaelic Imports, 6346 W Gunnison.
MM: Irish beer?
JF: I don’t think there is a correct answer to this question other than Guiness, and since I don’t really like Guiness, I’ll skip this one.
MM: Favorite dive bar on the Northwest side?
JF: So many good ones. Kennedy’s on Milwaukee, Sidekicks, the Six Penny. Good memories in all of those places!
MM: If you could live anywhere other than Chicago or Ireland where would it be?
JF: Klamath, California. I didn’t think I was a nature lover until I went here. Once I got past the remoteness, and the bears, I realized it was one of the most insanely beautiful places I’ve ever been. If you go, stay at the Requa Inn!
MM: The ubiquitous deep dish or thin crust? And where?
JF: Deep dish, Lou Malnatis; thin crust, Marie’s. In my opinion, thin crust is better, unless you have a hangover, in which case, the only cure is deep dish.
MM: Coolest purchase in the last month?
JF: I bought an outfit for my baby-to-be.
Read the first chapter of her novel in The Chicago Reader.
MATT MARTIN is a writer, actor, and producer, a graduate of the Second City Conservatory program in Chicago, owns a bachelors and is working on a MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Matt is the Interviews Editor for Hypertext Magazine. Has been published in Hair Trigger, Trilling, Mad Licks, and Fictionary. Matt also writes a sports blog for Chicago Now, and would love to be able to make a living from doing something related to the arts, but until then he’ll work toward collecting a pension from the city in 25 years.
