Hello from the Waters!
The Waters: Day 58 -- Counting down to publication day
Today I finished a Q&A for my publicist. We will send it out with the review copies of the book. I’ll paste it in here.
In Conversation with…
Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of THE WATERS: A Novel
Q: Why is this book important now? Why do you want people to read The Waters?
Well, my short answer is that it’s a fun story about women figuring out how to live joyfully (alongside men) in a complicated and sometimes hostile world. I hope people will enjoy the exploration of these strong personalities and take an interest in their adventures.
For the more serious reader, there’s a serious reason to read the book. We live in a divided nation, and this division matters desperately, especially as we approach elections that will decide the fate of American democracy writ large. This novel is about a community in rural Michigan, and I’m exposing how the problems of a community mirror these larger national problems, plus I make the claim that the nation’s problems cannot be solved without exploring community tensions. We have always looked to fiction to explore problems and possible solutions, and the people in The Waters are facing the effects of climate change, environmental pollution, gun violence, and bad governance.
This community does not reflect the diversity of America, and the very same could be said about the forces opposing democracy. I was once on a literary panel, and when I said to the diverse audience that it would behoove us to really understand, even empathize with, the ordinary people who support anti-democratic forces. I was met with a stony silence. However, I’ll stand by this claim, that understanding and empathizing with folks both powerful and powerless is valuable, even if it is just a matter of knowing your enemy. As a fiction writer, I have the unique opportunity to plot a way through the morass, even to stake my claim that we Americans have what it takes to save ourselves and our nation.
Q: Earlier this year Michigan State University Press published Michigan Salvage, the first scholarly collection of work celebrating and critiquing your fiction. What is it like knowing that your work is now in a critical edition?
A huge honor! Lordy, this is something I did not expect. I’ve only read a couple of the pieces in the book because it makes me feel shy somehow. I’ve always figured it’s important not to take your critical reception, good or bad, too seriously because such considerations can get in the way of writing. I’m trying to avoid thinking too much about what people admire about my previous work because the integrity of the new work is separate from that. However, the existence of Michigan Salvage gives me the confidence that people may take a serious interest in my work, which means it’s okay for me to continue to take it seriously as well. It also gives me the license to avoid housework, because I can feel confident that writing is more important than vacuuming.
Q: There is also a scholarly society dedicated to the study of your work. This year they’re invited to write papers and present about your oeuvre at the 2024 American Literature Association meeting in Chicago. Will you plan to meet with the group next year?
Heck yes, if they invite me. I don’t know how much they’ll actually like working with a living writer—usually these honors only come to dead people. I might end up arguing with them, because, believe me, if they get it wrong or start bs-ing, I’ll tell them! They can have their own interpretations of my work—once stories are in the world, they belong to everybody—but if they get the facts about me or my intentions wrong, I’ll let them know.
Q: Your work often explores rural settings and the lives of the people who live in those areas. Your latest project, THE WATERS, is no different. How has your personal experience living in rural Michigan influenced your writing?
I have always lived in a green and watery place—Michigan has a hundred thousand lakes and streams and all the wildlife you’d expect there, slipping around in the mud and among the trees. I also grew up in a polluted area, in a community afflicted by poverty and low education leels, where people do what they can to get by. Personally, I grew up with a single mother when that was a rare thing, and people flowed in and out of our house. We canned tomatoes and made homemade wine. People drank a lot and behaved unpredictably. Is it connected, is it all of a piece? It does feel that way, feels as though the kind of human suffering I’ve observed here is particular to this place. And in my fiction, I make a case that people are who they are because of their connection to the landscape as well as the socioeconomic factors.
The truth is that I had to move away from Michigan to really see this place and the people here—I wasn’t able to get perspective until I went away for a decade and lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Boston.
Q: In THE WATERS the relationship between two of the main female characters, Donkey and Hermine, is complex. Could you elaborate on your own relationships with the women in your life and how these relationships inform your female characters?
I hope every relationship in the book is complex! But Hermine and Donkey really do have something special. They love each other madly, and they must violate each other constantly in order to be who they are—loyalty among women looks very different than loyalty among men. The job of a character in a book is to be exactly who she is, and if we’re lucky, that clashes with whoever somebody else in the book is. That is how we have heat. As it happens, every relationship between every two female characters in the book is some variation of a mother-daughter relationship—and this is one of my key interests in this life, how we care for one another without giving up who we are. In my stories, every caring relationship between women contains some hostility—that’s not too far-fetched is it?
Q: Your book tells the troubling history of M'sauga Island. Is this a real place? Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind this atmospheric setting.
Not a real place, but your asking makes me think I’ve achieved my goal of making it seem real, so thank you for asking. I grew up on the edge of a creek and a big swampy riparian zone, and as a kid spent plenty of time traipsing the wetlands, learning the wildflowers, and removing leeches. My community was historically famous for celery fields, and celery was traditionally grown in rich mucklands, so that is part of it, too. My idea for an island came from real life too; my grandparents spent their weekends in a cottage on a tiny private island in the St. Joseph River, so I guess I moved the island to the swamp and the story arose from all those landscapes coming together. My stories often rise out of evocative landscapes, real and fictional.
