Rita Ciresi talks about the rudeness of comedy and why readers confuse novelists with their characters.
By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published October 30, 2003
[Publicity photo]
Rita Ciresi, 43, teaches at USF. Her latest novel, Remind Me Again Why I Married You, is a sequel to her earlier Pink Slip.
Rita Ciresi is the author of two short-story collections, Mother Rocket (winner of the Flannery O'Connor prize) and Sometimes I Dream in Italian, and three novels, Pink Slip, Blue Italian and her latest, Remind Me Again Why I Married You. The new novel is a sequel to Pink Slip, picking up the story of lusty, wisecracking Lisa Strauss and her buttoned-down, repressed husband, Eben, five years after their unlikely marriage.
Ciresi, 43, is the director of the creative writing program in the English department at the University of South Florida. She lives in Wesley Chapel with her husband, a retired history professor, and their teenage daughter.
Q. Lisa Strauss, the main character in Pink Slip and your new novel, Remind Me Again Why I Married You, bears some resemblance to you. In the new book, much of the plot revolves around her writing and selling her first book, I'm Sorry This Is My Life, and the effects that has on her marriage. Do your readers confuse you with Lisa?
A. After Pink Slip, people would ask me, "Why did you have an abortion?" or "What did it feel like to have your cousin die of AIDS?" Well, I've never had an abortion, and I never had a cousin who died of AIDS. Those things happened to Lisa.
Some people have this perception that as a writer you're just sitting down and writing out your life. They don't realize the hours and hours that go into crafting a story that's entertaining, that has resonance.
On one level, I appreciate that people react that way because I practice hyperrealism. I want the reader to feel these people are real, and that's why I write about their lives in such detail.
On the other hand, thinking you just write about your own life gives no credit to the hours you put into the writing, not to mention the imagination. Sometimes I want to say, "You think this is me? Let me disabuse you."
Q. So why make Lisa a writer like yourself?
A. Well, there are differences. I hope that I'm a much better writer than Lisa.
For one thing, I wanted to show what writers go through in learning how to write. Everyone writes really bad first drafts. And sometimes really bad second and third drafts.
I'm sure there are writers out there who write beautiful, nearly perfect first drafts. They should be shot.
Q. Pink Slip was written in Lisa's voice. Remind Me Again Why I Married You alternates chapters from Lisa's point of view and that of her husband, Eben. What made you decide to write half this book from a male point of view?
A. I think any writer has the right to write from the point of view of someone of the opposite sex. The first draft was entirely in his point of view. But my agent said, "You need some life, some kick."
So I got interested in this idea of not only the stories they tell but the secrets they keep from each other. What would he tell, what would she tell? The secrets are more telling than the things they say.
Q. Remind Me Again Why I Married You has a lot of bawdy talk and physical, even scatological humor. The characters belch, snore, bleed, vomit and suffer serious constipation. Why all the rude laughs?
A. Comedy often is extremely rude.
But I was trying to use them in meaningful ways. Some people just didn't get it, that it's not just lowbrow humor.
I wanted to show that these people were in many ways slaves to their bodies. That inability to function physically is related to their inability to function emotionally. They were imposing these physical problems on themselves.
I do think there's a double standard. If Thomas Pynchon wants to write 50 pages about s--, that's cool. If a woman does it, she's just gross, just indelicate.
I don't want to whine about being a woman writer. There are a lot of advantages to being a woman writer. Most books are bought by women.
But there's always criticism when you portray women feeling lust. It's kind of sad, if not disgusting.
But I'm not writing romance or chick lit. Though Pink Slip sometimes gets taken that way. But this is a romantic comedy. It's hyperrealism, but it's romantic comedy too. It just has a little more edge, a little more grossness, a little more "reality bites."
Q. What will your next book be about?
A. I'm working on it now. It's about two cancer survivors who meet in radiation, about their courtship.
I was going to set it here, have them move here after they meet, but I'm about two-thirds of the way through and I haven't gotten them here yet, so it may not happen. I've lived in Florida for seven years, but I've yet to really write about it.
I've had people say, cancer, how can you laugh about that? Well, it's black humor, but it's humor nonetheless.
Q. You often write about family relationships. How has your own family responded to your books?
A. I was afraid my parents and sisters might be offended by some things.
And I have to give them credit, they've never criticized me, although I'm sure there are some things, language and other things, in my books that bothered my parents. Philip Roth's The Ghostwriter is about a writer's family and how they react. The family just blows up. It's never been like that.
My daughter has read my books. When she first started reading them, I wondered. But she had interesting reactions. She'd say, "How'd you think of that, Mommy?" Or, "That's kind of dirty, Mommy."
AT A GLANCE
Rita Ciresi will appear at 11:30 a.m. in Sheen Auditorium and 2 p.m. in Dendy-McNair Auditorium.
