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"The Broken Estate" and "When the Kissing Had to Stop"
Literary criticism remains alive and well (the novel is another story) in the work of two masters of the form.
By Euny Hong Koral
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Kafka of the Great White North
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By Anne Beatts
[06/30/99]

Reviews
"The Wonders of the Invisible World"
These brooding, crushingly accurate stories are as forgiving as they come.
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[06/30/99]

Ivory Tower
Do what you want and the identity crisis will follow
A graduate student finds that there are tougher dreams to pursue than scaling the walls of the ivory tower.
By Christine Kenneally
[06/30/99]

The free market or your soul
Two conservative pundits play a game of moral Twister trying to reconcile consumerism and traditional values.
By Gavin McNett
[06/29/99]

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Making a monster

"White Oleander" author Janet Fitch talks about creating a wicked woman, the debacle of film school and becoming an overnight success after 20 years.

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By Laura Miller

July 1, 1999 | Recently, Janet Fitch's life has had an enchanted quality. At 43 -- after 22 years of laboring away at her fiction, publishing the occasional story in small literary magazines -- she has seen her first novel, "White Oleander," become a national bestseller. But "White Oleander" itself is no fairy tale. It's the story of Astrid Magnussen, daughter of the beautiful, merciless poet, Ingrid. In Venice Beach, mother and daughter live a peripatetic bohemian lifestyle ruled by Ingrid's rigorous idea of beauty (three white flowers in a plain glass vase is the epitome of her aesthetic) and her contempt for emotional weakness. When Ingrid condescends to an affair with a less than exquisite man, falls in love and then is summarily dumped, she poisons her former lover and eventually winds up in prison. Astrid then begins a journey through a series of foster homes, in each one learning about sex, money, love, independence, courage, rage and the manifold ways of becoming a woman. Salon Books spoke with Fitch at the beginning of a triumphant nationwide publicity tour for "White Oleander," shortly after she appeared on television with Oprah Winfrey, who made Fitch's novel the May selection for her book club.

Tell me about the genesis of "White Oleander."

I had the character of Ingrid first. She was actually the protagonist of a short story. It was black comedy. There's a writer, Sei Shonagon. She was a lady-in-waiting to the Heian empress in Japan in the 11th century.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

She wrote "The Pillow Book."

Yes. It was about a society based on aesthetics. Soldiers were promoted by how well they wrote poetry. Of course the Heian empire didn't last very long. They were pretty easy to wipe out. It was a time of tremendous refinement where the aristocrats would have a party in which they would go and look at moonlight on a pond. But they had no conventional morality. Sei Shonagon could see somebody beheaded right in front of her and it's like, pfft, there's no connection between her and that person. But if somebody wore the wrong color combinations in their robes, then for days she just couldn't get over it, how disgusting it was. I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to take someone like that, an aesthete, which is an aristocratic position, and put them at the end of the 20th century in America, with a crummy job and a crummy apartment, having to make a living, and see what happened. And so Ingrid emerged.

People read that story and they hated my character, Ingrid. They didn't want to walk a mile in her moccasins. They didn't want to be her; they said, "She's a monster, you cannot have her as your protagonist. Give her a co-worker, give her a friend, someone to see her through." And so I gave her a daughter. And suddenly it wasn't funny anymore. When you're the kid of someone who is an extreme person, it's not funny at all. And then the tone changed, and the perspective changed, and I got something very different, which was much better.

Then you had a short story and ...

I had a short story and I sent it around. I send all my short fiction to Ontario Review because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she's fantastic. They rejected it, but I got a little Post-it note saying "Too long for us. Liked it but seemed more like the first chapter of a novel." I thought, oh, Joyce Carol Oates thinks it might be the first chapter of a novel. So I started writing the novel, trying to continue the short story and trying to figure out what did happen to Ingrid and Astrid.

Did you always have the idea of Ingrid being undone by an affair?

Absolutely. That's a common experience. Many women get involved with a man that you pretty much know isn't suitable and you're kind of breaking your rules, but he's attractive in some unknown way. And then he doesn't even realize what a sacrifice you're making by being with him and he dumps you! [Laughs.] And you're just so angry at yourself for breaking your rules and angry at him for not realizing what he's given up. I think it's one step from that to, if you're an extreme unbalanced person, just going off the deep end.

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