How did you become a writer?
I didn’t actually make the move myself into a life in which words
are crucial to my existence. That was one of the most fortuitous things
that happened to me and I’ve often wondered what would have happened
to me if that hadn’t have happened. People ask me if I always
wanted to be a writer. It makes me laugh because I don’t think
I had any plans for the future at all. I never thought in terms of
ambitions. I had no plans. What I wanted to be was thin. I was always
on a diet. One day when I was about 18, riding a bicycle in circles
around this small patch of garden trying to lose weight, my mother
came out into the garden and told me I’d have to get a job. When
I realized my parents were serious, I applied for a series of jobs,
none of which I was qualified for.
A friend of mine told me about a job at a new rock music newspaper
and that I should apply. I went in and no one asked me if I could write,
but the editor asked me if I had a car. My father had bought me a car
because he was terrified of me driving with Australian boys whom he
thought drank too much. I said yes I have a car, a pink Valiant. He
asked me could I start the next day. I had to ask the secretary how
to put paper into the typewriter. It started a lifelong love affair
with typewriters and keyboards, and I learned that I could write. I
learned that writing made me very happy. Putting words together in
sentences made me feel good.
How autobiographical are your novels?
People have thought that I write about my life. I haven’t helped
that, particularly in the later books, because when you give
your central female character a husband who’s a painter and they
have three children and they live in New York, then you’re asking
people to think that you’re writing out your life. My female
characters have always had parents who were in death camps.
It isn’t
my life. If you were to write out your real life, many parts
of it would be very tedious. I think that all writers write
out of themselves, so people are right to feel that I’m writing
out of myself and they’re right to feel they know me especially
after reading many of my books. But it isn’t my life, and that’s
one of the great luxuries of writing – you can make yourself
something that you’re not, something that you aspire to be. Ruth
Rothwax has an independence that I envy. more
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