Bookreporter.com - Author Profile: Chris Bohjalian

Chris Bohjalian

BIO

Chris Bohjalian is the author of five acclaimed novels, including MIDWIVES. He lives in Lincoln, Vermont, with his wife, photographer Victoria Blewer, and their daughter, Grace Experience.

INTERVIEW

May 26, 2000

We revisit one of our favorite authors, Chris Bohjalian, in honor of his latest novel, TRANS-SISTER RADIO. A clever title combined with many plot twists and turns, this book will be sure to entertain old fans and win over new ones. The premise is simple, yet complex --- what happens when a woman falls in love with a man...who wants to be a woman? Does love transcend gender? Bookreporter.com's Jana Siciliano delves into this touchy topic with author Bohjalian in our latest interview.

TBR: Your latest novel, TRANS-SISTER RADIO, is about a middle-aged divorcee school teacher finding new love as her daughter prepares to leave home for college --- her new life creates unexpected jealousy by her ex-husband. What heats up matters is that her new boyfriend, Dana, is about to undergo a sex change. Exactly how did you come about such a complicated and unusual story?

CB: I grew interested in the idea of a novel about a transsexual because I have a divorced, female friend in New York City who fell deeply in love with a man who was planning to have a sex change. For a while they dated, but she didn't believe their love could endure her partner's sex change. And so they broke up, and her ex-boyfriend had his sexual reassignment and became female. Some years later, however, when my friend and I were chatting, she told me that she had never loved anyone, other than her own daughter, as much as she had loved that transsexual. She doubted a day had gone by when she hadn't thought about this other person, and wondered what if...

Unfortunately, my friend couldn't bring herself to pick up the phone and call this other woman --- despite the fact she believed with all her heart this other person was her soul mate --- because of all the issues that she brought to gender and sexual preference, and her own sense of herself as "straight."

In some ways, TRANS-SISTER RADIO is that wistful "what if." What if my friend and the transsexual had stayed together? Could their love have transcended the biologic imperatives of their bodies, as well as their ingrained notions of sexual preference? I think these are very interesting questions, because they get to the heart of who we are as people and how we want to be viewed by the world around us.

TBR: What kind of research did you do for this novel?

CB: It was important to learn as much as I could about the transgendered community, as well as about male to female sexual reassignment.  And so I spent time with transsexuals (pre- and post-op), and I interviewed some of the surgeons (and their staff) who do sexual reassignment surgery.  I spent a week, for example, in Trinidad, Colorado, because there is a surgeon there who did much of the pioneering work in sexual reassignment in this country.

And I tried to be very thorough with my research --- so thorough that another transsexual surgeon who read a rough draft of the manuscript for me assumed I was a transsexual myself (preoperative, I should add --- the doctor had read Midwives and seen my author's photo). I assured the doctor I wasn't. But I was very flattered.

TBR: Four narrators tell the story in TRANS-SISTER RADIO. How exactly did
you manage to tell one story through four individual people without losing
their specific voices?

CB: My books are, in a way, fictional memoirs.  They usually have a narrator chronicling the seminal event in his or her life, that before-and-after moment that changed everything.  Once I know that voice --- Connie Danforth in MIDWIVES, or Leland Fowler in THE LAW OF SIMILARS --- I am ready to write.

In TRANS-SISTER RADIO, I knew well how Dana, the transsexual, sounded ("How do you speak like a woman?  I've read all the books and I don't know how many articles."), and the book might have been simply her version of the events.  But I cared very deeply about the other characters as well --- especially Allison Banks, the schoolteacher who falls in love with Dana.  I knew them and I understood them (at least I think I did), and it seemed to me that they deserved equal time, too.

TBR: Why is Dana such a special character? Does he represent the idea that
love can transcend sex?

CB: Dana is very special to me, too. Thank you for that. Yes, I think that's a very nice interpretation of what Dana represents.

TBR: Your books often take place in small towns and the plot usually simmers under all the small town scrutiny. The same goes for TRANS-SISTER RADIO, Dana and Allison are up against not only Allison's husband, but also the fear and prejudice of the entire town. Why do you think small communities are so afraid of anything different?

CB: I live in a small town, and one of the dynamics that fascinates me is that they engender both great comfort and great paranoia. On the one hand, there is the support they offer: Everyone knows everyone's name, and there will always be someone there for you if (when) you're in need. On the other hand, there is no anonymity and little privacy: Don't even think of doing something clandestine!

I explored this notion a great deal with Leland Fowler in THE LAW OF SIMILARS: The community is there for him and his daughter after his wife dies, but he believes his neighbors are scrutinizing his every illicit move with Carissa Lake a little later on.

That point noted, I'm not sure that I would say small communities are afraid of anything different: But I believe you're absolutely correct that change does tend to come a tad more slowly than in larger, more diverse worlds.

TBR: Allison's daughter Carly seems pleased at her mother's new found
happiness at the beginning of her relationship with Dana. Why do you think
children are so much more accepting than adults?

CB: I can think of three transsexuals I met who commented in one way or another that children were infinitely more tolerant of them than grown-ups.  (Children also, they said, were more likely to detect that they may have been born a different gender.)

Perhaps it's because children haven't yet so firmly divided the world into neat little boxes: Male, female.  Gay, straight.  They're more comfortable with fantasy and make-believe, and they're still viewing the world as place of endless possibility and change -- not a regimented place where men are men and women are women, and one shouldn't even think about exploring an impulse that might exist somewhere in between.

TBR: Your title, TRANS-SISTER RADIO, is very clever. How did you come up
with this title and radio theme?

CB: The answer is fairly prosaic. Forgive me.

First of all, I used the radio to help provide the reader with relevant background about the transgendered community and sexual reassignment, without slowing (or stopping) the plot's linear momentum.

Then I wanted the word "trans" in the title somehow, because this is a book about transformation -- and I don't mean simply Dana's.  All three adults in the novel are transformed in some meaningful way.

And so from there it was a small step to TRANS-SISTER RADIO.

TBR: Is there any subject you would like to tackle through your fiction but
haven't quite figured out how?

CB: Oh, I'm sure there are many subjects.  But I've always had at least one subject in which I was passionately interested to help fuel a novel: Midwifery. Dowsing. All that baggage we bring to gender and sexual preference.

TBR: When you were developing your craft, were there writers whose work
influenced you?

CB: Joyce Carol Oates and John Irving have been among my favorite writers for two decades now.  I will never forget the first time I read Oates' novel, Expensive People, with that cryptic first line: "I was a child murderer."  The narrator asks you to ponder what that means: A child who happened to murder, or an adult who murdered a child.  I imagine Oates is comfortable with all manner of ambiguity in her fiction.

I believe I cherish Irving's work because he consistently offers us such wondrously vibrant and idiosyncratic characters.

TBR: How do you battle the twin evils of self-criticism and self-editing
while you are working on a new book?

CB: I rewrite constantly, and my books always take at least a half-dozen drafts.

And still I can't reread them.  Never have, never will.  I pick the few passages I will read aloud at public readings, and then I don't dare go near any other sections: I fear I'll see sentences that will appall me, and I'll find dialogue that will ring false when I hear it in my head.

As for the process of writing, I'm usually having too much fun to agonize much.  I really enjoy the work itself.

TBR: Has Hollywood come a-knocking? If so, what happened?

CB: My 1992 novel, PAST THE BLEACHERS, became a lovely Hallmark
made-for-TV movie. It first aired in 1995, and is available on video.

My 1997 novel, MIDWIVES, will start filming this autumn as a Columbia-Tristar movie for Lifetime, starring Sissy Spacek as midwife Sibyl Danforth.

TBR: Which of your books would you most like to see adapted to film?

CB: MIDWIVES (which will happen) and TRANS-SISTER RADIO.

TBR: Does your writing process change depending on the type of book you are doing or does it just evolve generally over time?

CB: I am very compulsive. I write fiction every day from 5AM to 10AM, and that routine never changes. I write in my library in an 1898 Victorian village house that looks up at Vermont's Mount Abraham, and I watch the sun rise as I work.

TBR: Any hints on what your next book is about?

CB: It's about a foster child and his foster parents (whose marriage is falling apart), and a horse named Mesa. It will be called THE BUFFALO SOLDIER.

TBR: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

CB: Read lots and write often. And, truly, savor the process of writing.  I had amassed over 250 rejections before I sold my first short story (to Cosmopolitan) when I was 24, so it's important to enjoy those moments when you are, literally, crafting sentences.