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Francine Prose
BIO
Francine Prose is the author of thirteen books of fiction, including the novel BLUE ANGEL, a finalist for the National Book Award and THE LIVES OF THE MUSES: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired. Her most recent book is A CHANGED MAN. A recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, she was a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in New York City.
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PAST INTERVIEW
July 28, 2000
Francine Prose takes us on a satirical and deliciously damaging ride through the dark side of academia in her novel, BLUE ANGEL. The setting is a small college in rural Vermont where a disillusioned and unhappy professor becomes enamored with one of his creative writing students. Bookreporter.com's Jana Siciliano delved into Prose's BLUE ANGEL and was inspired to ask the accomplished literary author some questions about the book. Find out what inspires Prose's prose and more in this interview.
BRC: Your new novel, BLUE ANGEL, takes a big swing at academic communities and the "witch hunt" attitude that most administrations are taking on the issue of sexual harassment. What prompted you to tell this story about the talented but disturbed Angela Argo and the smitten and somewhat lazy aging novelist Professor Swenson?
FP: I didn't especially want to write about academic communities or sexual harassment or political correctness. I wanted to write a love story loosely based on the film, THE BLUE ANGEL, with Marlene Dietrich. Once I decided to set it in a creative writing classroom, the rest naturally followed.
BRC: There are plenty of women characters in BLUE ANGEL and they are a complex lot. Did you want Swenson's wife, Sherrie, her operatic friend, Angela and her classmates and Swenson's friend and colleague Magda to represent different female archetypes? Who or what was your inspiration for these characters?
FP: I'd hate to think that my female characters were female archetypes. I never think of characters in fiction as archetypes of anything, but always --- I hope --- as very particular and unique individuals. In that way, they're like people, except that they aren't people, they're fictional characters.
BRC: HOUSEHOLD SAINTS is my personal favorite of all your books. Raised in a traditional Catholic family, so much of it struck home. Where did you find the inspiration for the book? Is Theresa, the young woman who emulates St. Theresa, based on your experiences with religion as a child? What did you think of the film directed by Nancy Savoca and what part did you play in the production process?
FP: I'm not a Catholic --- at least not in this lifetime --- so Household Saints is mostly imagined and invented. And my childhood was nothing like Theresa's, though as a girl I did like the lives of the saints, which I thought of (not knowing any better) as thrillingly morbid fairy tales. I loved the film --- I thought Nancy Savoca did an extraordinary job. She consulted with me about the screenplay and the casting, and I got to watch the filming.
BRC: GUIDED TOURS OF HELL, a book which contains two novellas about world travelers, seems to ask big questions about self-loathing and how it changes one's life, art and the way one relates to other people. Did your own travels inspire these novellas?
FP: I never thought about Guided Tours as a study of self-loathing. Rather, I thought it was about the opposite: unrestrained and inappropriate egoism. Both novels did have some relation to trips I took --- to Paris, and to Terezin and Prague.
BRC: Your recent New York Times Magazine piece about the low standards of "women's" media was considered very controversial. I, for one, think you are right: Television for Women and most websites which cater to a "female" audience are really lowbrow and cliched. How did you feel about the response you got to what seems to me to be a brave and well-considered attack on poor quality entertainment for women?
FP: The Times got lots of letters in response to the piece, and I was very gratified by how many were from women thanking me for noticing that they weren't, by definition, morons. The only really negative response I got, really, was from Salon, which for some reason seems habitually unable to read --- or comprehend --- anything I've written.
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