{"id":96121,"date":"2019-04-11T09:59:10","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T13:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=96121"},"modified":"2020-04-27T14:28:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T18:28:23","slug":"interview-emily-st-john-mandel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/interview-emily-st-john-mandel\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Emily St. John Mandel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere\u2019s a part of me that feels like the life of Station Eleven <\/em>was something like being struck by lightning or winning the lottery,\u201d says author Emily St. John Mandel, reflecting on the success of the novel that served as the focus for this year\u2019s NEA Big Read at UCF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Translated into 31 languages, a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award, and the 2015 recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke award for best science fiction novel, Station Eleven<\/em> certainly defies conventional literary odds. The novel \u2014 simultaneously about a travelling symphony, celebrity culture, Shakespeare, and epidemics \u2014 explores the role and survival of art in a post-apocalyptic world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a part of me that feels like the life of Station Eleven <\/em>was something like being struck by lightning or winning the lottery.\u201d \u2014 Emily St. John Mandel, author<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before her event, which was part of UCF Celebrates the Arts<\/a> at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, I spoke with St. John Mandel about how this lightning strike of a novel came together, apocalypses, and what books she would save for the end of the world.<\/p>\n

Adam Byko<\/strong>: You got your start in dance before moving into writing. Did you feel you transitioned skills or a mentality from one artform to the other, or were they two totally different things in your mind?<\/p>\n

Emily St. John Mandel<\/strong>: I mean, mostly they\u2019re totally different things. But I think dance is really good for developing this kind of fire and self-discipline, which I don\u2019t think is applicable just to the arts. I think if you\u2019re a dancer first, you might go on to become a more disciplined attorney or anything else you do in your life. But it definitely helps with writing. So much of writing is just forcing yourself to sit at your desk and write a novel. So, you know, discipline\u2019s important. In that sense, one\u2019s probably related to the other.<\/p>\n

AB<\/strong>: Speaking of discipline, I am so curious about your process for writing. Both the books I\u2019ve read of yours have really interesting structures. With Station Eleven<\/em> there\u2019s a graphic novel, theater, paparazzi, and on top of that a whole post-apocalyptic wasteland. How does this all make the leap from your head to the page? Do you start with one plot and then things spiral, or are you juggling multiple plots right from the get-go?<\/p>\n

ESJM<\/strong>: I start with one thing usually. With all of my books, it\u2019s just been one thing. Sometimes it\u2019s just kinda a wisp of a premise\u2026 For Station Eleven<\/em>, my original idea was partly just to write something really different from my previous three books. I felt like I was drifting in the direction of crime fiction. And that\u2019s kind of a delicate point because I really like crime fiction \u2014 I have such respect for what crime writers do. But you can get trapped in these marketing categories and it\u2019s hard to ever break out as a writer. So I wanted to do something a bit different. And my starting point with Station Eleven<\/em>\u2026 I guess it was that Shakespeare performance [of King Lear<\/em>] that opens the book. Even before I knew the book was going to be post-apocalyptic, it was always going to start with that actor dying of a heart attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get trapped in these marketing categories and it\u2019s hard to ever break out as a writer. So I wanted to do something a bit different.\u201d \u2013 Emily St. John Mandel, author<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AB: <\/strong>So in the original conception of the book, there was no mass epidemic?<\/p>\n

ESJM:<\/strong> Yeah, it was going to be set completely in the present day. I was going to write this \u2014 in retrospect \u2014 somewhat precious book about the importance of art in our lives. Which it still is, but it was going to be just about the lives of actors in a travelling company. The trials and tribulations of this underfunded Shakespearean troupe. And it wasn\u2019t until I started writing that that I added the post-apocalyptic element. It seems like a bit of a leap, but I wanted to write about our technology, and I thought an interesting way to do that would be to contemplate its absence.<\/p>\n

AB: <\/strong>A major theme of the book is summed up in the quote \u201cSurvival is Insufficient\u201d [from Star Trek<\/em>], especially in regards to the arts. Your book came out in 2014, and the world has continued to change since then. As someone making art in this world, does that phrase mean more to you now or has it had a continuous influence?<\/p>\n

ESJM: <\/strong>I would say it\u2019s been continuous. There are definitely things about the world in 2019 that trouble me deeply, that weren\u2019t even on the horizon in 2014. Like consensual reality? That\u2019s something I really miss. [Laughs]. When we all used to have one set of facts from which we drew different conclusions. That was a nice thing that I took for granted in retrospect. So you can make an argument that the world\u2019s become more bleak, but I feel like we always think we\u2019re living at the end of the world. You know, when have we ever felt like it wasn\u2019t going to be catastrophic? So there\u2019s some comfort in that.<\/p>\n

AB:<\/strong> I want to go back to the structure question and how you braided so many narratives together. I\u2019m so curious about the order. When did each element manifest in the draft as you were editing the novel?<\/p>\n

ESJM:<\/strong> Right, so I know the first element was Arthur dying on stage. I always knew it was going to be a nonlinear narrative because that\u2019s the only way I know how to write novels if I\u2019m being honest here. I knew I could kill him off on page three and we could still get a lot about his life.<\/p>\n

I think my next element was actually Miranda.  I wasn\u2019t sure for a long time how that character fit into the narrative though I remember all kinds of weird variations. Like at one point she was the executive assistant of Arthur\u2019s sister Claire, who doesn\u2019t exist by draft number three. I just always had a vision of who she was as a character: Graduated art school, practicing her art around the margins of her day job, which, as the graduate of a program in contemporary dance, was something I knew a lot about. So it was Arthur, then it was Miranda, and then I think the next element was the post-apocalyptic stuff, when I started writing about the Travelling Symphony.<\/p>\n

Clark was the last element, and kinda the last character who came together. With Clark \u2014 and this goes back to what happens to your work when you don\u2019t have an outline \u2014 he was originally such a minor character. I was originally thinking, \u201cWell Arthur\u2019s throwing a dinner party. He should really have an old friend.\u201d And I found I just really liked him. He was fascinating to me. He was the only character who I had a really vivid picture of.<\/p>\n

During my time at The Rockefeller University, there was a postdoc who I used to see all over campus. I don\u2019t know his name or what lab he worked in. But he had the most fabulous sense of style. He was probably, I don\u2019t know, early thirties. Probably six foot three, very thin, wore these great vintage suits, which, because he was so tall, ended about four inches above the ankle, with bright pink or striped socks and his hair was shaved off on one side and floppy on the other and sometimes pink?<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s fair to say that scientists are not particularly renowned for their sense of style \u2014  writers aren\u2019t either [laughs] \u2014 but this guy just had an incredible look about him. And for some reason I was picturing him as I was writing the young Clark, and he just took over and became more and more interesting to me. That was the last major element of the story to come together. I was really playing around endlessly with the structure of this book. I remember I was changing the order of entire sections, pretty much right up to the end.<\/p>\n