We caught up with novelist Bonnie Jo Campbell over the Labor Day weekend and pummelled her with questions, which she was gracious enough to answer. We sent her ten, thinking we'd choose the best five, but we should have realized that all of her answers would be interesting. So here are five, and you can read the other five next Wednesday in the Variety section in print.
Campbell is six feet tall and strong, once ran away with the circus, and can tell a story like nobody else. "Once Upon a River" is an enthralling story of survival, the tale of young Margo Crane who is utterly at home in the natural world but not so much in the troublesome world of people.
She'll be speaking at theLoft Literary Center at 7 p.m. Sept. 15.
Q: What's on your desk?
A: Piles of receipts, books I'm reading, books I'm trying to return to people, papers to be filed, notes from friends. Also there's a wooden box where I want my cat Pawpaw to curl up, but he prefers to be on my lap. There's a glass box where I put coupons I mean to use, but I never remember to look at them before I go to the store. (Okay, I just got up from where I'm sitting on the screen porch and looked at my desk.) There is also a big candle, an old fashioned school bell, and a metal bookmark engraved with the date I read at the Tattered Cover in Denver, July 28 2011.
Q: Do you have a favorite book from childhood?
A: I guess the books I feel most affectionate about are the Oz books, since those are books my ma read to us kids when we were little. I wasn't really a big reader as a kid. I read a lot as a prime form of entertainment, but I didn't really feel attached to particular books until I got to college and read Steinbeck. Cannery Row had a powerful effect on me.
Q: What books do you re-read?
A: Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor, and Faulkner. For my writing of "Once Upon a River," I reread repeatedly both Huckleberry Finn and The Odyssey. I just reread A Christmas Carol because I am writing a ghost story and wanted some inspiration.
Q: What are you reading right now?
A: I've just started reading Laura Kasischke's new book,The Raising. In my car, I'm listening to a CD of The Prince and the Pauper, by Twain. I'm also reading a book a guy I met compiled, of the complete reported accounts of Massauga rattlesnake bites in Michigan.
Q: What's been the best place so far to do a reading?
A: Since I've never read at the Loft, I'll say the sweetest place I got to read was New York City for the National Book Awards Finalist reading.
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