Interview with Helen Phillips, author of And Yet They Were Happy

Helen Phillips is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, The Iowa Review Nonfiction Award, the DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Award, the Meridian Editors’ Prize, and a Ucross Foundation residency. A graduate of Yale and the Brooklyn College MFA program, she teaches creative writing at Brooklyn College. Originally from Colorado, Helen lives in Brooklyn with her husband, artist Adam Thompson.

Links: www.helencphillips.com

To her book, And Yet They Were Happy, on Amazon And Yet They Were Happy (LeapLit)

Helen Phillips’ new book, And Yet They Were Happy, is a mad conglomeration of marriage fables, Biblical tales gone wrong, dead brides and regime changes. As those who read this blog regularly already know, she had me at “fairy tale characters combined with Greek mythology with apocalyptic overtones.” But I was as taken with her form as I was with her subject matter. I’ve asked her a few questions that I thought my poet readers might find interesting!

Jeannine Hall Gailey: Helen, amazing work in your book! You’ve already won the Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, and I read one of the reviews that called your pieces “surreal miniatures.” When I picked up your book, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but what I recognized inside was about two-page pieces that I might call “prose poetry” and that others might call “short-shorts,” “fables” or “flash fiction.” I also read that people described it as “experimental fiction,” but I don’t know if I wanted to label it an experiment, more like a different approach to storytelling.

When did you start working in this form? Can you talk a little bit about how you developed it? It seems unlike what most people think of as a novel, but very similar to a longer, thematically-linked book of poetry.

Helen Phillips: First off, Jeannine, I want to thank you for your insightful and generous description of And Yet They Were Happy—I love the “mad conglomeration” articulation.

I started working on this book in 2007, after I’d gotten fed up with the novel I was working on. I had so many ideas for narratives and metaphors that it was frustrating to be bound to one project that didn’t enable me to throw in, say, a trash-talking mermaid out of the blue. I wanted a project that would enable me to pursue every crazy idea I had. So (at the urging of my husband Adam Thompson, a visual artist who’d recently taken a break from painting to do a series of simple line drawings), I decided to give myself a simple assignment: each day I’d write a 340-word story (approximately one typed page). That was the one and only rule. Beyond that, anything was fair game—Bob Dylan and Persephone could be sitting around the breakfast table with me, as long as I told the tale in 340 words (I’d usually begin by writing 800 or 1000 words and then spend the vast majority of my writing time whittling it down). Somehow having that lone rule ended up being extremely liberating—I felt more alive and alert creatively than I ever had before.

I’m honored by your description of the book as a “longer, thematically-linked book of poetry.” I consider myself primarily a fiction writer (and got an M.F.A. in fiction); however, I believe that poetry is the most highly evolved form of writing. I’ve been enjoying the ambiguity of the book’s genre. Some reviews call it a short story collection, others call it an experimental novel, etc. I don’t care how it’s labeled, and love the idea that different readers perceive it as being different genres.

JHG: What I loved about it, its genre-hybridity, its resistance to classification, made it difficult for you sell at first (I read this in your Goodreads interview here and your Huff post interview here ) – but now it’s been praised by outlets such as Publisher’s Weekly and Elle Magazine, surely not known for embracing edgy fiction. Are you feeling a little bit vindicated? And how much do you love your publisher now?

HP: Yes, it’s been quite shocking/amazing (and indeed a tad vindicating!) that some more traditional media outlets have embraced the book, particularly given the fact that all the big publishers in New York turned it down with comments like “these are just too experimental and I honestly don’t think I could get them the attention they deserve on our list.”

I think perhaps this speaks to your earlier point—ultimately this book isn’t so wildly experimental, it’s more just a different approach to storytelling. There are still clear sentences and paragraphs on each page. There are still recognizable characters and situations. In fact, one of the most common comments I’ve gotten from readers is “This book is so relatable!” It’s a very raw and honest book about love, death, marriage, anxiety, family, etc.—granted, those themes are explored via strange transformations and magical occurrences and contorted fairytales, but all of that serves as metaphors for these central human concerns.

And yes, I will be forever grateful to indie publisher Leapfrog Press for taking the risk none of the big publishers was willing to take.

JHG: The subject matter ranges from weddings to monsters to apocalypses, yet retains an astonishingly down-to-earth (and often humorous) voice and tone. “Fight #2,” for instance, contains language that could be considered Biblical but also references that I thought might be to superhero characters (“WonderTwin powers, activate?” I couldn’t help but be reminded…) In “Wife #8,” Snow White pops up; in “The Helens” section, Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac. Mermaids and characters from Greek mythology pop up as well. What are your inspirations and influences? A little classical here, a little pop culture there?

HP: I love juxtaposing myths/fairytales/Bible stories with pop culture, because those age-old stories about basic human desires and frustrations are still so relevant. At the same time, combining these mythical images with contemporary ones can make for interesting tension (and, at times, humor). I’m glad you see the humor in the book—that was actually a very important part of this project for me. I wanted there to be the lightness of that to counterbalance some of the bleaker components. I love Ovid’s Metamorphosis, I love the Coen brothers, I love Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, I love Dylan of course …

JHG: Have you ever read Matthea Harvey’s book, Modern Life? It would make a great companion piece for “And Yet They Were Happy” – apocalypse, regime changes, a strangely chipper narrator for grim future scenarios. I just read another book, Monster Party by Lizzy Acker, that also features yes, monsters and apocalyptic scenarios. Do you think our generation (well, I think we’re all mostly in our late twenties to thirties) is particularly interested in the end of world? (I think it has something to do with the nature of the television shows and children’s books popular in the seventies and early eighties, personally…)

HP: I don’t read nearly as much poetry as I’d like to, though I’ve recently been thrilled by Mary Ruefle’s The Most of It and Maggie Nelson’s Bluets (also not sure what genre those books are). I haven’t read Modern Life (I did love Matthea’s recent prose poem, “The Straightforward Mermaid,” in the New Yorker) or Monster Party—I’ll be sure to check them out.

Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about this apocalyptic obsession. Statistically speaking, the world is better off than it’s ever been. More people live longer, healthier lives. But because of the internet, we have more ability than ever before to know about all the different ways people are suffering and dying. We see scenes of apocalypse all the time—in New Orleans, in Haiti, in Japan, in Iraq, in New York, in Pakistan, in Indonesia. It feels so near at hand.

There’s also a sense now of invisible, unexpected threats. Are our cell phones going to give us cancer? Are our children going to be brain damaged by the mercury in fish from the poisoned seas? In what unsuspecting place will the terrorists strike next? It breeds paranoia.

I feel the paranoia, I feel the fear and instability and loss, and in writing And Yet They Were Happy I was trying to talk myself into a state of greater bravery by confronting those fears head-on.

(I’d be curious to hear more about your theory re: ‘70s and ‘80s books and TV shows!)

JHG: What advice would you give a poet who wanted to try a foray into fiction? After reading your book, I suddenly felt it was a strange but tantalizing territory…you’ve really married an attention to language and economy of expression with a fiction-writer’s broader palettes of character and plot.

HP: Thank you, Jeannine. I teach an intergenre creative writing seminar at Brooklyn College, and we talk a lot about the intersections between the different genres. It seems to me that exploring those intersections is a good place to start if you’re moving from one genre to another. For instance, if you’re a poet interested in writing fiction, try writing a group of three prose poems in which each has the same protagonist. It can be intimidating/paralyzing to do something completely new, like going from writing poems to writing a novel, but there are many intriguing in-between places to explore along that spectrum.