Ladette
Randolph is the author of Leaving the
Pink House, published just this month. University of Iowa Press acquisitions editor Elisabeth Chretien asked
her a few questions about writing her book, growing up and living in Nebraska,
and her life in Boston now.
Elisabeth Chretien:
What drew you to write about your life through the lens of houses?
Ladette Randolph: The structure of this book arose
organically. I kept careful notes throughout the process of our gutting and
rebuilding the house in the country, so that formed the core of my inspiration
for this book; however, the story of the house project wasn’t quite enough (or
so early readers told me). Years before I wrote about the country house, I had
written a series of essays, and when I looked back through them I realized many
of my memories had been archived through the various moves we’d made in my
childhood and later moves in my adulthood. When I started playing with
combining the two stories, it seemed the best way to tell what turned out to be
a complicated story about the meaning of home.
EC:
What was the most difficult thing for you in restoring the country house? What
was the most rewarding?
LR: There were a lot of difficult things
about restoring the country house. It was financially very risky and the time
involved to pull it off was almost inconceivable. It was painful and
exhausting work. I still don’t quite know how we (mostly my husband Noel) did
it. I would say, though, that the most difficult thing and the most rewarding
thing are the same. We jumped into this project (and we aren’t usually such
impulsive people) and then came to see how we’d need the help of other people
if we were going to meet the deadline for the bridge loan. While it’s true if
we hadn’t met that deadline we could have extended it, during the volatile
period after 9/11 we were very anxious to lock into a permanent loan. Friends,
family, and our neighbors at the country house were wonderfully generous to us,
as the book makes clear, and that was incredibly affirming, but it also felt at
times like we’d created a burdensome situation. People never made us feel that
way, but we were very humbled by the experience.
EC:
You’re a native of Nebraska. How has your homeplace influenced your writing?
LR: I’m not sure I have enough
perspective to answer this question, but I know that I can’t seem to stop
writing about Nebraska. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s a landscape that has
shaped me; it’s in my bones, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Nebraska
remains imaginatively important to my work (at least so far it has). I keep
wondering at what point I’ll start writing about New England with as much
familiarity. It’s something of a puzzle to me.
This interview is the just the first part! Check out the rest on Monday, September 8.
