FF:
Yes, when I am writing I do cut myself off from everything and just live in the world of my story. I try not to even read the newspaper or watch the news.
SV:
Do your stories surprise you? Did you ever start out to write one thing, one place, one time, and find yourself writing about another? Do your characters tend to run away with you?
FF:
Yes, my characters never seem to do what I want them to. They are like bad children and do not mind me at all! In this book Hamm Sparks showed up and wanted a bigger part than I had intended.
SV:
How do you feel when you start a book?
FF:
Excited, scared, wondering if I can do it.
SV:
And when you finish?
FF:
Great! Even better! I love book tours and I finally get to have lunch with real live people again.
SV:
You have some nice touches in
Rainbow
where characters almost exchange lives. For example the little blind songbird who yearns to see or at least travel the world and the itinerant girl whose idea of the full life is to stay at home. Do you think that many of us would like to exchange lives? Or live at least two? Is this just restlessness or envy or the potential thrill of the unknown life never lived? We are all celebrity-struck while maintaining stoutly that we wouldn’t trade places for the world. Or is it just garden variety schizophrenia?
FF:
The grass does always seem to be greener somewhere else, doesn’t it? I think it is just human nature to want something we can’t have or to wish we were somewhere else or somebody else. I know when I was younger I often wished I could live parallel lives. As I recall when I was about ten I wanted to play violin in a symphony orchestra, be a nun, a famous ice skater, play piano and sing in some smoky little cocktail bar in Paris, be married to an Italian and have six children, and here’s the real stretch, be an English professor at Oxford University. But the truth is I have barely managed the one life I have. And I am happy to say as I have become older I am perfectly content with who I am and where I am. A very wise person said, “We are exactly where we are supposed to be.” I don’t know who the wise person was, but I tend to believe that more and more as the years go by.
SV:
You consistently show how much you care for your characters. You may laugh at their antics but you never really stand above them, looking down. It’s more like standing beside them, looking on. Where does your feeling for older people come from? And for female friendship? And for strong, not always silent, men?
FF:
I’m lucky enough to have a lot of friends, both men and women, and enjoy them thoroughly. As it so happens, many are older than myself. Being an only child, I was around adults for most of my young life. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I felt entirely comfortable with my peers, not until they were grown people I could relate to. I still tend to find older people much more interesting. They have so much to tell about and have lived through so much and know so much more. I am waiting to become old and wise. So far I’m older but seem to be none the wiser.
SV:
The roles you’ve played are quite varied. You can’t be said to have been typecast. Yet in your novels, you have set a new standard of your own so that other writers’ books are being compared to your work. How would you describe a Fannie Flagg novel?
FF:
I don’t think I can describe my own work. I don’t even know what my style of writing is. I don’t even know how I do it. So I am the last person to ask. I am still baffled by the entire process. I still don’t understand how something that was only in my head and can’t be seen can become a book, a solid object that you can pick up and carry around.
SV:
Your books have been printed in fifteen different languages. How do you feel about that? How do you think people’s reactions to your novels in Europe or China, etc., differ from those in America?
FF:
First of all I am still so amazed that anyone other than Americans understands my books. It is so funny to see them in strange covers and printed in so many different languages. I asked a French friend who had read the French version of
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
how he was able to understand the story and he said France has small towns just like every other country. I suppose no matter where you live people can relate; language may be different but by and large human nature remains the same the world over. As far as their reactions, judging from the letters I receive, they seem to be the same. Only the reviews may be different from the ones I get here, mostly because the foreign viewers do not know me as an ex-actress and tend to review the book only. Most American reviews and articles still mention that I used to be an actress and appear on television.
SV:
Your work has taken you to many places. Are you a good traveler?
FF:
I am a wonderful traveler, as long as I do not have to get on a plane. I hate to fly. Not only am I a white-knuckle flyer, I always feel like I have been sucked through a vacuum cleaner backwards and shot out the other end. Needless to say, I love motor trips and the train.
SV:
If you weren’t writing novels like Fannie Flagg’s, who would you most like to write like?
FF:
Certainly someone who writes much faster than I, more like my friend Sue Grafton, who pops out a book a year. I am in awe of that! You may have noticed I am a very slow writer.
SV:
Yes, I noticed. You are working on your fifth book at present and if you had a theme or a certain outlook in your writing that seems consistent, what would that be?
FF:
I suppose that there really is such a thing as true love, really nice people, and good friends, and sometimes there are happy endings. I speak from experience. As I get older I am much happier now than I ever was as a young person, and my life has turned out to be better than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams, and as you know I have a pretty good imagination!
SV:
When you are at work do you talk to yourself?
FF:
Not yet.
SV:
So far all of your books have landed on the bestseller list. What is your take on the idea of so-called serious fiction versus popular fiction? In your opinion is one more preferable to the other?
FF:
I would say that I am very serious about trying to write popular fiction. Blame it on my Southern upbringing but my preference is to write books that as many people as possible will enjoy.
SV:
Sooner or later, every popular writer discovers the art of the self-interview. If you were talking to Fannie Flagg, what questions would you most like to be asked, and have answered?
FF:
Aha! I have always wanted to do this. “Miss Flagg, does writing come easy for you?”
FF:
Are you kidding? Writing is the hardest thing in the world for me. First of all, I am easily distracted—if I see a leaf fall off a tree, I lose my concentration—and I am cursed with the ears of a bat. I can hear a car door slam two miles away, so I have to be locked up in a completely quiet place and sit all by myself all day. I hate to be alone!
FF:
If writing is so hard for you, then why in the world do you keep doing it?
FF:
Believe me, I have thought about this for years and I suppose I write for the same reason painters paint, or photographers take pictures. I want to stop time, capture a moment, a day, a year, and keep it forever. That, and the fact that my editor continues to bug me about my next book.
SV:
Speaking of that, how important is an editor to your work?
FF:
Of no importance whatsoever. I really don’t need an editor; after all, I do all the work myself. Okay, just kidding, Sam! I have been lucky enough to have the same editor for the last eighteen years. He knows me very well and understands when to push me and when not to. But mostly he helps me manage fear. It is terrifying to write a book, particularly when you know your publishing house is waiting on it. His guidance and patience have been and continue to be invaluable. Besides that, he knows grammar, spelling, and all that good stuff.
SV:
What is your next book?
FF:
I am working on a small Christmas book.
SV:
Have you finished it yet?
FF:
(Long pause) I have to go now.
R
EADING
G
ROUP
Q
UESTIONS AND
T
OPICS FOR
D
ISCUSSION
1. The novel starts in the immediate aftermath of World War II. How does the period compare with the times following more modern wars—Vietnam, Gulf War, Desert Storm, etc.?
2. In what ways is Bobby the typical pre-teenage son? Does he differ in any important details? Does his active imagination hamper him, confuse him, or fuel his ambitions?
3. In what ways is Neighbor Dorothy a good neighbor? What makes her such an effective seller of her sponsors’ products or services?
4. Does Neighbor Dorothy speak through the silences surrounding some farmers’ wives—the silent or the working-all-day husband, for example. Or the limited view the nation had of housewives at that time? Or perhaps the distance between towns and cities and countryside? Was this the loneliness that can come with working alone in a house almost all the time?
5. How does Dorothy succeed in making small events into larger ones—an anniversary, the birth of a kitten, some honor bestowed in school or church, one of the ordinary recognitions?
6. Is the humor in the novel satire—or not?
7. How does Hamm break out of the tractor salesman category?
8. How does he use his salesmanlike skills to win the young woman who becomes his wife?
9. Hamm eventually takes on a mistress and advisor. How does Vita not fit into the usual Other Woman mold? We see their relationship grow—but what of that between his wife and his mistress?
10. With all the evidence of “dysfunctional” families these days, why do some marriages in the novel work out so well?
11. Why do you think the author begins the novel with Tot, the voice of one of the minor characters?
12. The Oatman family of gospel singers: Do they reveal a “hidden” aspect of American culture (hidden, that is, unless you grew up with such entertainments and forms of worship)? What other pockets of American life are almost invisible to white, middle-class, urban Americans?
13. Hamm’s politics seem to be a bit all over the place. He’s not a true conservative or liberal; he’s not a true demagogue or, on the other hand, a true blue Boy Scout, or without endless ambition. At what point does he leave off being a populist do-gooder and let ambition take over? Is the process gradual or sudden?
14. Because of the author’s attitude toward her characters and presumably the world, some might call this a feel-good novel. In what ways does she allow some of the harsher realities to creep in?
15. Is small-town life any better per se than city life?
16. Is the Midwestern small town indistinguishable from the Southern small town in
Fried Green Tomatoes,
for example?
17. The decade of the ’50s occurs in the middle of the novel. It was the time of the Eisenhower presidency, the end of the war in Korea, etc. For years, much of the intelligentsia portrayed those years as dull ones, uneventful, complacent, unremarkable. Later, there was a revision in opinion. They were special years of peace (despite the Cold War), stability, growth, etc. What is your opinion?
18. Aunt Elner, Norma, Macky . . . Can you think of counterparts in real life? Do you know a character or two who exhibit some of their characteristics?
19. Do you agree that Aunt Elner would have made a good governor? Or that Poor Tot would make a splendid Secretary of Health and Human Services?
20. If you’re a woman, don’t you wish you could find a nightgown just like the one Macky so admired on Norma? What did it do for her?
21. How would you like a two-week vacation, all expenses paid, in Elmwood Springs, “The Most Middle Town in America.” How would you spend the time?
22. Transformations occur with fair frequency in the lives of these characters. Can you name some? Do you know of similar transformations in your own life experience?
23. “You can’t go home again,” wrote Thomas Wolfe, famously. Bobby tries it with mixed results. But can you ever get
away
from home, no matter how far you travel?
24. Macky eases into retirement only to find that everything rubs him the wrong way. But one gift, one wonder of modern technology, changes all that. What was it? And has that invention done the same for you?
25. How would you write the next chapter, beyond the ending of the novel, to see the surviving characters through the next phase of their lives?
Standing in the Rainbow
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc.
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2004 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc. and Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Ballantine Reader’s Guide and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004094063
This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-47863-4
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