Women writing about men

Adam Goldwyn interviews Sabina Murray, author of Forgery.

Sabina Murray: As a woman writer, I often feel stymied by my gender and the expectation that comes with it: write small, domestic, emotionally expansive, and morally upstanding fiction. Or be quaint and funny so that a bunch of ladies cruising Barney’s can feel literary as they discuss your book. Of course Durrell and Miller felt none of that and that absolute freedom–a male freedom–to drink and fuck and explore and be held as some sort of hero is the cause of much envy on my part. I wanted to look back at some of the great American writers who wrote on the edge of sanity, sobriety, and the guilty maw of survival and that brought up Fitzgerald, Miller, Hemingway, and the like. Durrell flirts with melodrama but as we follow Justine we are reminded that great lives are lived to the very perimeter of the believable, and that–unless you’re half dead and like to read in the same way you look into a mirror to apply your make up–can make for some interesting writing. I like a sense of adventure and wanted this book to be a sort of Treasure Island for grown-ups. About grief and discovery, yes, but also about how a man or woman creates himself or herself against a background. For these large-hearted, difficult people, a certain retro feeling was necessary. You mention that everyone seems nice and innocent at first, but then slowly reveals that to be a façade. I don’t believe in moral people. I don’t believe it. What’s amazing to me is that some reviewers– this is with all my fiction, all of it–look at the drinking and smoking and sex that go on in the books and have a little “ugh” of disgust. Why? Is health and hygiene a value in fiction? It’s not in mine and if I could choose some literary company–fuck it, any company!¬–I would rather be with Henry Miller, and Fitzgerald, and Durrell than just about anyone else. For style, I’ve always liked Angela Carter although I can’t find her anywhere in this book. Forgery is more of tribute to the big American fiction of the middle of the last century.