In The Empty Room (HarperCollins), Lauren B. Davis takes readers to the depths of alcoholism, told over the day in the life of a "career" alcoholic, pulling from her own past.
For #Fest2Fest, Lauren B. Davis talks to 49th Shelf about sobriety, the myth of the alcoholic writer, and the ideal book review.
See Lauren at Kingston WriterFest. Information here.
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Julie Wilson: In a scene from The Empty Room, Colleen drops a bottle containing vodka on the bathroom floor. While contemplating if she could bring herself to drink what vodka she might save, she muses that a "little madness could be expected." How did you go about creating empathy for Colleen while maintaining your position as a reliable narrator?
Lauren B. Davis: I like Colleen, even though I want to shake her sometimes, and that's what I want the reader to feel as well. To that end, I tried to show her as being smart and funny, and yearning for much more. I also tried to put her in situations readers might identify with, even though they aren't alcoholic. She is a woman of a certain age who finds she has become invisible, for example. She lives in a city, but without any real friendships and that isolation is a part of so many lives these days. She dreams, even if those dreams—indeed her very life—are now distorted. She reads, she tries to write, she longs for a relationship with God. I tried to show that at her core she is like any one of us—broken and failing, perhaps, but still longing. Wanting, as Raymond Carver said, "to call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved upon this earth."
As to the reliable narrator, the book is written in free indirect discourse, and so the narrator is almost entirely Colleen's perspective, even though it's in the third person. I did that because I wanted the reader to feel identification, but also a slight distance. It's a tough story and I feared if I told it in the first person it would be too much (and read too much like memoir, which it is not). The reader needs the objectivity so as not to drown along with Colleen, but the close psychic distance in order to feel what she feels.
JW: Why did you decide to focus Colleen's story on the course of just one day? Is this story of an alcoholic . . . told in moderation?
LD: "Told in moderation!" Funny!
I chose that framework because being an alcoholic is like being in a nightmare where every day is pretty much the same and you don't ever seem to wake up. You know those dreams where you're trying like hell to wake up and you think you have and then suddenly you realize you're still asleep and the struggle starts all over? It feels like that. So, it seemed a natural construction.
Besides that, in my experience there's always ONE day in an alcoholic's career that just isn't like the rest and it's there that the person finds a moment of clarity. I wanted to capture that.
This all began with me imagining what a day in my own life might look like if I'd never stopped drinking. The sections from Colleen's past are a way of breaking up the day, but not, as some have suggested, as a way of explaining her addiction; rather they are there to expose some of the things an alcoholic drags around in his or her head. The rocks they can't drop, if you will. These memories are what he or she might use to justify or rationalize the addiction, but the reader shouldn't necessarily do so.
JW: Writer Chris Kraus has said, "Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement?" Did you struggle with this at all while writing The Empty Room?
LD: I can't say I did. It hasn't been my experience that everybody does think we're debasing ourselves. Certainly no one has said that to me, certainly not about this book. But then again, I don't think I've written a particularly salacious or scandalous or debasing scenario. Colleen's life just gets smaller and smaller and smaller, more and more pitiful. Then too, perhaps because I am so obviously not the woman in this book, so obviously not living her life, it simply doesn't come to mind. Had I written memoir, perhaps it might have.
JW: Elsewhere, you've noted that James Agee wrote some of his best work while sober. Does any other profession align so romantically with alcoholism than writer? Is it writers themselves who keep this myth alive?
LD: You can sure tell when Agee was drinking—there are muddled passages in Let Us Know Praise Famous Men I can't imagine he wrote sober. On the other hand, when his writing is clear and crisp it just makes you ache, it's so good.
Your point about writers and alcoholism being romantically aligned is well put. I know a number of alcoholic doctors, pilots, accountants, house painters, teachers, roofers, and plumbers, and none of them find waking up from a black-out covered in urine terribly romantic. I think the romance is fake, frankly. People are not at their best, in any way, when they're active alcoholics. However, drunks don't like to admit they're a mess—even if they know they are. Perhaps it's easier to say their souls are wounded and in need of the salve of alcohol, or that the portals of creativity open wider to them when drinking. To be honest, I think the Great Era of the Drunken Writer is thankfully over. No one finds a drunken lout inspiring these days. We've educated ourselves that much, I hope.
Writing has certain psychological dangers—you're going deep down into some pretty dark places to write books—and the dangers of publishing are even more psychosis-inducing with all that rejection and criticism and competition. If one's neuroses come crawling out into the middle of the living room carpet it can be tempting to drink away the feelings, not to mention the isolation of the writer's life. But a drunk can find reason to drink in every life, every profession.
JW: I recently watched a video in which philosopher (and writer) Alain de Botton posited that writing (and, in fact, reading) is a response to anxiety. He believes that books really only have a place provided that they offer "help". Is Colleen an attempt to confront your own past or present anxieties? Is her story something that helps?
LD: On a personal level, writing this book, if anything, was an exercise in gratitude. Nothing will make you grateful so quick as taking a hard look at how dreadful your life might have been if you'd continued to make bad choices.
But, some good, some help—yes, I believe that. Do you know the film, Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel? It's about a character some people have found utterly despicable, without a single redeeming feature, and the film was criticized for being too dark, too hopeless. I, on the other hand—and perhaps this shows how twisted I am—found it one of the most spiritual films I've ever seen. Because if this man—this horror of an ethically-impaired, selfish monster—could find redemption, then who among us is unredeemable? Is that not the nature of whatever one means when one says, "God?" (I believe in such things, although again, that's another, much longer conversation.)
That's what I'm offering with Colleen's story—if even this woman can find hope, can discover she's not trapped in the "empty room" of her broken soul—then surely there's hope for everyone, even that drunk no one thinks will ever get sober. I've seen it happen, and to provide that glimmer of hope and understanding helps not only the alcoholic, but also those who have been taken hostage by the alcoholic: spouses, siblings, children, parents, co-workers, etc.
JW: I'm curious to know how you'd like this book to be reviewed. Many reviews to date at least make mention of your sobriety, understood. I'll borrow from a The Winnipeg Review when it says: "You're then faced with a moral dilemma. Do you accept that it's based on a terrible truth? Or do you attempt to enjoy what's been put in front of you and take it as a work of fiction?" You've said this isn't memoir; I'll restate that for clarity.
LD: What pleases me most is when a book is reviewed by someone who understands my intention for it. With this book, that's happened in most cases, and I'm deeply gratified by the insights most reviewers have brought to the table. In a couple of cases, the reviewers clearly didn't get what I was trying to do. That's always disappointing. I say this with no ill-will, but I suspect it might have been because the reviewers either didn't understand addiction (and that can happen even if one has suffered from it oneself), or don't have empathy for people who suffer. Reviews written by inexperienced reviewers aren't always on the mark, alas.
It was inevitable that people would look at my life as inspiration for parts of the book, and that's fine. I purposely mined some early experiences because they were the accessible to me—the ones that allowed me to write with the most authority—so clearly I shouldn't be bothered if people discuss that.
Still, I hope the book will be considered as any work of literary fiction. What were my intentions? Were they met? If so, how? If not, why not? And how should the reader approach the book? That's the method of any good review, in my opinion.
JW: As a reader, which stories have captured addiction in a way that resonates with you?
LD: I adore Brian Moore's The Lonely Passion of Miss Judith Hearne, and I also re-read Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight. Then, too, there's a long poem by the British poet Christopher Reid, called "The Song of Lunch," which just rips my heart out.
JW: Alongside using social media to keep readers up-to-date of your professional endeavors, you also tweet how many weeks you've been #sober. Can you talk a bit about that?
LD: There's a program that does that for me. (www.daycountr.com) I'm often surprised how many weeks it's been! I tweet about sobriety because you never know who might need a bit of encouragement and seeing someone else stay sober week after week can be pretty inspiring. It was for me when I'd meet someone with DECADES of sobriety. Still is.
I also pop on to the #sober and #sobriety hashtags to see who's just getting sober and might want a little support. That's one of the reasons I'm not terribly . . . anonymous. First, I figure if you know I'm an alcoholic, you are less likely to press a drink on me; second, because I find people come out of the woodwork when I say I'm in recovery. I was just at a writer's conference and mentioned I was an alcoholic. After I stepped down, five women came up to me and said they were in recovery. We had a meeting. It was great. I also often get emails—sometimes phone calls—from readers and other writers, asking about sobriety, people who've decided they can't drink anymore.
I'm incredibly grateful for my sobriety. It's the best thing that ever happened to me, and I'm happy to give back when I can.
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Read an excerpt from The Empty Room right here on 49th Shelf.
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Lauren B. Davis is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Stubborn Season, The Radiant City, and Our Daily Bread, which was longlisted for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize and named as a best book of the year by both The Globe and Mail and the Boston Globe. Born in Montreal, she now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Visit her online at www.laurenbdavis.com.