Jennifer Genest's Worlds and Words

"John wanted to believe that it was his craftsmanship alone that had made Mrs. Matthews—the owner of the Wedding Cake House—contact him, but she said she’d seen him on the news, too, after he’d rescued that little girl. Mrs. Matthews wore heavy rose perfume, and… lingered in the doorway when he arrived to begin work, inviting him to warm up with hot cocoa and coffee brandy, talking to him as he tried to get back to work. First she had him restore the rest of the wall… But then she called him for odd jobs… to keep him around: leveling out a washing machine that bucked during the spin cycle; asking him to haul a rotten old wicker porch swing to the dump, her boney hand on his knee as she rode next to him and his hand politely moving it away. He was used to women flirting with him—even women her age, older than his mother—but the part of him that could… respond had been in hibernation since [his wife] Grace died. Each day, Mrs. Matthews wore a lower-cut blouse than the day before, the skin of her cleavage like fine crepe paper. How had he known what to do to get them off the ice like that? she wanted to know.And how is that little girl doing?"

- from The Mending Wall

 – by Jennifer Genest

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Jennifer Genest has a lovely, quiet grace about her. She smiles easily, her head tilted to listen, an earnest gesture. Her writing mirrors that initial impression, until one turns the page. Quickly setting and character are challenged by complication, and the story flies forward with intention and strength, as well as beauty and eloquence. Jennifer speaks here of her writing process, as well as her inspiration and influences.

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Your novel, The Mending Wall, takes place in a small town in Maine. The details of place and the types of characters seem deeply rooted in the quiet and solitude, as well as the strength of community, one might find in a New England mill town. In writing the novel did you draw from your own experiences of growing up in Sanford, Maine?

Sanford gave me a lot of inspiration. I also had fun creating experiences I wished I’d had – inspired by places in or near Sanford. For example, Indian’s Last Leap (“The Leap”)—a wooded gorge—is a real place in Springvale, Maine (Sanford’s neighbor). In high school, The Leap was where the cool kids went to party. Far from being cool, I was never invited to those parties—but often imagined what it would be like. So I included it in the novel. I didn’t expect it to become such a significant place in the story.

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Jennifer, her brother Matthew, and their Old English Sheepdog Dudley

I understand you are presently writing short stories. Your stories have a range of emotional depth, humor, even darkness. Could you speak about this emotional range and about the difference in the process of working on a longer project vs. a handful of shorter, unrelated pieces?

As far as range, I think that when a writer knows what a character would do in almost any situation, and truly feels with the character, then organic emotion (and, I suppose, emotional range true to that character) finds its way to the page. I am in awe of great short story writers; it’s something I work to become better at. Writing long is more comfortable for me. I feel like there’s more space, more time, less pressure (although of course, that’s really not true, since writing short can take a very long time—and vice versa). For the novel, I took months to map and figure out the characters before I wrote because there was simply more to keep track of in the story; I knew I’d get lost without a map. With short stories, my process includes more free writing as a way of finding the story.

It’s easier to workshop short stories with my writing group than it is a single chapter at a time; in that respect, I find writing short stories to be a bit less lonely. You get to come out more often with a complete story to share. It seldom means you’re done with the story—it just means you get to come out of the writing cave.

Why do you write?

As humbling as the writing process can be, it makes me happy. It’s thrilling to pretend, to be someone else on the page. Research for writing can bring new people into your life and open your heart. When you write, you have a reason to explore things you might never have otherwise.

Jennifer in Maine

Five great children’s books.

One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey

Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume

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All photos permission of Jennifer Genest.

Jennifer Genest grew up riding horses and playing in the woods of Sanford, a mill town in southern Maine. In college she studied equestrian science before moving on to earn her BFA (Roger Williams University) and MFA (Antioch University Los Angeles) in Creative Writing. She is a Peter Taylor Fellow for the 2013 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her novel, The Mending Wall, was completed in 2012, and a synopsis and a sample chapter can be read at jennifergenest.wordpress.com. She lives with her family near Los Angeles, CA.

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

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This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Southern Writers and Roads

Road trip to New Orleans by way of Clarksville, Tennessee, Oxford, Mississippi, and Jackson, Mississippi. Was it a literary pilgrimage? It didn't start out that way.

The first day posed rain, then promised downpours. Cincinnati and Louisville with their impossible strands of traffic provided the worst weather. I simply slowed down, easing through the gray walls of water, and let the truckers and impatient SUV drivers pass.

I had decided to stay with a friend in Clarksville. Little did I know I was headed into the Tennessee River Valley where flash floods were in progress. I exited the big, wide highway - the safe highway - for the little, winding country roads of Kentucky, heading straight west into more rain and a few quick stops to gas up and gawk at the straight edges of simple poverty. Traveling alone, these sorts of things pluck at my anxiety. Western Kentucky made me uncomfortable, made me feel stupid and unknowing and resistant. I was happy to fly over the border into Tennessee, into the roads swollen with muddy pond water, the rivers rising all around. Really, until I pulled onto the road where signs read, Birthplace of Robert Penn Warren, I had no idea of the flooding. My friend's apartment was just off that road, and closer to high water. She was on the second floor, and our cars were parked beyond on even higher ground.

That night I asked her about her writing and the conversation came back to famous writers, like Robert Penn Warren. Warren was born in Guthrie, Kentucky, schooled eight miles over the border in Clarksville, Tennessee, and later attended Vanderbilt. I thought about his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All the King's Men, and remembered where I was heading: Louisiana, my home, with its diminished delta, its shores moving inward, oil refineries and fisheries fast neighbors, its statesmen still questionable, though Bobby Jindal would never have anything over Huey P. Long.

The next day I drove more little roads, alongside, but always higher than the rising, rushing waters of streams and rivers. I came to a place where the signs weren't clear and pulled into the parking area of a small bank. I realized for the first time how the land was so brilliant and green. Purposeful flooding back in the thirties - the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) - displaced more than 15,000 families, in order that the dams could harness hydroelectric power. Nearly seventy-five years later, the valley ribboned out in lush, verdant lines. I drove on, amazed.

Farther along, I saw an egret alone in a flooded field, a lilac balloon tied to a fencepost, an abandoned barbeque stand, a single yellow butterfly, and the velvet swathes of green, green fields against the hot blue sky. Things became apparent. Jackson, TN meant Jesus. Bolivar, TN meant pretty and poor. From Hickory Valley to Grand Junction, Tennessee's Hwy 18 proclaimed itself "National Bird Dog Highway." Near the border of Mississippi, a hillside of worn-down cows, horses and their babies, and sorry-looking donkeys all grazed together.

Crossing over into Mississippi, the fields quickly became cypress swamps and the roadside became frighteningly barren with blight and rusted trailers and permanently parked trucks. Signs read: kudzu-control. All I could think was, "Get me outta here." And once Hwy 18 became Hwy 7, the blight gave way to bright red clover, waving welcome all the way to Rowan Oak and Mr. William Faulkner's front porch, the Ajax Diner and a bottle of Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan Ale, a shaded bench just outside the Oxford courthouse, and Square Books where I picked up a copy of Suzanne Marrs' What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell. 

That evening I sat outside on a rocker on the long, luxurious porch of The 5 Twelve, the bed and breakfast on Van Buren, only blocks from Oxford Square, thinking about the lost art of letter-writing, and a line of lanterns floated past over the treetops, amber and aglow in the darkening sky.

The next morning, south of Oxford, MS, I passed graveyards, green corridors of pine and oak, the road growing poorer as I headed south. Just before Jackson, my air conditioner went out on me, but I was pulling off the road anyway, to visit Eudora Welty's home and to walk through her mother Chestina Welty's garden. The only one on the tour, I heard stories and stories from the young guide, an English Lit major just about to graduate from Belhaven, the college directly across from the Welty house. I'd once been an English Lit major with no idea of the future. And so, I was in good company.

The house was solid, with large rooms, bookshelves everywhere. Even so, Eudora placed many of her books in stacks, little stacks of five or six, and I wondered if there was rhyme or reason to the arrangements. One included Virginia Woolf and Dante and V.S. Pritchett, along with a few unreadable spines. The books lined couches, the dining room table, side tables, and in some rooms, the floors.

In the kitchen I stood, astounded, remembering the William Eggleston photograph I'd seen in the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio the previous summer. There I was, standing smack in the middle of the photograph. Nothing had changed. We stayed in the simple, bright room a while, my guide telling me things. The most memorable about a story Eudora rewrote from memory. After The Southern Review editor, Robert Penn Warren, rejected the story, Eudora threw it straight into the kitchen's wood stove. Yes, it burned right up. Her only copy. And you'll have to go on the tour to find out which one.

I hated to get back into the hot car, but there were miles and miles to go. The pouring rain in McComb, MS cooled the air by twenty degrees. No AC? No problem. Now I had only to worry about tornadoes and rain whipping my windshield. Eventually, the Mississippi pines gave way to Louisiana cypress swamps, and I bucked along the raised sections of I-55, fishermen's shacks and shrimping boats to one side, cattle egrets flying overhead. And finally, finally, I found the flooded streets of New Orleans. Writers and roads had guided me all the way. I was home.