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Interview: Kate Carroll de Gutes

Packing my carry-on bag for a flight to Portland, Oregon to visit my son and his husband, I ran my finger along the spines of books I’d purchased but had yet to read. I selected a memoir called Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear, written by Kate Carroll de Gutes. I read the first few pages in order to weigh its merit as travel reading. I sat down to finish just the first chapter. An hour later, I had to force myself to close the book. Before tucking the book into my bag, I flipped to the author bio and learned that De Gutes lives in Portland, Oregon. This felt like kismet.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I quickly sent off an email asking her if she’d be willing to meet with me and allow me to interview her. Instinctively, I knew this author could guide me around some of the obstacles I’d been bumping into in my own efforts to write a memoir. Kate graciously agreed.

We met at Townshend’s Alberta Street Teahouse where we took up residence in a couple of chairs nestled in a back corner. For the next hour or so, we discussed the sometimes sticky challenges of writing about our lives and the people in them who didn’t necessarily sign up to become supporting actors in the stories we need to tell.

Kate Carroll de Gutes is the author of two books, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear (Ovenbird Books, 2015)—which won the 2016 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in Memoir—and The Authenticity Experiment: Lessons From the Best & Worst Year of My Life, winner of an Independent Publishing Award medal in LGBTQ Nonfiction (Two Sylvias Press, 2017). Please also see Heidi Sell’s review of The Authenticity Experiment.

Heidi Sell for The Florida Review: 

You began your writing career in journalism. I’m wondering how that background informs your creative work. I’m finding there’s no shortage of people standing by to declare, “That’s not how it happened,” or “I never said that!” Since memories do indeed shape-shift over time, what strategies do you use to reconcile objective facts with subjective memory?

Kate Carroll de Gutes:

Both fiction and nonfiction are writing towards truth, but nonfiction writers are constrained by a ‘box of facts’ that they have to work within to get to the truth. I don’t make any composite characters in there. I don’t compress the timeline. I leave things out of the timeline obviously, but I don’t compress it as if ‘this all happened in one year’ kind of thing. Because I’m a real believer in facts. That’s why we read nonfiction, because we’re interested in the facts of someone’s life.

I don’t think it’s that hard to hew to fact and still get to some truth. I think you have to think awfully hard about it. How do you get there? And like you said, you have to bust through your own denial. What does that really mean?  You have to bust through your anger and your pain and your shame. All of that.

TFR:

Something I keep running into is that in my own mind, some memories have morphed and merged, and I realize that couldn’t have happened that year. We didn’t live in that house when she was that old, or whatever . . . What do you do with things like that?

De Gutes:

I think you tell your reader. There’s a phrase that I use a lot in that book [Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear], which is, “But that isn’t exactly true,” or “But that can’t be true, because we didn’t live in that house then.” And sometimes I interrogate myself on the page. Is this true?

There’s an essay in the book about my dad in the Navy. I had to do a ton of research for that. I got my dad’s Naval records. I talked to people that he was in the Association of Naval Aviators with. You know, my mom had Alzheimer’s, so I couldn’t trust her memory. She said, “Your dad wasn’t an aviator.”

And I’m like, “Yeah, he was. He had his wings.”

And she says, “Yeah, he just had those. He wasn’t an aviator.”

“But he was in the Association of Naval Aviators.”

She said, “No. They let anybody in.”

TFR:

Really? Can I get in?

De Gutes:

Yes! It turns out they do let anybody in, but it also turns out my father had his wings.

I have a new essay I’m working on. I inherited the kitchen table that I grew up with, and it was, I thought, my grandparents’. My mom said, “Oh, no. That was your great-grandparents’.”

And my sisters and I were like, “You have Alzheimer’s.”

This table always squeaked, and I sent it out to be repaired, to be re-glued and all of that and when the guy came to pick it up he was like, “Oh, wow! This table’s a hundred and thirty years old, at least!”

We’d totally dismissed Mom. So, I think those are important things to tell a reader. I’d completely dismissed my mother, and it turns out this was true.

TFR:  

I sometimes feel dismissed by my family that way, because I’m known for having kind of a wonky memory. So even when I’m sure I absolutely know something to be true, if they have any doubt, they just assume I’m the one who remembered it wrong. That’s something that I struggle with in trying to write my story. So I just think out loud on the page?

De Gutes:

Think out loud on the page, and also you have to remember that everybody has a different memory. You know, you’ll remember one thing from this meeting and I’ll remember another. It’s like the old car accident scene, right? Six people watch a car accident, and everybody has a different story about what happened.

That is the tricky part of memoir and that’s why, in my opinion, you always have to alert your reader. Like, “I’m imagining this. I don’t know this to be true. I think perhaps it happened this way.” I think an honest memoir writer will always alert their reader to the fact that they don’t know.

You know, my siblings remember this differently.

TFR:
Did you get a lot of push back from them?

De Gutes:

None, which I find fascinating. My dad had died by the time I finished the draft of the thesis. My mom read it. The original thesis was very different with a different ending. Her only comment was, “I don’t look very nice in this.”

I said to her what I think you should say to your family, which is, “Mom, these are just my memories, and they’re just the memories I chose to put down. It’s not the whole story.” When you’re writing about people, it’s hard.

You know, it’s like, No, I’m imposing a narrative structure. It’s okay, but people who aren’t writers don’t understand that.

TFR:

You mention in your book the generosity of your ex-wife and her current spouse in allowing you to tell your version of what happened. Did they know you were writing Objects as you were writing it, or only after you finished?

De Gutes:

My ex-wife definitely knew because we divorced while I was in graduate school. We were together twenty-four years so we had a lot of years of both reading together and talking about writing. I gave her the whole manuscript, and I said if there’s anything you object to let’s talk about it.

And she said, “I’m not even going to read it right now, because it’s your story. You tell it.”

You know, really gracious. She came to the book awards. She’s an amazing individual. And even her current partner, he’s like, “I hear I show up in the book. Do I get royalties?”

I’m said, “If you sell five thousand copies, I will send you on a cruise!”

He’s like, “All right, I’m working on it.” He’s a really good guy.

TFR:

If it hadn’t gone that way, if they’d been resistant or really upset with something you’d written, how would you have handled that?

De Gutes:

What do you do?

TFR:

Yes. Would you have gone ahead? Would you have abandoned the project?

De Gutes:

Well, that’s a great question. It’s a hypothetical, but I’m always open to change, you know? I’m sure you found my blog, which is actually becoming a book [The Authenticity Experiment]. I write about the people in my life. They all have nicknames, but my siblings were really upset about one of the posts.

And they said, “If you’re going to write about us, could you tell us and we could read it first?”

I said, “Sure.” And I actually changed a post for them. It was a simple change.

I think had my ex-wife been very upset about that I would have considered making changes. I would have considered cutting. As it was, you don’t know what happened in my marriage. That’s the biggest question I get from readers, “I don’t understand. What happened in your marriage?”

And I say, “That’s between me and my ex-wife.”

I hope I’ve told enough of the story that you’re engaged and it’s not tell-all. Nobody wants a confessional memoir, I don’t think. Read the National Enquirer for that.

TFR:

I have a blended family, so there are always these undercurrents of emotional stepfamily stuff going on. I’m trying to honor each of those stories that overlap my own, but it’s really difficult to tease apart and still tell a whole story. You talk about nonfiction writers being constrained by a ‘box of facts.’ So you use nicknames. That’s not something I’ve thought of trying, but they’d still know who they were in the book.

De Gutes:      

Right, they know who they are. I write about so many people on the blog and they didn’t sign up to be friends with, or to love a nonfiction writer, so you know . . . nicknames work for them. And some people I don’t name at all.

The post that just went up, my two friends that I was with, I didn’t name them. They both contacted me and said, “That was such a great post and I’d forgotten that happened. Thank you for that great post.” Neither one said, ‘Thank you for not naming me,” but I’m careful with people.

And I think with your blended family, again, you still have to tell your story. It’s your experience of the step-kids coming in and blending them with your own children. And is all of that germane? That’s the question I ask myself, too. I write it all down. You know, I write hundreds of pages to get ten. I’m sure you do the same.

TFR:  

Yes. There’s a scene that I have written again and again and again. I just can’t get it right. Part of the problem is revealing another kid’s personal crisis that was occurring in the same time frame as the event I need to write. That scene is crucial to the story, but difficult to write without exposing a painful time for our family that really isn’t relevant to the story I want to tell. Recently, I started over. Stopped trying to revise what I had already written and just started all over. This time I put everybody’s names in it, everything.

De Gutes:

Good.

TFR:

And now I’ll go back and revise again, but what do you advise in a situation where two stories are so tangled together?

De Gutes:

Well, the reality is it’s your story about it, so you don’t necessarily have to get their blessing. Right?

TFR:  

That’s what I keep going back and forth about. I think of Anne Lamott who says that if people wanted you to write nice things about them, they should have behaved better.

De Gutes:      

Right! Exactly, exactly! Anne Lamott will also tell you that she changes people. She uses composite characters sometimes.

TFR:

But you don’t feel comfortable doing that yourself.

De Gutes:      

I don’t. I think it’s wrong. I really do. I do feel comfortable, like on the blog, giving nicknames and I also know there are some stories I can’t ever tell. There are stories I’ll never tell except for—you know—like sitting here I might tell you a story, but I’ll never write it.

But you’ve got to write this one.

TFR:  

I can’t see the story without it.

De Gutes:

So I think if I were to give you any advice, I would say try writing it from a different point of view. Try writing it in third person. Try writing it in second person.

TFR:

I noticed that you use second person quite a lot, and it’s so powerful.

De Gutes:      

It is. And it’s a great way to approach a scary topic. So is third person. She could tell you there were many times when she saw what was true, but chose to deny it. You know, that kind of thing, right? It’s fascinating what a change in point-of-view will do for a story. Another thing is try writing in future perfect. Using second person or third person, you know. She will tell you in 2017 that . . .

TFR:  

I like that approach. I haven’t seen that in other memoirs. That’s something you did in this book that really caught my attention, that I really found to be very powerful.

De Gutes:      

It happened by surprise. It happened because something was out of the timeline, and I thought, I’ve got to make this work. Oh, I’ve got to change the tense. Oh, and it’s got to be future perfect. And there’s one other one that’s future conditional.

TFR:

Future conditional. I must admit I don’t remember exactly what that means. [Laughs.]

De Gutes:

Me too. I didn’t know what to call it. There’s a great book that I always refer to called Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia Tuft. It’s just fantastic. It’s so helpful in these situations.

TFR:

You shift those tenses throughout the book. And I guess in my head I thought that was ‘against the rules’ until I read Objects.

De Gutes:

Fuck the rules, right?

TFR:

Some of your chapters are really short. It makes me wonder about how I might use little snippets of my own that haven’t grown into anything bigger.

De Gutes:

Well, you might think about juxtaposition and how you can bump some things up against one another, because they inform each other. But sometimes a really short piece just works.

I’m also a big proponent of if you’re just writing a scene and it’s powerful and it stands on its own, then okay. I’m also a big believer in doing what works for you. Judith (Kitchen) was a big believer in working with your weaknesses. So you want to tie it up tidy, and she’s like, “Life isn’t tidy. Let’s work with that, you know?”

Your weakness is that you want to tie everything up. Let’s leave it untied. See what happens. I think it’s human nature to want to tie it all up, but you can’t.

TFR:

I think for me the trick is giving the reader a bit more trust to make their own meaning out of things instead of trying to tell them what I think it means.

De Gutes:

Right, and you never know what your readers are going to bring to the page anyway.  I’m stunned when somebody tells me what they see and I think, Well, you’re right, but I wasn’t thinking that. I never saw that.

TFR:

Have you had anyone write a review of your book that you really disagreed with?

De Gutes:

No. I’ve been so lucky that I have only gotten good reviews. At least, the published reviews. There are a few on Amazon and Goodreads that . . . well, there are trolls out there. But no, I have been so, so lucky that my written reviews have all been good, and I’m really grateful for that because I know I would be kind of devastated.

TFR:

It’s tough to put yourself out there. I think most writers are introverts.

De Gutes:

Right, and sensitive little beings!

TFR:

Do you have a workshop group, a list of first readers? How do you keep yourself moving forward?

De Gutes:

I keep myself moving forward because I’m just ridiculously driven, so there’s that. I’m always writing. I always have a journal with me. I’m constantly working on something that may turn into something and may not. Like I said, I write a hundred pages to get ten.

I do all my work longhand and then type it. I have a great group of first readers that I went through graduate school with and they’re all thanked in the book—Cynthia Stewart Renee, Judith Pullman—and they’ll read anything for me, anytime. I’ll be on a deadline for something, it’ll be totally last minute, and I’ll ask, “Does anyone have time to take a look at this for me?” And they will. We do that for each other, and so they’re great first readers for me.

I have another friend who is a singer/songwriter, a storyteller, and she gives me a different kind of feedback. She’s like, “You need to take me right into the story here. I wanted to go right into the story. And I wanted to know what the cigarette smoke did to your nostrils. Did you sneeze? Did it make your eyes itch?” You know, things that other people don’t notice. Songwriters notice all these physical details.

TFR:

I wondered if there are any other writers in your family.

De Gutes:

None. Well, my grandmother’s sister, my great-aunt Bobbi. She was a writer.

TFR:

Did she have any impact or influence on your decision to go into this field?

De Gutes:

No. she died before I was born. I’ve always written. I wrote as a young kid even. It’s in my blood. Music and writing.

TFR:

And why journalism first? Over fiction or other genres, what took you there?

De Gutes:

Well, you’ve got to make a living. Right? I don’t make a living with this—teaching and selling books does not provide what I want. So, I ghost-write magazine articles and e-books and blog posts and thought leadership pieces for technology executives.  It works. It’s a little draining, like I’ve got to leave here and jump on a call, but it affords some flexibility, too. I can look at my schedule and know when I can book myself out. I work for myself.

I don’t consider it ‘real writing.’ But other people say, “It’s real writing. You put words down every day.”

TFR:

Do you have other big projects in the works?

De Gutes:

The Authenticity Experiment: Lessons from the Best and Worst Year of My Life is coming out from Two Sylvias Press in September (2017). Then another project I’m working on is probably narrative nonfiction/memoir. I think it’s going to be a hybrid book on Alzheimer’s. I’ve got an agent in New York now, which is great. I’m finishing the book proposal for that, and then she’ll shop that for me. And then I’ll have to write it.

TFR:

That’s a story that’s needed.

De Gutes:

That story is needed, right? There are 65 million people right now that have Alzheimer’s. We haven’t even hit the peak of the baby boomers aging. It’s a problem.

Judith died, my best friend died, and my mother died within a ten-month period, and I had to close my friend’s estate and my mom’s estate. I delivered three eulogies and closed two estates in ten months.

TFR:

That’s life changing.

De Gutes:

Right? Objects came out in June [2015]. Judith died two days after she finished the edit on the manuscript. So my book came out in June, my friend Stef died in January, and my mom died in August.

The years 2015 and 2016 are just kind of lost years for me. I keep thinking, when did that book come out?  It’s just been a year since I won the Oregon Book Award, so the massive change in the last two years of my life has been huge. You know, it’s both good and bad, which is why I started writing The Authenticity Experiment. We have to stop thinking in the binary about everything.

Life is messy and it’s both things—dark and light.