Sigrid Nunez

Well, this would have been – I graduated from Barnard in 72 and from Columbia in 75, the MFA program. But I'm not just talking about school. I'm not just talking about school. I'm talking about men in positions of power after that as well. I'm talking about a long period of my life.

I have. I have no idea what other writing instructors do. But in fact, it turns out, in my experience, not to be a problem because the students do not write about sex. They are either too shy or afraid to, afraid to offend somebody. I have heard stories about other workshops where very bad things have happened. People have gotten upset.

But mostly I find, and I find it rather odd, that it's very, very unusual for a student to write about sex in a writing workshop, either undergrad or graduate. Is that a relief to you as the teacher? Yeah. No, no, it's not, because I feel like it's just one of many things that they are, you know, parts of human experience that they just won't go there. And, you know, a writer has to go there.

Very often what they do, and then we talk about this in class, is they go up to a point, and then they panic or get shy or whatever, and then they just make a leap. And then, you know, I said, but you didn't do it. You lost your nerve. You see, the most important thing when you're writing is that you don't flinch. You know, the reader will not accept this.

The reader will see right away that you didn't have what it takes. You didn't have the guts to actually write that scene that you led us right up to. And then you skip right over it.

But, I mean, it's very understandable because maybe if they were, you know, writing it for publication, they hope, but they don't have to share it in a classroom with an instructor and everybody talking about it, you know, that's difficult for them.

Yeah, that's something that has struck me well before I started writing this book, how difficult that is really because, you know, there the dog is at home. As far as the dog knows, everything is fine. And then the person, the dog's person, the most beloved one, vanishes into thin air, just doesn't, you know, isn't there anymore. Right. There is no way to explain to the dog what happened.

And it just seems to me that that must be a remarkable emotional tumult for the dog.

Because of the timing so near the start of the year, it was possible to think that it had been a resolution. One of those times when you talked about it, you said that what would stop you was your students. Naturally, you were concerned about the effect such an example might have on them.

Well, it's true that I was writing about flaneurie and the flaneur who was an urban walker. That's a French word. Yes. And the mentor's idea that, you know, can there really be such a thing as a flaneuse? Can a woman be a flaneur? Because real flaneurie requires that you are able to lose yourself in an urban setting and just walk and dream and discover and explore.

and that that is very difficult for a woman. Now, if we were talking about walking in the country, that would be different, but that's not what a Flanner does. It did strike me, I guess, just as an idea when I was writing, that of course it is true what he says, that a woman is raised to be always on guard. Is there someone behind me?

And not to mention remarks that are made or stares that are given. That certainly does make it much different for a woman than for a man. And with my narrator walking with the dog, she does feel embarrassed. She's a very private person, and she doesn't want to be interrupted constantly when she's taking the dog for a walk.

And then there's a certain amount of irritation with the same things always being said, like, why don't you ride him? And as you say, how much does he eat? And also people putting in their two cents such as it's a sin, a crime, as one woman says.

I think it's a crime to keep a dog that large in the city or that dog shouldn't be in the city, which is something that people do say if you walk a big dog. And you've walked big dogs? You've had big dogs, right? I've had – well, my family had an enormous Great Dane. And, you know, I was already out of the house by then.

But I did walk him and, you know, children would follow and people would say things. But I also had a dog that was half Great Dane, half German Shepherd and looked like a somewhat smaller Great Dane that I walked. And yes, yes, people do make a lot of comments.

Yes, I get a lot of emails from those people too. A lot. You know, they have lost a pet and it's been overwhelming to them. And very many of them say, I don't know if I could get another one or if I should get another one. Yeah, I mean, people become so emotionally attached to the animals in their lives.

Nevertheless, we thought nothing of it when you quit teaching last year, even though we knew that you liked teaching and that you needed the money. Another time you said that, for a person who had reached a certain age, it could be a rational decision, a perfectly sound choice, a solution even, unlike when a young person commits suicide, which could never be anything but a mistake.

We probably underestimate how powerful that pain is when people lose an animal that they love.

No, I don't. I had two cats and they grew to be quite old and they both died. And it was when the second one died that, again, I was one of those people who was so overwhelmed. And I have not been able to bring myself to get another cat since then. And that was years ago. Because of the grief? Yes, largely because of that, just not wanting to go through all that again.

But there was something about the way that cat died and the loss of it. In fact, I do write about that in the novel, that I just was not able to get over that.

Well, she was elderly and she became very ill. And then I took her to the vet who agreed that she should be put down because she would have to have surgery at her age. You know, that was probably not such a good idea. And then the vet said, I have to give her two shots, one to calm her down. And something went wrong. And then she picked up the cat and ran off with it.

She had said to me, do you want to be with her when she dies? I said, of course. And then something went wrong. It had to do with the vein being too dehydrated when she made the first injection. And she then picked up the cat and ran off with it. And then I waited and then she came back and put the cat on the table and the cat was dead. And I remembered her saying, do you want to be with her?

Well, then I wasn't with her. And, yeah, it was very, very painful. And there was a certain point before the cat died where, you know, she was so ill, and I brought her in to the vet, and she was there. And I felt that, you know, the way I write it, I say that I'm not saying this is what she said, but this is what I heard.

She put her paw on my arm, and I imagined her saying, wait, you're making a mistake. I didn't say I wanted you to kill me. I wanted you to make me feel better.

Exactly. And it was just a very overwhelming experience. Yeah.

Well, I never did marry, just as I said. And that isn't something that I regret it. I think at the time what I was referring to also was that I was with someone. I was in a relationship. We were living together. I didn't really see why we had to get married and we didn't. Now I am not in a relationship. I'm not living with anyone. But I guess I understood it then.

Marriage was just not going to be for me.

I have not shared that desire and need that so many people seem to have. I just, you know, when I was very young, when I was a teenager, I think I had, you know, fantasies of wedding and romance and marriage and children. But I don't have children, and I knew quite a long time ago that I wasn't going to have children. So, again, I mean, that makes a difference, too.

Once you cracked us up with the line, I think I'd prefer a novella of a life." Stevie Smith calling death the only God who must come when he's called tickled you pink, as did the various ways people have said that were it not for suicide, they could not go on. Walking with Samuel Beckett one fine spring morning, a friend of his asked, doesn't a day like this make you glad to be alive?

So I felt that I could be in relationships, I could have full, meaningful relationships without getting married, and I did.

I think I'm losing it. Did you give up that feeling? Yeah. Oh, I've given that up. I've given that up, Terry. I don't feel that way anymore.

Oh, of course, it's much easier when you're older, I think. Why do you think it's easier? To be single? Mm-hmm. I think it's easier because, well, I guess it depends on what we mean. I think it's very hard to be single when you're young because there are so many opportunities to not be single. I think it's both romantic relationships and friendships.

When you're younger, you get into these relationships fairly easily, and the people that you meet who are your peers, they want those relationships and friendships too. And it's quite different when you're older. I mean, I know people...

actually, you know, feel melancholy about this, that it's harder to, you meet people when you're older and you feel like you have a lot in common and you really like that person and that person seems to like you, but you just don't form the kind of friendship with that person that you did with people when you were younger.

And so in that sense, it's easier because you accept a certain amount of being alone and not seeking out people to date. Of course, everyone's different. But for me, I just feel like I'm not distracted by the idea of dating or meeting someone or finding someone the way I was when I was younger, the way I was for most of my life.

Yeah, you mean who's going to take you to the vet for the two injections? Or at least for the care, yeah. Right. Well, it's something that people just have to face. It's certainly something that I think about and worry about. But, you know, this is the way my life is. I will just have to, you know, deal with that when I have to.

Yes, and I think that that's very reasonable. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, missing having had children is enormous, is enormous. I did what I had to do. My life turned out as it has. But it's never... I've never not been aware that in not having been a mother, in not having had a child, I have missed one of life's greatest, most interesting, most meaningful experiences. I did. I did.

But, you know, you don't do everything. You can't have everything.

I don't—it's exactly that. I don't—no matter—in spite of the fact that I know exactly, you know, what a huge thing I missed, I also don't regret it because it was— Thank you.

I wouldn't go as far as that, Beckett said. That there was to be a memorial took us by surprise. We who had heard you say that you would never want any such thing, the very idea was repugnant to you. Did wife three simply choose to ignore this? Was it because you'd failed to put it in writing? Like most suicides, you did not leave a note.

I I I I Thank you.

Yes, I have. I have. And before I started writing this book, one of the main reasons why I wanted to write about suicide was because I realized that I knew quite a few people who had the idea of suicide on their minds. I mean, they might not have been actually planning it, but they'd come to believe that this was how their story would end.

It was a choice that was very much on their minds all the time, not just moments of despair. And I had finished the novel, though it hadn't been published yet, when one of those people did suicide.

He jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge.

I actually think that when people make that decision, it's such a mystery. I do know that... that people who have jumped and have survived, no small number of them have said afterwards that as soon as their hands let go or as soon as they were in the air, they regretted it. And then afterwards when they were saved, they were happy to have been saved.

So I have to have that in my mind that that might have happened to him too.

Certainly. I was not in touch with him right before he killed himself and there was no note. So I really don't know exactly what his thoughts were. Now, he was somebody who had been suicidal during his life and who suffered from depression and had been very unhappy.

But still, even when a suicide like that happens, it can come as an extraordinary shock while at the same time not really being a surprise. I was not surprised. In fact, when I came home from teaching and I saw an email from a mutual friend that said, call me when you get this message, I knew instantly.

Oh, I try to just listen. My friend who jumped from the bridge, suicide was something he talked about all the time and the different ways that he might do it. Also, when you know that somebody is feeling this way, you make all those suggestions about places to get in touch with, people who might be able to help, to go into therapy if you aren't already.

But I think it's very, very hard for people to deal with other people's suicidal feelings because it's so extreme, self-homicide, self-murder. It's so against the normal course of things. And since I wrote this book, I receive so many emails all the time from people who... who have lost people, in some cases very recently, to suicide.

And I do have to think of ways to answer those emails, and I do. I answer every one of them.

I have. I have. And I believe in this case, he is paraphrasing something that was said by George Steiner. Yes, if not in those words, or let's just put it this way, if not in words, in some cases, that message is there.

Well, that might be true, but I do think that women, female mentors and women in positions of power do indeed have that same feeling. They might not carry it all the way through, but wanting to seduce their mentees or their students... But I think you can understand that. That doesn't seem so strange to me that a young person would say that.

And then I think as a mentor, Susan Sontag certainly was extremely seductive and was fully aware of how magnetic and charismatic and seductive she was to men and women in that role.

Both. Both. It would depend on the person. But Sontag used to talk about that, how when she had any kind of affection or strong feeling for anyone, she always also wanted to sleep with that person. That was part of it. Now, she didn't always, of course. But it was always there. There was always some attraction like that or some desire there.

But as I say, just to remember her, I can't separate that seductive quality of hers out from the rest.

I've never had any kind of issue come up, even remotely connected to that. It's been helpful to me that I didn't start teaching until I was in my 40s. And I can easily imagine, oh God, can I imagine that. how different it might have been if I had been teaching as many of my students do and my fellow writers in their 20s. It might have been a whole other story.

Well, I think I might have been more susceptible. And I think that anybody could be.

Right. And I can't think of any names right now, any couples, but there are many, many of them.

Oh, we all take those courses now in universities and colleges. As soon as you start teaching, there's an online course about sexual misconduct, trying to make everything as clear as possible. And it's completely understood now that it is inappropriate. It's not allowed. You could lose your job. You know, this is fairly recent, right? And I think it's just something that had to be done.

You know, even though there were these marriages, that doesn't mean that it wasn't inappropriate for the professor to have the affair with the student before he married her. I mean, it was still an inappropriate thing. it was still something that was far more likely to hurt young women in some way than anything else.

And I think that the most pernicious thing about when a mentor or a professor has an affair with a student or treats a student in some sexual way is that there's also the student's work involved. And what happens is, because this is something that has happened to me, happened to me as a student, you don't know what – it affects the value of your work.

I mean, you think, well, did those guys really think that my work was so great? Because the one female professor, she actually didn't think it was –

as great as they did so is it is it that they really think that or are they just trying to sleep with me and that is something that a lot of women know about it's something that a lot of them go through it's a kind of gaslighting you end up not knowing is it the work or is it me the girl the young you know the young woman for that to be eliminated is you know is definitely progress what year are we talking about about when you were in college