Looking at what truly interests me
Author Claire Dederer takes on the Wandering Nine
Claire Dederer is a bestselling memoirist, essayist, and critic. I met her at Hugo House when I lived in Seattle, and was intently working at writing essays and my memoir. Claire was gracious in offering advice and support, even joining Suzanne Morrison and myself on stage at the time of my book launch to talk about writing sex. I think of her as a writer’s writer, in the sense that she’s unafraid to address the hard questions of personal narrative, and that her life is deeply connected to literary community.
I was thrilled to watch the launch this spring of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, Dederer’s nonfiction book investigating good art made by bad people. Monsters has become a wild success in the US and UK, what the New York Times has said is, “part memoir, part treatise and all treat. Dederer is continually trying — not in the adjectival sense, but as the present participle: showing us her thought process, correcting as she goes and experimenting with different forms.”
Melissa Febos, writing in The New Yorker, called Monsters, “A work of deep thought and self-scrutiny that honors the impossibility of the book’s mission. Dederer comes to accept her love for the art that has shaped her by facing the monstrous, its potential in herself, and the ways it can exist alongside beauty and pathos. Go ahead, she tells us, love what you love. It excuses no one."
This is the kind of book you hand-carry to your friends, urging them to read it soon. These are a few of the reasons why I was thrilled that Claire agreed to answer the Wandering Nine questions for this newsletter. I knew that I’d be intrigued by her responses, but also, I thought that I’d find something that urged me on in my own work. Indeed, I did. I hope you find what might inspire your wandering or art too.
The Wandering Nine
1. How do you define wandering for yourself? What qualities does a wander have in it, vs a vacation or a trip?
I guess, to me, wandering means following my feet. I’m less interested in wandering as a giant undertaking and more interested in how my feet take me into unknown nooks and crannies of the familiar landscapes that surround me.
Would you describe yourself as having wanderlust? Where did that come from?
I have, as mentioned above, curious feet. If I’m in a new place, or even an old place, my feet want to walk every sidewalk to its very end. I want to walk every tiny path until it disappears and becomes an impassable blackberried wall and I am absolutely forced to turn back.
3. What was your last wander? Why did you choose it (or did it choose you?)
I haven’t been able to really wander in a long time, not for months at least. I’ve been in a season of working and traveling for work. When I can steal an hour, I wander through museums, tracing a senseless, backtracking, circuitous path and only stopping when I am positively arrested by an image. I’m trying to jostle my idea of what I’m supposed to look at, what I’m supposed to be interested in, and look instead at what truly interests me. This is the point of wandering, I think: to remember interest—such a cold-sounding word—is vital, and we ought to pay attention to it.
4. What’s your idea of the perfect wander?
I’m fascinated by the idea of paths as architecture—something built by humans, however many years in the past. Because of this I especially love walking/wandering famous paths, such as the Haute Route in Chamonix. Architecture you can walk on, architecture you can participate in—this is very exciting to me.
5. What’s your biggest fear about wandering into an unknown place?
I don’t fear getting lost. I fear never wanting to come home!
6. Have you had a journey canceled or something go awry on an adventure? What happened? What was the effect on you?
Recently I took the ferry to Bainbridge Island from downtown Seattle. On the way over, the loudspeaker said this: "Man overboard, this is not a drill. Man overboard, this is not a drill." The ferry stopped and reversed. We stood on the stern in crowd-silence as a Zodiac was launched and, with another rescue boat, moved slowly back toward Seattle in a kind of pincer formation. Suddenly both boats sped up--clearly, they had spotted the person in the water--and then slowed again. This person had run to the stern and jumped off, someone near me said. A middle-aged woman. We watched as they hauled her out of the water. The ferry workers had moved quickly and had gotten her out of the frigid water soon enough to save her--she was loaded back onto the boat and we returned to Seattle, then back to Bainbridge. A four-hour journey that should have taken about thirty minutes.
I never wanted to jump, or whatever. I always knew I would stay on this planet as long as I could. But there were years when I wasn't quite alive, or not alive enough. And now here I am, lucky to be here, lucky to be on the ferry, a little bit late to my destination.
7. What are your favorite things/ideals/wisdom to pack?
I love to pack my tarot cards. They’re no help mid-wander, but they’re fantastic for when you stop. People are so charmed by having their tarot read. Even if they think they don’t believe, they can’t resist being told things about themselves—especially by a stranger. It’s the quickest bridge in the world.
8. What’s your greatest extravagance when you wander?
Time.
9. What do you most value in a wandering companion?
I’ve just moved back into the middle of my hometown, Seattle, after a decade of living on a nearby island, so my current companion is my younger self. It’s wild to encounter the streets of my youth, however, I find them: rendered unrecognizable by development; utterly unchanged as if suspended in aspic; overgrown with morning glory; crawling with graffiti. I walk through the city and I’m walking through and with my former selves.
For More:
Watch a terrific conversation with Claire and Brandon Taylor here.
A hybrid of essay, criticism, and memoir, Monsters is based on Claire’s globally viral 2017 essay for the Paris Review, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?”
Dederer’s books also include the critically acclaimed Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning, as well as Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses, which was a New York Times bestseller.
Dederer is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. She began her career as the chief film critic for Seattle Weekly. Dederer currently teaches at the Pacific University low-residency MFA program. She is the recipient of a Hedgebrook residency and a Lannan Foundation residency.
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The podcast I did with my kid.
PS - Sorry I was late with the newsletter this week. It had something to do with turning in a book and heading up a mountain to celebrate.