Fiction Collective 2 -- A Literary Alternative Since 1974

:: INTERVIEW WITH JANICE EIDUS ::

As interviewed by TJ Dietderich for FC2.

Much of your writing - whether it's serious or humorous in tone - contains scenes about love that are frequently erotic and sensual. Can you comment upon this?

My work has dealt a lot with these subjects; sometimes, in fact, they're what my fiction is about. Other times, they're integrated as metaphor or motif, or they're what would naturally occur between characters at the moment, and the subject may be something else entirely.

For instance, my inspiration for my humorous story, "The Celibacy Club", was my frustration and anger at the repression I was witnessing - sexual repression, political, artistic, emotional, you name it. So I wrote a story about a young woman who's sick and tired of everything in her traditional, status-seeking life, including her boring sex life. She joins a "Celibacy Club" that meets weekly in the Bronx to celebrate celibacy. Gradually, she and one of the other members become extremely attracted to each other. They end up having amazing sex one night instead of attending the group, and she becomes a much more vivid, alive and humane person.

My novel, The War Of The Rosens (www.BehlerPublications.com) is about an eccentric Jewish family in the Bronx, in which the sibling rivalry between two young sisters - one of whom is seriously ill - reaches a danger point, testing the strength and faith of the entire family. In this novel, the sexuality, far less overt, is woven into the tapestry of the text.

My first novel, Faithful Rebecca is -- at its heart -- all about the erotic and sensual lives of women. Rebecca and Sagana, best friends since childhood, find themselves, while stranded in a strange commune on a mountain top in a surreal land, battling over the soul of Rebecca's infant daughter.

The nature of sexuality is a subject that seems, like glorious confetti, to be sprinkled throughout my writing - just as it is throughout the "real" world.

Your Jewish identity, too, is a central motif in your work. Can you discuss how that enters into your writing?

While growing up, I realized early-on that my parents' identities as atheists and leftists were much stronger and clearer than their Jewish identities. My father frequently read aloud to us from a book called The Atheist Manifesto. He and my mother instilled in us children how lucky we were not to need "the crutch of organized religion" in order to grow up to be "decent, moral people." We never went to synagogue, never attended a seder, and almost never discussed Jewish customs or history. We did, however, eat plenty of my mother's blintzes, noodle kugel, and potato latkes. There was never any question that we were Jewish. The real question was: What did being Jewish mean to us?

Therefore, one central theme in my writing is -- how do I feel, and experience, my Jewishness as a writer and a woman? Well, in many ways, as it's turned out. In attitude, stance, worldview. In my great desire to fix all the world's problems; my suspicious nature; my deep-seated feeling of always being an outsider; my chutzpah; my feeling, upon meeting another Jew when I'm traveling, that I've found kin; my awareness, like a chronic ache, of the pogroms and concentration camps that my ancestors suffered through; my use of the handful of Yiddish phrases I know, letting out a loud exasperated "Oy vey!" on line at the bank, or (when my husband is driving), wailing, "We're farblondjet!," or to a dear friend, offering one of my greatest compliments, "You're so heymish!"; my pride when a Jew succeeds at something for which Jews aren't well known, whether it's baseball or rock stardom; my sense of personal shame when a Jew does something heinous; my poring through the telephone book looking for Jewish names every time I travel to a new city; my perceiving my life as a constant moral quest; my strong belief in the primary importance of the intellect (so much so that when I perform physical exercise, I feel very American, but not very Jewish); my sense that, through my writing, I engage in an ongoing dialogue with the Jewish writers who've preceded me, from Sholom Aleichem and Anzia Yerzierska to Philip Roth, Amos Oz, and Grace Paley, and also with younger Jewish writers like Ilan Stavans, Ruth Knafo Setton, David Unger, Myla Goldberg, and Thane Rosenbaum, even when my work has no overt Jewish content; my serious intent even in my most comic stories; my lifelong love of telling stories. It isn't that others don't share these qualities; it's that Jews have them in a unique manifestation.

Your website www.janiceeidus.com says that you currently live in New York City and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. What is your relationship to both places, and how do they have an impact upon your writing?

New York City is, and always will be, my hometown, although I've lived in many places. My parents grew up in New York City, and I, and my siblings, did, as well. First for me came the Bronx, and then Manhattan. I've got friends and family in all five boroughs. I wouldn't be the writer I am without the intense urban worldview that I was, essentially, weaned on.

Two of my novels, Urban Bliss and The War Of The Rosens, and many of my short stories -- Vito Loves Geraldine; Elvis, Axl, And Me; The Mermaid Of Orchard Beach; etc. - move between Manhattan and the Bronx.

About six years ago, my husband (who's also a native New Yorker), and I discovered San Miguel de Allende, a Mexican town celebrated in such books as Nothing To Declare by Mary Morris. It was love at first sight for both of us. It's an old colonial town with sun-splashed cobblestone streets and gorgeous architecture, and a thriving artistic and literary culture composed of Mexicans and non-Mexicans. We were able to buy a house there, and, with our daughter, we spend as much time there as we can.

My husband and I adopted our daughter from Guatemala, and so we now feel deeply connected to two Central American countries, Guatemala and Mexico. I love the literature and art of both countries, and my vision as a writer is inevitably expanding and evolving because of my having become a parent, and having found these new geographical and emotional homes.

On your website www.janiceeidus.com, you offer individual writing tutorials. What is the basis for your advice to new or struggling writers? What's the one most important thing you can teach a writer?

As a writing coach and mentor, the single most important piece of advice that I can offer is this: Fall in love with the process of writing. Love language - its rhythm, cadence, metaphors, and its sensual qualities. Love how, during the process of writing, you're free to take risks and make giant leaps. Love how the writing process forces you to be mindful of every word, comma, sound and silence in your text. If you're only interested in reaching "The End," you'll be disappointed. The artistic process - the writer's journey -provides most of the joy in a writer's life.

You've edited an anthology of short stories called It's Only Rock And Roll, which centers on music. What do you think is the correlation between music and writing?

All the arts are connected. Writers, for instance, paint portraits and landscapes with words, and create music with language. Through musical language, composers write novels and poems. Through color and form, visual artists tell stories.

Although I love many different kinds of music, I grew up as a street-savvy New York City kid, and so I'll always have a special place in my heart for rock and roll. Rock and roll has now been around for decades, with roots reaching back to the blues and jazz (whose own roots are in Africa), to European classical music, to American folk and country and western. It reflects cultural diversity and synthesis, and is a kind of literary soundtrack for our contemporary lives.

Rock and roll appears frequently in my work. In my short story, Elvis, Axl, And Me, Elvis Presley is alive and well and disguised as a Chassidic Jew in the northeast Bronx.

In my novel, Urban Bliss, the main character, Babette Bliss, is married to a man named George Harrison who, coincidentally, looks exactly like former Beatle George Harrison.

"Vito Loves Geraldine", the title story of my story collection of the same name, is about the lifelong romance between a Bronx-born, leather-jacketed doo-wop singer and a tough, teased-hair, gum-snapping girl from Gun Hill Road.

Without music and literature, life would be far less interesting.