COLUMNS
Talk Show 19 with David Ebershoff, Sheridan Hay, Amy MacKinnon, Kirsten Menger-Anderson & Roxana Robinson
/ Jaime Clarke
11.05.08
––Did you ever believe it, or did you doubt it from the beginning?
Ebershoff: I’ve thought a lot about it, but I have never believed the book would disappear.
Hay: I did at one time believe in the existence of some other realm. As a child, I believed I had seen ghosts, had felt the presence of something like a spirit, even that inanimate things could speak to me. After my mother’s death, I felt she kept me company as I wrote my first novel, and that my grief over her loss infused what I was writing. I heard her and felt her. What I heard was my own wish for her return. But the memory of someone we loved deeply can be excellent company; can enliven ones imagination. Gone but not gone – memory working to make the lost person’s presence more palpable than ever. Of course we are haunted: the need for an ethereal visitation seems unnecessarily theatrical.
MacKinnon: I used to believe in everything and just about everyone. But time and experience has a way of eroding such optimism. One holdover from my youth that is pretty much unshakeable is that love and determination can change the world.
Menger-Anderson: I believe in sanitizing medical implements and I have been grateful
for the hand sanitizing soap that I use when I visit the hospital. In addition, I admit to accepting hand sanitizer on two occasions: once from a good friend, whose father is a doctor, and once from a woman about my mom's age, who squirted the stuff on my hand, which I extended despite my worry that the potion would wash away my mosquito repellent and I'd end up with malaria or dengue fever (we were in a tropical rain forest at the time). In both cases, I said thank you, but I felt like I was failing to stand up for my immune system, which looks out for me all the time, not just on the occasions that I (or in these cases, other people) think to pull out wipes or sanitizer. Basically, I have always doubted super market wipes and the little bottles of sanitizer I find on the shelves. I've doubted them from the beginning. I've never given them a chance.
Robinson: When I was first told about it I was credulous. I believed it might exist. I was told about it by people I trusted, people who said with conviction that they personally had witnessed it. But how long can you believe in something that only happens the minute after you've gone inside to get your sweater? And whom can you trust, really?
Ebershoff: I’ve thought a lot about it, but I have never believed the book would disappear.
Hay: I did at one time believe in the existence of some other realm. As a child, I believed I had seen ghosts, had felt the presence of something like a spirit, even that inanimate things could speak to me. After my mother’s death, I felt she kept me company as I wrote my first novel, and that my grief over her loss infused what I was writing. I heard her and felt her. What I heard was my own wish for her return. But the memory of someone we loved deeply can be excellent company; can enliven ones imagination. Gone but not gone – memory working to make the lost person’s presence more palpable than ever. Of course we are haunted: the need for an ethereal visitation seems unnecessarily theatrical.
MacKinnon: I used to believe in everything and just about everyone. But time and experience has a way of eroding such optimism. One holdover from my youth that is pretty much unshakeable is that love and determination can change the world.
Menger-Anderson: I believe in sanitizing medical implements and I have been grateful
for the hand sanitizing soap that I use when I visit the hospital. In addition, I admit to accepting hand sanitizer on two occasions: once from a good friend, whose father is a doctor, and once from a woman about my mom's age, who squirted the stuff on my hand, which I extended despite my worry that the potion would wash away my mosquito repellent and I'd end up with malaria or dengue fever (we were in a tropical rain forest at the time). In both cases, I said thank you, but I felt like I was failing to stand up for my immune system, which looks out for me all the time, not just on the occasions that I (or in these cases, other people) think to pull out wipes or sanitizer. Basically, I have always doubted super market wipes and the little bottles of sanitizer I find on the shelves. I've doubted them from the beginning. I've never given them a chance.
Robinson: When I was first told about it I was credulous. I believed it might exist. I was told about it by people I trusted, people who said with conviction that they personally had witnessed it. But how long can you believe in something that only happens the minute after you've gone inside to get your sweater? And whom can you trust, really?