CultureCritic talks to Jane Smiley...

CultureCritic recently spent some time with Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Jane Smiley to discuss feminism, literary awards and her new novel, Private Life.

To what extent do you consider your fiction to be part of the American literary tradition, and how do you feel that America has impacted your work?

There are lots of American literary traditions. The most obvious is based in New York and on the east coast, but there's a midwestern tradition, a western tradition, a southern tradition and a Californian tradition - and perhaps more. Since I have never lived in the east, except [for when I was] in college, I read those books as a bit alien. When I was growing up, I had three favourite books: two novels and a non-fiction book. The novels were David Copperfield and Giants in the Earth, and the non-fiction book was a biology textbook about ecology entitled The Web of Life. I would say that all of these books were equally formative. David Copperfield was about being a child, Giants in the Earth was about the settling of the American plains, and The Web of Life was about the interdependence of the natural world. I loved to ride horses and walk when I was in my early teens; the natural world was beautiful and mysterious to me, and felt like my preferred habitat. The American "classics" were not as important to me as English classics, but I grew up here, I live here. Whatever I read and however I learned to write, here is the place I write about.

You have referred to yourself as a comic writer in the past. How would you define the comic aspects of your work?

A comedy is a book with a happy ending that at least occasionally raises a laugh. My comic novels are Moo and Horse Heaven. Ten Days in the Hills has comic aspects, but is, I think, a tragicomedy. Private Life raises no laughs and is not meant to. I wanted to explore the life of a fairly normal woman who is married to a highly eccentric man. There is no happy ending. I wonder if it is a tragedy - if you can have a tragedy about a fairly normal woman. I think Andrew, Margaret's husband, would have seen himself as a tragic hero; but who is really suffering here, and what does that suffering mean?

Horses and horse riding are evidently central to your work and your life. Could you tell us about how you became so fond of horses, and when you decided to make them part of your work?

I have no idea how I got fond of horses - it happened before I was conscious. It was probably from watching television. But it has remained a motivation. I made them part of my work when I went back to riding in my 40s. I discovered that horses are idiosyncratic and full of personality, and that they deserve to be characters in books. I couldn't keep them out.

Private Life was published a relatively short time after The Georges and the Jewels, your first book for children. Was there a dualistic process involved in writing these books, and was there any bleed from one to the other?

They are entirely separate in my mind - both distinct and both in worlds of their own. When I am writing the children's books, I think through the consciousness of my character, Abby. She and her world are very vivid to me. Margaret, in Private Life, is also inside her own world. If they are similar, I, at least, don't see it.

Your novel A Thousand Acres reconstructs King Lear and highlights the abuse suffered by two of the three sisters, and Private Life features a man consumed by his occupation to the detriment of his family. Do you feel a particular eagerness to highlight the wrongdoings of men and the perils of patriarchy in your fiction?

I think powerful and egocentric men are good characters, but my work has lots of different types of men in it, many of them just easygoing guys trying to get by. My horseracing villains, Buddy and Curtis, are small-time crooks, not egomaniacs. So I like all sorts of men, as long as they are busy. No Oblomovs.

You were once a Fulbright Scholar in Iceland. Have you maintained any relationship with Iceland since you left?

No. I've been to Greenland since then, but not to Iceland, though I think of it and read about it.

As a writer with a PHD, do you feel a close tie with the academic world, and can you see yourself going back to work at a university at any point in the future?

My ties are getting fewer, though I enjoyed teaching and felt comfortable in a university setting. As to whether I'll go back, I don't know. My life seems pretty settled, but invitations can be tempting.

You have said in the past that highly constructed literary fiction is distinctly ‘male'. Presuming that you feel somewhat detached from the world of self-consciously intellectual writing, how do you define your place in the landscape of contemporary fiction?

I consider myself a realist novelist who occasionally employs flights of imagination (as in Horse Heaven). If by ‘highly constructed literary fiction' you mean profoundly subjective and stylistically challenging fictional responses to modern life (such as Ulysses) - I don't find them entertaining, and I do find them more or less solipsistic. I'd rather read Anthony Trollope any day. But I've been enjoying The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos lately, so I can do it sometimes.

Do you define yourself as a feminist, and if so, could you explain what form that takes and how it is evident in your writing?

I do define myself as a feminist. I am interested in the lives of women characters, and I like to portray them as free agents, complex persons and, if possible, people who successfully make their way. But I don't see my work as feminist in the sense that women characters are more interesting or important than men characters. I am over six foot tall, and I think that has given me a somewhat androgynous point of view.

Do you feel any obligation to uproot notions of womanhood in your work?

I tell stories of women, and take them seriously. Their effect depends on the reader. Once, I spent a summer in a Marxist commune, and I made up my mind then and there that I was not going to tell people what to do or how to live their lives. For me, this extends to feminism.

You have a Pulitzer Prize to your name and recently judged the Man Booker Prize. What is your opinion of prizes in the arts?

A few are better than many. A few good prizes focus readers on value in literature. Too many prizes tell readers that only a few books are worth reading, [and] not to bother with the others. I like there to be a big pool of books to read, with maybe one or two of them on display. The history of prizes shows that juries are very hit-and-miss. But I did enjoy our prize jury, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss that experience. The books we read were always interesting and frequently wonderful. I thought our shortlist was full of variety, intelligence, and even genius. I love Alice Munro's work.

How did winning the Pulitzer Prize change your perception of yourself and your work, if at all?

What I used to say was that I went, in one day, from being a wannabe to a has-been. I always knew I was not a ‘cool' writer. I am still not cool. But I like to imagine that my work is enterprising and energetic. The Pulitzer gives me a chance to keep at it, exploring new forms and subjects.

Have non-literary art forms impacted your writing? If so, could you tell us how?

I love movies and paintings, so I wrote Ten Days in the Hills. Horseback riding is an art, too, and one I contemplate often. I love music, but that may only have influenced the rhythm of my prose. I think Ten Days turned out to be my love song to art, music, movies, architecture and landscape gardening.

Which writers - living or dead - do you hold in high esteem and look to for inspiration?

Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Giovanni Boccaccio, the authors of the Sagas of Icelanders, Rebecca West, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Sigrid Undset, Nikolai Gogol and Emile Zola.

What can we expect next from you?

A book on the invention of the computer, more books in the Georges and the Jewels series, and an adult novel that begins in 1920 on an Iowa farm and then travels far and wide.

Jane Smiley - Private Life is published on 6 May by Faber. To read the latest reviews, click here.