Interview With Hannah Tinti
Conducted by Abby Holcomb
Hannah Tinti is co-founder of the literary journal One Story and author of Animal Crackers, a short story collection that was runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her first novel,
The Good Thief, is published by The Dial Press and Headline. The Good Thief is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library Association's Alex Award, and winner of the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. Hannah grew up in Salem, Massachusetts.
Abby Holcomb:
Hannah, you once mentioned that your parents encouraged you to become a mystery writer in order to actually make a living. How did you wind up publishing a short story collection—increasingly difficult to do—these daysand championing, through One Story, the short story form?
Hannah Tinti:
My first love is short stories,tiny uncorrupted works of art. When my parents suggested I write mystery novels, I tried instead to write a short story and that ended up being "Home Sweet Home," which is
included in Animal Crackers. Why do I continue to champion short stories? Because I think that they are an important part of the literary conversation. I also really like the fact that you can sit down with one
and have a complete artistic experience in just 10 or 15 minutes.
You have a clear affinity for animals, evident in both your short story collection Animal Crackers and your novel, The Good Thief. How does writing about animals or from an animal’s point of view differ from that of humans? Are there certain limitations you face or does the change actually open up other avenues of exploration?
I studied biology in college, and that led me to writing about animals. They are fascinating creatures, and it doesn’t take much to slip into their point of view. It was fun writing about giraffes, for example. They really turned out more human than the humans, in the end.
In an essay you wrote for Powell’s, you said that "In the movies, everyone cries when the dog dies. In this and many other ways, it is easier to relate to an animal than another human being. An animal cannot speak. An animal has no ulterior motive. An animal is true to its nature." Have you read Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain?
No, I have not. I should!
"Home Sweet Home," my personal favorite from your collection, is a mystery that involves a dog as a fairly central character. When you began writing "HSH" did you know exactly where Buster would lead you or did you discover the plot as you went along?
When I began "Home Sweet Home" I had the idea of writing a murder mystery that shifted from POV to POV, never returning, until the mystery had been solved. Buster (the dog) had a much larger role in earlier drafts, and I went more deeply into his mind but in later edits, I trimmed that out. Eventually, as I wrote the story, I discovered who the murderer was, and I also decided to let her get away with it. In that way, it’s a bit untraditional.
What do you believe was gained by the shifting point of view in "Home Sweet Home?" Is this a devise which lends itself more to short story or novel writing?
I think changing POV is harder to pull off in a short story because of the contained space, but it was part of my original conceit for "Home Sweet Home" this shifting from character to character so I did my best to make it work. I believe the story was able to gather an interesting kind of momentum, and I was also able to build sympathy while showing what the true story was, hidden underneath.
There seems to a general consensus that short story writing is the more technically difficult of the two forms. Do you have a preference?
I don’t have a preference, and I believe they are equally difficult. For me the subject matter dictates the form. With The Good Thief, I knew right away that what I was tackling was much too large for a short story.
You have described your very precise and careful writing style in past interviews. How did your process change in the writing of your first novel?
I had to learn how to write larger. By that I mean releasing my vice-grip on the sentences, and let them wander more. A story has to stay on point in a way that a novel does not.
Both your stories and your novel are rife with symbolism. Can you tell us a little about your dependence on certain symbols and how the use of them functions in your writing?
A good trick when writing is to simply have an object reappear. Each time it does it will gather more meaning on the page. Sometimes I won’t even realize its significance right away, but after a time the object will start to fill with the emotion of the characters.
One symbol that I felt stood out in several of your stories is that of a scar. And Ren, the main character in The Good Thief lost a hand and is left with a stump. How do these disfigurations play into the larger themes of your work?
Every scar has a story behind it. They are great ways to open a character’s history. Also, it shows how life has marked them. For Ren, the scar is a physical representation of his hidden past, and he spends the novel trying to discover its origins.
The symbol of the scar in your writing congers notions of permanency. In a Book Expo podcast you did with Adam Bellow, you also alluded to the permanency of publishing on paper, as opposed to the trend toward online publishing. Tell us a little about One Story, the literary journal you co-founded and continue to edit.
One Story is an award-winning independent literary magazine that publishes one short story at a time. Our subscribers receive one small, nicely printed pamphlet every three weeks that they can read at home or stick in their pockets and take with them. Our first issue was published in April 2002, and we now have about 7,000 subscribers. Earlier this year, I received the PEN/Nora Magid award for my editorial work at One Story. To find out more, or try a free issue, visit www.one-story.com.
The history of the pamphlet is a powerful one and you have alluded to it in reference to One Story. What do you feel the pamphlet-like physicality of One Story will do for the future of the short story form?
The format of One Story is about looking at short stories as individual works of art, and I believe the pamphlet is perfect for this. It allows one writer to step forward and take the spotlight. I also believe this form will adapt very easily to reading on cell phones and other digital devices, which is certainly the future.
While everyone with a television will recognize John Hodgman as the PC in Apple’s "Get a Mac" advertising campaign, some readers will be surprised to learn that he is also an accomplished author, having been published in the likes of The Paris Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Wired and The New York Times Magazine, in addition to being the author of One Story’s very first issue. What was it about that story that seemed to embody your goals for the fledgling journal?
John and I worked together for many years at a literary agency in New York City, and became good friends. He introduced me to Maribeth Batcha, One Story’s publisher, so it only seemed fitting that our first story would be his. Also, "Villanova: or How I Became a Former Professional Literary Agent" is an excellent piece of writing full of humor and depth of feeling, with surprising twists and turns. For those of you who only know John as the television commercial personality "PC" I highly recommend buying copies of his excellent books: The Areas of My Expertise and More Information that You Require.
You mentioned once that the founding of One Story was a reaction to 9/11. Was this reaction a need to fight back with art, a desire to create and produce, or something else entirely?