A Peek into Haven Kimmel's Home
Since the theme of this issue is home, we're wondering if you can talk a bit about your writing space and why you write out here and how you've carved this space out.
Well, I think as with most writers, there are practical reasons and then there are reasons of the psyche. A practical reason is that my house is very tiny. It's a 1929 traditional Southern bungalow that has not been altered, so it's really, really pretty, and you probably may have heard me say tiny at the beginning. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old, baby Augusten, who is sort of like a typhoon in that he can actually move through a room and kick everything that is kickable, but he can also dump things that aren't too heavy, which he calls dump. He talks ceaselessly and he never forgets anything, so if once upon a time I had a ChapStick he desired, he will ask where that ChapStick is for months because I've hidden it. And then I have a teenager, a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy, Obadiah, who is so easy, yet a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy does a lot of IMing and talking on the phone and navigating his social life and also practicing to be a rock star. I have a twenty-four-year-old daughter who appears a couple of times a week and she is the opposite of them in that she stays here entirely for my aid, except that I'm distracted by her because I want to talk to her, so I have to go away. Going away is essential. Also, I think all writers have to have a space in which to write. Lee Smith was one of my writing teachers, and she's from Grundy, Virginia. She's a great Southern writer. She has this very distinct accent—well, all Southern accents are very distinct. It isn't Tidewater, South Carolina, it's not this part of Virginia, and it's not this part of North Carolina. It is Grundy, Virginia. Somebody in the audience once asked her, "Should writers get married and have children?" And she said [in a Grundy accent], "No, because you can't ever convince a husband that this is workin'," which is exactly right. You have to have the space where you can sit for long periods staring at nothing, working something out or waiting for something to arrive. For me that has to happen in silence; it can't happen any other way. There's that part, and then of course, as I've said since I was a child, I love animals more than God, but I couldn't fill the place with real wolverines or coyotes, because as thoughtful as Twain looks, he would eat me. This was the next best thing [looking around at the taxidermy collection]. I'm out with my animals.
We wanted to ask you a little bit about your upbringing in Indiana and how it influenced so much of your writing. Now that you haven't lived there for many years, have you discovered any new perspectives of your hometown that you wouldn't have realized while you were there
All of them. I couldn't have known Indiana if I hadn't left it. I've talked about this with other writers who live in Indiana and I've said that if you want to understand it, you're going to have to learn how to fictionalize it. The only way to make it fictive is to see it really clearly. People who are from Indiana and read my novels, they differ, but, for example, my friend George Studivo, who was an AP correspondent for the White House from Indianapolis for twenty-five years, said that of my books, She Got Up Off the Couch broke his heart the most thoroughly, but it was The Used World that just crystallized Indiana. He said there's never been a book about Indiana that's more clear than that one, but other people feel differently. It's like, that is Indiana, that one is Indiana. I go back often, and every time I'm there I pay attention to what I already knew but couldn't make fictive. It wouldn't have been possible. Here I've got that distance where I can see sort of a broad, panoramic view of life in that state, which is a peculiar state. It really is. There are probably other peculiar states. Well, Louisiana is a peculiar state. I love Louisiana. South Dakota is a peculiar state. Indiana is really odd. I say that with great affection. But I was just part of it while I lived there, and then I moved and I was not part of it, so I could take it on as a subject. I would kill myself if I lived there now [laughs].
On that note, are there any memories of your childhood and home that you particularly treasure?
This doesn't exactly answer the question, but one of the things I love about Mooreland is that it remains entirely unchanged. You know how shocking it is for most people to go back and everything is gone? But nope, everything is still there, it's just a little bit more dilapidated, or a lot more dilapidated. But everything else is still there. Also, here's the way that Indiana is distinctive: Nobody in that town gives a shit that I wrote those books. It doesn't mean anything to them. Very few people acknowledge it; very few people are interested. It doesn't bother them. Whatever, it's a book. Now, if I had become a basketball player, I would be famous. But since I wrote a book, who cares? Nobody. So I could go back to that town, and I'm still just that squirrelly little kid on a bicycle, and that's it. That's nice.
Since the theme of this issue is home, we're wondering if you can talk a bit about your writing space and why you write out here and how you've carved this space out.
Well, I think as with most writers, there are practical reasons and then there are reasons of the psyche. A practical reason is that my house is very tiny. It's a 1929 traditional Southern bungalow that has not been altered, so it's really, really pretty, and you probably may have heard me say tiny at the beginning. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old, baby Augusten, who is sort of like a typhoon in that he can actually move through a room and kick everything that is kickable, but he can also dump things that aren't too heavy, which he calls dump. He talks ceaselessly and he never forgets anything, so if once upon a time I had a ChapStick he desired, he will ask where that ChapStick is for months because I've hidden it. And then I have a teenager, a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy, Obadiah, who is so easy, yet a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy does a lot of IMing and talking on the phone and navigating his social life and also practicing to be a rock star. I have a twenty-four-year-old daughter who appears a couple of times a week and she is the opposite of them in that she stays here entirely for my aid, except that I'm distracted by her because I want to talk to her, so I have to go away. Going away is essential. Also, I think all writers have to have a space in which to write. Lee Smith was one of my writing teachers, and she's from Grundy, Virginia. She's a great Southern writer. She has this very distinct accent—well, all Southern accents are very distinct. It isn't Tidewater, South Carolina, it's not this part of Virginia, and it's not this part of North Carolina. It is Grundy, Virginia. Somebody in the audience once asked her, "Should writers get married and have children?" And she said [in a Grundy accent], "No, because you can't ever convince a husband that this is workin'," which is exactly right. You have to have the space where you can sit for long periods staring at nothing, working something out or waiting for something to arrive. For me that has to happen in silence; it can't happen any other way. There's that part, and then of course, as I've said since I was a child, I love animals more than God, but I couldn't fill the place with real wolverines or coyotes, because as thoughtful as Twain looks, he would eat me. This was the next best thing [looking around at the taxidermy collection]. I'm out with my animals.
We wanted to ask you a little bit about your upbringing in Indiana and how it influenced so much of your writing. Now that you haven't lived there for many years, have you discovered any new perspectives of your hometown that you wouldn't have realized while you were there
All of them. I couldn't have known Indiana if I hadn't left it. I've talked about this with other writers who live in Indiana and I've said that if you want to understand it, you're going to have to learn how to fictionalize it. The only way to make it fictive is to see it really clearly. People who are from Indiana and read my novels, they differ, but, for example, my friend George Studivo, who was an AP correspondent for the White House from Indianapolis for twenty-five years, said that of my books, She Got Up Off the Couch broke his heart the most thoroughly, but it was The Used World that just crystallized Indiana. He said there's never been a book about Indiana that's more clear than that one, but other people feel differently. It's like, that is Indiana, that one is Indiana. I go back often, and every time I'm there I pay attention to what I already knew but couldn't make fictive. It wouldn't have been possible. Here I've got that distance where I can see sort of a broad, panoramic view of life in that state, which is a peculiar state. It really is. There are probably other peculiar states. Well, Louisiana is a peculiar state. I love Louisiana. South Dakota is a peculiar state. Indiana is really odd. I say that with great affection. But I was just part of it while I lived there, and then I moved and I was not part of it, so I could take it on as a subject. I would kill myself if I lived there now [laughs].
On that note, are there any memories of your childhood and home that you particularly treasure?
This doesn't exactly answer the question, but one of the things I love about Mooreland is that it remains entirely unchanged. You know how shocking it is for most people to go back and everything is gone? But nope, everything is still there, it's just a little bit more dilapidated, or a lot more dilapidated. But everything else is still there. Also, here's the way that Indiana is distinctive: Nobody in that town gives a shit that I wrote those books. It doesn't mean anything to them. Very few people acknowledge it; very few people are interested. It doesn't bother them. Whatever, it's a book. Now, if I had become a basketball player, I would be famous. But since I wrote a book, who cares? Nobody. So I could go back to that town, and I'm still just that squirrelly little kid on a bicycle, and that's it. That's nice.