The College boasts many points of light in its constellation of faculty. Perhaps one of the brightest of these stars is Bret Lott, professor of English and author of 12 books. In January 1999, Lott leaped to the national stage when Oprah Winfrey made his novel Jewel one of her coveted book club selections. Almost overnight, the rest of the nation learned what our College students and alumni had known since he arrived on campus in 1986 – that Lott is a gifted storyteller and a master of language. We caught up with Professor Lott to get his take on the writer’s life, have him explain his penchant for teaching outside and, most important, find out his choice of super powers.
How many shoeboxes of rejection letters did you fill before your big break? Only one – but I have big feet. I have kept every one of them, and am nearing 600 as we speak. Just this spring semester I got two more. People think once you publish something – once you get a break – that it’s all easy from there. But rejection is a living breathing mouth to feed at your table if you want to write. You have to keep getting them, not because you want them, but because they keep you writing as well as you can. Rejection doesn’t defeat you, either: The essay I got turned down twice so far this spring is right back out there at another journal, trying to find its place.
How did Oprah change your life? In one day a book I wrote went from the Amazon.com sales ranking of 1,069,713 to number 1. That’s quite a change. I saw people walking around in airports carrying a book I wrote. A book I wrote got made into a movie, and that same book was on The New York Times bestseller list for over three months. My kids went to college without our going into debt, I was able to buy my wife a very nice car, and I took my whole big ol’ extended family on the vacation of a lifetime, one none of us could have ever afforded. But it also made it quite hard to write, because I had been writing in relative literary anonymity until then, just plugging along and turning out the books I wanted to have written. Then, suddenly, there was the word “Bestseller” written on my forehead, and I had to write another book. It took me longer to write that one than any I had previously written, and I had to put myself into a closet in our house in Mt. Pleasant in order to find the privacy, both physical and mental, I needed in order to write it. That’s quite a change, too.
What rule about writing did you once preach to your students, but you now break? Good question. But I’m kind of a Boy Scout when it comes to writing. I practice as well as I can what I preach to my students. There are no shortcuts to this whole thing, no passes or byes one can give oneself. I struggle with the exact same things they do every time I sit down to write: What am I seeing? Can I see it?
What is one thing every aspiring writer should know? This quote, from Walker Evans, the American photographer: “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare. Pry. Listen. Eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” This is the foundation for everything I ever want to teach people about the art of writing: This is about empathy. This is about understanding other people. It is about learning who others are, rather than writing about what you already know. You are here to learn something.
You are known for taking your classes outside. What’s your favorite campus spot? I love to teach outside because it gives us – or maybe just me, I’m not sure – a sense of there being a larger world outside of us. Four walls and plastic desks and blinded windows feel claustrophobic to me, when writing is meant to be a means by which to leave this world and go to another. Being inside is Predictably Educatory. Being outside is real. The best spot is in the back corner of Rivers Green, behind Addlestone Library – every day we can, I hold classes out under the live oak in the back corner.
You’ve got one minute to get out of your house. What books do you take with you? Any of the 20 volumes of Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander novels.
If you could have any super power, what would it be? The ability to travel in time, although I think there might be a machine somewhere being devised for this, so it might not actually be a super power. I would love to see moments large and small in history, to be able to go and witness and understand those things we read about in the histories I love to read, and to see what lives not written about were like as well. I want to know what happened.
What music do you listen to? I listen to Pat Metheny the most, right now. I listen to “Secret Story” again and again and again, because I listen to the same CD the entire time I am writing a book, and this is the CD for the one I’m writing at this moment. Otherwise, it’s Vince Guaraldi (I’m going to write his biography next), Bill Frisell, Stereolab, Vince Guaraldi, The Beta Band, Fleetwood Mac, João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, Stan Getz, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Jamie Cullum and Vince Guaraldi. Oh, and Vince Guaraldi.
What’s the best meal you have ever had? That’s easy. The fettuccine carbonara at Ristorante Piperno in the Jewish Quarter in Rome. Isn’t that everyone’s?
If you could steal any writer’s identity, whose would it be? Probably Stephen King. He has a lot of money, and having that guy’s ID would mean access to some deep pockets. Until the law caught up with me, of course. But oh, the damage I could do.
What’s the craziest thing you have seen on one of your book tours? I signed a book to a woman’s dog one time. A very old lady who walked the dog up in a stroller. I thought maybe it was her granddaughter or something, but then she opened up the bundle of blankets in the stroller, pulled out this little rat dog with a pink ribbon in its fur, introduced her as Sophie, and had me sign a book to the dog. To Sophie. I did it, too.
