author Anna North
There’s no way to talk about author Anna North’s latest novel, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, without centering the conversation around its title character. Told throughout the viewpoints of the people in Sophie’s life (who often become the main characters in the films the young director Sophie creates), the woman’s life is revealed piece by piece, from insight into her bullied childhood as witnessed by her brother, to early success as a filmmaker as seen by her lover Allison, to frustrations and struggles with relationships as disclosed to us by her husband. An awkward yet elegant and oddly alluring woman, Sophie’s relationship with art, and her much heavier flawed relationships with those around her, make for a melancholic tale of the search for perfection and the costs it may take to get there.
But enough about Sophie (from me, at least). I got the chance to talk to the woman behind the character, Anna North, about her own relationship with art, the ways in which her characters came to life, what books are on her nightstand, and more:
Kati Heng: Obviously, creating a character like Sophie is a monumental task. When did you first get the visions in your head of what she might be? Did she as a character come first, or the plot?
Anna North: I started thinking about Sophie Stark years ago, long before I ever started the book. I had this idea of a documentary filmmaker who was very mysterious and who built up a sort of mystique around her that might last long after her death. I wrote a tiny bit about her a few years ago and put the draft away for a long time — I picked it up again in 2010 or so and decided it could be a novel, and that’s when I really had to figure out the plot. So the character came long before anything else.
KH: So much of the story is about the way people connect through art. Do you feel, like Sophie, you connect better to others through your art? To what extent is it easier to make impressions through art rather than in person?
AN: This is an area where I’m pretty different from Sophie. My writing feels very solitary to me — it’s an incredibly important part of my life, but it’s not one where I necessarily feel I’m connecting to others, exactly. That’s why I like giving readings and talking to readers — otherwise writing feels like something pretty lonely that I do in my head. I also don’t necessarily feel, as I think Sophie does, that my art expresses who I am as a person. I think my writing is a creation pretty separate from myself, and you’d probably learn more about me by talking to me than by reading my work.
KH: Sexuality in your book is so fluid, at least for the female characters in the novel. What lines were you trying to connect between sex, admiration, and beauty? Where is the line drawn between sex and admiration?
AN: I think the book’s conception of sexuality kind of grew out of the characters. I knew early on that Sophie would be with both men and women, and I knew that pretty early on for Allison, too. In both cases when I thought about their life stories and the people they’d be in love with and attracted to, those lists of people included men and women. The question about sex and admiration is interesting: people certainly admire Sophie (although she isn’t always admirable), but I think people are really attracted to her too. Even though she’s not necessarily conventionally beautiful (more on that below), she has a real hold over people that’s sexual as well as intellectual and emotional. It’s funny — a friend of mine said recently that it’s odd how much people in the book love Sophie even though she’s so strange, and not necessarily charismatic in the traditional sense. I agree that she’s not, but I think there are people who can have a kind of charisma without being actually charming or socially aware, maybe even because they’re not very charming or socially aware, and I think Sophie is one of them. Also I think Sophie, whether she knows it or not, has a certain control over her personal magnetism and the way she uses it to get what she wants from people.
KH: You’re very descriptive about Sophie’s physical appearance — was there ever a draft where she looked differently? What are you most trying to say about her based on her physicality?
AN: Her physical appearance came to me very early — a lot of her attributes did. I sometimes slip up and talk about her as if she were a real person, because she seemed to come into my mind so fully-formed in a way. But I did have inspirations — I thought about the very striking actress Maria Pankratz from the movie Silent Light, about a Mennonite family in Mexico, and I thought about the young Patti Smith. In terms of what I’m trying to say about her, I think I wanted her to be very distinctive-looking, not necessarily beautiful but someone whose face would hold your eye. I also wanted her to be fairly androgynous and to be someone who could change her appearance a lot over the course of her life, while still remaining distinctly herself.
KH: Sophie has problems drawing the line between making art and respecting people’s feelings. As for yourself, how do you draw the line so as not to hurt those you love with your art? Have you ever had a problem/situation where you realized your art hurt someone?
AN: This has been more of an issue in nonfiction than in fiction. I’ve made a decision for now not to mention my friends and family very much in my nonfiction, because I’ve offended people in the past — though I might change my mind later if I feel like I can write about them in an ethical way. With fiction it’s less of a problem because I don’t feel I draw from life all that much — or rather, I do so more for minor details than for major plot points or characters. I don’t know anybody like Sophie, or really like any of the characters in the novel, though I suppose all of them have a little bit of me in them.
KH: Even if it’s not easy to see, tons of research goes into every good novel. What kind of research did you have to do for The Life and Death of Sophie Stark?
AN: I read several books about movies — Christine Vachon’s Shooting to Kill and Sharon Waxman’s Rebels on the Backlot were especially helpful. I also talked to a couple of female film directors — my friend Anna Kerrigan (most recently of The Impossibilities) was really helpful throughout, reading drafts and helping set me straight about the business side of making movies. I also thought a lot about my favorite movies and about the time I spent as a film critic for my college paper — that experience really forced me to think visually about movies in a way I hadn’t before, and I drew on that a lot when I was writing Sophie Stark.
KH: What are your bookshelves like? How do you sort books? Do you alphabetize? Where all do you keep books? What books have you had since you were 13? What books are you constantly rereading? What books are next to your bed?
AN: I do sort books on my bookshelves, or at least I try to. Generally I try to keep separate sections for nonfiction, drama, and poetry, and then I separate fiction into books published before I was born and books published after (I know this is kind of a narcissistic classification scheme, but I like it). Things tend to get disorganized, though, and right now I have books all over my apartment and also my office and my gym bag and probably some other places I don’t even know about. Probably the most important book I’ve had since I was 13 is the Odyssey — I got it when I was 11 and I still have that copy, along with several copies I’ve bought since then. I tend to reread poetry a lot: Li-Young Lee and Anne Carson and Claudia Emerson and Louise Gluck. I just reread Frankenstein for maybe the fifth time (I used to teach it), and it gets better every time. Now I’m rereading Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book and remembering how funny and mean it is. Here’s what’s on my nightstand: Benjamin Wood’s The Ecliptic (in galley form), Rebecca Makkai’s The Hundred-Year House, Emily Mitchell’s Viral, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Emily Schultz’s The Blondes, Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character, Karen Green’s Bough Down, Jess Row’s Nobody Ever Gets Lost, Nina McConigley’s Cowboys and East Indians, and Scott Stossel’s My Age of Anxiety. Some of those I’ve finished, a few I haven’t started yet, and some I’m dipping into a little bit at a time until I finish them.
