TAO LIN INTERVIEWS DEB OLIN UNFERTH
October 9th, 2007Can you talk some more about Diane Williams and NOON Magazine? Was NOON one of the first places to publish your work?
For me reading Diane Williams’s Excitability for the first time was like being saved from death. The world suddenly looked new to me — familiar and strange at once.
I wrote her a long incoherent letter, explaining my adoration inadequately, exclamatorily. She wrote back a nice short note saying, “If you’re ever in New York, we could meet.” I had only been to New York a couple of times and never unaccompanied. I had very little money at the time but I bought a plane ticket and a city map and went. To my astonishment she took me out for a very expensive dinner and we talked for hours. Much later I asked her why she had been so kind to me. She told me that many years before she had loved a certain writer’s work. She wrote to this writer and was also given an invitation. She also dropped everything and went to an unfamiliar place alone. The writer didn’t show up for their meeting. Diane waited for hours. I am very lucky to have benefited from that writer’s discourtesy.
That same year, Diane started NOON magazine and she put a story of mine in the first issue. NOON was one of the first places to publish my fiction. I am very grateful. The NOON authors I know, when we get together, we sit around and coo about how much we love Diane Williams and NOON. NOON is like an exclusive club that requires you work very hard to remain a member and I am willing to work hard. I am up to the challenge of being a member of the NOON club. Several NOON authors, when I meet them for the first time, behave as though we are long lost relations. Kim Chinquee said in an e-mail to me once before I’d even met her, “We are NOON sisters!” I was very moved because I have always felt so alone.
Diane is an amazing editor. She inspires excellence and demands discipline. More than an editor, she is an editor-artist. She has rejected my work several times, harshly, dismissively, unapologetically. The first time I was stunned. Clancy Martin and I now laugh about how she will take forty pages of writing and slash it down to two pages.
As a person, Diane is an incredibly elegant and charming woman. She has beautiful manners and a wide generosity. She is a role model in all ways. She is an intellectual but she is so cute about it. She has an old-fashioned politeness. If she doesn’t like an idea, she pretends not to understand it. It is hilarious because she is so brilliant. I often feel like she saved my life — and I know I’m not the only NOON author who feels this way. I had some dark years and through them she published my work in NOON and encouraged me to stay focused.
How did you find Diane Williams’ book?
A friend gave it to me.
Here is something strange. One of the reasons I decided to try writing in the first place was that I came across a book called Getting Jesus in the Mood by Anne Brashler. It different than anything I’d ever read and I loved it. I kept looking at other writings by the same author and, while I liked them, I didn’t connect with them in the same way or find them quite as exciting. A few years later, I was talking to Diane and I mentioned the book and how moving I found it and she said, “Oh, I edited that book.” Looking back now, I can see her handprints all over it.
I guess I am just a Diane Williams fan.
[Bookslut]