Interview with Mary Miller

Mary Miller’s debut collection Big World (Hobart 2009), was one of the better books we got our hands on last year. Miller’s prose is clean and charming. Her narrators are flawed and lovable. They struggle with broken families, and low self esteem. They flounder in negative relationships, and tumble through sexual misadventures. The 11 stories that comprise the book are brimming with humor and heartache. We caught up with Miller to ask her a bit about her craft, the South, and what she’s got in store for us next. — Brian Allen Carr

Dark Sky Magazine: Big World is a remarkable collection. Was it a set goal? That is to say, did the collection come about organically or were you working to piece together short stories for a collected theme?

Mary Miller: Thanks very much, Brian. No, the collection wasn’t a set goal, though I guess I knew that I was writing a bunch of stories that went together. The thing is, I don’t know how to write stories in which I’m not the central character, so all of my stories feel pretty similar. This is not to say I’m writing non-fiction, only that the narrator’s responses to whatever situation I’ve put her in are thoughts I’d have and feelings that I’d feel. Though I’ve been told this is a problem, I’m still not sure it is. I don’t write stories well about people I don’t know. How would I know what they’d do, what they’d think? It’s not something you can really research.

DSM: Most of these stories are written in the first person. Was this intentional? Do you prefer first person as a point of view? If so why?

MM: I do prefer first person, though I also write in second and third person. I play with tenses and points of view a lot more now, change them around to see what fits the story best.

DSM: Many of the narrators in Big World share similar character flaws and backgrounds. Most of the characters, for instance, come from single-parent families. Is there a statement you’re making by giving the narrators fractured homes? Do you find family trauma alluring?

MM: What’s funny is that my parents are wonderful people who are still married and I have three siblings; my childhood was happy. In my stories, however, parents go missing or die early (or at the very least are mentally ill) and there is never more than one sibling. I have no idea what this means except that large, happy families are 1. not interesting and 2. difficult to write about because there are so many people. I find trauma more alluring than no trauma, in general, but I’m probably in good company here.

DSM: Alcohol plays a big part in Big World, and it is usually shown negatively. Most Southern fiction has a more positive alcohol tradition. Why the departure?

Postive Alcohol Tradition?

MM: This is funny, a “positive alcohol tradition.” I’m not sure what a positive alcohol tradition would entail. Alcohol is a huge part of many people’s lives. People drink. I write about the things people do. Though I don’t drink very much anymore, I’m still suspect of teetotalers — I want an explanation. Of course, I don’t find any explanation very satisfying unless the person is an alcoholic.

DSM: Do you consider yourself a Southern writer?

MM: No, but I don’t care if people think of me as one. Being Southern isn’t something I think about. My mother is Southern. I just live here. I’m not quite sure what I mean by this — I guess I mean I don’t fit in very well. My manners aren’t very good and I don’t cook. I hardly ever wear makeup. I don’t use a lot of Southern expressions like fixin to. The other day, however, I told my friend I’d meet her at the bar if I got a wild hair and she had no idea what the hell I was talking about. She started talking about wild hairs, which confused me.

DSM: You use deep images with remarkable success throughout Big World. In “Leak” for instance the father brings up a friend of the narrator in conversation, and the result is a quick daydream shared with the reader “Emily, I said, and I saw her standing on the soccer field with her hand over her heart as an airplane deposited its fluffy white strip across the sky.” In “Fast Trains” the narrator describes a family as “Loud and heavy-footed, they probably still threw trash out their car windows.” Do these images occur as you are writing, or do you create these images independently and then look to use them in your work?

MM: Thanks! I just use what I’ve seen and heard and felt. I collect everything. When I was in elementary school, I had a friend who’d stop what she was doing and put her hand on her heart whenever she saw an airplane. It was some game she invented or something, but the image stuck with me, the randomness and inexplicability of it. I like things that seem to make no sense but also make perfect sense.

DSM: In some of your writing you use quotation marks and in others dialogue is not denoted. Is there a reason for this?

MM: There’s no reason — it’s kind of like the way I use tenses and POV. I play around and see what seems to fit the story best. Most of the stories I write now use quotation marks, but there are still stories that, for whatever reason, seem to work better without them. I don’t like to think about these things too much, really.

DSM: What are you working on now? What can readers expect next?

MM: I’m working on new stories. The ones I’ve written in the last year and half are much more varied than the stories in the first collection, and people are more active. They don’t sit around and stew as much. You can only write so many stories in which people do absolutely nothing about circumstances they find unacceptable and not be completely annoyed, and annoying. I almost have enough for a second collection, but I have no idea where or when it will be published. I’d like to work on it for another year or two, probably. And then I’d need someone willing to publish it.

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Mary Miller’s stories have been published in dozens of print and online journals, including Black Clock, Mississippi Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Oxford American, Quick Fiction, elimae, Smokelong Quarterly, and Hobart. Her story “Leak” was selected by ZZ Packer for inclusion in New Stories from the South, 2008. She is currently a student at the Center for Writers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.