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August 15, 2005

Questionnaires, and Mild Misquotations

San Francisco Examiner film critic Jeffrey M. Anderson interviewed me for the "Why I Write" column in yesterday's paper:

"The Examiner: Why do you write?

Rachel Howard: I've kept a journal since I was 18. If three or four days pass and I haven't written in my journal I feel like my life is just this collection of random experiences going by. So I write to give my life shape and meaning.

Q: Now that you've published your book, you have to talk about the murder more than ever. Is that hard for you?

A: I wanted that to be forced upon me. I had lived for a long time with this fear that when I told someone that my father was killed, they were going to completely change their idea of who I was. And so the more I took control of that, the less I dreaded telling people."

For the full interview, click here. It's always nice to be called lean and striking, so I hope it won't appear ungrateful of me to point out that I was mildly misquoted. First, one of the books I'm currently reading is "Camus and Sartre: The story of a friendship and the quarrel that ended it." And I didn't say I was reading Isak Dinesen because "I like to read fiction." Geez, I write fiction, so you would hope I like to read it. What I said was that I was reading Dinesen short stories because I like to always be reading at least one work of fiction (to keep my mind in storytelling mode).

Ah, to be on the other side of the tape recorder.

Regarding the little factoids about my tastes at the bottom of the interview, the Examiner actually gave me a long list of questions, including "Favorite song/piece of music" and "If I could only retain one book on a desert island, it would be . . ."

"You can't answer those straight, or you'll be a total nerd!" my husband Bill said when I showed him the list. But answer them more or less straight I did, and I'm sure it's just good luck that the Ex didn't print all my replies.

So I'll just share one answer that didn't make it in. "Book I've read lately I'd recommend most?" Nicole Krauss's "The History of Love." Without a doubt.

Posted by Rachel at August 15, 2005 11:11 AM

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