Very few writers of any generation receive the critical and popular recognition of Claire Messud, who will be in Denver as part of the Post/News Pen & Podium series on Nov. 27. Critics have called Messud’s prose elegant, smart and funny, and her subjects range from island life on Bali to the cultural wars of New York’s Upper East Side.
Her first two books were finalists for the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award and her last, “The Emperor’s Children,” was long-listed for the Booker Prize. In addition, she has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Strauss Living Award, which grants writers support for five years.
“I feel incredibly fortunate,” Messud said in a telephone interview from her home near Boston, where she lives with her husband, the critic James Wood, and their two children. “The Strauss allowed me to be a writer. Without it, ‘The Emperor’s Children’ would not exist. When I received the award I was teaching, had one baby and was pregnant with another. There was no time for writing. The Strauss and the Guggenheim changed my life. Awards bolster your confidence in wonderful ways. But they aren’t the world.”
The daughter of a French father and a Canadian mother, Messud was born in America but lived in Australia and Canada before returning to this country for high school and college. She then attended graduate school at Cambridge before moving back to America.
Still, while she may be a citizen of the world, Messud has come increasingly to identify with American writers and writing. “It took me a while,” she says. “I came back more or less for good when I was 28, and it took me a long time to feel like a truly American writer.” Describing herself as a realist, Messud says, “Henry James and Edith Wharton are huge for me because they gave me a way to understand America while still respecting the European backgrounds of my relatives.”
“The Emperor’s Children” was seen by many as a breakthrough book, the first of Messud’s three novels to garner a large popular audience. “Before that I had some nice reviews,” she says. “And a small, enthusiastic group of readers, but that was all. I am aware now of having readers interested in what I’m doing. That can be distracting so I try not to talk about new projects.”
The one person she does consult regularly is her husband, who has recently become the book critic for The New Yorker. “He’s my first reader always and his is a voice I’m glad to have in my head,” Messud says. “I always want to hear what he has to say.” But she’s quick to add that Wood is not always supportive. “I had started a novel before my last one and gave it to him to read and he said he thought it sounded like something off the Lifetime Channel,” she remembers. “I put that one aside.”
Despite the encouragement of critics and readers, keeping up a regular writing schedule remains a challenge for Messud. “Writing with kids is an adventure,” she says. “It seems like someone always has the flu or pink-eye. I mean, you don’t even have to be in direct contact with anyone to get pink-eye. But for parents who write, flexibility becomes essential and as long as I have a pad of paper and a pen I can write anywhere. Starbucks is fine.”
Any writer has reason to be concerned about recent National Endowment for the Arts reports of a shrinking audience for novels, especially among young people. But Messud says, “It bothers me more as a human being. There are so many claims on our time now, and so few of them are very significant. Literature teaches us empathy and a greater understanding of the world.”
Aside from being a realist, Messud doesn’t place herself in a particular literary school. “I have friends who are writers,” she says, “but they’re quite disparate.”
Unlike some writers, including those who’ve taught, Messud has a generally positive view of creative-writing programs. “When I was younger I was less positive about them and left one,” she says, “but I see it differently now. You’re not allowed to teach while you have the Strauss, but before that I taught at Amherst and at Kenyon College in Ohio. I think writing programs teach you to be a good reader and a better writer.”
Although just past 40, Messud says she doesn’t really consider herself to be a young writer. For the many that discovered her only with “The Emperor’s Children,” however, she’s clearly a new and exciting voice on the literary landscape. “Everyone I talk to has an opinion,” she says, “and the really scary thing is that now readers have expectations of me as a writer. That’s exciting, but there are still moments when I think, ‘I can’t do this.”‘
William Meredith, the late poet laureate of the United States, once said in another context that only the good writers ever have such doubts. And while the expectations of readers can be a burden, almost anyone would choose that over anonymity. In any case, there’s little question about Claire Messud’s gifts as a novelist. Which is something Denver readers will have an opportunity to discover for themselves when she comes to town later this month.
David Milofsky is a Denver novelist and professor of English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
Hear Claire Messud at DU’s Newman Center
Claire Messud’s Pen & Podium talk begins at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 27 at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of the University of Denver. For tickets or information, call 303-357-2787.
