Five questions for Scott Russell Sanders
One of America's most prolific and acclaimed essayists, Distinguished Professor Scott Russell Sanders is the author of 19 books, which include novels, short stories and children's books. Among the many prestigious awards and honors he has received are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lilly Endowment and a Lannan Literary Award.
Sanders has been teaching in the English Department of Indiana University since 1971. His most recent book, A Private History of Awe, is a coming-of-age memoir, love story and spiritual testament about which Wendell Berry wrote, "Our poor country needs this book more than it knows."
Sanders, who is on faculty in the Indiana University Bloomington Creative Writing Program, travels extensively to keep up with his speaking engagements. Sanders talked to Live at IU about his recent work and his plans for future creative endeavors.
LIU: In the review of A Private History of Awe, Booklist called you "a sage of the Midwest." What is your reaction to being labeled such?
SRS: I'm certainly a Midwesterner, for my character, voice and outlook have been shaped by this region. Whether I'm a sage is for others to decide. If I have wisdom to offer, it comes from reflecting on six decades of living, from listening to people of all ages, from traveling, and from lifelong devotion to reading and writing. A writer ought to provide insight as well as pleasure; I hope that my books offer both.
LIU: What are your writing habits and have they changed over time?
SRS: Since childhood, writing has been my way of noticing things, focusing my attention and reflecting on experience. My ideal writing schedule, which I'm able to maintain only during summers and periods of leave from my university position, is to work at the keyboard from daybreak until noon; to garden, do carpentry, take hikes or bicycle rides in the afternoon; to read or visit with family and friends in the evenings. When I'm teaching, I must snatch odd hours here and there for my writing, and even then I struggle to push other concerns out of my mind.
LIU: During the 36 years that you have taught creative writing at IU, you have influenced hundreds of aspiring writers. What advice do you give your students about perfecting the craft of writing?
SRS: Writers begin as readers, just as musicians begin as listeners. One writes largely by ear and imagination, rather than by rule. We train our ears by listening to language on the page, and if we're lucky enough to grow up among gifted storytellers, by listening to vivid speech. Just as we should avoid feeding our bodies with junk food, so we should avoid feeding our minds with junk culture. Imagination is the capacity to envision something other than what is immediately before us, to summon up objects or entire worlds in our minds, to think beyond the obvious. I doubt that imagination can be taught, but it can be nurtured; it can be strengthened through exercise. So keep writing.
LIU: You mentioned in an interview earlier this year that you are at a point of "major transition" in your writing. What did you mean by that statement?
SRS: As I anticipate retiring from IU in the summer of 2009 and being able to place writing at the center of my days, I wish to make the most fruitful use of this gift. I measure fruitfulness not by the number of pages written, but by the quality of inspiration, illumination and consolation I am able to offer my readers. After writing personal nonfiction almost exclusively for the past twenty years, I have recently been drawn back to fiction, my first literary love. I will continue to write essays about the issues that concern me and the experiences that move me. But for the time being, I am enjoying a return to the short story, that elegant and difficult form.
LIU: What are you currently working on, and do you have a projected publication date for it?
SRS: I recently completed A Conservationist Manifesto, about the necessity and possibility of shifting from a culture based on consumption to one based on stewardship. The book is now with a publisher, and it will appear, if all goes well, in 2009. I'm at work on a series of linked short stories, and I am planning a book about the "common wealth," those shared sources of our well-being, from atmosphere and oceans to parks and public schools, from science to language. In all of my writing, I am concerned with love and loss, fidelity and betrayal, the fact of mortality, this enveloping marvel we call "nature," and this mystery we call "spirit."
