Q & A: Author Ellen Gilchrist
Born in Vicksburg, Ellen Gilchrist has enjoyed a long and distinguished writing career that, at the age of 81, is still flourishing, and the proof is in her newest book, “Things like the Truth: Out of My Later Years,” just released by University Press of Mississippi.
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Through more than 50 brief essays, Gilchrist tackles topics that include family, childhood, travel, divorce, psychotherapy, aging, and change, all with the unflinching candor she’s approached every writing project.
A poet, novelist and essayist, Gilchrist was born in 1935, and says she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t writing or reading. The beginning of World War II meant moves to towns in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, as her engineer father worked at building airports for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At 14, she first landed her own column for a newspaper in Kentucky. At 19, she eloped with an engineering student in North Carolina, and together they had three sons.
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She would go on to study writing under Eudora Welty at Millsaps College; earn a philosophy degree from Vanderbilt University; marry three more times (one of those was actually a remarriage to her sons’ father) and, along the way, publish more than 20 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry and nonfiction works.
Today she maintains a home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she writes and teaches writing courses at the University of Arkansas; but she also owns a house in Ocean Springs, where she spends summer days with her large family. While she calls Arkansas her “adopted state,” she says “Mississippi is still my home. Three of my four grandparents were from Mississippi.”
Now the grandmother of 16 and great-grandmother of four herself, Gilchrist delights in nothing more than her family. “I‘m so thrilled with every baby,” she said.
In “Things like the Truth: Out of My Later Years” looks back on your life’s circumstances, heartaches and joys. Why did you decide to put this book together?
A writer doesn’t know why they do anything. I was collecting essays and was not doing anything with them. I just thought, “It’s starting to feel like a book.” Craig Gill, (editor-in-chief) at University Press of Mississippi had put together “The Writing Life” (an essay collection released in 2005) out of a huge collection of about 300 essays. I once again had a huge manuscript, and he took them and did it again.
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This book is for my fans, those who have stuck with me through the years. I hope other people will want to read it, too. It’s mostly about things that happened with my family. I hope people will be entertained by it. It’s like a “net of jewels” — everything touches everything else. Everything is connected.
Tell me about why and when you started writing.
When I was about 4. I used to carry around pen a paper so I could write. I was just writing all the time.
I could read long before I could write. I loved to read. My mother read to me, my father read to me, my grandparents read to me, and aunts read to me, my uncles read to me.
I was lucky to live at a time before everybody had a TV. I was 16 before I ever saw one. I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. Someone in the neighborhood got one, and I went over there every Sunday to watch it because my friend’s mother made these cheese dip things.
During school I mostly read books that I could hide in my lap and turn the page when the teacher wasn’t looking. I could pretty much do what I wanted in school, since we would get a star for each book that we read, and my list of stars would reach all the way to the floor.
I read anything I could get my hands on, at the library, or at home. We had so many books at home, and we had encyclopedias. It didn’t matter what it was. I loved reading stories the best. My father wouldn’t let us watch TV, but I was just always reading.
I wrote for a newspaper in Franklin, Kentucky, and that’s how I learned to write poetry. They hired me to write stories about whatever I wanted, and when I was 14 I was writing my own column, Chit and Chat About This and That. I remember that the first column I wrote was about why (our community) needed to build a swimming pool. At the end, I would write a poem sometimes if I needed to fill up the space. I wrote poems until I was in my thirties, and I had some published poetry.
Everything I wrote, people liked. If there was a (school) magazine or newspaper, I was the editor. I would write book reports for my friends because they all hated to write book reports.
Later in life I always had someone who was my intellectual peer — by that I mean someone who was curious and loved to read, mostly boys, so we could talk about those things we were both interested in and curious about.
Who are your favorite authors?
In order, starting with my favorite, William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, Joan Didian, John McPhee, Harold Bloom and, my favorite poet, Anne Sexton.
What personality traits, strengths, habits or character traits did you get from your parents?
What I got from my parents was unconditional love. They both had so much passion and energy and love of life. They loved to work, and I love to work. Both were passionate, energetic people. I didn’t realize it. I was mostly trying to get off by myself. We were so much alike in our family. We would get up in the morning and make things happen and get things done.
Please tell me about your writing process.
I never turn my computer on. I write on a typewriter, and I have had six of them. I had a Royal portable when I was 12 years old. It was hard for me to give it up. Today I use an IBM Selectric.
My grandson has gotten typewriter ribbons and eraser tape on the internet for me, and I have also have lots of typeballs (that strike the characters) for my electric typewriter.
I also like to use No 2 lead pencils and yellow legal pads. Your hands can’t get ahead of your mind when you’re writing with your hands.
I don’t even know I’m writing if I use my hand or my IPM Selectric. I‘ve tried to use computers but I just don’t like it as much.
You make it very clear that family is everything to you. Describe what kind of parent and grandparent you are. You mention in your book that you worry about your family.
I love them to death, and I think about them all the time. If the slightest thing goes wrong, I want to fix it. I love them and they love me. I spoil them. I just adore them. I feel like I’m so rich to have all those people (children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren) to love. There’s nothing like the way you feel about your progeny.
I think about what can I do to make sure they’re perfectly happy. It’s not really worry; it’s responsibility.
Tell me about your teaching. What do you try to impress on your students — about writing and about life?
I teach a creative writing workshop for graduate students, a three-hour class on Shakespeare. I also teach creative non-fiction and a class in film writing. I’ve written lots of scripts. I teach them what I learned when I was 14 — to write who, what, when, where, and why.
I teach them to make the language beautiful and make great characters. I teach them that people want to read about something they recognize or something they may have never known. I want it to be beautiful — bravery, courage, putting life back together. Young writers think they don’t have anything to write about, but they do have something to write about, but they must make it beautiful and courageous. And, writing something funny is the best you can get.
Please tell me about the title of the book, “Thing like the Truth.” From where was it taken, and what does it mean?
It’s from a quote from Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, who likely had a hand in writing the King James version of the Bible.
It’s such an amazing metaphor for literature. You can only know the truth when you’re experiencing it. You can tell people about it, but it’s like you had to be there yourself.
Jonson wrote:
“He is called a poet, not he who writeth in measure only, but he who formeth and feighneth a fable and writes things like the truth.”
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