We recently sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout, whose fictional characters frequently come to her fully formed, often appearing over her shoulder while she’s, say, unloading the dishwasher. In the case of Artie Dam, protagonist of her latest novel, The Things We Never Say, Strout was perusing a box of obituaries from the 1960’s and 70’s a friend sent her when she came upon a photo of a man named Artie Damm. Something struck her about his face—that it was “extraordinarily ordinary,” she says, though she can’t recall anything else about him. A vision began to form, of a history teacher in Massachusetts named Artie Dam, an apparently jovial man, popular among his students, beloved by his family and many friends, all unaware how deeply troubled he is.
In our Substack Live with Strout, she shared how she brought Artie to life, layering him with complexity, creating a character who embodies the intricacy and mystery of being a human in this crazy, wondrous world.
Strout also shared:
How she began writing at age four, prompted by her mother’s suggestion that every day she jot down everything she’d seen and done
Why she doesn’t do social media
Why she begins writing a new book even before she’s finished with the one she’s currently working on
How her mother’s observations about passersby—“Oh, she doesn’t look very happy to be getting home to her husband”—inflamed her young imagination and propelled her to write
Why she didn’t publish her first book, Amy and Isabelle, until age 42, and how she credits one editor—Daniel Menaker—with launching her career. He was an editor at the New Yorker, rejecting her short story submissions, but each time encouraging her that her work was 80%, then 90% better than the other material crossing his desk. When he took a job as an editor at Random House, he acquired and published her fiction debut.
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