It’s no surprise that novelist Alice McDermott, a 1998 National Book Award winner for “Charming Billy,” would be asked to deliver the annual St. Catherine of Siena Lecture at Dominican University.
McDermott, who will speak there April 29 on “Astonished by Love: Storytelling and the Sacramental Imagination,” primarily sets her stories in the Irish Catholic community of her native Long Island. Though, as she is quick to point out, she uses faith in her writing as a tool, not a proselytizing end in itself.
Q: What do you mean by sacramental imagination?
A: The simplest way to think about it is turning water into wine. For a Catholic, the wine becomes blood, bread becomes the body, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. A sense of holiness accessible through the things of the world.
Q: And how does that relate to storytelling?
A: When you enter into a story as a reader, the means by which the story is conveyed, the written word, is through the inner voice. And religious faith is all about that inner voice, the voice with which we speak to ourselves. In the act of reading, especially reading fiction, where a world is being created, all kinds of matters of belief come into play.
You know, it would be laughable for a half-assed Catholic like myself to address this very prestigious audience and pretend to be a theologian. So, I asked myself, ‘What is there about my profession that can speak to some of the things theologians speak to?’ And I realized it’s the use of imagination, to uncover what we don’t always catch, what we don’t always see, in daily living.
Q: You’re typically described as a Catholic writer. Is that how you think of yourself?
A: Any adjective you put before the noun writer is going to be limiting in some way. Whether it’s feminist writer, Jewish writer, Russian writer, or whatever. I’ve always believed you go to literature to find the shared human experience, not the categorized human experience.
On the other hand, it’s nice that your work is recognized enough that you can be categorized. (Laughs.) And it’s true I’m a born and bred Catholic, so I’m sure even the way I use language is affected by my having been raised in the church. In some ways, the way I view the world is influenced by that, but I’ve never set out to proselytize for the church and I don’t consider myself a strong Catholic. I’m a struggling Catholic. I’m still trying to get it.
Q: And yet, your stories are typically set among Irish Catholic families in suburban Long Island, where you were raised. Would you say that’s an integral part of your writing?
A: I think it must be integral, because my background has naturally shaped the way I use language and look for metaphor. On the other hand, subject, for me, is more a means to an end than an end in itself. I’ve never felt, ‘Gee, I want to record what it’s like to be an Irish American Catholic growing up in the suburbs in the ’60s and ’70s.’ I want to explore what it’s like to grow up, and I have access, because of my experience, of details that would fill out a story about those particular people.
Q: How is faith most useful to you in exploring the lives of your characters?
A: It gives my characters a vocabulary for their inner lives. Using the familiar phrases of their faith, they can begin to talk about things they wouldn’t ordinarily talk about. Things like redemption and immortality. And the language of the church gives them the means to begin to wrestle with the things we all wrestle with. The church gives them prayers, to ask for mercy, to ask for comfort in sorrow, to express gratitude in joy.
Actually, most of the characters I write with don’t think an awful lot about their faith. They’re not always questioning the church or feeling confined by the church or rebelling against the church. Which seems to be a typical trope when writing about any institution like the Catholic Church. My approach is: Give them a religion and then move on to explore things their religion is not answering yet. The doubts, the struggles, the dark nights of the soul that exist even in people who have faith.
Novelist Alice McDermott
7 p.m. April 29
Dominican University’s Lund Auditorium, 7900 W. Division St., River Forest.
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$10
(708) 714-9107; http://www.dom.edu/siena