Sarah

Anyone who has lived in the 21st century knows this: balancing one’s own needs with those of others is as complicated as it is desirable. We lie for the sake of peace, we put on a calm facade while inwardly worrying, we strive to do “the right thing”—whatever that may be—and yet find ourselves once again facing a pile of unresolved problems. Is there such a thing as a true life within the false? (Adorno) It is precisely this question that vocational school teacher, father, and still-husband Scott explores in Mc-Clanahan’s novel Sarah. But not without plenty of escapades: drunk driving, burning Bibles, etc.—with which he nevertheless tries to cope in a world that pretends to be the best of all possible worlds (this time not Adorno but Leibniz), yet—spoiler alert—it is not. But Scott doesn’t give up, because, as the author McClanahan puts it: “I don’t want to change people. I want to love them, because that’s the only way to change anything at all—by loving.” Thus, in the novel, Scott encounters people, animals, and children with great love and humor, and yet in the end, all that remains is a pile of shards. Sarah is a hymn to life on the brink, the story of a marriage coming to an end, and the attempt to find common ground in a world full of individuals. For despite all doubt, at least one thing remains certain: We are all in this together!

We live in times that could be described as turbulent: the COVID pandemic, the so-called “end of Western hegemony,” financial crisis, global climate crisis—tough times. Is this the right time for literature?

Oh, I think it’s the perfect time for literature. In many ways, perhaps the perfect time for writers. I’ve basically been socially distanced since I was five or six years old… (laughs). The prison-like environment of the modern world is just right for stories.

We’re basically living the fiction!

Yes, at least in the 21st century. Actually, it’s always the right time for literature. The moral and ethics of the novel basically consist of listening to other people. I can’t imagine anything more important or more political than that! Especially in the age of advertising and slogans, which all feel like they’re part of the same kind of marketing plan. So definitely: the right time for literature.

At the same time, escapism and the fantasy genre are booming: Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, etc.

There has always been popular literature, and there have always been these islands that you have to find and to which you can escape. I’m mainly interested in emotions—not sentimentality—but genuine emotional stirrings, the personal. Especially in the last year, as the world slowed down. Now it’s becoming even clearer that people are looking for something other than just headlines and news stories and are questioning their lives—I definitely questioned my values last year. The fact is: someday I’ll be dead and gone. And I’m working to ensure I’m still being heard 40 years from now. It’s about literature as a journey through time and communication across the centuries, like spirits in a community of readers and writers. Harry Potter will never be a part of that.

Because it lacks reality?

Literature doesn’t necessarily have to be true to life. When I’m face to face with someone, I know whether they truly mean what they write. And that’s what I believe in: sincerity. I feel a connection across time to the writers who were truly sincere.

You say in interviews that it’s not about you, because it’s “just” fiction—you wrote a novel, not an autobiography. On the other hand, this guy in *Sarah* is a vocational school teacher named Scott McClanahan, married to this woman named Sarah, has two kids, and is somehow struggling in life to do the right thing, but he can’t manage it, he screws it up every time… Isn’t that you? Or a part of you?

That depends on whether you want to sue me or not. (laughs) Fiction and reality always run parallel to each other in some way, and writers often try to mask that while still preserving a core truth. I know what I can connect with emotionally. Namely, the stories closest to me—stories I tell my friends, or someone I know—and I think that’s exactly what literature is about. That’s a truly revolutionary act: to look at the world with sincerity. So yes! It’s about me—but somehow it isn’t. But that’s a fundamental problem with historiography in general: Take any three facts. The order in which you arrange and narrate them will change the interpretation of those three facts. So: It’s me, and it isn’t me.

In Sarah, you repeatedly reach a point where you draw conclusions about the bigger picture from the first-person narrator’s personal experiences: “The tendency of all things to become one in the end,” it says at one point. What do you mean by that?

We are all one! My aim has always been to draw my audience into a sense of community. Literature is often strangely cut off from the world. The authors and filmmakers I know just want readers to lose themselves in the text. But I want to break through that wall and dissolve the separation between the story and life. That’s an almost religious feeling for me. What’s the point of getting lost in a story if we can’t convey the fact that, through the eyes of these characters, we can understand other people’s worlds—that we can connect with them? I’m not interested in literature that doesn’t acknowledge the readers’ presence, just as theatergoers are present in a theater. The audience sometimes needs to be shaken up, sometimes needs to be held, and sometimes needs to be challenged.

Sounds a bit like Brecht...

Absolutely! That’s what I believe in when it comes to literature. I grew up with preachers in church, and our preachers did exactly that. At the end, the preacher comes down from the pulpit and stands with the congregation—you can smell him, you can feel him, and you know there’s a kind of community, and that creates a kind of tension. I think it works the same way with literature—at least for me.

I also read your novel as a very American story. How are things in the U.S. right now? We know everything’s a bit chaotic at the moment. You’ve survived Trump...

Hopefully, yes! The last four years were a nightmare, but they also showed how our country has evolved culturally. In my bubble, Trump was always seen as an adversary, as if he were an anomaly among us and as if we could now simply dismiss him as the past and forget him. But he is no anomaly! In many ways, Scott in my novel is also a bit like Donald Trump. He’s been considered “one of us” for a very long time. He’s been in the public eye since the 1980s and has long been part of the American ethos: money, success, golden toilets, boundless consumption, without worrying about what that means for future generations. This kind of nihilistic capitalism, in which the individual stands above all else—even loving one’s own suffering—is an essential part of American culture. But at least in the character of Scott, there is also something truly hopeful: this completely self-centered first-person narrator ultimately abolishes himself. He tries to become a different person; he tries to find his place.

So what about the “American Dream”? That, it seems to me, is what Sarah is also about. You try to do the right thing, and you try to do everything as you should. But can you live a real life in the wrong system?

I don’t think I ever had anything to do with the “American Dream” when I was growing up in West Virginia. It always applied to someone else. Someone who grew up in the suburbs of LA or the suburbs of Chicago. West Virginia has a much more antiquated culture, almost like in the 19th century. We still believe that Grandma should stay with us in our home instead of going to a nursing home. We still believe that family means something—the connection to the people around us. There’s a term here—“hillbilly.” It’s a derogatory term that the people I grew up with use. People make fun of us. When I visited relatives in Michigan as a child, I was called that, and it always made me feel like I didn’t really belong.

You once said in an interview that the only way to change something is to love it. What do you mean by that?

... and not to preach. Flaubert writes somewhere: “The writer’s duty is not to change the world, but to understand it.” To understand is to love. You also have to show the bad sides, not just how things should be. Characters should please not only behave as they ought to, but also as real people actually do. We need more love! We need more attention, and we need more action! We should look at our actions, because that is what really matters—not so much the pretty talk surrounding them.

The interview was conducted by Johannes Nölting.