The role of place in fiction

Lately I’ve been pondering the importance and influence of place in fiction. When I first started out, I was living in New York City, a struggling journalist from unglamorous roots, making her way in the most glamorous scene in the world—making mistakes like drinking out of a brandy snifter and having no clue how to use a fish knife. Naturally, my fiction was inspired by this world. In my fiction, I’d tried to revisit the landscape of my childhood back then, but I hadn’t been ready to do so properly, and the draft I’d worked up felt forced and phony. I’d shelved even the topic—which, in essence a coming of age story, was certainly universal—for nearly six years before I revisited not so much the topic, but as I was to learn later, the important bit: the condensed feeling of the experience, in an abbreviated sense, in THE VELVET ROPE DIARIES. It was much easier to explore this landscape—both physically and emotionally—because I’d distanced myself from it, and this made all the difference. So, you see—distance from a place is one way you can impact your use of it.

But this is only one of the powers of place. I had my next lesson in place when I moved to rural Connecticut, leaving the city life behind. What I learned about place was that dropping yourself into a new one turned your mind into one fertile little garden of ideas. Everything you see (pick-your-own berry farms! People who go to church every Sunday! Four feet of fallen leaves! And a rake! With my name on it!) sprouts ideas. You begin considering ideas that hadn’t occurred to you at all, your own values adjust, grow, are tested against different ones. You meet different kinds of people; they teach you new things, take you to new places, share new experiences with you, expand your experience and expectations of love. You see new facets of nature, and in that deer’s equanimity, and the way a young child doesn’t fear a poisonous snake, but has learned the proper way to remain safe around one, you see life in a different way.

And then there’s travel…the lifeblood, more powerful to an artist than blood to a vampire. Nothing is so instinctively creative as seeing how other people live, their unique and similar morning rituals, their different fashions, their holiday traditions, weather patterns, conflicts, dark pasts, cultural interests, food, homes.

Living in a new country, I always feel there’s something to discover. Every day is an adventure—I’ve never before eaten a Lamington, or seen a Tree Kangaroo! Or a Sass & Bide store in a mall! Or said ‘how you going?’ rather than ‘how you doing?’ And inevitably, exquisitely, Australia has made its way into my art. Even in a book that takes place in America, it’s impossible not to be influenced by your surrounds, not to absorb a local personality trait, a joke, a bit of history, or relevant metaphor. If it’s not done consciously, it’s certainly woven in the subtext—whether you realize or not. The picture above was taken over my holiday; it’s the “office” I used to do the final edit pass on VIVIAN RISING. I’d doubt whether there was a second of thought that wasn’t transformed in some way or another from a passing Gowana or an afternoon go at surfing, or a sip of Billy tea.

And so the question of practicality arises: In general, American publishers look for American stories, Australian publishers for Australian, and in kind at each corner of the globe. And yet, in my personal tastes, I love reading books from other cultures. Such novelty offers that same opportunity to dive into a different way of life that travel does, only you also get to use your imagination to puff it into being! And you’re told what everyone’s thinking rather than having to guess or politely question. I can remember my very first tastes of this international literary exposure—I was working for an international company and my boss would come back from London with all these new books we hadn’t yet heard of in the States: Bridget Jones’s Diary, Does my Bum Look Big in This?, and Jemima J. This was before anyone had used that label ‘Chick Lit,’ and all I knew about them was that I ate these books up like candy, and it wasn’t just the novelty of the places they mentioned, the mention of the Tube stations and street names. It was a lovely, rich mix of that and the fact that at that time, I’d felt I’d finally stumbled upon a genre of books whose heroes were like me. People who felt insecure and didn’t know how to get what they want, who messed up paying their bills, and weren’t perfect like everyone else seemed to be, but dreamed big, and for the most part, these girls made it to the top! All those miles away! Could young women really share the exact emotions and aspirations that a girl from Queens did? I was hooked.

Since I’ve been living in Australia I’ve read dozens of books that take place here and abroad. I devoured Karen Foxlee’s The Anatomy of Wings; the experience of growing up here, the different pop culture references of the same time I’d come of age, and yet so many shared emotions…it was addictive. And when I was through, I felt I both understood more what it was like to be from this wonderful, truly unique country, and at the same time that underneath it all it wasn’t so different from where I’d come from. This is what the best art does, doesn’t it? Hold a mirror up to life? Does it really matter where?

And yet, in some stories it does: where else could Sex and the City take place but in Manhattan? I just read You or Someone Like You, by Chandler Burr, and Hollywood is as much a character in the story as any other. Take Diane Johnson’s Le Divorce, which is Paris through and through. But, this doesn’t make it any less universal, does it? In fact, I would argue this losing of yourself in this new land, this growing to know its customs so that you might guess what will happen next, is the true meat of these novels’ appeal.

Recently, with the worldwide sensation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series, not to mention that good old Master Potter franchise, and the ever more integrated world of digital publishing, I have to wonder—will the reading community become more international in its tastes? Not just adapting cultural phenomena after they’ve become blockbusters indigenously, but so that a writer in Indonesia can approach a publisher in New York and no one would bat an eye? I, for one, certainly think there’re only gains to be had from such a movement. I’d love to hear about your tastes and opinions on the topic. Do you like to read international books? Why or why not? Do you have any recommendations? A favorite book that has introduced you, or perhaps enticed you to visit its homeland?