Q. You’ve written openly about your childhood trauma and “love” addiction. How do those themes evolve in this book?
Previously, I’ve written longer pieces on these subjects with straight-through narrative arcs. Here, in these flash essays, the form is shorter, more imagistic, and, at times, experimental. Additionally, as I’ve evolved as a writer, I see the past differently. Oh, you know, memories are fluid, always in flux. With intervening time and experience, I envision the past through different lenses.
For example, the opening line of this book reads, “My father sexually misloved me growing up, but that’s another story.” Then, this story or essay, in which this line appears, is actually about a magic show I attend where I’m selected to be the magician’s “assistant” for one of his tricks. While on stage, the narrator experiences a world that’s magical, and considers that maybe the magician can “abracadabra” her into another little girl, one who is safe. In short, the essay isn’t really about the narrator’s father. It’s about her obsession with this magician and his hoped-for magical powers. The short allusion to “misloved” provides context for how I now understand that particular memory.
Q. What was the most challenging part of writing your book?
The book is comprised of 71 brief essays. The challenge, then, was how to form all these essays into a whole, a collection that would be thematically congruent. After much trial and error, I arranged the book into three parts 1) Strange Entanglements, 2) How to and How Not, 3) Grieflets. I sorted through the essays figuring out which essay belonged in which section, while also focusing on how each essay still spoke to the overall theme or title of Selected Misdemeanors. That theme is, generally speaking, both a reckoning of past failures of judgment, as well as approaching—if not exactly achieving—some kind of forgiveness, both of myself and others.
Q. What type of reader will enjoy your book?
Anyone who has committed their own “misdemeanors” will, I hope, find some resonance with this essay collection. In my own case, I mean emotional misdemeanors, in that I’ve never served jail time or been dragged before a court of law! There were times when I skirted actual law, so potential readers who have stepped over that line will find themselves in empathetic company In other words, if you want to better understand your own emotional transgressions or missteps, reading about similar challenges others have faced, including mine, can help illuminate the reasons behind the various paths we all choose, or are forced to take. Women who have ever experienced an unfortunate relationship with a man will especially recognize the entanglements I describe in my essays.
Q. What does image symbolize in your work?
I don’t think in terms of symbolism in my writing. What I do think about is metaphor, which is more inclusive and, hopefully, more relatable for the reader. For example, that magician I mentioned is a metaphor for a kind of longing and escape.
Or, in another essay, “Emerald Isle,” crème de menthe is a metaphor for the ephemeralness of beauty. Here’s how the metaphor forms: The young narrator stands on the verandah of her home on St. Thomas spying on one of her parents’ fancy parties. The guests don’t interest her. Rather, the long-stemmed glasses of crème de menthe, do. But the crème de menthe is only a liqueur until, years later, I write about it, scrutinize it, slant the sensory imagery in such a way to determine its deeper or more universal meaning—the revelation that beauty is fleeting. “After the party I inhaled the glasses’ residue, which smelled cool as twilight rain on frangipani leaves. I savored it like memory…like when a tropical setting sun, in a flash, turns from sapphire yellow to emerald green.”
Q. What was your favorite experience while writing your book?
I loved the challenge of writing brief essays by conveying, through metaphor, particular, individual experiences that speak to readers in some communal way.
For example, on the cover of Selected Misdemeanors is an image of a goldfish, belly up. This goldfish, in the essay “Love Deferment,” is a metaphor (in the context of the essay) not just for physical death, but for betrayal in matters of love as well as the absence of love. In the essay itself, my unloving boyfriend is off at boot camp; I buy a goldfish for company; I betray my boyfriend by having an affair with his roommate. So, one of my misdemeanors is the relationship with the roommate. Additionally, when the roommate breaks up with me, I’m so distraught I forget to feed the goldfish. Who dies. Another of my misdemeanors. But this goldfish is a metaphor for me because he encapsulates more than just my misdemeanor of forgetting to feed him. The fish is a metaphor for the loss of love and how that can deplete and derail us.
It’s this search for the right metaphorical images that illuminate the theme of the essay at hand that I love.
Q. What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers after finishing your book?
That we all make mistakes, our individual misdemeanors. And, as I seek understanding about mine—my motivation, or the meaning behind the misdemeanor—that others will come to better understand their own. We are all different and yet the same—metaphor bridges that gap from self to world.
Q. Can you share an example, maybe the “skinned knee” moment?
Sure, in one of the essays, “Scratching the Surface,” I’m in kindergarten, and I fall while roller skating. I skin my knee. Now, at the time this happened, this skinned knee was only a skinned knee.
However, through the writing process, I came to understand the significance of this incident—why I’d been obsessed with this injury for decades. I learned that this was the first time I sensed there was more to me as a person than meets the eye. Looking at the scratch, and seeing beneath the surface of my skin, I arrived at the awareness that a whole universe lived inside me! And, by extension, there are, in fact, many unseen worlds in our magical and mysterious lives. Most of this magic originates in our interior, emotional selves—the most mysterious of all worlds.
Q. Tell us about your childhood obsession with Pat Boone.
Growing up, I was obsessed with this 1960s pop music idol known for his squeaky-clean wholesome image. I wanted him to adopt me. He already had four daughters and, really, would he even notice a fifth?! What I came to learn later, through the writing process, is that, to me, Pat Boone, the antithesis of my father, was a metaphor for a Perfect Father. A Safe Father.
Fast-forward a few decades to when I attended one of his Golden Oldies concerts. Afterward, I stalked him backstage, met him, and told him what he meant to me growing up. Subsequently, after I wrote about him, he invited me to “officially” meet him backstage after another concert. By then, he’d read a few of my books. I happened to be wearing a jacket with an embroidered flower on it. He pointed to it and told me that at home he had a photograph of a flower growing up through concrete, and that I reminded him of a flower growing up through concrete—referring to my childhood and how, subsequently, I’d overcome it by becoming a writer.
He really saw me in ways my own father never did. So, ironically, in a sense, he did become the father I always wanted. That only happened because I sat down at a keyboard and wrote. That’s always the first and hardest step for a writer—sit yourself down and put words on the page. Never judge that first draft. You can revise later.
Q. Why do you invite readers to hold these essays “at the mercy of the reader”? How do the emotional misdemeanors connect with them?
Well, by sharing my misdemeanors—by being open and honest about them—I am kind of throwing myself at the reader’s mercy: Can you read about my misdemeanors and not judge me too harshly? I’ve done the best job I can to write about my misdemeanors; now, it’s up to the reader to show me mercy or not. Of course, the whole title is meant rather ironically!
Q. What Are Your Plans for Future Writing Projects?
Ah, stay tuned! I’m not at liberty to reveal any additional misdemeanors at this time! Maybe I’m just being superstitious, but most writers are!
The essays in Selected Misdemeanors are unapologetic word grenades lobbed into an otherwise complacent forgetfulness. Throughout the collection, Sue William Silverman focuses on pivotal, often fleeting moments that defined the course of her life, such as a fraught family vacation; an evening watching the Chippendale dancers’ extravaganza; a Pac-Man-and-whisky-fueled rumination on failed relationships; and the way melodramatic movies such as Rome Adventure shape an adolescent’s idea of love. Ranging from short to flash to micro length, these emotionally courageous writings imbue minimalist forms with maximalist emotions and an unrepentant, no-holds-barred attitude. Each action explored in this collection produces the Butterfly Effect—seemingly quotidian events rippling into emotional tsunamis.
