Deborah Eisenberg’s Intensely Intimate Third

Just found a great Deborah Eisenberg interview with Ron Hogan of the blog Beatrice from 13 years ago. (I’d searched for “Deborah Eisenberg interviews” because she talks about writing like no one’s business, and because a terrific one in Tin House is print-only; more on that tk.) Here’s a snippet that touches on close third; emphasis mine:

RH: My favorite moments in these stories are those in which epiphanies would stereotypically occur, but your characters simply go on experiencing what they’ve been experiencing, doing what they’ve been doing, just the way we would in real life.

DE: That’s the issue as far as I’m concerned. What is an experience? What does it actually feel like? What is the consistency of that moment in the mind? What is actually occurring? What does it actually feel like? Not, how will I sum it up to myself, or how will I sum it up to the reader, but what is going in my nerve endings? What’s going on in this strange, sloshing organ that’s encased in my skull?

RH: In order to convey that, you avoid using an authorial voice that ‘explains’ a character’s thoughts or actions from outside. You stay as close to the characters and their reactions as possible.

DE: To me, in a way the implicit task is always, “What does it feel like to be a human being?” Whoever the character is, how far can I crawl into the mental processes of that character? It’s very rare that one says to oneself, “This is what’s happening, this is what this moment is. It means blah-blah…” That’s just not the experience of being alive, the experience of a moment.