Authors Interviewing Characters: Lee Upton
About Tabitha, Get Up:
Tabitha, Get Up is a comic novel about an ambitious but perpetually out-of-luck biographer trying to create her own story. In an effort to restore her self-respect and pay her rent, Tabitha leaps at the chance to write two biographies during the same summer: one about a stunningly handsome actor; the other about a popular writer of children’s books, the 21st century’s Beatrix Potter, who was recently outed as the author of outrageous erotic fiction with a fanatical cult following.
Lee Upton Interviews Tabitha:
The author and the character she created, Tabitha, meet at The Gradual Eatery & Café. Throughout their conversation they are never waited on.
Author: I have some questions for you.
Tabitha: I love questions! I love to ask questions! Actually I should be interviewing you. That’s what I do—I squeeze embarrassing information out of people—things they would never tell a living soul. It’s like people think I’m dead, and so it’s okay to tell me anything. But really I’d prefer to interview you. If you’re interesting. Maybe you’re not interesting? Maybe you could do something to become interesting? Like commit a crime?
Author: Tabitha, tell me: what is your deepest fear?
Tabitha: That’s the sort of question I ask people and they refuse to answer! You’re making me feel like a celebrity! I guess I should try to answer! My deepest fear: that someone catches me while I’m dancing alone in my apartment. Like maybe they’re watching me and I forgot to pull the curtains. That would tear my heart out to be seen like that. I wouldn’t be naked though. I never dance naked. That’s for celebrities.
Author: Aren’t you afraid of anything else?
Tabitha: Children who sing. My ex-husband was a choir director.
Author: That still doesn’t seem like—
Tabitha: You’re doing this so well—the way I do. Like you don’t accept the first answer or the second answer, like you basically distrust what I say. Like we’re all liars with advanced self-protective defensive systems. I’ll tell you what I like, okay?
Author: That would be great. What do you like?
Tabitha: I adore my nephew’s bar. You just walk in and right away you feel happy and warm and contented. You don’t even need to drink. It’s like you’re already drunk!
Author: When we first met you couldn’t pay your rent and had no job and no job prospects and no friends and were teetering on the edge of terrible and lasting self-loathing. What are your secrets for maintaining resilience?
Tabitha: This helps: I don’t make my bed anymore despite all that advice about how making your bed gives life meaning. I order discount chocolates online and make sure I don’t know when they’ll arrive so it’s like a gift out of the blue from an admirer. I volunteer to make sure our local water is clean and so that the cement factory doesn’t spew too many pellets that pock our cars. I help my nephew at his bar even though I hate when people hand over wet dollar bills. I go to a therapist and argue with her or weep inside my heart. Should I go on?
Author: Yes.
Tabitha: What else can I tell you? I help others by making sure people know that every woman looks better after a divorce. But why do you care about me? I don’t understand!
Author: It’s because I love you. I’ve loved you ever since I heard your voice in my head and knew you were the loneliest voice I’d ever heard. You were lonely, kind, loyal, and desperate.
Tabitha: I’m not desperate. I have skills. I once took a class in flower arranging. I didn’t drop out because I’m sensitive to beauty. Especially male beauty. Raw male beauty. I love it! And I’m not alone in that feeling! And not desperate! And full of admiration for others!
Author: Great—
Tabitha: For instance, I really admire women who flout cultural conceptions about their own worth as they pass the age of thirty-five! Guess what happened to me within the space of one week? On cable I came across two movies about fifty-year-old women! So rare! I tuned in to the ending of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, when a fifty-year-old actress is so addled by cultural constraints placed upon actresses her age that she invites a stranger into her apartment to murder her. Okay, that’s bad enough. But I was prepared. I’d seen the movie before. I wasn’t prepared for Mr. Skeffington. In the movie Bette Davis, after a bout of diphtheria and turning fifty, goes to a therapist who belittles her presumption that she might still be desirable. In the worst scene she invites her old admirers to a dinner party. They gasp when they see her. Granted, Bette Davis is wearing too much makeup and her skin looks oddly white but my god it’s Bette Davis.
And then in a later scene a little curl from her wig falls to the floor and this guy could not be more repulsed if a flaming rat jumped out of her head. Only in the end when her husband returns is she accepted again—because he’s gone blind and can’t see he’s married to a fifty-year-old woman. I will always combat stupid stuff said about women. I will not bow to cultural constraints that refuse to honor our needs and desires at any age!
Author: You’re fifty, aren’t you?
Tabitha: Yes! And I have power over younger people! If they insult me I just imagine their intestines are full of worms.…I have to go. I’m so sorry. It’s my mother. She never stops texting. There’s a squirrel infestation in her house. I have to pretend to care when I’m really on the squirrels’ side. Although I adore my mother. Her self-confidence is STEEL!
Author: I almost feel like I understand you.
Tabitha: Well, you don’t. Goodbye and good luck. Maybe we’ll meet again.
Author: That would be wonderful.
Tabitha: You’re saying that to get rid of me.
Author: Never, Tabitha.
BUY HERE
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Lee Upton’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, and in many other journals as well as three editions of Best American Poetry. She is the author of books of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism.
Lee Upton’s website and Facebook: www.leeupton.com
https://www.facebook.com/uptonlee/
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing
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