Francine Prose published her first novel in 1973 at the age of 26. She graduated from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachussetts in 1968. Then, according to her bio on the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website — she was awarded that prize in 2006 for her 12th novel, A Changed Man — Prose spent a year in India and it was there and then she began that first novel, Judah the Pious.
Over the years since, she’s published 22 more novels — including four for young adults — and at least 10 works of nonfiction. Her 2000 novel Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award.
From 2007 to 2009, Ms. Prose served as the President of PEN America, an organization dedicated to defending free expression. She’s also been an educator, from prestigious creative writing programs including The Iowa Writers’ Workshop to her more than two decades at Bard College, where she now serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence.
Her brand-new novel, Five Weeks in the Country, taps into historical fact to weave a fascinating account of two geniuses of world renown who really did cross paths in the 19th century about 30 miles east of London, and who really did completely fail to get along.
In June of 1857 Hans Christian Anderson — known for his works including The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, and The Ugly Duckling among countless others — travelled to Charles Dickens’ country home, called Gad’s Hill Place, at Dickens’ invitation, and stayed with him and his wife and nine children (and their servants and two large dogs) for five weeks. Francie Prose’s novel explores that coincidence of literary greats, we chat with her about it.
Guest:
Francine Prose, author of Five Weeks in the County, her most recent book among many works of fiction and nonfiction.
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.
—
Transcript created with Copilot. Please forgive any spelling errors or mistranslations.
Mike Kiniry
From WGCU, this is the Gulf Coast Life Book Club. I'm Mike Kniery, and today for Carrie Barber, thanks for joining us. Francine Prose published her first novel in 1973 at the age of 26. She graduated from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1968. Then according to her bio on the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website, she was awarded that prize in 2006 for her 12th novel, A Changed Man. Prose spent a year in India, and it was there that she began that first novel, Judah the Pious. Over the years since, she's published 23 novels, including four for young adults and at least nine works of nonfiction. Her 2000 novel, Blue Angel, was a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2007 to 2009, Ms. Prose served as the president of PEN America, an organization dedicated to defending free expression. She's also been an educator, from creative writing programs including the Iowa Writers Workshop to her more than two decades at Bard College, where she now serves as distinguished writer-in-residence. Her brand new novel, Five Days in the Country, taps into historical fact to weave a fascinating account of two geniuses of world renown who really did cross paths in the 19th century, about 30 miles east of London, and who really did completely fail to get along. In June of 1857, Hans Christian Andersen, known for his works including The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes and the Ugly Duckling, among countless others, traveled to Charles Dickens' country home called Gad's Hill Place at Dickens' invitation and stayed with him and his wife and nine children and their servants and two large dogs for five weeks. Francine Prose's novel explores that coincidence of literary greats. I spoke with her from her home a few weeks ago. Let's hear that now. Francine Prose, welcome to the show. It's great to talk to you today.
Francine Prose
Oh, thanks, Mike. Thank you very much.
Mike Kiniry
So before we get into your new novel, which I enjoyed, by the way, I want to talk a bit about your time at Bard College. What does the role of distinguished writer in residence entail for you there? It seems like you've been there at Bard one way or another for about 25 years, and you've been in that role for about 20 years. But what does that role mean for you these days?
Francine Prose
Well, I teach a literature class. I teach in the fall, and then in the springtime I help seniors with their senior projects. But I teach a different class every year, which is fun. I mean, it keeps me, I mean, it's a million times more work for me, but it keeps me alive and I'm not doing the same thing. So for example, this past fall, I taught a class called eccentricity. So, you know, I mean, given the nature of Bard, it was like a kind of bubble within a bubble. And also the class kind of self-selected. So we did a whole range of works from Shirley Jackson and Jane Bowles and Roberto Bolano. And this coming fall, it's a class called Ghost Stories. So we're doing ghost stories from all over the world. I mean, obviously, The Turn of the Screw, Macbeth, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Pedro Paramo. So just to talk about the relation between the living and the dead and what ghost stories have to tell us about it.
Mike Kiniry
Very cool. I think I would enjoy an eccentricity class with you at Bard College. That sounds great. So let's talk about 5 weeks in the country. So it came across my desk in a period of what I might call a high-frequency Dickens exposure. I've just been, for whatever reason, Dickens is coming up in my life a ton lately. So I was like, I'm going to read this and talk to you. What was the kernel for this story? And I don't mean the historic nature of their visit, but what drew you to it as a story to work on?
Francine Prose
Well, just the idea that these two geniuses, 2 astonishing great writers, were in the same space for five weeks, five kind of miserable weeks. And they were, as I said, great writers, but of a very different sort, very different sorts of writing, very different personalities. and conflicting personalities, really. And one, Dickens, of course, had this huge family of which he was getting more tired by the day. And Anderson was very much a loner who wished he had a family and had some sort of fantasy that he would be adopted by the Dickens family as their long-lost son. And that was never, or a brother or whatever, and that was never going to happen. So really the idea of the emerging conflict, I guess, but also the complication, really, of those five weeks and that visit and what it would be like to try and really imagine myself into that house for that period during the summer.
Mike Kiniry
How much documentation is there of what happened? I know the sort of the bones of it are out there, but, you know, are there any, you know, how much of what you have in the narrative was entirely made from whole cloth and how much of it is documented somewhere?
Francine Prose
Of course, there's a zillion Dickens biographies, and there's several Anderson biographies that have been translated into English. And then there's a very small volume of their letters between the two men, also translated into English. But, you know, again, as so often happens with these things, some of the most, let's say, unbelievable things are the things that actually happened. I mean, for example, there's this horrible moment. Mrs. Dickens, Catherine Dickens, who was born him, 12 children, of which nine have survived, is by now sort of confined her bed where she mostly kind of lies there weeping and eating sweets. And one of the tiny incidents in the novel is she finally makes herself come down to lunch, you know, sort of formal Victorian family lunch, and loses her ring in the soup. And it's just this, horrible, horrible family drama and the servants are called to help her and so forth. And then the fact that Anderson was terrified of dogs and Dickens had two, at least two gigantic dogs. And also Anderson was sort of in the habit of passing out in Dickens' presence. So those things are real.
Mike Kiniry
I was going to ask about the dogs, so I'm glad you confirmed that about the dogs. I know you had written about Dickens before, so I assumed you had some baseline understanding of his ins and outs. What about Hans Christian Andersen? Did you have to do more research into his side of that story?
Francine Prose
I did, I did. But he, Anderson had this habit or talent, among his gifts, was that he, when he would be telling these stories, often aloud to children, usually back in Denmark, he would make these extremely elaborate paper cuttings. I mean, you know, like paper angels, except angels and demons and trees and palm trees and, you know. And years ago, a friend of mine curated an exhibition of Anderson's paper cuttings and I think William Burroughs's collages together. A strange combination, but it worked for the show. So, and I wrote the preface for the catalog. So to write that, I had to kind of look into Anderson and his life, but also his work. I mean, I grew up reading those fairy tales and, well, one of the art classes actually I taught twice at Bard was a strange books class. And in both classes, I taught Anderson's The Snow Queen, which is truly one of the strangest stories ever written.
Mike Kiniry
In the story, you craft a way that they meet, and then years later, Charles Dickens invites him for sort of a strange reason. Is any of that factual, or is that all made-up?
Francine Prose
No, they did meet at a dinner party in London. The part that I made-up was that they both got so drunk that they were under the illusion that they could communicate. Actually, Anderson, I mean, yeah, Anderson didn't speak English, but it's happened to me where if you drink enough, you think you can speak a language that you can't actually speak. So they had this kind of friendship that was forged or something that was forged. The way I sort of played around with history was, in fact, in the 10 years, about halfway through the 10 years, between their meeting and Anderson's trip to visit Dickens in the country, he had actually visited the family once before in the seaside in England, and the visit had kind of gone okay. But then this last one was actually the second one, and it really did not go okay.
Mike Kiniry
Yeah, to say the least. So I got to the end, so it's broken up, the first section's the children, the second section's the father, the third section's, I forget what it's called, but it's the Hans Christian Andersen section. I got to the end of the second section, and I immediately went back and started the first section again and read it a second time, now having Charles Dickens' perspective, if you will. Have you heard that from any readers? Did you expect that from readers, or is that just my approach to reading?
Francine Prose
That's what I had to do, for sure. I mean, really the hardest thing about writing the book was that, for one thing, nobody understands what's going on with anyone else. I mean, that is Dickens has lost, I mean, the children know that Dickens is no longer interested in the family and in them. What they don't know, which becomes clear in Dickens' section, is that he's fallen in love. again, historically, with a young actress, Ellen Turner, who was 18 and he was well into middle age by then. Again, another sort of variation of history was that the love affair didn't happen until Anderson had left the family, but I just pushed it back a while to make it work better for the novel. But anyway, so no one knows what's going on in anyone else's mind, but certain things happen in all three sections because certain things happened. I mean, for example, there's an early on, the vicar comes to lunch and it's kind of a social disaster for everyone. But the children see it one way and Dickens sees it another way and Andrew sees it a completely other way. So the hard thing for me in writing it was to keep straight like what actually happened, like who said things and who did things. and then put the three completely variant perspectives in to make it look differently from everyone's point of view.
Mike Kiniry
Neat thing for me as a reader was after having spent so many pages with... Hans Christian Andersen as just a character in the other narratives who, because he didn't speak English very well, seemed to be always sort of befuddled. And when you get to his section and suddenly his language is so clear, and you get to start to see things from his perspective and his approach to the world and his genius starts to emerge, and it kind of releases a bunch of dissonance, which I found very enjoyable.
Francine Prose
Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, he was a heartbreaking character and an interesting character to try and write about. he was incredibly self-conscious. I mean, I think now he would be considered a neurodivergent, I guess. But that diagnosis was not available at that point. So he just didn't, all he knew was that he was, he didn't seem to fit in really anywhere he went.
Mike Kiniry
One of the things that I like about reading books these days is like when you first bring up at the beginning that it takes place at Dickens Country Home, Gad's, what's it called?
Francine Prose
Gad's Hill.
Mike Kiniry
Gad's Hill. You know, I'm able to just immediately Google Gad's Hill and I can see it. And I'm wondering, as a writer, because I do that all the time now, especially with non-fiction books, you know, I will go off on little tangents from a paper book in my hands into the internet to give me context. As a writer, do you think about readers doing that, or is that just something that happens downstream from what you're doing?
Francine Prose
I can't imagine them not doing that. I mean, part of the fun of writing is just going down, I mean, I have to say it, is just going down these internet rabbit holes, you know, just that will take an entire day or two days out of your life just seeing, you know, for example, once I started looking at pictures of Anderson, I honestly had no idea how homely he was. I mean, I sort of knew he wasn't the most handsome guy in the world. But when I, so then I started looking for all these pictures and pictures of, and then pictures of Dickens and his family and pictures of, as you say, the house in Gads Hill, which has now been turned into a kind of boarding school, I think, and a lot of the older features have been removed. But yeah, I mean, those things are fun.
Mike Kiniry
So there's a comet in your story. Another thing I immediately Googled, there was a very notable comet in 1858. Is that the one that you merged into this story that took place in 1857?
Francine Prose
Yeah, no, there was some bogus prediction, of course, I mean, it turned out not to be true, that a comet was going to strike the planet Earth around that time and just destroy everything. And the original title of the book was The Comet. And it was really going to start with Dickens trying to explain to his family that was not going to happen, because Dickens being the scientist had every reason to disprove this absurd theory. And Anderson being a neurotic had every reason to be terrified by it. So that was sort of part of the disparity between the two men that I was thinking about. But I think I say in the afterword that I just stole the plot or, the atmosphere of the Lars von Trier film, Melancholia, where, you know, which is... comets supposed to strike the earth. And I think Kirsten Dunst is like lying in the grass waiting for the comet to hit so she doesn't have to get married. So that was kind of, I mean, that was always the image in my head. And that's why when we were working on the cover, of the novel, I said, oh, the comet has to be there. The comet is, for me, such an important part of the book.
Mike Kiniry
And I Googled, apparently Hans Christian Andersen was big into astronomy and that comets had been a part of his sort of mental state since he was a kid anyway. Was that consciously done on your part or not?
Francine Prose
Yeah, he saw a comet as a kid. I mean, there was a comet over in Denmark as a kid. For some reason, I've come to think there were more common, I mean, I saw The summer, one of the summers I was working on the book, I saw a comet. There was a comet over the Hudson River. And we were driving. I was with my husband and grandkids in the car. And we saw this comet. And I knew that there was a comet around. And I said, look, it's a comet. And everybody's going, oh, no, it's the contrail, you know, from a plane. And I'm going like, Let's pull over her. And it stayed there. It was the comment and you could see it in the evening. So yeah, it was figured heavily into what my conception for the novel would be.
Mike Kiniry
How long have you been with your current editor?
Francine Prose
My current editor? This is the first book I've done with her.
Mike Kiniry
Oh, oh, oh, oh, that's, that Google did not tell me that. what I was going to ask, and it won't be applicable to this story, but when you work with an editor for a long time, because I know you have worked with a couple editors for a long time, do they become present in your writing process? Does that make sense?
Francine Prose
I mean, there have been, and I have. This particular editor, Noah Eker, who I keep crediting with writing the end of my novel, although he says he didn't do it, but he's an amazing, amazing editor. And when I sent him what I thought was kind of close to the final draft of the novel, he said, I think it just needs one more turn. Because my original plan was to end the novel with the fairy tale that Hans Christian Andersen writes at the end of the novel that incorporates many of the like unpleasant, awkward things that have happened to him in the Dickens home. And he turns them into this kind of beautiful, wondrous fairy tale. And because my idea was, you know, part of what I was writing about was the way in which daily life is transformed into art, and also about the sort of redemptive quality that you can take something, unpleasant that happened and make a work of art out of it. And Noah said, I think it needs just one more turn. And I said, well, I have no idea. And he said, what about the letters? What about just some more, just a couple more letters? And then I thought of one more letter from Catherine Dickens to Anderson, in which she kind of catches him up on what's happened since the rest of the novel is over. But also it ends with, I mean, the only Dickens child, the kids just can't stand Anderson. I mean, they know something's wrong in their family and they don't know what it is. And suddenly they have this awkward house guests overstaying, overstaying, overstaying. But the only child who's nice to Anderson is the youngest, whose real name was Edward, who's called Baby in the novel. And at the very end, Catherine Dickens says to Anderson, and by the way, baby no longer wants to be called baby. His name's Edward. And for me, that was kind of emotionally wrenching because, you know, one of the hardest things about having kids is they grow up and they don't want to be called baby anymore. So it did add this whole other dimension to the book. And As I said, I keep thanking my editor and he keeps claiming he didn't do it, but I think he did.
Mike Kiniry
That reminded me of a quote that I pulled from toward the end of the book. Hans Christian Andersen thinks to himself how lucky I was to live with a family that had given me the childhood I never had. And I thought that kind of crystallized it all in terms of, you know, as you alluded to earlier, he had a very, he was a very much a loner in terms of his way he lived his life. And despite the awkwardness between them. He still was hoping, even after leaving, that they could fill that role for him somehow.
Francine Prose
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that Dickens and Anderson had in common, and it was one of the kind of suppressed things, was the fact of their childhood. I mean, both of them had come from extreme poverty. And of course, Dickens had grown up in the debtor's prison and then worked in the shoe polish factory, basically. And Anderson was a cobbler son. And Dickens kept that whole early life a secret. Anderson didn't like to talk about it either. So Dickens was kind of constantly afraid in the novel, and I think in life, that something about him would tip off Anderson to who he really was and where he came from. So they share this desire to keep their past hidden.
Mike Kiniry
We've only got a few minutes left, but I have to ask, because you used to be president of the Pan American Center. We here in Florida have the dubious distinction of leading the country in book bans and public schools and libraries. What are your thoughts on this turn that we've taken in recent years when it comes to expression?
Francine Prose
Well, you know, I am completely with Penn on this. I mean, I believe that kids should be able to read more or less what they want to, and it should be the decisions of the librarians who are very well informed. I mean, librarians are heroes and they're teachers, and that somehow the idea that kids can't read about certain things, I mean, you know, gender issues and race and so forth and so on, they're gonna find out about it anyway. So it just means that they don't have a kind of mediated or literary or complicated way of learning about something, which believe me, they're gonna find from the internet, which is a much worse way of getting information.
Mike Kiniry
I've been thinking a lot lately because I know that the number of people who in this country who read novels every year has dropped over the years and attention spans are getting shorter. I think that's documentable at this point. And you know, what you get from reading fiction is helping you craft the ability to have a theory of mind where you can empathize your way into other people's thinking. And I feel like book bans included, that's all leading to just a decline of us being good at being humans. It's very disheartening to me.
Francine Prose
Boy, are you right. I mean, I love that you used the word empathize. I mean, you know, one thing that fiction can do or reading can do, it's the one way I think you have of really getting into the consciousness of another human being, into another consciousness. I mean, you can really see the world through the eyes of somebody else. That's what happens when you read a novel. And I think you're so right. I mean, I think it makes you more human. I think it makes you more compassionate. I think the ability to walk in someone else's shoes, as they say, or whatever, is so essential to living in this world and having pity and mercy and all the things that we would like to have. And I don't think there's anything else that can quite do that for you the way that reading a book can.
Mike Kiniry
I'm sure you've been asked a million times what your writing process is like. I want to know what your reading process is like. What do you read? How do you read it? Do you listen to audiobooks? How do you read these days, Francine?
Francine Prose
I would listen to audiobooks, but I'm mostly, when I'm in the car, I don't drive. I mean, it's strange that I live in the country, but so my husband's driving and he doesn't like listening to audiobooks. So I basically don't. I read books as books, book books. But in the middle of the night, I read with an e-reader because it keeps, it doesn't keep everybody awake and so forth. So I go back and forth. I mean, if I have my choice. Also, I have like an insane number of books. I don't know what's going to happen to this, you know, library I have, but I probably have, I don't know, 7 rooms that are just full of books. I mean, I have one room where I just kind of I mean, the family joke is that I throw some books in there and close the door, but that's actually what happens. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of my life. And I never, I'm always curious and happy when I get some book in the mail just to see what it is and see if I might like it.
Mike Kiniry
What are you working on next, or are you working on anything next, or are you working on multiple things next?
Francine Prose
I just finished an almost complete draft, and my editor has it now. I'm doing a non-fiction book about Macbeth, and it's partly about my obsession with Macbeth. And it's sort of a combination of fun facts and history, literary history, and close reading of the play. I mean, it begins, you know, there's that superstition that if you say the word Macbeth in a theater, something bad will happen. So the book begins essentially with like 4 pages of nightmare horrors that have happened in theaters during performances Macbeth, including, I mean, the most recent was the theory that went on the internet that the reason that Chris Rock got slapped by Will Smith during the Oscars was not because he joked about Smith's wife, but because he congratulated Denzel Washington on his performance of Macbeth in the Cohen edition of the version of Macbeth, hence the horrible misfortune. So, you know, it's how the play got written, King James, who it was written for, and then going through it kind of line by line. to look at what a masterpiece it is and then why I've been obsessed with it since I was a kid.
Mike Kiniry
Fascinating. Well, Francine, unfortunately, that is the end of the time we have available. Francine Prose is an acclaimed novelist and distinguished writer in residence at Bard College. Her latest novel is Five Weeks in the Country. It came out a few weeks ago. Thank you so much for your time, Francine. I've enjoyed it.
Francine Prose
Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure.
Transcript created with Copilot. Please forgive any spelling errors or mistranslations.