Sigrid Nunez on Organic Prose
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Harman Writer-In-Residence Program, its current visiting author Sigrid Nunez read from her latest novel The Last of her Kind and commented on her writing style, which critics have described as unflinching and disconcerting.
In the voice of Georgette the novel’s narrator, Sigrid Nunez reads what sounds unmistakably like a journal entry. Few writers could accomplish the same meditative, staccato rhythm of Sigrid Nunez’ signature style. While Nunez’ writing is digressive as any thought process scribbled in a journal, there is no doubt that this master writer is in command. Each vignette and digression reveals another thread in a web of the narrator’s experiences. Reflections and raw confessions such as Georgette’s description of the bruise she gets from her mother as “oozing with the will to live” illuminate the world of a complex, sentient being in a way only a private letter can.
In her first novel A Feather on the Breathe of God as in The Last of her Kind, Nunez starts with a seemingly ordinary person overlooked by the world, but by endowing her characters with her own powers for observation and poetic language she molds them into powerful people with experiences worthy of being shared. For this reason, many students find it hard to believe that Nunez’ writing is not autobiographical. It appears unthinkable that a person could create such multidimensional, fragile characters without having lived their experiences. Yet, Nunez assured students that aside from the occasional borrowing of names and settings from her real life, her novels are fictional.
Still, students persisted in asking questions about the authenticity of her first novel. Nunez shot them down one after another crushing any suspicion that her work is an autobiography wrapped in fiction.While students failed to extract the confession they were perhaps hoping for, that evening’s reading and talkback did reveal a shred of the person behind the novel. Like her self-proclaimed organic writing style, Nunez is a plainspoken, unapologetic and intelligent person. Undoubtedly, she has a vast array of biting ideas, which she is sure to draw upon for her sixth novel that for the first time will feature a male protagonist.