12 November 2010
2 hours, 1 minute, 27 seconds
Ireland House Oral History Collection, Archives of Irish America, New York University
Alice McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953. She was raised in the suburban community of Elmont, Long Island, New York. She graduated from St. Boniface grammar school in 1967 and Sacred Heart Academy in Hampstead, New York in 1971. She received her BA from The State University of New York (Oswego) in 1975 and her MA from the University of New Hampshire in 1978.
She has written a number of novels starting with 1983's A Bigamist's Daughter. That was followed by 1987's That Night, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Price. 1992's At Weddings and Wakes was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize as well as her first novel to be a New York Times bestseller. That was followed by 1998's Charming Billy which won the National Book Award for fiction. Her most recent works are 2002's Child of My Heart: A Novel and 2006's Pulitzer Prize finalist After This. She has also written extensively for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. Her articles range from personal essays to book reviews.
She is currently the Richard A. Macksey Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In the past she has taught at University of California San Diego, American University, Lynchburg (VA) College and Hollins College in Virginia. She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and three children.
Admiration of Josephite nunsDisc 1, Track 3, 1:25-2:31
Transcription of Excerpt No. 1
Maybe even the majority of them failed in some way, maybe they lost that initial ambition, or they were overwhelmed more than likely over worked and overwhelmed and became bitter. But it started with, their vocation started with, something remarkable, that they had the wherewithal and the determination to do that. And I think that's the part that's not recognized. You know, so they beat kids and they said stupid things and they probably drove more people out of the Church then brought them in, many of them, and many who were just the opposite. But even for the worst of them, you know, even for the craziest of nuns who popular culture loves to make use of, somewhere there was that initial tremendous calling or ambition, and the belief that they could do it. Whether they did or not, somewhere in their careers they had the confidence to say, "I can give my life, my whole life to this." That's a remarkable thing.
When I know I was going to be a writerDisc 1, Track 3, 4:54-7:58
Transcription of Excerpt No. 2
So I was at the beginning of my sophomore year, and again, I loved to write. I always wrote, I wrote little skits, I wrote a novel when I was 12 or 13 on loose leaf paper. And I read constantly. So I took a course that was called The Nature of Nonfiction thinking that nonfiction was kind of close to journalism and journalism is something that sort of sounds like a career. Because writing fiction just seemed ridiculous, you know, Henry James is dead, Faulkner is dead, you have absolutely nothing in common with either of them. So, you know, you could write for Carol Burnett but you are never going to be Eugene O'Neill. So the first assignment was to write a brief autobiographical essay. So I go back to my dorm room and I write a brief autobiographical essay, except that none of it ever happened. It was all made up. I mean I used first person, it was "as if" I had but I just didn't put the "as if" part I just said, "I have." We had a wonderful teacher; his name is Dr. Paul Briond. He was a retired air force colonel and a journalist. He had written a biography of Amelia Earhart, a biography of Nora Final, just a wonderful teacher. In those days, he didn't like what he called "dirty purple," which was mimeographed sheets, which was how you did a writing workshop in those days. And so, he would take your writing and put in on an overhead projector. The class was in a big, modern for the time, lecture hall. And he would just put your words up on this huge screen. And the lights are dim in the audience, which is the class, and he's just down there with your words glowing behind him and he would correct right there in real time on the overhead projector. Read it fresh for the first time, and then correct. So, you know, an effective way to get a young writer to think about words, and shapes of sentences, and whether you put a comma or a semicolon because he was up there. So he did my little autobiographical never happened piece, and he talked about it, you know, put in the commas I should have put in or took out the ones I shouldn't have put in. And when he was finished he said, "McDermott, I want to talk to you after class." And I'm thinking, he's going to say, "nature of NON-FICTION" and you know clearly... So I go trotting down and he looks up at me and says, "Well, I have bad news for you kid, you're a writer, and you'll never shake it."
Respect to SilenceDisc 1, Track 7, 6:26-7:34
Transcription of Excerpt No. 3
But I think, it also sort of gives respect to silence, that I think that those of us who are living don't fully appreciate the way we should. That everything shouldn't be defined, and that sense of the un-sayable. And sometimes it's un-sayable because it's unsavory. Then we have the whole priest abuse scandal and that's another kind of un-sayable. But also, that in some ways, to speak of it, or even try to define it with language, in some way limits it. You know, diminishes it, exactly. Again, you know, that sense of "this happened to me" or "this happened to him" and he is like no one else and I am like no one else, so my experience cannot be part of that great basket of what it's like to have this happen to you.
- Michael Stallmeyer
- Linda Dowling Almeida
- Alice McDermott. Photo courtesy of www.ew.com