In Nora Lange’s flash fiction, “Her Cousin Lena,” Rose records a long-distance phone call with her mother. Their exchange reveals a disconnect that, though often funny, describes the “love and horror” of a certain flavor of mother-daughter relationship. Haunting the conversation is the absent figure of Rose’s cousin, Lena, to whom the mother constantly compares her daughter, and who becomes the axis point of their unaddressed tensions. We chatted recently with Nora about her story and writing.
Clara Spars: Where do you begin when writing a story? Do you plan out a certain aspect of the story beforehand or do you write freely and see where it takes you?
Nora Lange: For me, not every story begins the same way. “Her Cousin Lena” began as a scene in a larger performance project called Dailyness. The result was essentially a collection of Oulipian-style conversations dealing in certain themes, like the body and deflection. A lot of my time as an undergraduate was spent in the sound department. I tend to “hear” a character’s voice first, roll with it, and then there’s revising.
CS: Speaking of being heard, surveillance seems to be a recurring theme in this story—Rose records her mother on the phone, she places herself in the public eye by putting out an advertisement, her mother demands that she “[engage] with the public in a less abstract manner.” Is there a specific message about the ideas of being a woman in the public eye that you are interested in?
NL: God, good question. Lately I’ve been thinking about proof as it pertains to existence; how often, when we feel unheard or unseen, we feel disconnected, out of body like a corpse. And suppose I was thinking if Rose could show her own existence to herself and to others—a signifier, print or recording, something indisputably real she could point to—she’d have proof and feel alive. The act of reinforcing herself, even if it “fails,” like it does when she speaks with her mother, could be freeing.
CS: You do such an excellent job of portraying the complexity of an adult mother-daughter relationship in writing—the balancing act of trying to gain the approval of a parental figure while trying to simultaneously stay true to oneself. Is motherhood or parenthood a theme in your work? Do you have any favorite mother-daughter duos in literature?
NL: I’m curious about family and secrecy—not even the secrets we keep from others, but the ones we keep from ourselves. I’m curious about what passes between people. While not always between mothers and daughters, I’ve certainly been drawn to what feels to me like more honest work exploring these subjects. Elena Ferrante comes to mind, Catherine Lacey’s The Answers, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, Leslie Jamison’s essay about stepmothers in the New York Times.
A good friend once said of being a mother to a seven-year-old, she loved her child and sometimes didn’t love her child. She said that’s what parenthood was: love and horror. It shook me in the very best way. I appreciate when people aren’t timid, especially women. The threat of being called “cold” can be a deterrent to speaking her mind.
CS: Which books and authors have influenced your work or are the most important to you?
NL: In terms of early influences I’d say Rachel Carson, Thomas Bernhard, Lydia Davis, Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, and so forth. Lately I’ve been reading Amina Cain, Joanna Walsh, Catherine Lacey, and Renee Gladman—anything and everything I can get my hands on.
CS: According to your website, you’re currently working on a project about the Argentine writer Norah Lange. You mention that you “share more than just a name with her.” What else do you have in common with this writer? What sort of project is it?
NL: I began researching and working on the Norah Lange project in graduate school, many moons ago. Lange was relegated as muse to Argentine Modernists like Borges and her husband Oliverio Girondo. The idea of the project was to access Lange, and through research to restore to her the artistic credit she deserves. She had a performative, mystical side. She’d hold gatherings (Discursos), which were sort of like language séances.
I was going to stage some of Lange’s Discursos as a way to reflect on my own life as a creative woman and write the experience as a kind of “Autobiography of Norah Lange by Nora Lange,” an ode to Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
I feel we’re spiritually linked; she was born Nora Lange and added the ‘h’ to her name in solidarity with Norah Borges. I hope to get back to work on the project soon.
CS: Your website also says that you’re in the process of writing your first novel, The Tryer.
NL: I’m currently revising the book from close third to first. I often struggle with being intimate with my work and I’m hoping first will get me closer. Every day I feel that that’s what I’m working toward—feeling present, locating flesh, pinpricks, a whisper that leaves spittle on your ear, and articulating those experiences.
And I feel I owe it to my characters. In this case, two precocious sisters growing up during the Midwestern farm crisis of the ’80s that wish to dominate their own narrative—not be slapped with a story and be expected to live it. In 1985, in their attic space, that’s exactly what the sisters set out to do. As Joanne and Bernadette would say: To consider the onslaught of information surrounding them, like the rising rate of suicide among farmers and the growing popularity of the sweater vest.
CS: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received (with regard to writing or otherwise)?
NL: Advice is tricky. That said, I’ll end on this: You Are Not Crazy.
Nora Lange‘s writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, The Fairy Tale Review, The Morning News, Juked, LIT, Hobart, HTMLGIANT, Birkensnake, The Hairpin, Two Serious Ladies, and elsewhere. Lange received her MFA from Brown University’s Literary Arts Program where she was a Kaplan Fellow. She is currently hard at work revising her first novel. Find her at noralange.com.