Alexandra Naughton of Oakland published three poetry chapbooks last year, and this week celebrates the release of her debut novel, American Mary. “I’m not writing right now,” she said, when asked i…
Writing, she said, “is my way of comprehending something. Like that’s how I … understand how I feel about things, or understand how other people feel about things, or understand why something happened.”
Compare that with an early line in American Mary: “We always write letters, it’s the only place we know how to hide.” This paradox is at the core of the book: There is an intimacy, or a desire for intimacy, that contains within it an expression of ambiguity.
“A confession and the truth are not the same thing,” Naughton writes. “A confession isn’t necessarily what happened, it’s a version of what happened.”
The book is written in vignettes that have been arranged to form a larger narrative and provide different angles to the story, changing tenses and senses of self; the overall effect is a feeling of being present while also being connected to those parts of yourself you may have discovered — or hidden — in some letters you once wrote.
Thanks to Evan Karp for doing this interview with me <3
