Plains TalkAn interview with Kathleen Norris
Plains Talk
Best-selling author Kathleen Norris spent a quarter century living in western South Dakota. During her April visit to campus, Classic staff asked her about the places and people that influence her writing.
Classic: Not many writers leave New York City for the Great Plains. Why did you and your husband [poet David Dwyer] move from the Big Apple to Lemmon, S.D.?
Kathleen Norris: I grew up in Honolulu and had been on the East Coast for about 10 years—college and then I worked in arts administration in New York City, where I met David. My grandparents had recently died, and my mom didn’t know what to do with their house and things in Lemmon. The rational thing would have been to sell everything at an auction and then just move on as a family, but she didn’t want to do that. So I had this perverse idea: I said we’d go out there and live in my grandparents’ house and take care of things awhile. “Awhile” turned out to be 25 years.
Classic: How did David respond to your idea?
Norris: The poor guy was in love, and he had this sense of adventure. It was part of the world he’d never been to, and he liked to go places he’d never been. I had to assure him it wouldn’t be flat because he said he didn’t think he could bear living on a flat landscape. I said, “Oh no, this is much more interesting.” And it turned out he just fell in love with it.
Classic: What insights are available to people who live in barren spaces?
Norris: If you call it barren, it just means you don’t understand it—because, of course, the people who live there don’t see those spaces as barren. They see potential and life there, from grasses to animals. Sure it’s bare in the sense that it’s not developed with highways, buildings and the stuff people cling to as signs of human civilization. You ask, “Where’s the human touch?” Well, you’re it. Open spaces throw you back on yourself. That’s why people have a strong response when they get out there. Some say, “Yes! I love this.” And others—who rely on being distracted from themselves—can hardly wait to get out of there. The prairies, in particular, seem to provoke a love-hate response. And if you love it, it never leaves you. I live most of the time in Honolulu now, but I dream about the prairie.
Classic: Urban dwellers might accuse people in small towns of being provincial. Are they?
Norris: Sure. But urban dwellers can be very provincial too. Provincialism is a human condition. You notice it more in small towns because you know so much more about the community and its people. People complain about the lack of anonymity in a small town, but David and I enjoyed that—the idea that I could walk into the drugstore and know the person behind the counter: I know who her parents and grandparents are—why she left her husband and that her son rodeos. One of the things I find disorienting about urban life is I go to the same grocery store in Honolulu all the time and even though I recognize the clerks by sight and we have nice little exchanges about what I’m buying, I don’t really know them.
Classic: What is the future for plains communities like Lemmon?
Norris: A lot of people who were born and raised on the plains don’t want to leave. They love the land, even though it hasn’t always been good to them. Unfortunately, some are forced to leave because there are no jobs or they can’t farm or ranch the way their parents did. I recently read an article about a study done by one of the South Dakota universities that identified Perkins County, where Lemmon is, as a food desert. People in Perkins County might be 30 to 45 miles from a grocery store. Most people grow some of their own food, but in a drought or if you’re elderly, what access do you have to good nutrition? Not much.
Classic: You mostly live in Honolulu now—why did you leave Lemmon?
Norris: Like others, we didn’t leave by choice. David became critically ill, and we had to move near my family in Honolulu. We had to be close to a hospital because the closest specialized care to Lemmon is the hospital in Bismarck, 130 miles away. If David hadn’t gotten so sick, we’d still be happily living in Lemmon, I’m sure.
Classic: When is your next book coming out?
Norris: This fall. It’s called Acedia and Me: Marriage, Monks and a Writer’s Life. “Acedia” means not caring—or worse, not even caring that you don’t care. It leads you to hate the place you are and hate the people you’re with. It’s the temptation to walk away from commitments—to seek a different, illusory place that’s going to be perfect. I think that’s one of our big afflictions in contemporary life. We don’t like to make long-term commitments because they’re too much trouble. The traditional monastic way of dealing with acedia was to pray, meditate and stop fantasizing about leaving. Stick in your place.
Classic: How important is story to enabling one to embrace a place?
Norris: Life wouldn’t be worth living if you couldn’t tell stories about it. Story is the whole point. 