Current Issue
July 2008

Check Out

Our Store

Send Page To a Friend

Alther Writes It: Hot and Steamy

by Katharine Hikel

photos by Sue Gillis

Lisa Alther is among the vanguard of those who put sex back in literature, where it belongs: Rita Mae Brown, Erica Jong, even Philip Roth -- wonderful American authors who did groundbreaking work in writing about love and sex. Ms. Alther's best-selling first book Kinflicks came out in 1975, followed by four other popular novels. Vermont Woman visited with the novelist at her Vermont home -- here are excerpts from our tete a tete:

Vermont Woman

How do you as an author approach lovemaking and sexuality in your books -- did other writers inspire you? Were there any favorite sexy scenes in books that you recall?

Lisa Alther

Well, we were all reading Peyton Place, and The Group by Mary McCarthy.

Vermont Woman

Didn't The Group contain one of the first lesbian love scenes in literature?

Lisa Alther

Rita Mae Brown’s was the first I remember. Rubyfruit Jungle was published by June Arnold, here in Vermont, at Sisters Press, before I published Kinflicks. What I remember about that book is how hilarious it was.

I can't think of anything sexy that I was reading when I was growing up; I didn't even know what sexuality was, much less finding anything to read about it.

Vermont Woman

You started writing when you were at Wellesley College; you wrote and wrote and wrote, and weren't published for fifteen years, and collected lots of rejection slips. Then you wrote Kinflicks. Were you cautious about your writing before then, and did you worry about what your family, friends, and neighbors might think?

Lisa Alther

I had been writing for fourteen years and nobody had wanted to publish anything. I assumed that Kinflicks wouldn't be published either, so I could say whatever I wanted to say. Then I sent it out, the way I sent all my stuff out, expecting to get it back; then when I didn't get it back, it didn't occur to me to be concerned. By that time, I'd done five or six drafts, and although I might have started with some real people, they had transformed themselves into their own characters, so that nobody would recognize them.

The funny thing was that I had people contact me that I didn't even know, saying that I had based Ginny Babcock [the flag-swinging, football-playing, bisexual heroine] on them. I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to think that I had based Ginny Babcock on them. She really was made up. Some of the other characters were composites, where I'd take five or six people, and use somebody's car, and somebody else's nose, and mush them all together, but she was a wish fulfillment for me.

When I was in high school, I spent years trying to learn flag-swinging -- it's a thing they have in the South, at football games, which are huge, and the whole town comes to them.

And there are very elaborate marching bands, with unbelievable routines that they do; they have majorettes; and they also have flag-swingers. There's a brightly-colored flag, about three feet long, on a short pole with a ball on the end, and you swing it around in this routine, marching at the same time -- kind of like rubbing your head and patting your stomach at the same time. I can really do it quite well.

Vermont Woman

We would love to see you do that.

Lisa Alther

I bet you would -- but you never will!

Vermont Woman

When Kinflicks -- with all of its terrific, funny, sexy love scenes -- came out, what kind of response did you get from your family?

Lisa Alther

My mother was an English teacher, so she read it on that basis, and appreciated the writing. My father loves money, so when he found out how much I'd made, he was fine about it, although he did say, “I ought to take you out to the woodshed!”

My grandmother was the one who was least pleased. She's a very proper lady, and in the South, people don't criticize each other. The way she did it was, we were talking one day, and she said, “You know your daddy's a wonderful man?” and I said, “Yes, ma'am, he is,” and she said, “He never had a bad word to say about you.”

Vermont Woman

Men have always written about sex from the woman's point of view. What about your writing sex scenes from the man's point of view?

Lisa Alther

A Gestalt therapist would say that everybody has all the elements -- male and female -- within them. And I have three brothers, so it's not hard to imagine.

Vermont Woman

One of our favorite passages in Other Women is: “I felt the walls of her vagina turn from velvet to corduroy.” You are so delightfully at ease writing about anatomy; did you have any medical training?

Lisa Alther

My grandfather was a country doctor, who kept a stable of horses and drove around to people's houses; my father is a surgeon; my three siblings are all doctors, and I was supposed to be one. My father would discuss his cases in detail at the dinner table; we heard all the words: ‘uterus’, ‘vagina’, ‘penis’; so everybody in my family was comfortable with that level of discussion, and it all seemed very familiar and natural.

We lived on a farm, where there was a lot of sexual activity among the animals; I remember when we were little, watching the horses mating, and laughing. And the chickens, and the pigs, and the dogs... it was all a natural part of the way things were.

Vermont Woman

In the early '80s, living in Hinesburg, was there any problem writing sex scenes -- hetero, or lesbian -- then going to a PTA meeting?

Lisa Alther

You don't set out to write sex scenes; they arise from the characters. And they aren't necessarily autobiographical. Often as not, I'd get the idea from the National Enquirer, or from friends' stories -- or I just made 'em up.

You can't control the reactions of other people. You can try to keep your personal life separate.

Vermont Woman

In the '80's, after Other Women came out, and you were becoming more and more identified as a feminist-lesbian writer -- how did you come to terms with that?

Lisa Alther

It always came up in interviews; I didn't worry about it. I always tried to protect my daughter, and keep our personal life private. After the book came out, I felt there was a wonderful, warm, and very supportive community of women in Vermont.

The wonderful thing about Vermonters -- this was before the civil union conflict -- is that they are very tolerant, indifferent to things like that -- nice!

Lisa Alther lives in Vermont and Tennessee, and has published five novels, beginning with Kinflicks (1975), and most recently, Five Minutes In Heaven (1996). She is working on an historical novel about the Melungeons, an isolated mixed racial group in Appalachia. See more about her at www.artvt.com/writers/alther/p_alther.htm

A printer friendly version of this article is available.

Vermont Woman is a forum for news, issues, features, arts and entertainment from the perspective, experience, and voices of Vermont women. Vermont Woman is a monthly newspaper published in South Burlington, Vermont and is excerpted here on this site. All content ©Copyright 2005, Vermont Woman Publishing