Susan Rebecca White launches latest Novel: A Place at the Table
Susan Rebecca White, the local Atlanta author behind Bound South (Touchstone Books; February 2009) and A Soft Place to Land (Touchstone Books; April 2010), is launching her third novel A Place at the Table (Touchstone Books; June 2013) on June 2 at the Decatur Library (215 Sycamore Street, Decatur, GA). From 7:30-9 p.m. there will be a discussion of the book held by White and food writer Susan Puckett.
Below, White shared her thoughts on her third novel, her love of culinary arts, and the influence of New York City.
Q. Your third novel is launching this weekend, does number three feel any different either during the writing or publishing process?
A. Of the three books I’ve published, this was the hardest one for me to write. For one thing I stretched myself with this book in terms of subject matter and point of view. But also I was going through a divorce while writing it and I was worried about very basic things such as would I have enough money to live on and would the house that my (now ex) husband and I owned sell? (This was back when the housing market was still very much in the toilet.) I was painfully aware that I needed to finish the novel in order to continue making a living as a writer, but I also wanted to write the best, truest novel I could. On some levels the urgency of my situation helped me. It made my writing more urgent. But the writing itself was hard. Ultimately it was deeply fulfilling, but it also took a lot out of me.
I remember once about midway through writing the book I printed all of the chapters I had drafted up to that point. (I don’t write linearly; I just follow voices until I’m ready to switch to another.) But I felt I was at a point where I needed to organize the book and figure out what went where. So I spread all of the chapters out on the floor before me. And looking at them, realizing how many holes still needed to be filled, I became so overwhelmed that I started weeping. I did that for a long time and then finally I called another writer friend. I told him I didn’t know if I was going to be able to finish the novel and I didn’t know what I was going to do to make money and survive and he said, “Honey, you’re just tired. You just need to take a nap.” I did take a nap, and I think that was actually a turning point for me in writing this book. I realized it wasn’t always going to feel good to write it, but I was going to keep plugging away at it. And if I got really tired, I’d take a nap.
Q. A Place at the Table, seems like a huge departure, not only in place but in character, from your past novels. Was there a different sort of excitement due taking on a whole new world?
A. I had a blast researching the subject matter of this book. Edna Lewis provided a seed of inspiration for the character of Alice Stone, but my book doesn’t begin to describe her extraordinary life. That said, I did read all of her cookbooks (including finding an out-of-print copy of the Cafe Nicholson cookbook.) I cooked from her books too, just so I could taste the foods she prepared. I probably most enjoyed making (and eating) the chocolate souffle she is famous for. I also read a lot about the Reconstruction era after the Civil war, just to saturate myself in the world that Alice Stone’s parents would have lived in. I also got to research the time in NYC just after World War II. From all I’ve read, that seems like a heady time for many to have been alive. If you were an artist, you went to New York, and so the city was teeming with young, creative people who often had more ambition than money. (Ambition is better than money when you’re young, I think.) And though apartments were hard to secure, they were cheap if you got one. There was a feeling of optimism in the air from the US having defeated the Nazis. New York appeared to be a city on the hill, with mighty skyscrapers, bustling people, and style. Ladies still wore gloves and men still wore hats. I have to admit I’m a little envious of such elegance. I know there were lots of cracks beneath the facade, and it was not necessarily a great time for those who did not yet have their proverbial “place at the table” (it was, after all, pre-civil rights, pre women’s rights, and pre-Stonewall) but the elegance and optimism of that era is seductive.
Q. This book was heavily inspired by your readings of Edna Lewis and your own love for cooking. Did you take a lot of cooking breaks while writing this novel? And what was your favorite dish to conquer in the kitchen?
A. I sometimes feel guilty about how much I cook. Seriously, I am either always cooking or thinking about what I’m going to cook as soon as I can get back in the kitchen. If I make pizza dough one night I’ll make it again the next, just to tweak it a little, to see what will happen if, say, I add a little warmed honey to the dough (which I did tonight when I made pizza topped with arugula, Parmesan, and prosciutto, which was delicious.) As I said in an answer to an earlier question, I cooked a lot of Edna Lewis’s recipes during the writing of this book, but I also cooked my own recipes, for my own pleasure. There was a chunk of time when my cash flow was really limited, and fixing my own meals saved me a lot of money. It became a ritual, especially during the most difficult days of my divorce. No matter how I felt or how sad I was at the end of the day I’d make myself a nice (albeit cheap) dinner and eat it at the table with a cloth napkin and a glass of (again, cheap) wine. Cooking for myself, knowing I could feed myself, knowing I could care for myself, was incredibly empowering. And I’m sure that redemptive nature of cooking influenced how I wrote about Bobby when he experiences his own season of grief.
Q. You spent quite a bit of time in New York City for this book. But the setting is not in modern day NYC, it is set in the 80’s. What was the research like for finding out about a bygone New York?
A. You can’t ask for a more intriguing place to research than New York. It is not a place that is ultimately knowable. It’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than all of us. I was so aware in New York of how we are all, ultimately, renters on this earth, that nothing is permanent. I would walk down 92nd Street and look at all of the beautiful townhouses and think to myself, “these buildings will outlast everyone who lives in them.” Just being in New York was very, very helpful for figuring out how Bobby experienced the city. Also, I discovered that NYU’s Fales library has an archived collection of essays and articles and memorabilia relating to Cafe Nicholson (the real-life cafe that the novel’s Cafe Andres was inspired by) so I spent a week at the library reading all of those old documents.
Q. A Place at the Table is all about healing and acceptance, it seems that not only was this applicable to your characters but also came at a good time in your life. Were there moments of life mirroring art? Or vice versa, were there moments where the art influenced your own life?
A. I lived in New York during the most intense period of my divorce. There was a moment when I was walking around midtown and suddenly I felt so cognizant of how there was concrete all around. I missed screened porches and grass and taking long walks through neighborhoods with trees and yards and it occurred to me how awfully homesick southerners who expatriated to New York back in the day when that was the only place for an artist to go must have felt. It occurred to me that a lot of people left the South not because they wanted to but because they had to. And while it is wonderful that New York has always been a place that harbors outsiders (or rather is indifferent to outsiders, the same way New York is indifferent to everyone), there is no denying that leaving where you come from costs something. There is always a part of you left behind. I tried to work that understanding into my writing of Bobby in Manhattan.
