On Oct. 11, acclaimed essayist, poet, and fiction-writer Phillip Lopate, will read from one of his two novellas (either “Confessions of Summer” or “The Rug Merchant”) at the Hammer Museum. The Brooklyn native took time out of a busy schedule of readings and appearances ““ he’s traveled around New York to Connecticut to Mexico in the past month ““ for a Q&A with the Daily Bruin’s Paige Parker. His works include “Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan, “Being With Children,” and essays “Bachelorhood,” “Portrait of My Body,” and “Totally Tenderly Tragically.”
Daily Bruin: When did you begin your writing career?
Phillip Lopate: I guess I started when I was in college and I was the editor of the Columbia Review. So when I got out of college I just tried to write. I didn’t go to school or anything. I just gave myself enough time to learn by myself. I went through a period of writing fiction then poetry and then nonfiction and I’ve written a few novels but I guess I’m most known as a personal essayist. I’ve written about film criticism and some about architecture, but for this new book I returned to fiction.
DB: How would you describe your work to people who aren’t familiar with your work?
PL: I think it’s (my work is) on the way people fool themselves, the way they sometimes trap themselves. The comedy of personality has a lot to do with it.
DB: Would you say that in your work you draw from personal experiences?
PL: For the essays I completely draw from personal experiences. In my fiction, I make up characters and make up stories. They’re rooted in personal experience but they’re distorted. So for instance I wrote two novellas about a neighborhood in Brooklyn but not the neighborhood that I live in. Or I made a character who has much more money than I do, but he has some of my same interests. So I switch between my experience and the fictional characters’ experience.
DB: You teach graduate classes at Columbia University. Do you have any key advice that you give your students?
PL: Some advice I give students is to try to develop some special areas of interest, some specialties so that you only have to write; they can also write something technical because they know something. I also tell them to skip a few years after they get their undergraduate degree before going directly to a writing program. It may help to be out in the world for a few years. The other advice is to read as much as possible because you can teach yourself as much by reading as you can going to writing school.
DB: Working with students and other writers, do you think there are a few certain qualities that make a writer successful?
PL: I think to trust your thoughts and not try to write like other people want you to.
DB: How does film and writing compare in your eyes? Do you think in order to write about film, it’s more important to learn about film or to be a great writer?
PL: That’s an interesting question. In some ways they’re similar and in some ways they’re different. It’s applying language to a largely visual medium. But when I was a teenager I immersed myself in movies. I’d go to two or three a day. I lived in the movies. I lived for the movies. … I also read a lot of film criticisms. … And to me, in a way, film criticism is another way of doing essays.
DB: Would you say you have a passion for one over the other?
PL: I love them both but a lot of times writers have another art form that they love ““ sometimes it’s painting. Sometimes it’s music. Sometimes it’s movies. And you can be more tolerant of another art form. I’m likely to sit through a whole movie but if it’s a book I don’t like the style of, I’ll toss it after 20 pages. If it’s a movie, I’m more forgiving.
DB: You attend tons of readings and events, like the upcoming one at the Hammer. Do you enjoy reading for audience members?
PL: I do and I like going to different places ““ like I’ll be Los Angeles, Mexico, Chicago, Philadelphia, Ohio, Connecticut ““ just in a few weeks, and I like sort of dropping in to other people’s lives and seeing how people deal, how they cope. It’s interesting.