I am a person who saves things, from the obviously important letter my father wrote me right before he passed away to the “might need it someday” notes from middle school. I have shoeboxes of unorganized photographs, rocks and shells from past trips sit on my bookshelves, and, rolled in a back closet corner, sit the requisite Beatles posters that hung on my college dorm room wall. So, Tarn Wilson’s new book, The Slow Farm, immediately caught my interest when I flipped through it and, between short essays on childhood, found pictures, lists, letters, quotes from books and interviews, and more. Instead of just describing a photograph or a family letter within her essays on childhood, Tarn had included the actual objects on their own between essays. She had taken the pieces of life that we collect and used them to reconstruct part of her past. This made me wonder how I might take my own collected pieces from different parts of my life and use them in my writing. How could I define “pieces of life” and what might they include? What might including a letter from my dad do for a collection of my essays?

In her introduction to The Slow Farm, author Judith Kitchen uses the term artifacts for what I call “pieces of life.” Merriam-Webster defines artifact as “an object remaining from a particular period” or “something characteristic of or resulting from a particular human institution, period, trend, or individual.” After experiencing Tarn’s use of artifacts as an integral part of The Slow Farm, I agree with Judith that these “resurrect her unconventional childhood without being self-indulgent,” and set up a larger cultural context for her unique story, turning “memoir into an interactive project.” As I read The Slow Farm, and pieced together artifacts with essays, I became part of Tarn’s journey exploring the early 1970’s when her family lived on Texada, a small wooded island off the coast of Canada. Even though Tarn was only four when they moved to Texada and six when she left, her memories remained vivid and for years she found herself writing about this time period over and over again. Toward the end of The Slow Farm, she says, “Maybe I’m obsessed because our family began its slow decay long before I recognized the signs; I’m compelled to sift through memories, looking for hints I missed.” Tarn’s short essays of childhood memory interspersed with family and historical artifacts help both her and her readers look for these hints and begin the work of understanding the larger cultural contexts that influenced, and perhaps contributed to, its fractures. As a student in the same MFA program as Tarn attended, I asked her questions about her writing process.  She was so forthcoming that our interview will be posted over several weeks. Part I focuses on how Tarn used artifacts to reconstruct the past and how she structured her book. In Part II, we talk about the art of remembering, and in week three, we cover what to consider when writing about family members as well as information about Tarn’s journey to publication.

Andrea
One unique feature of this book is that between your short essays on childhood memories you decided to include actual artifacts from the time period this memoir covers. These artifacts take the form of documents, pictures, quotes from books and interviews, letters, and lists, just to name a few of the forms that you use. How did this particular project get started? Was using artifacts in this way always a critical part of telling your story, or did the idea evolve over time?

Tarn
When I first started this book, years ago, I had no idea what I was writing. I knew I was compelled by my earliest memories, and most of my writing, no matter where I began, ended up circling around those years on Texada.  In the beginning, I just tried to capture the little moments of memory that were arising for me—the details and the emotion. Then, in writing, I would reflect on the nature of memory and try to make guesses about why the odd little moments felt significant. In my early versions, as in most traditional memoirs, I tried to weave together the child perspective and adult reflection. However, this led to jarring switches in voice that interfered with the reader’s experience of the story. (Also, I think I hadn’t yet discovered the thematic centers of the book.) So, I decided to let the early childhood memories stand on their own. However, because the majority of The Slow Farm covers ages four to six, the perspective of the book was limited.  I could only communicate to the reader what I understood as a child, which wasn’t much. I needed a way to provide context, the larger world, without breaking the child voice. I had considered weaving in “artifacts” to provide that context. Then, when I started my MFA program, my mentor, Judith Kitchen, also had the same idea. So, I began the project in earnest, and I spent the better part of my first year reading what my parents had read, researching the history of the time period and the history of the region, listening to the music of the time, etc. I developed a deeper understanding of the social forces that had shaped my parents and their choices—forces that shape all of us much more powerfully than we ever realize. At first I feared I wasn’t being productive spending my precious MFA program time merely researching, collecting snippets, and arranging them. But, in retrospect, that experience, although slow, was so important in shaping the final version of the book and adding depth and complexity—and humor.

Andrea
I really enjoyed the artifacts because they gave me a different way to experience the story. I felt a little like a detective matching the short essays to artifacts to get a complete picture of both the time period in which you are writing and your family’s history. Did you have the reader’s experience in mind when you decided to include the artifacts?

Tarn
Although it was a risk, and one that I knew would cost me marketability, I decided I wanted to leave room for readers to develop their own judgments about my parents instead of drawing conclusions for them. I wanted to place the artifacts next to the childhood memories and let the reader make meaning in the spaces in between. I was happy when, in the same month, one reader raved about how cool my parents were and another accused them of child abuse.

Andrea
Yes, I think using the artifacts really invites the reader into the story. Your really great placement of artifacts is one reason I think they are so successful. Using placement can be such a great way to add important details in an understated tone. One of my favorite examples of this is the essay “What I Learned About Timing: The Octopus,” where your father, Jack, catches an octopus and wants the family to eat it. However, it seems that a way to cook the octopus eludes your mother, Janet. In the essay you say, “She looked through her copy of Joy of Cooking and told us she’d found recipes for rolling homemade candy on a chilled marble slab, but no directions for preparing an octopus.” You immediately follow the essay with this one sentence artifact: “On page 412 of Janet’s edition of Joy of Cooking is a recipe for preparing and cooking octopus.” Putting this artifact right after the essay tells us so much about Janet. It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to eat the octopus, but Janet wanted to assert herself in the family’s decision-making process. She couldn’t say no to Jack, but she could use her silence as a form of action. Because artifact placement is so important in telling your story can you tell us a little bit about how you decided on the placement and order of the artifacts?

Tarn
Thank you so much for being so attentive to the artifacts and the meaning they create next to the chapters.  I know that some busy readers will just skip or skim them, so I am so pleased that you gave them so much time and thought. Yes, I thought so hard about how to place the artifacts—and revised and revised and revised. At the time I was working with Judith, she was beginning her thinking about writing about photographs, and she encouraged me, with her poet’s brain, not to be too literal in my placement, to allow the artifacts and entries to play off each other and have a story arc of their own.  I found far more artifacts than I used in the book, maybe three times the amount–or more. I lived in a very small house at the time, and the entire living room floor was covered in the chapters from my book, and I placed the artifacts in between and moved them and moved them and moved them, thinking about all the different options and the association and meanings that could be created with the different placements. That placement continued to evolve. Between the time Judith asked for the book and I published it, I felt the book still needed some improvements, so I asked a group of reader friends to help. They all read the manuscript, then had a book-group style discussion while I listened and took notes. Based on that feedback, I decided to introduce my father’s voice earlier by moving the placement of his two letters (to his college and to his parents) closer to the beginning of the book. (I originally had more information about the island there.) For years, the beginning was far too slow, and I think that small change helped enormously to create context and forward motion.

Andrea
In addition to artifact placement, it seems like the number of artifacts also could affect the pacing and the forward motion or movement of the book. You just mentioned that you had about three times more artifacts than what you actually included in the book. Toward the end of The Slow Farm you talk a little bit about the confusing and complex process of sifting through our pasts: “From our complicated pasts, how do we know what to keep and what to let go?” This is a great question. Were there several artifacts you had to exclude?

Tarn
At the very end, I had to cut some artifacts to which I was very attached because they slowed the story. This included an extensive historical timeline (which took me forever to research and create), more information about the island, which I think is really fascinating (but is probably more meaningful to me than the reader), and a series of maps. The book probably could have used a map, but I ran out of time in getting permissions for that.

Andrea
It can be so hard to let go of research and writing, especially when we have spent so much time putting the material together, but I think your idea of putting the story first is a key point. We have to ask whether the story benefits from the material or if we are just holding on to a certain paragraph or piece of research because we are attached to it. I think I struggle with this every time I sit down to revise! I’m glad that you brought up the idea of permissions because I wondered if that was an issue for you when you decided to include the artifacts in your book. Did you have to get permission to use any of the artifacts and if so how did you go about getting permission?

Tarn
Much of that process surprised me.  I originally included fabulous recipes from Joy of Cooking, which I loved, including instructions on how to cook an octopus! Although the book is out of print, the publisher that holds the rights wanted to charge (discounted price because we are small press) $1000 every three years!  So sad to let that go.  Graywolf kindly let me use the William Stafford poem for only $35 and the promise that I would send a copy of the book to the William Stafford archives. Song lyrics rights are complicated and expensive to get, so I cut many lyrics. I was attached to “Coat of Many Colors” and got a good deal, so I decided to pay the $50 dollars every two years. Much of the other materials I was surprised and relieved to discover were free to use.  I wrote letters to people to ask to use the Texada Information and got easy yeses. According to the research I did on the web I did not need permissions for work published before 1923; for fewer than 100 words for a book or 50 words for a magazine or journal; or for anything in the public domain. However, I would suggest that readers do their own research on how to get permissions for specific material before publishing it instead of just taking my word for it.

Andrea
It seems like photographs are obvious artifacts and perhaps the most familiar parts of family history, but something that makes your project unique is how you really extend the boundaries of what constitutes a family artifact. How did you go about collecting artifacts? How did you discover and pursue artifacts that may not have had an immediate and direct link to your family? Here I’m thinking of artifacts like your interview with Fayette Hauser and excerpts from Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childrearing, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Timothy Leary’s Declaration of Evolution.

Tarn
Because I was trying to capture some of the larger cultural forces that were shaping my parents, I tried to read some of what I knew my father read or was likely to have read. I looked up lists of counter culture texts and started working my way through them.  Although Walden was much earlier, I knew it had shaped my father’s thinking and the back-to-the-land movement. During the time I was collecting artifacts, by chance, I was housesitting for a friend who had Summerhill and I just happened to pull it off her shelf.  What timing!  I enjoyed having a reason to skim such seminal texts as The Feminine Mystique, which I had heard my mother reference. Fayette is a friend of Judith’s, so she recommended that connection.

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The Slow Farm Artifact, p. 20

“The women didn’t want to be ‘50s style wife and mothers, they didn’t want to be plastic. So they gave up all the modern conveniences, prepared foods. They admired the Indians, so they wove, made their own bread. Everyone made their own bread. But after a while, it became its own form of entrapment.”

Interview, 2006, Fayette Hauser, member of the Cockettes, the 1960s psychedelic gender-bending San Francisco performance troupe.

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Andrea
One type of artifact that you used, and in some cases created for this project, was the list. I think I counted at least eleven lists throughout the book ranging from facts about Texada, to major events in 1973, to radio songs. My favorite lists, though, were the lists about your parents, ones that I thought of as the “Jack and Janet” lists, because they worked to provide this contrast in how your parents saw and understood the world.  I was wondering if you could tell us about your decision to use lists.
Tarn
As a reader, I am charmed by lists. They can say so much in so little space. In The Slow Farm, most of the artifacts are other people’s words.  The lists, however, give room for my adult perspective and understanding, but without too much interpretation for the reader—and without writing in prose paragraphs, which again would break the spell of the child’s voice.  I have also been thinking the last several years about how difficult it is to know another’s interior, but how much others revealed about themselves by what they love. I definitely clarified my parents’ relationship for myself by comparing what they loved and wanted and believed and their childhoods up until the time they married.

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The Slow Farm Artifact, p. 202

Janet’s religious beliefs                            Jack’s religious beliefs

Agnostic                                                        Atheist 

Janet’s mother’s politics                           Jack’s parents politics

Republican, pro-Vietnam War                       Father – Republican, pro-Vietnam War

                                                                      Mother – Democrat, pro-Vietnam War

Janet’s Political Beliefs                              Jack’s Political Beliefs

Left, socialist;                                                All governmental systems are corrupt;

Empathy-driven                                             Intellectually and philosophically driven

Janet’s Secret Ambition                             Jack’s Secret Ambitions

None                                                              Be a literary writer

Janet’s Secret Fantasies                             Earn a PhD

Be a singer                                                     Be a professor

Be an artist                                                     Be a famous mathematician

Janet’s Hero                                                 Jack’s Hero

Martin Luther King                                          Flash Gordon

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Andrea I love lists as well. A list has a surprisingly simple structure, but, as you suggest, can really help both the writer and the reader understand complex emotions and relationship dynamics. Because your project has such a unique structure by alternating short essays with artifacts, are there other authors that inspired or helped you as you put this book together?

Tarn
I was particularly inspired by Sandra Cisneros’ autobiographical novel House on Mango Street, which is written in a child’s perspective, in simple, dense, lyrical language, and short chapters. Each chapter stands alone as a little story/vignette or prose poem, yet together, they do have a story arc.  Other books that have shaped my sense of how to use creative interstices include Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris, which intersperses little chapters called “Weather Reports”; Terry Tempest Williams Red, which I only skimmed, but which includes some evocative lists of places, some chapters written in poetry or prose poems, an excerpt from a journal entry, etc.; and the fabulously playful Encyclopedia of a Life in which Amy Krouse Rosenthal arranges her memoir as a fictional encyclopedia with alphabetical entries, charts and graphs, etc. Judith introduced me to an incredible book by Julian Barnes called Flaubert’s Parrot, which is a biography of Flaubert, but written by a fictional biographer who approaches the material in a crazy-interesting way, such as listing two timelines of Flaubert’s life, one putting a positive twist on all the events, the other a negative. Judith also suggested Tim O’Brien’s novel In the Lake of the Woods, a story in which a Vietnam vet’s wife disappears while they are on vacation in the woods. The mystery is never solved, but O’Brien creates context by including increasingly complex information, often in footnotes.

Andrea
I have read Encyclopedia of a Life, and really loved it, but the other books are new to me. It makes me want to start a new book-ordering list!

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This brings us to the end of our first week with Tarn. Next week we will be posting the second part of Andrea’s interview in which she and Tarn talk about the art of remembering. Tarn tells about how she finds ways to access the memories buried in what she calls “the messy filing cabinets of our brain,” how she decided which memories to include in The Slow Farm, and explains what it was like writing from a child’s point of view as an adult.