Elizabeth Crane
Issue #35
With a new pet dog, an aspiration to become a reality show contestant, and her third short-story collection down the pipeline, the Chicago-based author confirms that, yeah, her life is pretty awesome and great
By Sarah Coffey
Published: March 1st, 2008 | 3:00pm
The world Elizabeth Crane creates in her short stories is tipped slightly off-balance. One character pulls people out of the TV and into her living room, another regularly breaks into her boyfriend’s closet, loving the lemon-y smell.
But inside these wobbly realities, women look for happiness in familiar places: Hollywood fantasies, the illusion of perfect dream relationships, or nervous suppression of irrational fears. They’re the kind of woman most of us can relate to, and Crane tells their stories in pitch perfect voices that are ridiculously dead-on with the little voices inside our head.
Her latest collection of short stories, You Must Be This Happy to Enter, again begs the question, “Who isn’t a little weird in their own way?”
Did you watch Rock of Love?
I don’t have cable, so I didn’t see much of it, but I did see a couple of episodes. There was this one part where this girl with a really mousy, high-pitched, obnoxious voice is whining, and Bret Michaels says, “Oh my God, hearing that voice is such a turn-on.” I thought he was going to say, “Hearing that voice makes me want to punch her.” It just doesn’t make sense, which is like a lot of reality television. And why do all these women want this guy?
I actually have strong — very strong — fantasies about going on The Amazing Race in spite of the fact that I hate flying and I’m not competitive. But somehow I just have the idea that I would be great on the The Amazing Race, when in fact I would probably be terrible.
The first story (“My Life is Awesome! And Great!”) is about a woman who is desperate to get on reality television. Do you relate to her and other characters in your book?
I love the character in “My Life is Awesome! And Great!” She’s propelled by denial, which is a big theme in my work. What we need to be aware of is that denial has a purpose. There are so many terrible things happening in the world every day, and we really wouldn’t be able to survive without some degree of denial. There is such a thing as healthy denial, but her denial is kind of ramped up into something very extreme.
Is your life awesome and great?
Yes. The holiday card that my husband Ben and I sent out this year was titled “23 Reasons Why This Year Was Awesome and Great.” Number one: we got a dog this year. Ben and I also had a ton of great things happen for us. My work got made into a movie and a play, I sold the movie rights to another story (maybe that was last year). Ben had his first gallery show. We traveled. We spent time with family.
What have you learned about being happy in your own life?
When I was younger, I had this idea that when you get a book published, you’re set. That’s completely untrue. My books have not brought me a lot of money. They have brought me the satisfaction of doing what I love to do. I also have the joy of being in a solid relationship, which I used to think was beyond my wildest dreams.
At this point, the money we rely on is my teaching income. I’m stunned that we’ve been able to support ourselves on that so far.
What’s the path that led you to the good spot that you’re in today?
It’s a long, windy path. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, but I think after college I spent a lot of time concerning myself with what other people wanted of me. I had many odd jobs along the way — it’s not a route I would advise a young writer to take.
But it probably wouldn’t have worked out the way it did had you taken some other route.
It all worked out the way it needed to work out. I do wish it could have happened a little sooner. I was 40-years-old when my first book was published, which was both wonderful and bittersweet.
But when I was younger, I had just enough smarts to realize that I didn’t have anything really valuable to say yet. One of my favorite examples of waiting until later in life to really make your mark is Julia Child. She was over 40 when she went to the Cordon Bleu.
You can always decide to do what you want — that’s the part of my story that I really like.
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Hometown: New York City
Works published: three short story collections
Favorite books as a kid: Harriet the Spy and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Least favorite word: “Feet”
Sample line from You Must Be This Happy To Enter: “They invent silly songs about making guacamole and asparagus pee and how the trash bags always break and about Zoloft and pretentious modern art and whatever else comes into their heads to sing about.” (From “Banana Love”)
Describe the plot of a novel or short story that never got published: “There’s a woman and she makes magic pajamas that give you beautiful dreams. She also has a television that allows her to see scenes from her life, including her dead mother. She goes to a support group for people with weird, magical appliances. It was a little too cute — that’s why I rejected it. The fantastical imagery was a little too much for one story line.”
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