Q&A with Leena Mahan, author of “Attica”
Leena Mahan’s “Attica” was published in The Offing’s Fiction department on May 7, 2018. Q&A conducted by Mary Pappalardo, Assistant Editor, Fiction. Patreon supporters got it first, and helped make the story publication possible.
Mary Pappalardo: There’s a sense of something like claustrophobia or anxious-ness that comes through in this story, both when the narrator finds herself inside and when she is on the streets, ostensibly out in the open. How do you navigate feeling and space in this story and in your writing more generally?
Leena Mahan: So much of the story happens in the narrator’s thoughts, and I think that in itself creates a sense of claustrophobia that is reflected in her relationship to physical space. Her internal state is often mirrored by the way she moves around — the way she takes an aimless walk when she’s restless and unfocused on her creative work or confines herself to sitting on the boyfriend’s bed when she’s uncomfortable in his apartment. In general my stories tend to be centered on a character’s internal narrative, so having significant physical movements and a relationship to the outside world helps to ground that and break it up a bit.
MP: When I read this I immediately placed it in New York City (not least of all because of the title), but the city itself is never named. Why keep the location unnamed? How does place function for you in your work?
LM: I tend to start a story from an image or a line, then work backward filling in characters and action around that one detail. I don’t usually start with a full plot or distinct setting in mind and those elements are always the most difficult for me to construct and establish. For that reason I sometimes leave place more vague. In this case I did also consider that all the connotations that come with New York might overwhelm the impressionistic quality of the rest of the story.
MP: “Attica” is shot through with a lingering sense of danger, of violence, of imprisonment all lurking in the background. So many images are at once innocuous and a possible threat. I wonder if you could tell us more about where the sinister fits into your writing?
LM: I’m glad that came through! I love Elena Ferrante’s writing, and particularly admire her ability to establish and sustain a lingering sense of unease over the course of a whole novel. I’ve been interested in the mechanics of that and I think it crept into this story a bit. I’m also drawn to trivial, slightly irrational choices a character might make; actions that are inconsequential but at the same time inexplicable, like walking all the way to a destination then passing it without going in or saying she’s on her way to work when she’s going to the movies. Besides signaling that a character is unpredictable, and maybe unreliable it also exposes her to random interactions and encounters, and unfamiliar places. The narrator in this story is often moving and acting aimlessly in that way, and I think some uneasiness comes out of that.
MP: The story strikes me as being of a certain generation. References to “adulting” or start-ups or the artist boyfriend’s lament that “All the good rappers are younger than us”…It seems like this piece takes seriously what other people might scoff at as “millennial” problems. How do you manage to invoke these cultural references while maintaining a kind of sympathy or empathy with the characters?
LM: I definitely wanted to look at the nuances and shades within this cliché, exploring the degrees to which it applies to each of these characters, and the various ways they might be critical of themselves and each other, rather than dismiss it altogether. In a way dismissing “millennial problems” has become a cliché in itself, and by treating these concerns as trivial or caricaturing them too much, I knew I’d lose the opportunity to deconstruct and explore them, which I’m much more interested in. I think of the two boyfriends as being at opposite ends of the spectrum, but both content and carefree in their own diverging ways. The narrator herself is critical of them to an extent but it’s more because their contentment seems so unattainable to her personally that their means of getting to it, no matter how trivial or shallow, seem at once remarkable and a bit off-putting to her.
MP: It’s hard to pick a favorite passage from the story, but I was drawn up so short when I first read “The sun starts setting early and I begin to feel sorry that I left the house, and that I gave Victoria’s Secret my email address without hesitation, and that I was ever born.” There’s a rapid downward spiral you capture here that has to do with effort and self-image and actions and consequences…can you unpack that for us a bit?
LM: Spiral is the perfect word for it. It takes the small but immediate annoyance of the Victoria’s Secret ads disrupting her work for her to recognize the problem at the root of her broader, more vague frustrations — that she lets things happen to her or misdirects her energy and ends up dissatisfied.
MP: I’m curious about your writing life…what drew you to writing fiction, who’s been your important touchstones, whose work most excites you now, what does your life as writer look like?
LM: I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I’ve tried a lot of different creative outlets, but I’ve always been drawn to how accessible writing is — that I didn’t have to take a special lesson or join a group, I could just start doing it on my own, right away.
Reading Renata Adler’s Speedboat was important to me early on. It showed me that the tendency to notice details and to take pleasure in concise, particular observation of them in language was a viable model for making work. There’s also a Clarice Lispector interview — the only TV interview she ever did — that I like to watch if I’m feeling uninspired. She’s so direct and sure of herself, acknowledging her overwhelming compulsion to always be telling stories, even while saying that she doesn’t really know what fiction writing is for.
Recently, I’ve been excited about the dark humor and urgency of Jenny Zhang’s writing in Sour Heart. I also love Durga Chew-Bose’s essays. She manages to draw together so many disparate references and bring them to bear so naturally on one experience or moment. I had a class with Heidi Julavits once where we read perfume reviews for style, and I still do that sometimes. They work — often to the point of grasping — to convey sensory particulars in language, and weird and striking descriptions tend to come out in the process. I’m into music criticism for the same reason. Sometimes when I need a break from constructing plot and action I’ll write about music instead and it’s always a refreshing way to break up any writer’s block I have.
As for my routine, I work around my full-time job, and as much as I’d rather be writing all day, I think this affects my process in interesting ways. I keep a lot of notes in my phone throughout the day. Most of my sentence level work gets done in the note taking, then I’ll sit down later and collage it all together into a story. Sometimes, if I have an idea while I’m busy, there’s a long gap between the initial thought and writing it down. A phrase or a sentence will usually shift and change while I’m keeping it in mind, and by the time I write it out it’s almost like I’ve already revised it a few times. I think recognizing the ways I can still get writing done in the time that I have has been crucial for me lately.
Leena Mahan lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has previously appeared in the Columbia Review. Follow Leena @leenalizabeth
