Introduction

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Meet Billy Gertz: a fiercely independent playwright, whose newest drama imagines the story of a man waiting to hear if his estranged wife has survived a cataclysmic event. As her life touches three other unforgettable characters, Billy's play?the emotion behind its genesis and its powerful performance?forms the thread that binds them all together. A moving love story and a tale of connection and loss, The Lake Shore Limited is Sue Miller at her dazzling best.

Questions for Sue Miller on The Lake Shore Limited

Q: The Lake Shore Limited takes its title from the famous train, but it is also the title of a play embedded within this novel--a play about a terrorist bombing of that train as it pulls into Union Station in Chicago, and a man waiting to hear whether his estranged wife is among the survivors. Billy Gertz, the woman who's written the play, has waited in just such a way on 9/11 to hear whether her lover, Gus, was on one of the planes used in that attack. Was there one event in particular that sparked the idea for The Lake Shore Limited?
A: Yes. The spark came from a friend who had a relationship that would have ended sooner than it did had not her lover's brother died on 9/11. While this situation is not like the one I created for Billy, my fictional playwright, the situation started me thinking about the far reach of such an event; and the variety of responses that play out around it, even at some distance. And the way in which the responses may be based in feelings that might be not the expected one--i.e., the way in which sometimes we're called on to enact something we don?t feel, and the discomfort and sense of alienation from ourselves that comes from that.

Q: Much of the book centers around the characters? reactions to Billy's play, "The Lake Shore Limited." How and why did you structure the book as, in essence, a play within a play?
A: As I began to include some of the lines from the play and create scenes in rehearsal, it began to seem more important to me. It began to seem central to the book, actually. I began to see the book as at least in part a kind of speculation on how the experience of art can be transforming in life--for those who create it, as Billy and also Rafe, the actor, do; and for those who take it in and ponder it and ask about its connections to their own lives. And then, I suppose, I just got interested in the play, too--in writing it, at least the part you read in the book. Q: The viewpoint in The Lake Shore Limited flips amongst four characters, two male (Rafe and Sam) and two female (Leslie and Billy) all of whom are at various ages and stages of their life. Why did you choose to cast the book in this way?
A: I wanted the book to look at the way this play strikes a variety of people. I had Billy nearly from the start of thinking about the book, and Leslie came next, because I knew I wanted two versions, two understandings, of what the real story was about Billy and Gus, with the play mediating between them. But I wanted to broaden the impact of the play, too--to have it speak not just to the people directly involved, but to others, with other stories. Rafe and his life came next, more or less in a rush of notemaking and writing. Sam's was last, and most complicated to develop--though I knew from the start about his connection with Leslie. Q: You so eloquently write about the interior lives of people who are trying to understand their feelings, their relationships, themselves. How do you create such three dimensional characters, each with their own vivid and complicated pasts?
A: Now THIS is the kind of question I like, wrapped neatly in a compliment. And I think I?ve started an answer with my response to the last question. But let me also say that this is one of the most pleasurable aspects of writing for me?the construction of lives and histories. The process of imagining them so deeply as to feel I actually know these other people, these other stories. A way of escaping myself, I suppose. Q: You teach English at Smith College. What is the best advice you give to aspiring writers?
A: Read. Q: Tell us a little about your writing process--how you write, when, etc.?
A: I make a lot of notes before I write. I want to know what I?m doing. Where I?m going. I want to feel that I?m working on a whole thing, the idea for which I have clear in my mind--the way perhaps an architect would know what he wanted to do without knowing every detail of it from the start; or a composer might know what he wanted a piece of music to do, the way he wanted it to move, without knowing all the themes in it. I write in longhand for the first draft, typing it in when I feel ready to work on revision. Sometime that's a small piece--a chapter--sometimes a longer chunk of the book. I type it in, pull it out and write all over it again in longhand, type it in again, pull it out, etc. etc. I try to write in the morning, before I get enmeshed in the demands of daily life--though those are all easier now that I don?t have responsibility for a child. Towards the end of a book, I write longer days. Q: What's next for you?
A: I?ve signed a contract with Knopf for a new novel I?ve described to them, so I?ll be working on that for a few years. I?d like to try, anyway, to write Billy's play--"The Lake Shore Limited." And I have a two-year-old granddaughter I?d like to spend as much time with as I can.

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