Marcia Butler’s debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, has been hailed by Michael Schaub of NPR as “Surprising and audacious…. Pickle’s Progress is a deeply weird novel that succeeds because of Butler’s willingness to take risks and her considerable charisma — she’s a gifted storyteller with a uniquely dry sense of humor and a real sympathy for her characters… a promising fiction debut from a writer who seems incapable of not going her own way.” Vulture and Refinery 29 listed it as one of their top books of April 2019. Her nationally acclaimed memoir, The Skin Above My Knee, was one of the Washington Post’s “top ten noteworthy moments in classical music in 2017”. Her writing has been published in Literary Hub, PANK Magazine, Psychology Today, Aspen Ideas Magazine, Catapult, Bio-Stories and others.
Marcia has had several creative careers: professional musician, interior designer, documentary filmmaker, and author. As an oboist, the New York Times hailed her as a “first rate artist.” During her musical career, she performed as a principal oboist and soloist on the most renowned of New York and international stages with many high-profile musicians and orchestras. Her interior design projects have been published in numerous shelter magazines and range up and down the East coast, from NYC to Miami. The Creative Imperative, her documentary film exploring the essence of creativity, will have its premiere in New York City on June 9, 2019.
Marcia was a 2015 recipient of a Writer-in-Residence through Aspen Words and the Catto Shaw Foundation. She was a writing fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2018. She lives in New York City.
Kirsten Ogden spoke with Marcia via telephone in April 2019 just after the release of her novel, Pickle’s Progress.
It’s wonderful to finally speak with you! You’re kind of a renaissance woman of sorts! Musician, essayist, interior designer, memoirist and novelist, and now documentary film maker! Talk to me a little bit about how you first came to writing.
I didn’t begin writing until about 10 years ago. The idea that, through the act of writing, I’d gain a kind of agency to explore myself and the world through personal experience was something really appealing to me. There are aspects of each artistic discipline I’ve worked in that have lent themselves organically to writing.
That’s definitely true – it makes perfect sense to me. I’m trained in theater, performance and psychology, and these lend themselves well to writing. The skills involved in other art forms can do a lot for writing. Is this how you first approached writing—from these other art forms?
Well, yes. Music is auditory, design is visual. But in both cases, you have to study the past so that you can make a very informed choice about how you’re going to do things differently in the present. Basic elements and structure have to be there for things to take flight. For design, you have to study architectural classics, such as Brunelleschi who built the first dome, and Palladio, whose symmetrical buildings are the inspiration for almost everything that came after. And in music, one listens, almost endlessly, to musicians who came before and study how they interpreted music. But writing is something other — it’s almost like an alchemy of everything. For me writing is intuitive. All the senses are involved; I see things and hear things when write. All that said, a lot of craft and rigor must be present to encourage that intuition. But, every day it’s all new on the page! That daily invention is just the best thing.
How does the practice of each of these other art forms compare with writing?
The writing process is very similar to music. With the craft of writing, characters get fleshed out and stories are developed. The first draft is raw and is just a skeleton of the story. In subsequent drafts, fat and then skin are added. This is similar to learning a piece of music. Once you have the notes down, you have a basic or “skeletal” understanding of what the music is. Only then can you begin to develop interpretation, first by simply sitting with the music, and then through rehearsal with colleagues. But in both cases, at first, you know nothing. Then you think you know a little bit more. Usually there comes a time when you discover that what you thought you knew, is not true or is insufficient. In other words, it’s all terrible! When that needed rejection occurs, you must break down your box and build a new one. Design is a bit different because one is in service to clients and the collaboration aspect is more pronounced. But discovery is still very much part of the design process and there are thrilling moments, especially when the client sees how their life has been enhanced by a beautiful and functional environment.
I know that you attended the Kenyon Review Summer Writing Workshops and met fiction writer Nancy Zafris there. She’s really championed your work and your voice. How important was that experience to the development of your work?
I met Nancy in 2016 in her fiction workshop. She is such an exceptional teacher and mentor, not only to me, but to countless other writers. Before I met her, I read Home Jar: Stories. I put the book down and thought, “why isn’t this woman famous?” Participating in her workshop was a revelation. It’s uncanny the way she can cut to the heart of any story and give just the right nudge in a direction that helps the writer understand what is actually on the page. She encourages writers to develop their own voice. We kind of bonded, I think, because I was her age and we just clicked with our life experiences. We had had similar illnesses. She’s just an exceptional human being and I feel really lucky to know her.
That’s right – I read that you had gone through cancer at 44.
I was diagnosed at the end of 1999 with Breast Cancer and I think that going through that experience taught me a lot about empathy. Because of my illness, I approach my life and writing in the same way now; with compassion.
How so?
I remember specifically one day after a chemo treatment in New York, I went down the subway stairway feeling quite odd and weird. I just didn’t feel well at all. People were behind me and were really irritated that I was going so slowly. I kept thinking, “I will never become irritated at elderly people, or mothers trying to get their strollers down the stairs, or people going slowly for whatever reason, ever again.” I didn’t want to be that person. This experience helped me see how important it was to be helpful to others, and more importantly, to try and understand what is under the surface of why people behave the way they do. Cancer broadened my ability to empathize with others who may be quietly suffering. Now, 20 years later, I have tried to be available for anyone who wants counsel from me as a friend and as a writer.
Developing connection and empathy is hard because, as you said, many aspects of our lives have us constantly working in isolation. When I think about writing, I realize, now, how rare it is that we get to develop connections with other writers who really want to support us and see us succeed.
That’s true. Writers have to sit down in the chair and just do it, and this is necessarily isolating. And lonely. At the Kenyon Review fiction workshop, I was part of a community that not only gave me valuable feedback on my work, but also affirmed that I was part of a tribe. Finding writing communities like that is vital. Now I belong to a writing/submitting group here in New York that meets about every 6 weeks. We submit work to each other for feedback and always have a good gab session about struggles and process, which in many ways is just as valuable.
Reading your memoir, it sounds like you were really narrating a history for yourself. Did you find that writing your memoir The Skin Above My Knee was more therapeutic than writing your novel?
I was narrating my history at first and began by writing scenes about my childhood and also about my life as a professional oboist. Eventually, it did become therapeutic because in writing the memoir, I found a way to get to some truths about myself. But there are surprising connections between the memoir and my novel. Through fiction, I have woven aspects of my interior life into my characters, and it was mostly unconscious! I discovered this after the novel was finished and had gained some distance from the writing process. What a surprise! But I suppose this tendency is operating for most novelists.
I think that’s true – novels give us different opportunities as writers. You said earlier that once you wrote the memoir down you were actually excited afterwards to be writing fiction because you were done with “naval gazing!” So let’s talk about your new novel, Pickle’s Progress. It’s so good! How did the character of Pickle come to you?
Pickle is a character I love so much – I just adore him. He’s not a nice guy. He comes from deep tragedy; his mother favors his identical twin, Stan, in awful ways. As a result, Pickle emerges in the world as a person who is always seen in relation to his brother, who is slightly obsessive compulsive and also a brilliant architect. The only way that Pickle can distinguish himself is through his love relationships and by acting out recklessly in ways that are not socially acceptable. He can’t be special on his own merits – as a good police officer with a deep need to be loved. Pickle thinks he has to manipulate people in order to get the love he desires. He is very tragic. I relate to him because when I was young I behaved in ways that were unacceptable and attached myself to people who were unimaginably horrible, despite doing well in my personal life. That’s how I felt alive — through danger. That’s why I love Pickle, a deeply flawed man who can’t help himself. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea but he does reveal a more vulnerable part of himself through his interaction with Junie.
Junie is interesting because she never gets her own point of view.
Right. We find out about Junie through the eyes of Pickle, Karen, and less so, Stan. Junie is a bereaved woman whose boyfriend has committed suicide off the GW Bridge. Karen decides they will let her live in their private brownstone as Junie recovers from her trauma. But they end up using her as a guileless pawn to manipulate each other. Karen sees her as a sister substitute and unloads her secrets. Pickle idealizes Junie as a woman who represents a whole new beginning for him, as a love interest. And of course, Stan doesn’t really like her because he’s not so sure if Junie will fit into his highly-constructed life. Junie is a pulse/mirror that is present throughout the novel, where the characters continually bounce off her, for better or worse.
I love how you use New York as a character in the book. Is this an example of your expertise in design coming in to help you tell the story?
I constructed the novel so that architecture and art are backdrop characters. This is a world I do know deeply through design, and I was happy to utilize this as an organizing device. Also, the progress of time is regulated by the stop and go of the renovation of the brownstone, which is a secondary plot point. In terms of New York City, there’s a drama going on at every corner. There could be a husband and wife having an argument with their kid standing to the side, crying, or a homeless guy with a dog on the corner asking for money. I tried to illuminate city life to draw nuance into my plot. There’s always stuff going on in the city, flash points really.
What a rich place for discoveries! I see how everything – the city, your music, your design training, how it all dovetails to help you bring the novel to life, and especially with these really whole and flawed characters.
Right. The character that you write in the beginning of the book is literally finding a way to become a person. At the end of the first draft, that guy from the beginning is very different from that guy at the end. The trick is, through revision, to make sure they are integrated as one, warts and all!
So, a lot of the fun is in the revision. Sounds like something Nancy Zafris would say!
She certainly would. And yes, revision is 75% of novel writing. During rewrites and editing, I think a lot about inciting incidents and how they provide tension and release. An ebb and flow of stress and relaxation. You can’t have forte, or loud music, for an entire thirty-minute work, or the audience will scream “No! I can’t take this!” There have to be soft passages which build in volume and then diminish. And different instruments, like characters, create a variety of sounds and colors. In my writing, I am aware of building tension and where I will place the resolution of that tension. And all of my experience in the arts is involved. This is the way I see storytelling – it’s the music, design and architecture funneled into language.
I guess this is why Pickle’s Progress felt so cinematic to me – the structure, the landscape, the characters — they are all so visual and full of life, and that balance between, as you say, “tension and release” is palpable. Have you thought about writing films?
The thought of actually writing a screenplay feels daunting at the moment. But if someone saw the cinematic potential in Pickle’s Progress and called me to discuss my options, I’d take that phone call!
Yes! And you’re working on a documentary film right now – The Creative Imperative. Filmmaking seems like a natural extension of your talents and interests, to me.
Yes, I’ve been making this film for a year, though it had percolated as an idea for years. It’s premiering on June 9th at the New York Society Library in New York City. From there, I’ll submit it to film festivals and maybe get some distribution.
Tell us about the film and the project!
My film showcases individuals speaking about the rigor, wonder, devotion and immense satisfaction of working in art forms that are common to virtually every culture: music, theatre, dance, art and literature. What I attempt to reveal, through their interviews, is the notion that the arts are the way in which everyone, regardless of background and beliefs, religion or race, can come together and find common ground. Disagreement can be set aside when we immerse ourselves in reading a book, or attending a performance, or observing art. Creativity, as an emotional environment, encourages us all to pause, and it is in that moment that we might better understand one another. In addition to celebrating the brilliant artists who appear in my film, my ultimate mission is to encourage young people to not only dream of a life in the arts, but to understand that it is possible. That what they have to offer is unique and needed. And that though it may not be an easy path, the fulfillment is immeasurable. Living an artist’s life is a gift to the world because artistic expression is one of the most valuable things we can do to make the planet a better place.
I wish that were a film I’d seen as a young person struggling to make art! Are you working on any other writing projects now? After the documentary, what’s next for you? A new artistic impulse, maybe?
I have the first draft completed of my second novel and am in revision now. It is about a moose who lives in central, rural Maine and roams on the adjacent properties of two families. One is 4th generation Mainer and the other is a relatively recent transplant of 20 years. I explore aspects of class and wealth in this wonderful state, and how the two families perceive each other and negotiate their differences. Of course, the moose is the lynchpin of the story and has a point of view! I am having such fun trying to get inside a moose’s head!
Purchase your copy of Pickle’s Progress here.
Meet Marcia at one of these upcoming events!
- May 29-31 | New York, NY |Book Expo
- Book Expo on May 30th at 12:30 – signing, IPG booth #1822
- BookCon on June 2nd – 11:30 am – signing, IPG booth #1822
- June 9 | New York, NY |Premier of Marcia’s film, The Creative Imperative, New York Society Library, 2pm