How Carolyn Sees It

The bad news: acclaimed novelist Carolyn See, a living treasure in Pacific Palisades, is leaving town. The good news: she’s only going as far as Santa Monica. She agreed to an interview last week, despite being in the throes of moving out of her condo on Tramonto Drive, a charmed hillside dwelling she’s called home for the past nine years. Writing everything in longhand on her terrace, she has produced two novels here, ‘The Handyman’ (1999) and ‘There Will Never Be Another You’ (2006), and the nonfiction bestseller ‘Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers’ (2002). Now 74, See retired two years ago as professor of English at UCLA, but continues her role as book reviewer for The Washington Post. Her awards include the prestigious Robert Kirsch Body of Work Award (1993) and a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction. In spite of all the accolades, the author remains supremely down-to-earth. Her characteristic warmth, candor, wit and wisdom were all at play as she reflected on her years in the Palisades’among many other subjects’amid boxes stacked high in a soon-to-be-empty space. The literary life extends to See’s daughters, Lisa See and Clara Sturak, both of whom are writers. Twice divorced, See met the love of her life, John Espey, also a gifted writer, when he became her doctoral supervisor at UCLA in 1974. They were together until his death in September 2000. See was diagnosed with macular degeneration, the disease that causes visual impairment, more than a decade ago. The condition, which limits one’s ability to drive, prompted her decision to move to Santa Monica where shops and stores will be within easy walking distance. Q: In 1987, you published a piece in L.A. Magazine about Pacific Palisades called ‘The Land That Time Forgot.’ In the article, you wrote: ‘Nothing in excess’neither great wealth, nor great poverty, nor conspicuous consumption, nor late nights’is what the Pacific Palisades is about.’ Do you think this is still true? See: I think the income level has gone up and people have gotten a little richer. I wrote that piece before a lot of movie stars started living here. When I moved down here from Topanga nine years ago, I remember feeling very frumpy and canyon-ish. I’d go to the car wash and think zowie because a lot of these women–no offense, they’re beautiful– wore on their bodies what I make in a year. Then I realized Topanga and the Pacific Palisades are very similar. Both are small towns where people are in costume. They have a vision of what they should be like and then they go ahead and do it. Topanga has become so rich that people can’t afford to live there anymore. It’s amazing to think one of my former houses, a little box on an iffy slope, just sold for a couple million. Prices have gone up, but everyone still wears overalls. Here it’s just this clean upper-middle-class look. If they wanted to present as extremely rich, they’d be over in Beverly Hills. Q: Are there other impressions you had about Pacific Palisades before you actually lived here? See: No, but John Espey, my life partner for 27 years, did. He recalled these halcyon moments back in the 1950s when all the houses on Bienveneda were brand new on raw dirt and filled with young families. He said at 5 or 6 at night everyone would stroll out outside carrying a martini and chat with each other while watching the kids run back and forth, all the while getting smashed but in a genteel way. He thought that was domestic paradise. You didn’t have to go to over to somebody’s house or have a dinner party. You could just walk out to your front lawn and have drinks with the neighbors. Q: You often refer to life in Topanga as your hippie days. Do you miss those times? See: Actually, it was pre-hippie days when we first moved there in 1964. Topanga is a place that you get very emotional about. You either think ‘Who in their right mind would live here?’ or ‘This is the greatest place I’ve ever seen in my life.’ It inspires that kind of fanatical devotion. Q: How did you decide to move to the Palisades? See: It was because of John’s health and the onset of my MD. Plus there had been that terrible fire of ’94 that burned the house down next door to us. God was telling us it was time to move on. You can’t water down the roof every time a fire comes because you can’t even get up there anymore. Also, I became a Getty Scholar for a year and got to live in an apartment on Sunset where the climate is temperate and there aren’t any rattlesnakes. We moved back to Topanga on an unbearably hot August day and realized it was untenable to continue living there. Q: You are known for your generosity toward fellow writers, including sharing all your secrets in ‘Making a Literary Life.’ Where does that come from? See: When I first started writing, there were very few women writers out here. There was Joan Didion, but she had taken a much more traditional East Coast route, having gone to New York and worked for Life and Vogue. When I started to write, I was dead broke, divorced, had two kids and I really had to believe in this other stuff, this alternate way of doing it. I didn’t know anything. The strength of what I didn’t know was prodigious. ‘Making a Literary Life’ is for beginners, not for people who know what they’re doing. I had to learn it all myself. Once you find out this stuff, you tell people. What’s the point in being stingy? That’s how I got to be so generous, it’s not because I was born a saint. Q: Is there one piece of advice for aspiring writers that especially stands outs? See: Developing a mailing list is the most important point in that book. People don’t really need hardcover books, but if you say, ‘Come out and buy the book,’ they will. It was my daughter Lisa’s idea to have people provide their addresses at signings. She has taken this to unknown heights. With mailing lists, you’re not at the mercy of publishers. It frees you up to always have a respectable sale. Q: You also recommend sending charming notes to editors and writing 1,000 words a day. Are these things still part of your mantra? See: Or flowers or balloons or whatever. It’s just good manners taken to a slightly higher level. It’s easy to be a failed writer, someone who sits around and sulks, looks out the window and suffers. I was married to one once, actually two of them. One of them said, ‘I have a mind that is just smart enough to know how mediocre I am,’ which gets you off the hook for everything. You don’t have to do anything ever again. It’s much more fun when people you know get to be a success. Or get to have some fun. Q. Isn’t tenaciousness, a certain never-give-up attitude, a big part of your own success? See: Yes, I was usually coming from position where I had nothing to lose. I hate to say it, it irritates me, but I am getting older and I do less because I’m tired. And with John’s death, beyond the grieving process, I went into a different kind of state. You realize nothing matters all that much. In other words, you can be a contractor or writer or a bum, if you really give yourself over to it. Doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do it very well. In a way, it’s sort of anti-art. There’s nothing inherently superior about being a writer. For years, I thought there was. I thought it was the highest calling. I changed my mind when John was dying. Once you realize writing is pretty much the same as any other activity, you still do it because you love it. This messes with ideas of good and evil, as well, although I don’t know exactly how. I’ve always felt there are really no bad people in the world. They can impersonate bad people because they’re not in their right place. Al Gore is great example. He was a terrible candidate, and terrific environmentalist. Once he moved over, then he blossomed, he just bloomed. I don’t know what that has to do with the Palisades. I love to write and I love to read and that’s what I do. People love to hunt and fish, whatever. Q: What are you working on right now? See: A book about a lunch group called ‘Love, Death, Lunch,’ although I think the title will change because it’s too close to that other current bestseller (‘Eat, Pray, Love’). My own lunch group has been together for 13 years. There’s a psychologist, fountain maker, radio announcer, several writers, and a couple of painters. It’s based on Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artist’s Way.’ We started out rather formally, talking about our work. But then we became very close over the years. One of the things that’s happened is that several of our husbands have died. The youngest is 45 and the oldest is 88. We have memories that go back to different periods in American life. All of us are women trying to be independent and sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. All of us are facing death at some level or have faced it down and are starting over. We have landmark conversations about topics such as ‘Are young people piercing themselves to get ready for a future robotic age?’ We just talk all over the place about anything. We never consult about what we’re going to bring. The lunches are always transcendently good. Then we laugh a lot, or cry. The book will be fiction. I have to be careful to not invade their privacy and I wouldn’t because I just adore them. There are all kinds of ways you can mess with that. Q: Do you have a favorite contemporary novelist? See: I would say Elmore Leonard, but not necessarily to read. He does better for me in the car listening. He’s a master of control. Again, when John was so sick, I’d find myself going to the car and I’d have a funny feeling on my face and I’d be smiling because I was going into Elmore Leonard land. I’d listen, and then listen again to see how he did it. They seem so effortless, but they’re just brilliant. And then I would say James Ellroy, who wrote ‘The Black Dahlia,’ one of the best American novels of recent memory. He takes this squalid thing and turns it into what it means to be an American. Just a gorgeous book. And then there’s ‘Lonesome Dove.’ Larry McMurtry is very uneven and lousy much of the time. However, ‘Lonesome Dove’ is the greatest American novel of the second half of 20th century. I used to teach it and it took three weeks. He transports you to another world. I admire it more than I can say. Of course, if I were a Christian, I would say E.M. Forster is my scripture. He’s my all-time favorite. Q: Do you have a favorite haunt in the Palisades? See: I love the Pearl Dragon, the early show at 5 or 6 o’clock, when couples bring in their screaming children and kids pick fights with their chopsticks and parents strive mightily to keep them in line. It’s that small-town thing. People know who you are, what you want to eat, what part of the restaurant you want to be seated in. I also like Modo Mio for lunch. It’s quiet in the middle of the day and I can read. Q: What will you miss most about living here? See: When I move to Santa Monica, it will be the first time I’ve lived in a place without a view since I was 30. Then I console myself and realize I can walk three blocks and there is the ocean. I had a great time here in Pacific Palisades. It’s been extremely pleasant. I just loved it.