The following day, on our way to the airport, Karr drove me past the house David Foster Wallace once rented in Syracuse. Her loud, hearty laughter at his dry wit could be heard above the ambient noise in the room. That night, she introduced a reading by the poet Charles Simic, a longtime friend. Karr is an energetic, engaged, and wry teacher, and her students are fond of her. I observed two graduate seminars: The Perfect Poem, and Dead White Guys, in which she discussed the poetry of Wallace Stevens. She had not yet warmed to the idea of a formal interview, so we toured her life in Syracuse instead. Years it’s gone on that way.”įinally, this spring, I flew to meet Karr in upstate New York, where she has taught at Syracuse University since 1991. “Who knows about the memoir,” she wrote, when I asked if I could read it, “It circles me like a gnat. She had started the book over twice, throwing away nearly a thousand pages, and had been working long hours to meet her deadline. She was finishing her third memoir, Lit, which was published in November of 2009. “Are you sure I have that much to say?” she wrote in one preinterview e-mail. There were numerous reasons for this-she was traveling she was teaching she lives across the country from me-but perhaps the main reason was that Karr is surprisingly diffident when it comes to talking about herself. Nearly two years passed between our initial contact, in July of 2007, and our first session. Interviewed by Amanda Fortini Issue 191, Winter 2009įor a writer who has shared herself with the public in three memoirs, Mary Karr is an extraordinarily elusive interview subject.

Mary karr's lit