d   a   n   g   e   r   o   u   s        e   x   p   e   r   i   e   n   c   e   s

By JOY PRESS

exactly ten years ago, Mona Simpson made her splashy entrance into the world of literary fiction with the novel "Anywhere But Here." Simpson's voice emerged fully formed in this stunningly nuanced portrait of a young girl, Ann, and her manipulative mother, Adele. Their complex relationship is a lens through which Simpson viewed the fierce, claustrophobic nature of the mother-daughter bond. Like Simpson herself, Ann spends part of her childhood in Wisconsin and part in Beverly Hills. ann was such a powerful character that Simpson couldn't get rid of her. So she brought her back to life in "The Lost Father," the 1992 follow-up to "Anywhere." "The Lost Father" found Ann desperately searching for her Egyptian dad — who had disappeared when she was a young girl — and nearly losing her sanity in the process. Both of these novels won Simpson critical kudos, financial success ("Anywhere" was a bestseller) and several big awards, including the Whiting Prize. Most recently, she was named one of Granta's 20 Best American Writers Under 40 — at 39, she made it just under the wire. “a Regular Guy" is Simpson's new book, and it's something of a departure. She eschews her usual first-person narrative for a more decentered, third-person style. There is, once again, a young woman in the novel: Jane, brought up in a commune by her flaky mother. But it is Jane's father who is this story's central figure. Tom Owens is a go-getting college dropout who impregnates Jane's mother and then abandons mother and daughter. He goes on to create a multi-million-dollar biotech company, but becomes trapped in his own material concerns. He is a self-contained, distracted creature, but Jane's arrival on his doorstep subtly changes his life as she forms a surrogate family out of Owens' friends and lovers. simpson spoke to Salon in Manhattan. She and her husband and child live in California for most of the year, but Simpson spends the fall on the East Coast teaching undergraduate English at Bard College. Next: Steve Jobs and little nuggets of writers' lives.

Bookmark: http://www.salon1999.com/weekly/litchat.html
Archive: http://www.salon1999.com/archives/litindex.html