H. LITERARY FICTION
BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH
OLIVE, AGAIN
By: Elizabeth Strout
Every literary piece have its own stories to tell the same way every author have their own inspiration in crafting every novel they make. Olive, Again is a novel that portrayed the small town life of its characters. It revealed how people in a small town live an ordinary life. From the usual gossip, infidelity in marriage down to failures of being a parent, all are manifested in the novel. With this unusual concept of a novel, readers wonder what inspired Elizabeth Strout in writing this literary piece. People are curious if this is somehow related to the life she’s lived.
According to an article by Book Browse entitled, “Elizabeth Strout Biography”, Elizabeth was born in Portland, Maine. She grew up in the smalls towns of Maine and New Hampshire. At a very young age, she is already interested in writing. She even kept notebooks which contain written accounts of the quotidian details of the days of her life. Growing up, she spent hours in the local library indulging herself with stacks of great fiction. Her abiding love for the physical world is perhaps the thing that inspired her to put into words the life of the ordinary people in an ordinary small town. Being born and raised in a small town, Elizabeth utilized her experiences in a day to day basis to come up with the idea of the novel. Further, in her adolescent years, she already figured out that one day she is going to be a writer, hence she continued studying authors and how they write. More so, Elizabeth’s parents are both professors and her husband is a lawyer. With this, we can consider the assumption that most of the characters in the novel are inspired by the most important people in the life of the author. In an interview with Emma Brockes in 2019, Strout revealed how she came up with the scenes in the novel. She said the whenever she writes a scene, she tries to use whatever is most urgent in her at that very moment and transpose it into character. For her, with such inspiration, it will be a living thing that is real. She even admitted that the scenes are always sequential that she often got stuck. This is the reason why every chapter in the book is a different scene from the preceding chapter. For her, it is what made the novel interesting and appealing to its readers. More so, there is a scene in the story involving Kayley and Mr. Ringrose that tackled the issue on sexual exploitation. In the same interview with Emma Brockes, Strout told her the reason behind this. She admitted that it was a risky scene however there is a part of her constantly trying to write outside the grain. Although she did not mean political correctness grain, she emphasized that as a writer, one always try to look for the aspects that are subtle. Going against the grain was not her purpose of writing such scene instead she only wanted to highlight the interesting facet of human experience.
What Elizabeth Strout revealed is a proof that writers draw so much inspiration from their experiences. Although there are a lot of aspects to be considered, having a story to tell behind a great literary piece will also give readers a more interesting story to talk about. The concept of a novel is not the sole reason why it catches the heart of the audience. What makes it more touching is how the author came up to that certain concept.
References
Elizabeth Strout Boigraphy. (n.d.). Book Browse. Retrieved from https://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm/author_number/312/elizabeth-strout#:~:text=Elizabeth%20Strout%20was%20born%20in,in%20Maine%20and%20New%20Hampshire.&text=Strout%20attended%20Bates%20College%2C%20graduating,with%20a%20Certificate%20in%20Gerontology.
Elizabeth Strout. (2020). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Strout
Brockes, E. (2019). ‘Oh man, she’s back’: Elizabeth Strout on the return of Olive Kitteridge. Support the Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/19/elizabeth-trout-interview-emma-brockes
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