Clay Stafford Interviews Reviewer Maureen Corrigan: “I Want Good Books”

Maureen Corrigan interviewed by Clay Stafford

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Maureen Corrigan, the esteemed reviewing voice for NPR’s Fresh Air, is a figure whose influence I’ve admired for years. It was a true honor to present her with the John Seigenthaler Legends Award at the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. Her book-lined office in Washington, D.C., where we had the privilege of conversing, is a testament to her influence. She receives over two hundred books per week for review, a staggering number that underscores the weight of her opinions and influence.

“Maureen, all of us would like more reviews. I think like a writer. I think like a storyteller. I think the way that my brain works. But how can a writer step out of themselves and start thinking like a reviewer to get more of their books covered?”

“I don’t think a writer should think like a reviewer. I don’t think a writer should be thinking about reception.”

“Not at all?”

“I think a writer’s job is to be as loyal to the work at hand as possible, and that is where your focus should be. And thinking about reception is, in my mind, a killer. When I’m having trouble with a review—just writing because reviewing is writing—I don’t think, ‘Oh, I’d better write it this way because I know that’s gotten a good response,’ like jokes or some witticisms from Fresh Air audiences, or whatever. What I say to myself is, ‘Pretend you’re writing this for the Village Voice.’ That’s where I started out as a reviewer. Voice was the greatest independent newspaper ever in America. There’s a new anthology out of Village Voice writing that I’m very excited about. The Voice would let you do anything, and be as outrageous, or even offensive, or funny, or heartfelt, as you wanted it to be. If they felt like you were writing from an authentic place, if you had something interesting to say, let it rip. I need to give myself permission to really think about what I think of a work and write in the way that I think is appropriate to my sensibility. I cannot think about whoever is hearing it, or reading it, or how they may feel about what I’m writing.”

“This leads to my next question. You are a professor as well as a reviewer, and what do you think a writer should do to have a writer’s education?”

“For me, it’s still the traditional wisdom: read, read, read, read, read, read.”

“And read what?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes. Read popular fiction. Absolutely read the canonical stuff. I mean, there’s a reason why we’re still talking about Hemingway, even though some of my students might roll their eyes and say, ‘Oh, you know, the deadest of the whitest, malest writers.’ Read him. Look at those Nick Adams stories. Hear that voice! Look at what he’s doing with those omissions, those spaces in his writing, and how he draws us in. You try to do it. See if you can do something like that. And, as a reviewer, to have a sense of the canon of Western civilization, you know, I wish I had absorbed more of it. I’m always trying to be able to make those connections to contemporary literature, or to even sometimes use an apt quote that opens out what a book might be trying to do. I’ve got some of that at my fingertips. So, I think being informed about the craft and the art that you’re working in is crucial. And I’ll tell you one other thing. I think the greatest advice is, ass in the chair. I am a little fed up with pre-writing. I think that the academy writing programs are way too invested in pre-writing exercises.”

“Can you define that?”

“I have an honor student right now who’s working on a thesis. And what that means at Georgetown is that she will have been in a yearlong class. All fall semester, she and her cohort were just talking about what they thought they wanted to do. That’s four months of talk, and then she would meet with me, and she’d say, ‘I think I want to do this and that.’ Being the sour puss that I am, I would say, ‘Well, I think I want to write a book about a whale and a ship. What do you think of that?’ But it’s not gonna be Moby Dick. Put it down on paper and see what it really is, and then we can work with this. I think that all these pre-writing exercises where students—they don’t even do drafts. They do outlines finally, but they’re theorizing their subject. And you know it’s just endless talking about what they think they might want to write. I think it amps up the anxiety of writing. Just sit down and write—as Anne Lamott says—the shitty first draft, and then the next one, and then the next one, and the next one. It is not fun. It’s hard to write. Keep doing it, keep at it, and maybe something will come of it. That’s the only way.”

“So, if a writer wanted to transcend just the normal, what would they do? How would they go about it?”

“They’d have to look inside themselves. They’d have to look inside themselves armed with all of that other language in those great books that I’m talking about, and they’d have to look inside themselves and say, ‘What’s my worldview? What’s the thing that when I think about it—an incident, a person, a situation—I get that charge of, ‘I want to get it down. I want I want to nail that.’ I think they have to start with wherever their creative spark is. That’s what they have to do.”

“Okay, last question. In your classes, teaching, and being around authors, your whole life, basically, even before you started a career, you were around authors your whole life. What do you wish that writers really knew? If you took a writer aside and said, ‘I just wish you knew this,’ what would that be?”

“Well, I hope they know that writing really changes people’s lives. I hear from listeners of Fresh Air who say, ‘I read this book or that book on your say so. It really touched me profoundly.’ My students still come in with Catcher in the Rye, and they want to talk about it. They feel such a strong connection with Holden. For many of us, those characters, those worlds that we meet on the pages of a book, they’re as real as anything that’s out there. I really do feel like there is a kind of sacred aspect to writing. So even if you’re writing—you know I love mysteries—even if you’re writing mysteries, my God! Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, that whole crew. I’m rereading the Spencer novels now, Robert B. Parker. I love those novels and I’m seeing the magic in them again—I haven’t read them in a long time—from back in the Seventies. Parker was writing from an authentic place. I think, late in the series he began to repeat himself and quote himself, but what a joy it is to read those novels and to enter that world! And I feel like you can feel that he’s having a blast himself being in that world. So, I don’t know. I think writers should know we’re all rooting for them. We want the magic to happen, too.”

“You’re talking about characters. You’re still not over Gatsby.”

“Oh, how could you ever get over Gatsby? I was just in New York. I had the privilege of meeting with some of the folks involved in one of the two Gatsby musicals that are about to open. It was so much fun talking to creative people who were not, you know, academics. Yeah, who were musicians, who were producers, directors. What’s Gatsby about? What’s this about? People who are just as obsessed as I am with that novel. It has a hold on many of us, and it’s so wonderful to have Gatsby regarded that way, but also to think about why, what is the magic here? You know it hasn’t gone away in 100 years.”

“Was Fitzgerald telling an inward story, or was he trying to change a life, or what?”

“He was telling an inward story. He did both. He was also telling a story about America and the dream of American meritocracy, and how it lets us down. In that 185-page little novel, he managed to vacuum-pack his own story—a lot of it is about class anxiety and that’s Fitzgerald’s story—and it’s also the story about America and the promise of America.”

“So, it’s personal and bigger.”

“That’s right. And it’s hard to do that. And he managed to pull it off.”

“But that’s what we all should strive for. Thank you.”

“I’m flattered and honored that you want to talk to me. You’ve probably heard enough of my spiel about Gatsby and writing and everything else, but I really do believe all this stuff. I want the good books. I want the books that surprise me.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer and filmmaker and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. https://claystafford.com/

Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University. She is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers (Scribner) and the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism, presented by the Mystery Writers of America. In 2019, Corrigan was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle; in 2023, she received the John Seigenthaler Legends Award from The Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. Her book, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures, was published in 2014. https://maureencorrigan.com/