This article originally appeared in PAGES Magazine, May/June 2000 issue.
by Shari Weiss
A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Karen Stolz discovered a new world.
Writing is as instinctive as baking pies for Karen Stolz, whose first novel, World of Pies, is due out in June from Hyperion. “You get a feeling for what works–and what doesn’t,” says Stolz, whose twin passions began when she was eight years old, growing up in the small Kansas town of Atchison. “I knew with certainty that I wanted to be a writer at the same time I was struggling with pie crusts,” she says.
Actually, Stolz didn’t get over her fear of piecrusts turning into crumbs until she worked at a bakery at age 19, but she was never afraid of not getting published. “To be honest, I believed in my heart that I would,” she explains. “I don’t think that is egotism. It’s more that I wanted it so badly I knew I couldn’t live without it.” Her intense desire to become a published writer motivated Stolz to pursue an MFA degree through the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she “really learned to write a story.” Located at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, the workshop was the first creative writing degree program in a U.S. university. It was made possible by the university’s decision early in the 20th century to grant academic thesis credit for creative work in the arts and has served as a blueprint for university-based creative writing programs ever since.
“I was very hungry to learn about writing,” Stolz offers. “What was unique and beautiful about being there was two years devoted to writing in a community of writers who were as passionate about writing as you were.” Stolz wrote and studied with well-known, published authors like Jane Smiley, Don Hendrie, Clark Blaise, and James Alan McPherson during her time in Iowa City. She continues, “I learned the importance of community to me. Writing can be such an isolating experience, with a lot of rejection along the way. The support of a community makes a big difference.”
Stolz credits the workshop with teaching her how to build tension and create a direction for a story “so that it goes somewhere.” She admits she was like many beginning writers who are “stunned to learn that drama can be built from something natural and not a big bolt, and yet render a powerful effect on characters.” She discovered that, in a good story, the writer builds a level of stress, then often diffuses it before stepping up the tension once again.
World of Pies is a world of small climaxes leading to a greater message. “What I want people to get from my book has to do with the power of family love,” the author says. “That love is their defining force in life, and it carries them through hard times and unexpected changes.”
And what better place for a world of pies and everyday family climaxes than small-town America? In the case of Stolz’ novel, that place is Annette, Texas–which itself is a significant character in the book, according to the author. “It’s hardly a coincidence that I chose a girl’s name, someone you can get to know,” she says. “Annette is a pretty, old-fashioned name, and the town’s intimacy embraces, exasperates, and empowers Roxanne in the same way that her family does. Small towns are warm and intimate. Everyone knows you, and looks after you. You can explore without getting lost. You can walk downtown, to school, to friends’ homes. And because there aren’t so many restaurants and activities, things are more home-centered. Barbecues, picnics, gatherings to watch The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, popcorn at the high school football game, church suppers–and, of course, lots of homemade pies. The town itself is your family.”
And you can go home again, even if you leave to try out the big city. That’s what readers come to understand from the ten stories that begin with an introduction to a 12-year-old tomboy named Roxanne, who grows up in the ‘60s and learns about first kisses, racial tension, war’s waste, the death and rebirth of loved ones-and the comfort of a good home-cooked dessert. “I want readers to carry away with them the pleasures of old-time summers, eating Eskimo pies on a blanket on the lawn, enjoying the arc of the porch swing and the smell of hot-out-of the-oven cherry pie, remembering the first bottle of nail polish and the first bra they bought and their first kiss in the summer darkness,” Stolz explains, “I want them to feel all that once again–through their senses and in their hearts.”
This is a “heart and soul book,” not typical of the gritty Gen-X type books so in vogue in recent years, according to many of the early readers of the novel. Stolz’ agent, Gail Hochman, submitted it confidently because she felt the book had a positive life force, “The stories were warm and real and the characters touched me deeply,” says Hochman, who first met Stolz in the early ’80s at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. “It was a refreshing change from the bleak and ‘edgy’ first novels so frequently published now. This is a book I was proud to recommend.” Recognizing Stolz’ talent early on, Hochman waited well over a decade for the book to finally be finished because she says she knew it was a wise investment of her time. “When I finally received the manuscript, I took it on vacation with me, which I normally don’t do,” she says. “But reading it, I was totally mesmerized. After finishing World of Pies, I just wanted to sit there and think about the characters and all that had happened to them. It was a rejuvenating experience.”
Editor Leigh Haber says the opinion at Hyperion was unanimous: “It’s difficult to get the many readers within a publishing house to agree on fiction–everyone has their own ideas about what they love and what they don’t–and it’s on record how many novels have gone on to become beloved bestsellers after first having been rejected by scores of editors at scores of publishing houses. When it came to World of Pies, there was no such debate. Every single decision-maker here found something to love about the book, whether it was the small-town-in-Texas feeling, the humor, the growing up experiences, or the recipes. We all felt it was the kind of book that we would love and that we could persuade the book-buying public to love, too.”
Stolz’ greatest strengths, according to her editors, are her wit, sense of place, vivid writing, surprising linguistic twists and turns, and her recipes. Many of the chapters conclude with instructions for making baked goods.
But World of Pies has its sour ingredients as well as the sweet ones. In fact, Stolz’ favorite chapter, “Solace,” describes two tragedies and how family members comfort themselves, sometimes with “discomforting” addictive behaviors. Although Stolz’ immediate family life was peaceful, her father’s position as a campus minister brought many troubled people into her home and into her life. This novel is not autobiographical–even though the first person narrator induces many readers to believe otherwise–but Stolz does feel a powerful connection to Roxanne, the novel’s central figure. “When I was in junior high, my family was active in antiwar causes, and my father counseled men who’d been to Vietnam,”says the author, describing the timeframe for much of the novel. “Those were very exciting years for me. It was the most political we had ever been-or have been since.” Stolz wrote the first of the novel’s stories without any vision of it growing into a full-fledged book. But there was something in that story that begged her to continue. “Family stories are the guts of our lives,” she notes.” There is pain and sorrow, but ultimately, there is the affirmation a family can provide. “The novel just kind of evolved as I followed Roxanne and her family living their lives in this town that I made up. To me, the characters were very real, and I just kept writing stories. I guess this was the chicken’s way to write a novel.”
Shari Weiss is a freelance writer in Oakland, California.