L'Achat
An Interview
with author Laurie Graham

CNF: What pleases you about the way your essay turned out? Are there ways in which it fell short of your original goals?

Graham: This essay is an expansion of a shorter version that I wrote shortly after the trip to Paris that "L'Achat" describes. The original version was thinner and less satisfying, and was never published. But it did provide the framework for the current essay. My job was to fill in the framework, add more humorous moments, and make the essay richer in visual and emotional detail. I am pleased with the way the framework provided by the original essay offered itself for expansion, and I enjoyed reliving those moments I added accounts of. I wanted the essay to reflect the humor of the apartment search and the emotional roller coaster I was on, and also to evoke a bit of Paris from an unfamiliar perspective. I don't think I yet have sufficient distance from the essay to know whether I've fallen short of my goals. I guess the reader will decide.

CNF: How did the essay develop, both in your initial thinking about it and in the revision process? What happened in the writing that you didn't expect would happen?

Graham: The essay is a chronological tale, framed by my subsequent offering at Saint-Sulpice Church. That was the structure I decided on at the outset and it did not change. In revising, I did add some material to the final paragraph of the essay to strengthen the image and recall its appearance at the essay's opening.

CNF: How does your experience writing creative nonfiction depend upon or depart from your work in other genres?

Graham: Apart from book reviewing, I haven't written in other genres. I do find that in my book reviews I often try to set scenes. Perhaps that is a reflection of my impulse to write creative nonfiction.

CNF: Can you speculate about creative nonfiction as an emerging genre in American literature? Where do you see it going?

Graham: I think the rise of creative nonfiction comes partly from the reader's desire to know "the truth." The novelist will justifiably point to the higher truth achieved by the novel, but I think readers often feel that the facts, what actually happened, is more 'true"—and so, more satisfying, more pertinent to real life.

CNF: What advice do you offer new writers?

Graham: I don't think I have any sweeping generalizations. When commenting on a new writer's manuscript, I address myself to that particular piece of writing.