Kathryn Scanlan's great literary derby

Writer Kathryn Scanlan.Melanie Schiff

It was four hours of conversation in one sitting and then a few more talks, some time later, in the middle of the pandemic, on the phone.

From there Kathryn Scanlan (Iowa, 43 years old) took the pieces to put together

A todo brida

(Errata Naturae), the brief and moving book about Sonia, an indomitable and hardened woman whose life is spent surrounded by horses in the dark world of racetracks and the races.

“I was born on October 1, 1962. I was born in Dixon City, Iowa. I was born with a dislocated hip.

The doctor said she would never be able to walk.

My mother said, “Nothing about that, something can be done,” begins the book, based on a true story.

Structured in 12 blocks and an epilogue, the longest text in the book barely reaches three pages and the shortest does not exceed two sentences.

They are all headed with titles as if they were prose poems ('How guilty he was', 'Miss, blunder', 'I saw him every day',...).

In

A todo brida

the only voice heard is Sonia's, her story is not clothed with other descriptions, because Scanlan has not added anything, there is no more context than that offered by the protagonist herself.

The author has cut and organized the notes that make up this book, texts that at times make one think of long captions from a non-existent album that allow the protagonist to revisit scenes from her life ("I learned to gallop through the cornfields," she says. the 'Short Iron

'

chapter ).

Humor and tragedy, cruelty and tenderness follow one another without emphasis or drama.

“I thought that his story had to be told in this style, but also the form of this book is mine, something that I have arrived at after spending a long time without writing in such a compressed way,” explains the author in a video call from Los Angeles. writer, one of the most unique literary voices on the American scene, who in her minimalism follows in the footsteps of veterans like Lydia Davis or Diane Williams, also declared fans of Scanlan.

“I am interested in the possibility that each word in each sentence holds to contain and offer something.”

Horse race (untitled), circa 1970. Gerry Cranham (Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery)

The narrator of her new book, the indomitable Sonia, and the writer Scanlan were born in Iowa. Their childhood landscape was the same, but their meeting was not the result of chance, it was brought about by the author's mother.

“My parents are dedicated to antique markets like her and that's how they met her.

My mother insisted that she should meet Sonia and listen to the stories she told her,” she recalls.

“I went to see it without any expectations, but I immediately understood that there was a book in it.

Her challenge was to give it shape.”

Oral history, that discipline that in the United States achieved publishing success thanks to Studs Terkel in the 20th century and that has maintained its popularity, permeates

A todo brida.

That conversational tone remains alive in Scanlan's minimalism and fosters an absolute lack of drama, captured in the naturalness with which Sonia speaks of violence and love, of accidents, careers, physically destroyed men, women and animals among whom there is camaraderie. and brutality.

“I also grew up with horses and had one: the way Sonia talks about it, about that bond, there is nothing imposed,” she points out.

Scanlan is interested in tough stories like Sonia's, with an intensity that is far from sentimental.

“If you give it space and isolate it, it takes on a new meaning,” she explains.

“This story would be totally different if the protagonist were a man.

The female experience is fundamental.”

Lost objects

Scanlan has been transforming almost randomly found materials into literature for some time.

In his previous book he worked from the personal diary of an 86-year-old Illinois woman he found.

“It was funny and moving, he talked about the weather, about her family and friends, about food.

It was huge and I spent a lot of time trying to distill what it made me feel.

It helped me learn to edit.

What interests me is saying as much as possible with as little as possible.”

Her critics say that her work focuses on ordinary people.

What does she think?

“Perhaps what they mean is that the lives I have noticed are of working class people, something that perhaps is not so common now,” he says with an ironic smile, and confirms his liking for the stories of Raymond Carver, the master of American literature, who precisely taught at the same University of Iowa where Scanlan did his undergraduate degree.

But she did not train as a writer in the famous writing workshop of that center, in fact she studied her postgraduate degree in fine arts at the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Today it is almost impossible to make a living from writing exclusively and I think this influences the type of books that are written.

There is also the issue of university programs for writers, which put enormous pressure,” she reflects.

In

A todo brida,

references to race are also almost non-existent, the natives who are Sonia's neighbors when she was a child, and some more notes in Sonia's long talk.

Scanlan defends that

A todo brida

is fiction, although everything is taken from his interview with the protagonist of the book.

Something close to poetry?

“Yes, I like that idea.

They are loose blocks with their words, vignettes that I put together moving the information.

When I had them all, I printed them and placed them on the floor to look for the affinity between them.”

Like a

collage

, where cutting out the real image creates something new.

“In my work there is a lot of juxtaposition,” she clarifies.

And yet, there is no disorder in Sonia's story, as contained and exciting as it is raw.

She is someone who cares deeply about animals, but accepting the brutalities they suffer in competitions without being able to prevent it causes her enormous conflict.

“Everyone who is in that business is complicit in the harm that is done to animals and people.”

Sonia left the competition circuit and the horses.

She later worked in prisons and now in the world of antiquities.

She tells it with that sarcastic, detached and raw tone, almost like a

country song.

But there is no doubt that neighing and horses are his thing: “It is said that you never get rid of the racing inside you.

“I still dream about them almost every night,” she says near the end of her story.

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