Introduction

by Helen Gallico
 

As first-year English undergraduates at the University of Warwick, we study a module called “Modern World Literatures”. A section of this module is based around Contemporary World Literature. We study three books, and choose to focus on one in particular. As a group we chose to focus on Janet Fitch’s White Oleander; the other two books being Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Embassytown by China Miéville.

Marshall Berman uses a quote from Karl Marx to describe modernity, naming his book after it: “All that is solid melts into air”. This idea of rapid destruction of the past to create a way for the future is a key feature in defining modernity. We have tried to look at White Oleander in this light, to be able to define it as a ‘modern’ text.

White Oleander was written by Janet Fitch in 1999. Set in Los Angeles, it tells the story of Ingrid Magnussen, a poet and single mother, and her daughter Astrid. After Ingrid is arrested and imprisoned for murder, the story follows Astrid and her movement through six different foster homes in as many years. An excerpt from the novel was selected as a notable story in the 1994 Best American Short Stories. It was selected for Oprah’s Book Club in 1999, and a film adaptation was released in 2002, featuring Michelle Pfeiffer and Renée Zellweger. Fitch has lived in Los Angeles all her life, and her knowledge of the city is clearly seen in White Oleander. She teaches fiction at the University of Southern California.

Interview

by Helen Gallico
 

I read online that you had already used Ingrid as the protagonist of a short story, why did you decide not to continue to use her as the primary voice in a longer novel, or, indeed, White Oleander?
Ingrid is a natural antagonist, not a protagonist. She is someone without the potential for change, she doesn’t doubt herself, except at certain critical moments, and then, when the crisis is past, she 'snaps back' to the way she was before. She is a given, whole, herself.

Did you take inspiration from/research any particular poetry when writing Ingrid's poetry? You mention Dante and reference a wide range of other authors; did you read up on this in advance to decide what sorts of poetry Ingrid would have known about and liked?
The poet who informed Ingrid's voice the most was Anne Sexton. I'm a huge Sexton fan, I hear [Ingrid's] tone very much like that. But no, I didn't read up or research these authors, I heard them, they're like music inside me. Ingrid was aware of the entire canon, she was an educated woman, it was all already there. I knew, I could feel, who she would be attracted to, who she would embody.

Was White Oleander to a certain extent a social commentary on 1990s California?
Among other things. Our society as a whole reflects the dislocation and fragmentation of the Los Angeles of White Oleander. Now even more than in the 1990's.

Why did you decide to base White Oleander entirely in Los Angeles?
I just started writing it, and it was enough to unpack what I knew about the city. It's a world of its own, and a world not often depicted in literary fiction.

Were you influenced by any writers in the overall creation of White Oleander?
I'd say. Dickens and Joyce - Portrait of the Artist and Oliver Twist - and Sei Shonagon (The Pillow Book). Ingrid was Sei Shonagon in some very basic ways.

Would you call White Oleander principally a bildungsroman?
Absolutely. It was my Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.

Do you think religion is important in the novel?
I think the problem of a human being's developing sense of fate and free will, of good and evil, of faith and despair, lies at the heart of the novel. Call that religion or philosophy or spirituality, it boils down to the same thing.

Would you describe the ending of the novel as a happy ending?
Absolutely. I think whenever a person can survive extreme hardship with his ability to love intact, with his compassion and some kind of faith in the future and an ability to act in the world, that's a happy ending. Whenever a person can transmute the lead of bitter experience into the gold of creative work, that's a happy ending.

Marshall Berman uses Karl Marx’s idea that “all that is solid melts into air” as a definition of modernity. Rapid destruction of the past to create the new is a prominent idea in modernity. How comfortably do you think, following this definition, White Oleander fits into the category of Modern literature?
If modernism is the rapid destruction of the past to create the new, Los Angeles is modernism itself. It's the place where the past only got a tiny toehold before it was ejected - where ideas of solidity and tradition come to die. White Oleander shows what it's like to live in this invented reality. We're all foster children in the modern world.

To what extent do you think capitalism is a key aspect of White Oleander? Was Rena being from Russia a deliberate choice to highlight the difference between capitalism and communism?
Well, capitalism is what makes it so difficult for an artist like Ingrid to live. It's why she's so stressed out. There's no other way to make a living than a minimum wage paste-up job. If society can be judged by the fate of the weakest of its members, the fate of children, an economically useless sector of society, capitalism is the necessary condition for such pressure on poor families and neglect of children.

Loneliness seems to be an occupational hazard in modern literature. Struggles to form close bonds is a given. Would you call Astrid, or indeed Ingrid, modern heroines?
Loneliness is the individual at odds with his society. As such, they are absolutely modern. Traditional societies co-opt the individual. There is no place for individual consciousness when the village needs to get the wheat in. For better or worse, they operate free from the patriarchy.

Does Astrid have one relationship in the novel that you would class as more important than the others?
The relationship with her mother, naturally is the most important. Her mother has both wounded her irredeemably and given her the strength to transcend those wounds. her attachment to Paul Trout, to a good kid her own age, is also extremely important. It's the only really healthy relationship she has.

What lessons can we take, today in 2012, from White Oleander’s 1999?
That as long as we can continue to love, no matter how bruised and beaten up we get, as long as we're willing to stick our hands out one more time to connect with another person, we've got a chance. Once we decide it's too dangerous to love another person, we're screwed.

What is the function of Astrid’s art in addressing the issues of modernity? Is it to challenge the consumerist, capitalist society by which she is surrounded, or is it her only method of clinging onto the remnants of her past?
Creating is by nature the opposite of consumerism, it’s the antidote. Astrid's art is the essential human act of turning the garbage of one's life into something that has meaning for the artist, and which communicates that meaning to others. Although everybody has to eat, the economic value of art is its least important function.

How does White Oleander engage with the tension between past and present?
In this I'm with Faulkner, the past is not over. The present is the pinpoint behind which masses the cumulative effect of the past.

Why do Paul and Astrid end up living in Berlin in particular?
Because Berlin is built on ruins, and so are Paul and Astrid. It's an artistic hub, and it's recently been reunited with itself. It's trying to reconcile the past and the present.

Would you describe White Oleander as a feminist text?
Yes. It's a book about women's lives, the way in which women influence one another, the way in which women offer a variety of images or 'role models', philosophies and ways of being, to girls, who then sort between them to find what's true for themselves.