Q&A with Alison Maeser Brimley

Alison Maeser Brimley received the 2017 AML Short Fiction Award for her short story, “The Pew,” published in Dialogue, 50:3, Fall 2017. Brimley is nearing the completion of her MFA in Creative Writing from BYU.

Michael Andrew Ellis of the AML Board conducted this interview.

AML: Tell us a little about your history with writing and what you are working on at the moment.

Brimley: I’m one of those who have been writing since I could hold a pencil (though I held the pencil the wrong way, as my father has never hesitated to inform me. It doesn’t seem to have inhibited me too severely.) I’ve only ever wanted to be a writer. Right now, I’m finishing my MFA in Creative Writing at BYU. I recently defended my thesis, which was a collection of eight stories. At the moment, I’m letting my thesis stories rest and churning out a new batch of stories, mostly just for the sake of writing them. Many of the stories I’m working on now have centered themselves on the theme of storytelling itself—the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how we can use our stories or other people’s stories to our advantage. Mostly I’m just trying to make myself write habitually.

AML: In “The Pew,” the tabernacle is central to the story’s conflict between those who want to tear it down and those who want to keep it. How did you learn about the history of the regional tabernacles being torn down in the mid-20th century?

Brimley: During my undergrad, I worked as a student editor at the Religious Studies Center at BYU, where I edited various articles written mostly by BYU religion professors. I once was assigned to edit an article that overviewed the history of the tabernacles that were torn down in the 60s and 70s, and I just found that really fascinating. I knew about the Salt Lake Tabernacle and the old Provo Tabernacle, but I didn’t know there were tabernacles everywhere. Much of this article focused on the drama surrounding the Coalville and Heber tabernacles, and I became fascinated with the hints of interpersonal conflicts hinted at in this historical article. I was especially interested in the fact that the division of teams in this debate seemed to fall along gender lines: men tended to support the instruction passed down from the Brethren in Salt Lake to stake presidents to tear down the tabernacles, while women mounted a defense. These battles went on in multiple cities. I read snatches of one letter where a stake president warned that “petticoats were ruling the priesthood.” From the milieu of voices I was reading when I started researching this time period in earnest, certain character types started to suggest themselves to me. The “stake president” character, of course, who is full of righteous zeal to carry out his calling in a satisfactory way; the sassy woman who doesn’t care what her leaders think. I thought it would be interesting, too, to let that large-scale conflict play out in a home, between one husband and wife. I think I was drawn to the fact, too, that in this instance, these two very Mormon ideals—on the one hand, honoring your heritage, and on the other, honoring the direction of those in authority over you—were butting heads. It wasn’t as simple as a conflict between good and evil. They’re both good, and, when taken to extremes, they’re both evil.

AML: The characters in “The Pew” are developed so well. What did you do to be able to understand them and present them, especially understanding older folks and the dynamics of older couples? For example, the marital advice “You can be right or you can be happy?”

Brimley: I’m not at all sure that I do understand the dynamics of older people and older couples. I started writing the story after having just gotten married myself, at 23, so I guess in a way I just extrapolated my worst fears about inequality in marriage on to a time period that is sort of stereotypically notorious for its inequality in marriage. (I must issue a disclaimer here: I have never, never once since my actual marriage had occasion to worry over this in my own life.) I think the advice “You can be right or you can be happy” may have been advice that I myself received before getting married. And the thing I think is so interesting about that line is that it’s so troubling, and yet it’s not wrong. In many situations, it’s completely true. Part of living in relationships with people—any relationship, whether it’s parent-child or friend-friend—is learning to pick your battles, and sometimes you have to realize something isn’t worth being “right” about. But to see how that principle might manifest itself the context of a relationship where one partner is conditioned to always aim for “happy” (or if not happy, at least status quo) at the expense of “right” —that’s where it becomes troubling.

AML: Over the course of the narrative, we flit back and forth between the present and the past, and even capture the distant past with the history of Frandsenville and the tabernacle. I like the way you used a mixture of the present and past tense in this story. Please explain how this came together as you wrote the story. Did this structure surface over the course of many drafts or did it come natural and instant?

Brimley: I wrote my first draft of this story in an undergraduate fiction workshop at BYU. My first draft actually looked pretty different—it started out fully anchored in the past, with no jumps into the present. The comment I got from my professor, Steve Tuttle, after turning in that draft was something like, “Why does this take place in the 60s instead of today?” I was like, Well, because it took place in the 60s. It’s historical fiction. But after returning to the draft a little later, I think I realized the impulse behind that question. The story needed a reason to be told in the present. So that’s when I added the perspective of Helen as an older woman, reflecting on her past. After reading through that draft even more recently, after it had been accepted for publication, I realized that the present-tense Helen actually contributes a lot to the story’s theme, which I hadn’t even intended to do. As an older woman, she’s concerned with her “staying power” as a human—she feels expendable, even to her family, and there’s a kind of beneath-the-surface concern that nothing she’s done will matter after she is gone. Her campaign to save the tabernacle, half her life ago, failed. The things that once concerned Inez about the tabernacle’s destruction—that it’s a symbol of her ancestors, it’s a symbol of people who are gone now—are now the things that concern Helen about herself. There’s a fear of being forgotten ourselves that I think we transpose onto inanimate objects.

AML: Yes, I thought it was sad that Helen didn’t find a reason to keep the pew when she could. It’s like she was acquiescing that it wouldn’t matter in the end.

Now, similar to the shifts in tense, the point of view has some interesting shifts. Most of the story seems to focus on Helen and her thoughts, but then there are a couple of sections where the reader is in the mind of Helen’s husband, Alvin, and then in the hospital scene, the mind of President Pike. Will you speak to these shifts in Point of View, and how as a writer you determine what POV to take, and how limited or in depth it should be?

Brimley: This is another way in which the first draft differed pretty significantly from the last. The first draft split its narrative time pretty equally between four characters: Helen, Alvin, President Pike, and Inez. We saw scenes from each of their perspectives. When I brought Helen in as an older woman reflecting on her past, the perspectives of everyone who wasn’t Helen kind of had to go, and I cut a lot of scenes. For example, there was a temple recommend interview between Inez and President Pike that got cut. I guess there were just some of those scenes, though, I couldn’t bring myself to cut without losing something, which is why the story sometimes does flit back into other heads. I suppose I should have figured out a better way to solve that problem. Overall, I don’t think I try to determine what point of view to take. I just take it story by story.

AML: Are there any other stories in the works that have some of these same characters? Perhaps a fictional Mormon village?

Brimley: Not technically “in the works”…. Actually, people ask me semi-frequently why I don’t write novels, and I tell them it’s because I don’t have novel ideas, I only have short story ideas. But this is one story I think actually would work as a novel. So I have toyed with that possibility. I could bring back the shifting points of view, and spend alternating chapters in the heads of each of these four main characters. I think that structure is generally much better suited to a novel than a short story. I would love to go deeper with each of these characters. So who knows.

AML: Who are some current or past writers you draw inspiration from or feel like they influence your work in some way?

Brimley: I’ll give you the two I plan to name my children after. My number one hero when it comes to writing is Alice Munro. I love a short story that feels like an epic tale, and she does that so beautifully. I definitely have a thing for writing stories that span rather long periods of time, and I like to think I’m influenced by her in that respect.

I also have to say Flannery O’Connor. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” was the first short story I remember really reading, and it blew my mind. I came home from school and read it to my parents. I think they didn’t love it. But she characterizes so well—she can make you hate a person so much and still hate it when something terrible happens to them. You feel like you know someone exactly like each of her characters. If anyone in this story is O’Connoresque in any way, I guess it would be Inez, if I may pay myself an undeserved compliment.

AML: What is your writing process?

Brimley: I’m very fortunate at this point to spend so much time in a formal creative writing environment, so my process, after I have an idea, mainly goes like this: I write a draft of a story and give it to my husband to read, and he tells me it’s the greatest thing he’s ever read, etc., but then he also tells me what’s not working. We have the same literary tastes, and he is a good reader, which is also a great blessing for me. Then I give it to my writing workshop—a group of fellow grad students—and they give me invaluable feedback as well. But I usually leave that feeling like “This story needs to go in the trash.” But then, I let the story sit for a few months and work on something else, and when I come back to it, I have the energy to re-tackle it, and I feel less married to whatever I wrote months earlier, so it’s fun again at that point. I actually like revising way more than writing the first draft.

AML: Thank you very much for allowing us to get to know you better as a writer. We look forward to more stories!