An Interview With Rebecca Saltzman

Rebecca Saltzman’s short story, “Don’t Tell Me the Lights are Shining Any Place but There,” is one of those galvanizing stories that’s so fantastic it lends a renewed sense of urgency to our work. We collectively loved the remarkable language, enthralling sense of place, and  heart-breaking characters. After we fast-tracked the submission to editor-in-chief, Mitch Weiland, we waited and hoped we wouldn’t be too late to accept it. You can read it here and as the first story in Idaho Review issue #20!

 I had the privilege of asking Rebecca a few questions about this story, the balance of humor and darkness in her writing, and the intrigue of haunted spaces. Rebecca’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. Her humor writing was included in the print anthology Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something: Twenty-One Years of Humor From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Rebecca received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. She lives in Manhattan.

IR: One of the many features of your story, "Don't Tell Me the Lights are Shining Any Place but There" that I admire is the balance of beautiful lyrical detail and an intimate voice; the reader feels close to the character while also experiencing these incredible moments of language. How did you go about finding the voice for this story?

RS: Thank you so much! I’m so glad you said this, because that was a hard balance for me, and it took a lot of drafts to get to a voice I was satisfied with. One of the seeds of this story was I wanted to write a character who was struggling with addiction, and wouldn’t necessarily be honest or upfront with the reader as she was telling her own story. At the same time I felt that the landscape she was moving through was essential to her character, so I really wanted to capture all the details of that world, and in the end bring these qualities of narration together in a cohesive way. There’s a lot of darkness in this story, so bringing beauty into it too felt really essential. 

IR: "Don't Tell Me the Lights are Shining Any Place but There" explores a nature park with a cliff that weeps tears, a haunted mansion, and a massive, abandoned factory. Some of your photography similarly explores these kinds of spaces in some stunning photos. What draws you as a writer and artist to abandoned or haunted spaces?

RS: I’m obsessed with these kinds of spaces as both a writer and a photographer. There’s a lot of beauty in them, but it’s a disturbing beauty that reminds us of how ephemeral we really are, as individuals and even as societies or a species. I believe that the physical landscape we move through shapes us as people, or shapes the characters I write, and we can’t understand that without a sense of the history that created that landscape. And that history is most on display in those haunted or abandoned spaces. I grew up in a house full of art books, and I spent a lot of time looking at two books about Clarence John Laughlin, who was one of the first American surrealist photographers. Laughlin took dreamy, spectral photos of the South, particularly along the Mississippi River, and his photos really captured a sense of time passing and a society haunted by its own past. His work had a huge influence on me as a writer and visual artist. When I look at his photos now, I see a lot of aesthetic skill but perhaps moral failure–his photos romanticize the Old South its plantations, and seem to have no interest in grappling with the violence of slavery. As a writer or photographer, if I’m not grappling with what is really haunting a place and its people, then I feel like I’m failing as an artist.

IR: I feel I’m terrible at titling my stories. The title of this story caught my eye right away when I was assigned to read it; it’s beautifully lyrical on its own. And though it doesn’t explicitly tag the story with something like a character’s name or some other reference, it also feels totally right. Could you talk a bit about the title and how you came to it? 

RS: “Don’t tell me the lights are shining any place but there,” is a lyric from the song “Meet Me in St. Louis,” which was written to celebrate the 1904 World’s Fair, and was later featured in the 1944 Judy Garland musical of the same name. I lived in St. Louis for six years and I was always fascinated by the way a fair from a century ago still felt very much alive in the collective memory of the city. It’s a beautiful lyric, but one that becomes sad and haunting in the context of history. I loved the irony of contrasting this past full of shining lights with the modern day city that my character was living in, marked by ruin and neglect.

IR: Your humor pieces are widely published in places like The New Yorker and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. I just read your story, “Large Hairless Mammals,” in Missouri Review, which, while very serious also had a lot of humor; there are some great moments of snark and levity in "Don't Tell me the Lights are Shining Anywhere but Here" (a heavily tragic story) as well. Could you speak a bit to your relationship with comedy/humor and how it might inform your fiction?

RS: Humor is a vital part of who we are. Joy and laughter remind us that we are alive. If a story I’m writing has no moments of humor or levity, then I don’t feel like I am really capturing the full humanity of my characters. Joy and sorrow cannot really be fully understood without the other standing in contrast. If we never laugh, we can’t really understand what it means to weep, and vice versa. I try to write the kinds of things I would want to read. I personally don’t want to read something that is purely depressing, so I feel like I owe it to the reader to throw in a few jokes.

IR: What are you reading that is exciting you, and why?

RS: My son has had long covid for over six months now, so I’ve been reading a lot about illness, both from a philosophical perspective and personal narratives. I recently read Meghan O’Rourke’s excellent The Invisible Kingdom, and Taylor Harris’s memoir, This Boy We Made, which has been an essential touchstone for me navigating the journey of parenting a chronically ill child. I think one of the most powerful things literature can do is help us understand and make sense of our own lives, which these books have done for me. Susan Sontag’s great classic “Illness as Metaphor” has also been an important companion for me these last few months.

IR: What’s next for your writing?

RS: I’m working on a novel and a story collection. And yes, there will be more abandoned buildings and spooky landscapes!