Issue 21 Fiction: Hunters: Author Interview and Discussion
by Fringe Magazine • 12.07.2009An Interview with Kate Russell, author of Hunters.
Fringe: What was the inspiration for this piece?
I’ve recently moved back to Maine after a few years of living out of
state and I find myself struck by things that otherwise would have
gone unnoticed. One Sunday this past fall I saw a Maine Guide dressed
in full camouflage hunting gear, despite hunting being illegal on
Sundays. I started wondering what the story might be behind that and
“Hunters” emerged.
Fringe: How often do you write? Do you do it on a schedule?
I write every day, most often at night, but I have no set schedule.
Even the fact that I write every day isn’t the result of a set
schedule; I just write all the time because it’s my favorite thing to
do. My goal is one thousand words a day, but that doesn’t always
happen.
Fringe: How did you get into writing? How long have you been writing?
I first started writing fiction about ten years ago when I realized
how much fun it was to write about myself in the third person.
Thankfully my characters have evolved into their own people and not
just thinly-veiled versions of me, but the reason I started writing is
the same reason I continue to write: it’s just so much fun. In the
past few years I’ve started also started writing short short/flash
memoir pieces, which are a product of my (obsessive) blogging and my
fondness for the brevity of that medium.
Fringe: Is this piece typical of your work?
Yes and no. My fiction is almost always set in Maine, but usually my
fiction is much longer. I think this story is also quite a bit tidier
than my typical stuff. I tend to be a juggler with my fiction, trying
to keep plots and subplots and themes and flashbacks and shifting
point of view and whatever else all up in the air at the same time.
“Hunters” is one of those stories that came out when I was feeling
overwhelmed by all that juggling.
Fringe: Is Fringe your first publication?
This is my first national fiction publication. I also have a
nonfiction piece in the current issue (Fall ‘09) of Redivider.
Fringe: What do you like to read? Who are your influences?
Some of my favorite short story writers are James Salter, Lorrie
Moore, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, Pam Houston, Russell Banks, Steve
Almond, Matt Klam, and Maile Meloy. But for the past few years I’ve
found my writing most influenced by the lyrics and music of the
Decemberists.
Fringe: What do you hope the reader gets out of this piece?
Tough question! Ideally, an enjoyable reading experience and maybe a
few lines and images that stick even after the story is finished. Or
even just a reason to Google the phrase “Maine Guide.”
Have thoughts about this piece? Feel free to comment!
I really enjoyed reading this piece. The description of the setting was really evocative–I like how the barren cold of the woods stands in as a physical symbol for the narrator’s loneliness.
I live near where this story is set, so it really appealed to me from a regional standpoint. The author really captured the feeling of the main character’s aloneness, and also the experience of the native watching the curious antics of the tourists.
On the surface, this is simply a story of three New Jersey hunters, their wives, and their sons who rent a rustic lake house in the Maine woods. “Hunters” also tells of the Maine Guide whom they hire. But underlying the plain events of their vacation days is a very intrusive layer of frustration–the narrator’s frustration. She, as the house renter to the hunters, tells not so much about hunters as she does about herself. She is perhaps confused, perhaps angry, but she is surely frustrated–frustrated with the hunters and frustrated with her loneliness.
She looks upon the hunters in a decidedly negative fashion. She sees them as both somewhat insensitive and incompetent. They are only able to hunt and kill an animal that moves at a cow’s pace. They indeed do kill a bobcat but only because it has been cornered and forced up a tree, making it an easy target. The boys are seen as soft (the Maine Guide’s words) because they cannot endure the long days and the cold very well. One boy shows his inexperience by shooting a dog to its death, thinking that its movement was that of a deer. The men are seen as dangerously holding their weapons in a very casual style.
The narrator is frustrated with more than the hunters. The woods are lonely and dark, and so seems her existence nearby the lake. She longs for male companionship, and when she decides to ask the Maine Guide in for coffee, they soon begin to embrace and kiss. She desires him, but she withdraws. He senses this, and withdraws himself despite her urges to continue. She has lost the moment. She is sensitive to loneliness, understanding and feeling for the wives as they await the return of their husbands and sons. She reflects on her deceased husband. She knows about solitude, but she seems incapable of getting closer than she already is to anyone except for her dogs.
The woods present an apt metaphor for the narrator’s state–deep and lonely. She ends her tale by conjecturing how she would respond if the Maine Guide’s female companion sitting in his truck outside her house were to ask her why she lives as she does. She would answer that she has no idea why she lives this way.
This is a very beautifully written short story told with simple vocabulary and sentences. But underneath is a story layered with involved emotions that go far beyond the hunters on vacation.