The US novelist on getting through the pandemic, Trump’s legacy of fear, and why a slow apocalypse could be the threat we didn’t see coming
Jenny Offill’s first novel, Last Things, was published in 1999. It took a decade and a half for her next to appear – Offill suffers from depression and was unable to write for much of this period. The wait was worth it, though: her second novel, Dept of Speculation, was widely heralded for its innovative use of brief, impressionistic paragraphs and a luminous stream-of-consciousness first-person voice. Weather, her third novel, was published in February 2020 and shortlisted for the Women’s prize for fiction. It is about the climate crisis, Trump, and the state of the US. Offill lives in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, and teaches at Bard College. She was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2016.
Weather continues the fragmentary style of your previous novel. How much do you think about the effect this has on the reader’s experience of the book?
I think about it a lot. I really want the writing act to be collaborative with the reader. I often feel, when I’m reading a lot of contemporary novels, like so much is filled in and spelled out, so much backstory is put in. For me, so much of the joy that comes from reading a good book is the conversation you’re having in your head with the author. I feel like the white space in my writing is for the reader to bring their own thoughts and ideas to the book. I know what would go in between if I were to write it, it’s not a mystery to me. I’m not trying to withhold exactly, but rather to distil. Asking myself how much is essential and how much is the part that you plod through to get to the interesting bits.
