By Claire Dietz
James Magruder began his career as a translator of French plays before switching to dramaturgy. His focus — for the last 15 years — however, has been fiction.
Magruder is scheduled to read from his third novel, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, at Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St., at 7 p.m. Friday.
He said he began writing as a way to stand out among his many siblings, as vying for his parents’ attention was difficult at times. While in sixth grade, after turning in an essay describing a picture, Magruder finally managed to catch their eyes.
“I went overboard with the descriptions, and the teacher told my parents I was writing at a college level, and that was all they needed,” he said. “They paid attention to me after that.”
In 2001, after a brief period at the MacDowell Colony, in New Hampshire, Magruder began writing fiction, and he “hasn’t looked back” since.
“I gave myself permission to write fiction,” he said.
Magruder describes Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall — which took around 19 years to complete — as a monumental journey. After working on the first draft for years — the manuscript was approximately 150,000 words, or 600 pages — he put it aside until the early 2000s, when he decided to pick it back up because he “loved the people” in the story.
“I started it in 1996, just as I discovered I had the HIV virus,” Magruder said. “I was a combination-therapy miracle, and when I realized I was going to live, I thought to myself, I better start writing.”
He describes the book as a tale of “graduate students that are really idiotic about the way their hearts and their groins are pointing them” and the ghost of Helen Hadley looking back on her favorite year of taking on love apprentices.
“It took me 14 years to find out that she would be my narrator; in its early form, it was pretty terrible,” Magruder said. “Then I realized, what if Helen Hadley was the narrator? She was there from page one, sitting in her portrait all along waiting for me to discover her.”
While the characters eventually take on lives of their own in Magruder’s head, he said he goes in “not knowing where I’m going.” Because of his background in theater, sometimes he doesn’t allow himself ultimate control.
“I write one sentence at a time and push forward,” he said. “There are some things I can’t do yet. [For example], I can’t give myself the authority to write a sentence like ‘Three years passed.’ I don’t grant myself that power.”
After 20 years of figuring himself out, Magruder said, it has all paid off in his fiction. For him, the moments of “payoff for all the scrapping together of sentences” or “when your characters do something unexpected and surprise you” make it all worthwhile.
“I have to earn my right to live on this planet every day, so if it’s a good writing day, there’s nothing else that fulfills me this way,” he said.
James Magruder
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque
Cost: Free