in conversation with Amina Cain
we meet with my beloved author Amina Cain to talk about books, the writing process, and aesthetic experiences (but also meditation, Los Angeles, and more)
Welcome to “in conversation with”, a new series in je lis trop! I have long dreamt about in-depth conversations with people who’ve had an impact on me as a writer and a creator, and I’m honored to start the series with Amina Cain. Please note this doesn’t replace the monthly book newsletter—expect the May issue in your inbox next week.
When I first read Amina Cain, which happened in January last year, it was a defining moment. Amina Cain is the author of four books, and many of you are familiar with Indelicacy or A Horse At Night, her latest release. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review Daily, LA Times, and other places. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Getting introduced to Cain’s work was a defining moment for multiple reasons. First, she shows the value of paring down, getting to the essence of a scene, emotion, atmosphere. Her work is a space of clarity and beauty rather than wordy overwhelm. Second, she opens new possibilities of writing, in fiction and non-fiction alike: writing as a clear, meditative space; writing as a space where reflections on books mingle with reflections on life; writing as an experimental space where things borrowed from other mediums (such as visual art) can be tested.
I was thrilled to invite her to discuss her writing process, her work (from a debut story collection to the novel she’s working on right now, including her ambitions and frustrations), and what constitutes an aesthetic experience. Along the way, we also talk about politeness, meditation, and the light of Los Angeles.
Monika: If you were to write an introduction for yourself, what would you mention there?
Amina: That’s a big question (laughs). The four books that I’ve written are important—I Go To Some Hollow, Creature, Indelicacy, and A Horse at Night. I started my life in Key West, Florida, and Nashville, Tennessee, grew up in Ohio, and moved around in my twenties and thirties, spending a lot of time in Chicago. Los Angeles is an important part of my biography in terms of finding a home, the first place I’ve wanted to stay in. I have access to the desert, mountains, and ocean here, and I love being able to have these three things together. Friendships and relationships have been very important to me. I mean, family is too, but there's something about chosen family and friends that’s very special. Animals and nature. Art.
Monika: Let’s talk about your writing journey and, more precisely, about its start. Was there a lightbulb moment when you realized you wanted to write? Or is it all blurry?
Amina: No, it's pretty distinct. Growing up, I felt like a creative person, but I didn't yet understand my full relationship to creativity. Early on, I wanted to act. I was in many plays, but as I began to study in college, I realized I wasn't a theater person. I'm much quieter than that, and I needed a quieter outlet. I had written growing up, as many people do, but not seriously. And then, kind of on a whim, I took a poetry workshop and a fiction workshop as an undergraduate in college, and that's when I knew that I should be writing. At first, I didn't know if it should be poetry or fiction. I chose fiction, but I can see that poetry has remained essential to me—there's something of poetry in the fiction that I write.
Monika: When you look back on your debut collection of short stories, I Go To Some Hollow, published in 2009, how do you feel about them?
Amina: I Go To Some Hollow is out of print, and I've often asked myself if I should try to bring it back. I thought I might—it's been ten years since it's been gone—but when I read through it recently, I decided: no way (laughs). It feels so different from what I'm writing now, and I'm a little embarrassed by parts of it. That said, there are some stories that I'm really proud of. They’re much stranger than A Horse at Night and Indelicacy, and I like that. So, these are mixed feelings: I'm proud of the young writer I was when I wrote them, but also a little embarrassed.
Monika: I wondered if embarrassment would come into play. Once I had the ambition to write something I wouldn't be embarrassed by ten years later. But after a conversation with a friend, I was reassured this was a burdensome expectation. And not a realistic one.
Amina: I don't think it's possible not to be embarrassed. There are parts of Creature that I'm embarrassed by, and maybe even Indelicacy, A Horse at Night. In a way, this embarrassment seems inevitable.
Monika: I read Indelicacy last year, and it quickly became one of my most cherished novels. It has several themes, but I was particularly interested in how you wrote about writing. These were my initial thoughts on Indelicacy: "Understanding why one writes is a popular topic, more often than not wrapped in thick layers of philosophizing. I don't think it's the case with Indelicacy. The novel is short, the chapters are short, and the thoughts contained within them are alluringly simple." What I mean by "writing not being wrapped in layers of philosophizing" is that your novel hints at, rather than explains, the beauty of the writing process. Do you see writing as the main thread of this book, and do you feel that, through the narrator, you have expressed your approach toward writing?
Amina: I do feel that through the character of Vitória, I've expressed my idea of writing or my relationship to writing. But it's not exact. Vitória has her own relationship with writing, which overlaps with mine. Writing is one of the most important parts of Indelicacy, but the book is also very much about seeing and being in the world and, of course, art. But for Vitória, writing is partly how she exists in the world and is able to process her experiences. I find the territory of writing endlessly fascinating. In the novel I'm working on now, I have to stop myself from exploring that territory again, from making my narrator a writer. I don't know if that's the right or wrong decision because what I covered in Indelicacy isn't everything in terms of how I think about writing. But at the same time, I don't want to repeat myself.
Monika: I found some humor in Indelicacy, and I wanted to quote this: "Occasionally a man would walk by and ask what I was doing. "A menu for a dinner party," I would say. Or, "I am writing down my dreams." When too many men had walked by with this same question, or some version of it, I said, "Your face looks like the butt of a wolf and it's interfering with my concentration." This one made me laugh because I’ve been in these situations where I’m minding my business, and then someone pops out with intruding, persistent questions. I never quite know what to do—either I stare into space or pretend the question wasn’t for me. Have you ever said anything like this to indelicate intruders?
Amina: No, I haven't (laughs). I often feel I have to be polite above all else and smile. Writing is a space where I can let go of politeness; my narrators don’t have to be polite. That’s the nice thing about fiction. Happily, I'm becoming more honest in my responses to people than I used to be when I was younger. But no, I've never said that to anyone, to any man in public.
Monika: It would be liberating to say something like that. I don't know what would happen after, though.
Amina: Men are used to women brushing them off, but to hear something like that would probably disorient them. I would love to disorient a man in that way.
Monika: Moving to a more serious question—now that there’s more distance between you and Vitória, how do you feel about her? Have you seen new sides of her emerge?
Amina: I have good feelings towards her, a closeness. You know, I have a tendency to make fun of my characters a little bit, to make them say absurd things. I take them seriously, but I also play around. I’m not surprised, but sometimes readers find my characters (including Vitória) to be unlikeable. I'm interested in the flaws that we all have or the flaws that a character might have. In the novel I'm writing now, the narrator is closer to me than any narrator I've ever written. But I'm still making fun of her, and she also says absurd things. I’m not frightened by it, but I’m aware that I'm going to put this character, which is more like me, out into the world. And if people dislike this character, how will I feel about that? Anyway, I’ve rambled beyond the parameters of your question.
Monika: Thank you. That's interesting to ponder in any case, and I understand the reservation. It does feel personal when you consider how people react to your characters, especially if you base them just a little bit on yourself. But that's a whole other question. I wanted to move on to A Horse at Night and tell you more about my reading experience of it. When I started writing my newsletter in 2020, I knew I wouldn't review books in the traditional sense of the word. I wanted to connect those books with the daily happenings in my life, my thoughts, and even some threads of my short stories and create this sort of a new micro-world. Yet, I was always a little unsure of what I was doing. I mean, what is this genre, and how do I present it to the reader? Not that I needed to define it, but I hadn’t seen writing about books approached that way. That was until I read A Horse at Night. I remember reading and thinking: this is what I am aiming for. I felt a curious affinity for your work. When and how did you decide to publish a book like this? Do you see yourself continuing with these reflections and publishing a similar book in the future?
Amina: I wrote about the books I’d been reading for a couple of years before I realized I might actually be working toward a book. When I did realize it, I thought right away of Dorothy, a publishing project (they’d published Creature). Their press has been very important to me in terms of finding a fiction community and in terms of widening my ideas about what fiction can be—so I wanted this book to be for them.
Whether or not I will write another book like A Horse at Night remains to be seen. I enjoyed working on it, but towards the end, I started to feel some limits. Maybe because I felt a little hemmed in by the essay form or the form of nonfiction. Not because I think it inherently has limits, but I didn't feel quite as free as when writing fiction. There are certain sections in A Horse At Night that are more poetic, they veer away from the essay form, and I guess this is how I ultimately found some freedom within the form of that book.
Monika: In A Horse at Night, you write, "As a writer, I feel I am always negotiating that: when to give something explicitly to the reader and when to hold back, or when to give just a little of it so that it can be sensed rather than simply seen. There is great value in what can be sensed." I agree with this a lot and want to know how to achieve it. Is it about the setting? Is it about the editing? Or perhaps talking obliquely?
Amina: Yeah, it's tricky. As I said, it's something I'm always negotiating, but because I am more of a minimalist, I probably get to that space more easily than I would if I were another kind of writer.
Some of it also comes through editing. I don’t tend toward obvious statements and I don't write long, baroque sentences, but I write a lot more than what appears in the final form of my books. And then I pare down. I see where I've gone too far. I don’t always see it right away; sometimes, it takes months to recognize what I should get rid of. Finally, it sticks out. Setting too is part of it, definitely, and imagery. So much can be suggested through visual detail.
Monika: You also write: “Of all the forms language can take, the sentence is the one I’m most drawn to.” How do you know when the sentence is as precise as it can be?
Amina: Many writers are told that when they're writing a draft of a novel, or maybe even a short story, they should get the story down, and then they can go back and edit. They shouldn't worry about their sentences early on. But I feel that if I can't get the sentences right in the beginning, I can't go forward. It’s almost like the sentences themselves create a certain sound and feeling, and those things create a space for me. When I'm in that space, I can go forward, but without it and without the precision, it feels too cluttered.
I've always dismissed that advice and it's part of what makes me such a slow writer. I write slim books, but I spend so much time on each sentence and each sentence's relationship to the next. I have a draft of my novel now, and it's frustrating because I realize once again it's going to take a long time to finish it because I'm trying to get the sentences right. Yet it feels really satisfying to get them right. It feels important. For me, a precise sentence is one that is airy and light but also sharp in some way.
Monika: What do you see as clutter in the text? What prevents the reader from having an unobstructed view of the story?
Amina: I'm interested in objects when I'm writing, and I feel that those objects can only talk to each other if there are only a few of them in a scene. Let me give you an example: My grandmother was sort of a hoarder. She had so much junk in her house. But once I looked around, I was like, oh, this is a beautiful dish over here. And this is a really nice table. The nice things in the room couldn't be seen because there was so much stuff on top of them and all around. I love a room that has just a few beautiful objects in it so that you can really see them. It’s almost as if they’re on stage. And then, they have a relationship with each other, they're talking to each other. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do in a work of fiction: I want the objects to be in a relationship with each other, and I want a character to be in a relationship with an object or a setting.
Monika: I listened to your interview on the Reading the Room podcast. Among many things that resonated with me, I was gripped by one fact in particular. You mentioned that you need a certain atmosphere to enjoy doing things. For me, some experiences become enjoyable only when they're written. If, in reality, they fell short of my expectations, I can transform them into the aesthetic experience I was longing for through writing. For example, I'm traveling, and I don't like the atmosphere—stifling heat, dizzy head, mirage-like quality—but when I sit down two weeks later to turn it into a story, I take care to describe the atmosphere and arrange different elements together. As a result, that experience transforms into something aesthetic. I think it's possible because there's some distance, and all the physical discomfort of the moment has been removed. Have you ever relied on writing to transform your experiences and make them aesthetic?
Amina: I don't know if I've done that. If something feels aesthetically bad, I don't know how to transform it into something that is good. When I go to my in-law's house, the lighting is so harsh in the bedroom where we sleep that I show up with my own cozy light. I would never know how to transform that environment into a pleasing one. That said, when I'm writing a scene in a work of fiction, I'm always creating an aesthetic environment that I want to spend time in. I more often imagine an aesthetic experience into existence than transform an experience I've already had. So I have to either create that aesthetic experience myself, literally by bringing a lamp, or write a different kind of space. But I think it's interesting that you do that and that you're able to.
Monika: I’m able to do that most of the time. Some people think it’s strange when I tell them I can only enjoy certain experiences when they’re on the page and not happening in real time. They ask: So you only live when you’re writing? But that’s not correct. I’m reliving the memory and experiencing it again.
Amina: It's like the real meeting the imagined. It makes sense to me what you say about the physical discomfort, that if that's gone, you can see and experience the things you couldn't fully see and experience the first time around.
Monika: In one of your interviews, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that you study koans. I discovered them earlier this year, and I feel that this meditation practice—turning over short, simple statements has helped me look at daily life from another angle. Koans have heightened my awareness of beautiful simple things. Apart from the fact that meditation creates the space that you’re looking for, has it informed or influenced your writing in any way?
Amina: The koans are interesting because they're so absurd. I often don't know at all what's going on or how to read them. In a way, they're impenetrable, and yet parts of them I do understand on a visceral level. I'm interested in transcendent experiences that you can't describe, that you can't put into words why they're profound. I feel that way about koans in terms of their connection to my writing—I'm often writing about something because I don't completely know how to talk about it. There's also something interesting happening in koans in terms of language and phrasing, like a jaggedness or a mysteriousness. I'm drawn to mystery. I can enjoy classic forms of mystery, such as mystery stories, but I also feel there are smaller mysteries that you can reach through writing.
This realization about koans is recent. The relationship between my writing and meditation is one that I've understood for a longer period of time. When I did interviews after publishing Creature, I kept bringing in the space of meditation to talk about the space of writing. And I wondered, why do I keep doing this? I began to see that they were similar spaces for me because I'm a writer who doesn't know what direction a story is going to take. I go into that space to see what emerges and what needs to be written. In meditation, I’m not necessarily waiting to see what emerges, and yet things do emerge. There's the same sense of openness. An empty wall, a blank page.
Monika: In your introduction, you mentioned Los Angeles as important. Does Los Angeles play any role in your writing?
Amina: It really doesn't. It came into A Horse at Night, a work of nonfiction, because I was writing about my life and where I live. But it never comes into my fiction because I'm already here. Usually, my settings are based on places I have already lived in that I miss. And then also places that I want to go to, that I’m longing to spend time in, but have never seen.
If I ever have to leave Los Angeles, I know I will write about it. I’ll write about it because I'll miss it and because it is an evocative place. The light is very interesting here. Whenever people come to visit, my artist friends especially, they will comment on how nice the light is. And of course, I'm drawn to the landscape. It feels like it matches something in me.
Monika: I wanted to ask your thoughts on my two other cherished writers: Clarice Lispector and Lucia Berlin.
Amina: I have nothing to say about Lucia Berlin because I haven’t read a single word by her, but it sounds like I should. I've meant to for a while. Clarice Lispector, on the other hand, I've loved for a long time and feel is an influence. My writing is different from hers in many ways, but I'm drawn to the absurdity of her characters. I sometimes get bored when I'm reading her writing, but it's a pleasurable boredom. I don't know if you've seen the movie Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by Chantel Akerman, but it's a very long movie. It's not actually happening in real-time, but it feels that way; it is tedious, and yet I love it. It’s the same reason why I love a full-day meditation retreat. It's super boring in certain ways, but things open up for you in that space. You have to go through the boredom to get to the other side of something. I don't want the reader to be bored when they're reading my work, and yet there's something profound Lispector brought about in her fiction that I really admire.
Monika: You are currently working on a new novel. Do you mind sharing what stage you are currently in and what this novel means to you?
Amina: I started about three years ago and have at this point about half of a full story, though I’ve already written multiple drafts. I'm at a slightly frustrating stage right now because I'm seeing all the things I don't like in it, so I'm pulling them out. I don’t like seeing the page numbers go down, but it's the only way forward. With Indelicacy, at one point I had to get rid of half of it because I read it through and hated a lot of it. Once I’d gotten rid of what I disliked, I could build it again into a work I felt connected to. So that's the process I'm in right now.
The premise of the novel is pretty simple. It's about a married couple who go to this sort of empty coastal town for the summer, part tropical, part south of France, even though I've never been to the south of France. They go to this town for the summer, things seem pleasurable, but there's an ominous undertone creeping in. The female narrator also meets another woman and her young son and becomes friends with them. I don't know what happens in my books as I'm writing them, so I don't know exactly where it will go. We’ll see.
Monika: How, over the years, have your ambitions as a writer—in terms of what you want to accomplish with it—changed?
Amina: When I first started writing fiction, I was happy to experiment, play around, and see what was possible. As I get older and have written a few books, my ambition lies in challenging myself to do things I haven't done before. For example, I have often written flat male characters, they're a little bit cartoonish. I spend much more time with the female characters. I've done that partly because I wanted to—I'm interested in the inner lives of women and the relationships between them. But now, as I'm working on the new novel, I'm trying to write a male character who has depth and complexity. I'm also trying to write about the love between these two people in a marriage. I'm still experimenting, and I'm still interested in the sentence and in language and in objects and imagery. But I'm also trying to think through the questions I have about being alive, about being a person, and maybe even about mortality in a way I haven't done before. It feels more ambitious because while I’m hanging on to style and to aesthetics, I’m also trying to contend with these questions.
Monika: And lastly… What are you currently reading?
Amina: I'm reading Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul. Are you familiar?
Monika: I’ve heard of it but haven’t read it.
Amina: Celia Paul is a painter from London, and in the book, she’s written these unsent letters to Gwen John, a Welsh painter who preceded her and to who she feels deeply connected, even though they never met. The book is about Paul’s life and what she knows of John's life and about their work and process of working. It's very meditative and intimate and gentle. A truly pleasurable book to read. And I love both of them as painters.
Monika: Thank you, Amina, for this conversation. We are all looking forward to your new novel coming out, however long it takes to get the sentences right.
Congratulations Monika this was such a pleasure to read. Thank you for introducing me to Amina Cain's writing earlier in the year. Brilliant questions, I look forward to reading more from your new series.