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Meet the Author: Frances Mayes
This month Reader’s Club interviews Frances Mayes, the author of three best-selling non-fiction books about Italy. The No. 1 New York Times bestseller, Under the Tuscan Sun, remained on the Times bestsellers' list for more than two years and is now the inspiration for the movie starring Academy Award® nominee Diane Lane. A widely published poet and essayist, Mayes has also written five books of poetry and her first novel, Swan. Formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, Mayes now devotes herself full time to writing.
Q&A with Frances Mayes
Q: How did you become attracted to Tuscany?
A: On my first trip to Italy, I was in Bologna that very first day and I looked around at the lively cafe scene under those fabulous arcades and I said to my husband, "These people are having more fun than we are." I came for the art, the food, the wine, etc. but basically it's that quality of living life to the full in the moment that continues to draw me to these people.
Q: You seemed to have started something of a trend in terms of Yuppies' and Baby Boomers' love of the region. Have you detected any increase in Americans' living in Tuscany and restoring old houses?
A: When I came here, I knew no one who'd done something so wild as restoring a ruin 7,000 miles from home. Now lots of people do, all over the world. The demographic fact of our time is the big migration of people from their homeland to somewhere else. I guess we're part of that in a small way. People have been crawling over those Alpine passes to get to Italy since the stone age. The place is a powerful draw because the gods have smiled on the Mediterranean areas.
Q: What led you to write the novel, Swan?
A: I have wanted to write novels all my life. I'm just getting around to it. Swan is an homage to the South, esp. to Georgia, where I grew up.
Q: How much of your experience as a southerner is in the book?
A: All my experience as a southerner is in Swan, especially the language and the immense power of the landscape.
Q: Is there any similarity between the South and Tuscany; Southerners and Italians?
A: Yes. Both are hospitable, although the Tuscans are more intensely so. Hot climates breed people who feel more at home in the world. More outgoing, too. Or that's my theory. Cold climates breed introspective and interior people. I wrote a whole chapter in Under the Tuscan Sun about the similarity between Tuscany and the South.
Q: What's next for you -- another novel? Another Tuscany volume? Some other project?
A: I'm working on two projects, both involving travel. I'm restoring another house in Tuscany, and enjoying my daughter's one-year-old boy.
Interview Date: July 2003
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