The following piece is a fictionalised interview with fictional author Margaret Roche.
Interview With Margaret Roche, 89, Author of ‘Dear Reader; For The Last Time’
By JG Higgins
Margaret Roche, 89, is a household name in the literary world. Born in 1933, Vermont, Margaret climbed her way to the top of the poetic scene, where she cemented her place as one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century.
Her latest book, ‘Dear Reader; For The Last Time’, takes the world on a journey through her life – from the 1950s when Margaret was only an aspiring author, to today, when her name has rested upon more bookshelves than could ever be counted. The book serves as a memoir, and a goodbye to us, dear readers, since Margaret’s team has informed the public of the author’s retirement for reasons we can only speculate.
The author has agreed to partake in an interview, one question per day, for Mattingly High’s school paper. For the next week or so, I, your faithful journalist, will be interviewing one of today’s most brilliant minds and will have the privilege of hearing a first-hand account of the dazzling greatness that was the life of Margaret Roche.
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[Note: Some of the following quotes may have been slightly edited for the sake of suitability]
JGH: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Margaret: I think, deep down, I always had that nagging feeling. You know, I loved words. Everything about them – the shapes, the sounds, the pen on paper. I was quite young when I fell in love with the art of stringing together 26 letters and dancing around them to find the right progression. It amazed me how, sometimes by lucky chance or plenty of trial and error, I would be able to find just the order that could pull out a heart and leave it bleeding. As I got older, I fell in love with meanings. With being explicit, or cryptic, or blunt, and how it all came together to mean something different each time. I loved all of it from early on. That is not to say I was any good, though. You see, I’ve always been a reader. Plath, Austen, Dickens, the good stuff. But somewhere between the endless flipping of pages, somewhere along my late nights with nothing but a worn-out book, a lantern, and a vivid imagination, I realised that it wasn’t enough for me. I knew I wanted to write because I wanted more, I always have. So I wrote my first mediocre poem, then another and another, then a slightly better one, then a book and so the rest of the story goes. I couldn’t ever stop.
JGH: How did you know what you wanted to write about?
Margaret: I don’t think I did, to be completely honest. At least at the beginning. I just knew I had something to say. I’ve experimented with different genres and styles, mostly mirroring what I’d been reading at the time. But after a good bit of analysis went into my pieces, I came to realise that every single one of them – from fanfiction to romance novels to angsty young adult poetry – had the same underlying stream of emotions. I had found many different ways of saying it, but at the end of the day, I had been saying the same thing. In my writing, I have made it a habit of taking my problems, insecurities, and fears, and projecting them on to some inexistent person in a way that made me the observer as opposed to the subject of said fears and insecurities. I’ve taken every aspect of my life and made it someone else’s problem so that maybe then I could fix it. I vomited on a page, all that built-up anger, self-righteousness and mistakes, arranged them into a neat three-act structure or tidy little poem and suddenly, it was all so clear. I’m a fixer, I think all writers are. That’s why there’s so much of me in my characters, I think. They’re flawed and imperfect because so am I, and I built them by glueing together pieces of me. I needed to understand so badly, the scar on my left hand, my avoidance, my tendency to stop calling back. There are shadows of my life that haunt all aspects of my stories, and they’re so terribly clear once you know to look for them. And so in my fictional world, there is betrayal, guilt, choice and consequences. But there’s also love. So much love. Because I still believe in it. That is what I wanted to write about.
JGH: In your books, you often come back to your childhood. More specifically how growing up the oldest child made you into who you are today. Do you think your identity as an older sister has shaped the way you write, or your choice to do so?
Margaret: Absolutely. Being the oldest child has influenced many aspects of my life, and I do believe my general attraction towards writing has been one of them. As a rule, older children don’t say much. Some of us may talk a lot, which I think is merely compensation, but we don’t say much. Because, really, nobody’s listening. For me, writing was the only way I could feel heard. Even if nobody read it, at least it was out of my system. I also think that I’ve always been very good at knowing exactly what everyone was feeling at all times. I could tell my mother was angry by the way she washed the dishes, I could measure the exact depth of my father’s silence and I think that gave me an advantage in a way. This deep, at times disturbing, empathy enhanced my senses. I’m highly aware of every sensation around me which allows me to choose the precise word needed to describe a certain feeling or situation. My mother’s eyes were never just sad to me, they were a tormented jungle of future and past. It takes a certain perspective in life to be able to see things this way, and I think older children have that.
JGH: Do you have any advice for young women breaking into a field so heavily dominated by the male gaze?
Margaret: My advice for any young female writers trying to launch themselves into the world of literature is to ignore, ignore, ignore. Focus on your art, on what you’re doing and what you love, not what the people around you think of it. If someone tells you no, go someplace else, try again, but never ever stop at that. “No” has only two letters, there are 24 more that could do wonders for you.
JGH: You’ve lived an eventful life, with many public ups and downs. Tell me, Margaret sitting here now at the very end and looking back at it all: Is there anything you would have done differently?
Margaret: [Note: Margaret smiled so brightly I swear it reflected on me] I would do it all again.
[Author’s note: Margaret passed away before we were able to complete our interview. Her daughter informs she passed in her study, doing the very thing she loved most: writing. The Roche family was kind enough to share an excerpt of Margaret’s last words, the last thoughts to ever grace her wondrous mind:
“I have been many things in the 89 years my feet have roamed this earth. I have been brave, I have been stupid, I have been greedy, I have been kind. I’ve done things I’ll never forget, and some other things I may always regret. Though, something I will never regret is this pen. This book. This language, these letters, these words. At times, they have destroyed me, shattered me, broken me whole. But oh, God. Never have I felt as alive as the first time I saw the ink seeping on paper. I’m not too sure about heaven, if there is one or if I’ll be allowed in. One thing I do know is wherever it is, there shall be music, tea, and black leather notebook waiting for me.” – Margaret Roche, 2023
Margaret Roche was an icon of the literary world. A once-in-a-lifetime mind, working tirelessly, thinking and creating until her very last breath. Margaret was a hero for the wounded, a compass for the lost, and a voice for the silenced. But above all of that, Margaret Roche was a mum. She was a daughter, a wife, a neighbour, a lover, a friend. She loved, feverishly so, and she was loved most diligently by us all. I was lucky enough to come into her orbit, even if briefly, and I will miss the passion she radiated for the rest of my days. May she rest in joy and may we always remember her not as the one who died, but as the one who, through her words, kept every single one of us alive.] -JGH
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