Molly Giles is funny. Spending time with her, you’ll start to view the world through a slightly skewed, slightly absurd, and definitely ridiculous perspective. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her for years. She’s the one with the quick quip, the cutting comment, the one-liner. She’s like a stand-up comedian who stumbled into an improv show.
You’d never guess it by looking at her. She looks benign, sweet even, like someone who might offer you a plate of cookies; her ginger-colored hair curled and coifed, her dresses and high collars, her voice high-pitched, almost girlish. When she unleashes one of her witticisms—if you don’t know her—you might wonder if you misheard her. She said what?
In her latest book, Life Span, a memoir in flash form, she turns her comic gaze on herself. The span is from 1945, when Giles was three years old, to 2023, and the span is also crossing back and forth on the Golden Gate Bridge to visit relatives, to see friends, and to teach creative writing at the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. Packed in these postcard-sized crossings are humor, surprising vulnerability, and feminist fire. The other span that stretches across almost all of her 82 years is a burning desire to write.
Giles has published five award-winning story collections: Rough Translations, which won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction; Creek Walk, which won the San Francisco Commonwealth Silver Medal for Fiction; Bothered, which won a Split Oak Award; All the Wrong Places, which won the Spokane Short Fiction Award; and Wife with Knife, which won the Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize. She also published two novels, Iron Shoes and The Home for Unwed Husbands.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Giles on the phone. If there were a soundtrack accompanying this interview, it would be punctuated with lots of laughter—my laughter.
NS: There are laugh-out-loud moments in Life Span. When you sit down to write, do you say to yourself: now write something funny? This is a good example—I know I laughed out loud with this iteration of crossing the bridge. You use hyperbole and upend the expected, which every good joke does.
We have never seen each other dressed up before, but this is surely how we’re meant to look from now on: he like Peter Gunn in his dark suit, me like Kim Novak in my strapless lavender gown with my hair done up in a French twist. After the prom we are going to the Tonga Room and after the Tonga Room we are going to not-go-all-the-way under the bridge at Fort Point. I have not been this happy since I was a baby.
MG: I wish I could intentionally write jokes. It just comes out that way, and it’s gotten me in a lot of trouble. I’ve been advised to think before I speak, especially at faculty meetings. It certainly hasn’t helped me in terms of relationships. Ralph [her current partner] tickles me; he’s so good and prim and so righteous. I know it hurts his feelings, he’s just so ridiculously nice. I guess the four-year-old is still alive in there. When I was that age, my parents wanted me to give this older woman, Mrs. Hirshfield, a kiss. I said, I spit in her eye. They all laughed. They should not have encouraged me.
NS: How do you know if something is funny? It’s there some litmus test?
MG: I write to amuse myself, not necessarily to laugh out loud, but life is funny to me. I laugh more at my own jokes than anyone else’s. A friend once chided me, not everything is funny. But human beings are funny. I can’t help that. I’m Irish.
NS: Humor requires the right pacing. In Life Span, the pacing is spot-on. You write about your stepmother, who your father remarried shortly after your mother died, this stepmother who refuses to let you in the house because you left Richard and began dating a carpenter. It seems like the passage is building toward regret. But that’s not where you end up.
So what if she funded luncheons for Ronald Reagan. So what if she was anti birth control, pro capital punishment, and confused Gore Vidal with Vidal Sassoon. Maybe I rolled my eyes a little too obviously at the engagement party. Maybe I drank too much at the wedding. Maybe I pointed out that fifteen years was a big age difference, maybe I wondered if she knew about Dad’s emphysema. But didn’t I back down when Dad curtly reminded me his life was none of my business? Didn’t I shut up? Didn’t I try? My sisters tried harder, that’s true. Bridget, just glad “Dad is going to be taken care of,” has been nothing but sweetness and light, Nora, fearful of offending, has been silent. Danny, no longer playing in rock bands, couldn’t be happier; a licensed stockbroker in Dad’s office, Danny is now handling her money. I hate them all.
MG: You rewrite. For years, I wanted to be a poet. I love the brevity of the poem. In the end, I wrote two poems. My favorite writing advice is from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: throw up and clean up. In the first draft, get everything out, then clean up. In my writing, I’m merciless at sculpting and carving away.
NS: It’s a big change to move from fiction to nonfiction, and in particular, memoir. I found you often revealed yourself in less than a shining light. Was it difficult for you?
MG: I have lots of trepidation about this book. You want to tell the truth, but writers are shy. We’re bad at parties unless we drink, which is our downfall. In this book, I wrote not only about myself, but people I love. I’m expecting storms from my children. All three daughters said they won’t read it. I couldn’t be happier. They are all gifted, they are all good writers. They can all take their revenge. They have my permission.
NS: Do you have a favorite piece in the memoir?
MG: The 1992 story. I was heading home after teaching at San Francisco State University and my Honda broke down in the middle of Golden Gate Park. A stranger picked me up and drove me over the bridge and back to Woodacre. It brings back all the exhaustion of that time.
I love that story:
The Russian has a truck bed full of flowering shrubs and a little yellow dog with three legs that sits on my lap during the long ride back to Woodacre. The Russian will not take money or let me pay for the gas. He is too excited. This is a lucky thing, to meet an actual writer stranded by her broken Honda at midnight in the middle of Golden Gate Park, but then, he says, he has always had luck. He was born in Iran and grew up in Morocco and lived in Afghanistan before he came to San Francisco. He is a musician and a juggler. He speaks Russian, Spanish, French, and Farsi. His first unpublished novel was in Farsi; this new one, however, is in English. It is a wonderful novel. His friends love it. But he can’t get it published. Hey! the Russian says. Why don’t you read it? You are an editor. It is only 746 pages long. It is all about chess. You could help with the grammar—what do you think?
I stroke the little dog’s head on my lap and look at the Russian’s large hands as they flex on the steering wheel. I would rather be strangled, I think; I would rather be robbed and dumped on the side of the road. But: Yes, I say. Of course. So then! Here is your house! Here is my manuscript! Can you read my handwriting? Dasvidaniya! We’ll be in touch.
NS: What’s the best piece of advice someone gave you?
MG: Grace Paley: Love your life, whatever it is.