Drue Heinz winner believes in brevity

Stories that veer from unlikely circumstances to impossible ones, bizarre tales and reimagined… Stories that veer from unlikely circumstances to impossible ones, bizarre tales and reimagined fairytale myths. Prose that is delicate but substantial, ethereal yet unpretentious, preposterous and unsettling.

Such is the experience of reading Tina May Hall’s collection “The Physics of Imaginary Objects,” published by the University of Pittsburgh Press yesterday.

The Hamilton College professor’s collection was published as part of her award for winning the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

“It’s nothing I ever thought I would win, but I sent my work every year hoping. I was quite surprised when I got the call that they chose me!” she said of this achievement.

Hall said that she has always worked with short-form literature like the vignettes and short stories that appear in her book.

“Maybe I don’t have the attention span to sustain a long narrative arc. Also, I like compressed, tightened language, and I think there’s only so much you can expect readers to tolerate [of that length of writing]. It becomes very burdensome,” she said.

As a result, the collection’s final piece — a novella telling the story of a couple trying to conceive — was an experiment for Hall.

“I wanted to see if I could work with a longer narrative arc, but in a way that felt comfortable for me,” she said.

She accomplished that feat by breaking the story down into page-long vignettes, which enabled her to jump from moment to moment in her characters’ lives without the loss of emotional impact that can accompany a piece told in a longer format. She said that the vignettes “kept everything together and moving forward.”

Concerning the poetic and lyrical nature of her prose, Hall said that she always thought it was important to work on both poetry and prose, but that she has “always kind of known I was a fiction writer. I wish I could write poetry, but I can’t. I certainly like to read and hear it but at heart, narrative is the thing I like to play with.”

Hall has held some of her stories in the revision process for as long as 10 years.

“It’s hard for me to let a story go. I love revising and seeing the way a story develops, it’s the most pleasurable part of the writing process for me,” she said.

“Usually when I start a story, I start with a line that floats up out of somewhere. It’s accurate to say that [the stories] are very much about language and putting disparate images next to each other. Those are things that interest me,” Hall said.

She said one of the themes that intrigues her is “girls who wander, women or girls who stray from the normal or accepted path. There’s also a lot of meandering that goes on. I wanted to explore what happens when you get close to the edge of things, when you go into the forest or off the beaten path.”

“I have this weird obsession with Victorian scientific manuals and books. Sometimes I’ll go into stacks in the library and find the oldest scientific journals — their language really inspires me for some reason. They always make me think of a murder mystery,” she said. She also keeps lists of words, images and phrases that intrigue her for inspiration.

Many of Hall’s works boast extraordinary names, including  “Faith Is Three Parts Formaldehyde, One Part Ethyl Alcohol,” “Gravetending,” and “By the Gleam of Her Teeth, She Will Light the Path Before Her.”

“I have a propensity for long titles. For a short story, the title is an important part — it’s another chance to get a little extra information in there,” she said.

Hall said her titles usually go through several iterations, but the scientific aspect of the collection title she finally decided on, — “The Physics of Imaginary Objects,” appealed to her.

To aspiring writers, Hall offered the same advice she gives  students in her classes: Read.

“Read as much as you can. Read the great writers — just keep reading voraciously and as widely as possible. Read outside your comfort zone,” she said.