INTERVIEWER

A continuous theme of your early work is understatement—your own as a stylist and what goes unsaid between people.

CONNELL

My father kept everything to himself. One time he and my mother were visiting Europe. My father wanted to go to the battlefield where he had served in the war, but he was afraid my mother would be bored. She wouldn’t have minded—and even if she was bored, so what? But he didn’t go.

My friend Max Steele once talked to me about his parents. He always felt that his father loved his mother much more than the other way around. When she was dying, her husband said, Tell me that you love me. His mother turned away from him. She couldn’t do it.



Evan Connell Sr., 1945. “My father kept everything to himself.”



INTERVIEWER

 

Did your parents ever say “I love you”?

 

CONNELL

 

Never.

 

INTERVIEWER

 

How did your parents talk to each other?

 

CONNELL

 

They didn’t.

 

INTERVIEWER

 

How did they refer to each other?

 

CONNELL

 

My mother’s name was Elton—she went by Elton. Her name was actually Ruth Elton, but I never heard anybody call her Ruth.

 

INTERVIEWER

 

You open Mrs. Bridge: “Her first name was India—she was never able to get used to it.” Did your mother feel that way about her name?

 

CONNELL

 

I don’t know. She never read the book.

 

INTERVIEWER

 

Why not?

 

CONNELL

 

She was dying of cancer when the book was published. My father blamed himself for her illness. They had been in a small car accident in Kansas City, just an intersection accident, and she was hit in the breast. Ten years later, that’s where the cancer developed. He never said it, but he felt guilty—he thought the accident was his fault. Had he been more careful, none of this would have happened.

What shocked me was that he knew ahead of time how much longer she was going to live. He told the receptionist in his office to mark off the month of August, or whatever it was, a year or so ahead of time. Strange things happen. I got kicked out of a casino once—they thought I was cheating. I wasn’t, but I was rolling the dice and I kept turning up seven, again and again. I don’t know how, but I knew I was going to keep rolling sevens. They didn’t like it. The man in charge said to me, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I don’t want you here.

 

INTERVIEWER

 

What do you think your mother would have thought of Mrs. Bridge, had she been well enough to read it?

 

CONNELL

 

She would have been polite.