Rebecca Skloot
Rebecca Skloot needs little introduction to most readers of The Open Notebook: Her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been a bestseller since its publication in February 2010, and she has toured the U.S. and Europe almost constantly since then talking about the book and the many issues of race, science, and privacy it raises. She’s also been interviewed many times as well. Here she talks with TON guest contributor David Dobbs about two particularly writerly issues the book raises: structure, and the use of the writer as character:
You’ve been interviewed to death about this book, so I’ll limit this to two areas readers of The Open Notebook might be interested in: one is structure and the other is your decision to put yourself in the book and how you handled that.
That’s good. I honestly think that structure is one of the most important tools in writing, yet it’s not something that people often pick apart and really get obsessed with.
Did you carry your concern about structure into this project, or was it something you developed as you wrestled with it?
No, I came to the book already fixated on structure. I did my MFA in nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh, and Lee Gutkind, who was one of my professors there, taught a readings class where he constantly harped on structure. Every class, the first exercise we had to do with every piece we read was map out the structure. The first day of class we read an essay in class and his first question when we were done was, “What’s the structure of this
piece?” We had no idea what he meant. And he wouldn’t tell us. He would just push us and push us, and people would randomly guess things … They’d say, “It’s a profile.” He’d say, “No, that’s not a structure.”
Eventually it clicked for me when he walked me line-by-line through a piece he’d written and said, See how the piece starts here, then goes back in time here, then forward in time here, but always comes back to that same story I started with, which is actually in chronological order? The story was about a veterinarian facing tough decisions about whether to euthanize various animals; it did jump around in time a lot, and included sections of exposition, or facts — like the history of the field, or whatever — that weren’t part of the narrative, but when you pulled the essay apart it became clear that the structure was just a day in the life of this vet going from one patient to the next. From that point on, I started obsessively mapping out the structures of everything I read. When I started teaching I made my students do the same thing.
Any student who has ever studied with me would think, “Ugh. Structure, structure, structure; that’s all she talked about.” My philosophy is, once you understand what structure is, then you can talk about characters and narrative arcs and how to fill in the story. But for me, structure can just completely make or break something.
Skloot's first visit to Turner Station and the Henrietta Lacks Museum. Skloot says, "Courtney Speed in Turner Station was hoping to turn this building into a museum in Henrietta's honor; I took this photograph to document the building, its location relative to the sign welcoming people to Turner Station, etc. I then took at least a roll of photos (if not more) documenting every inch of the building that I thought might be relevant someday in the future for describing it." Photo courtesy of Rebecca Skloot.
What are some key teaching pieces you used?
I always use John McPhee’s “Travels in Georgia” because it’s such a brilliant structure. Once you figure it out, it’s so basic. But it’s really hard to see it at first. When you say to people, “Read this thing and tell me how it’s structured,” they just can’t. But once you really pick it apart you see he starts in the middle of the story, then he goes forward for a while, then loops back around so by the middle of the piece you’re back at the point where you started, then you continue forward. He’s so subtle and graceful with the structure that few readers even realize they’ve looped back around to the point where the story started because he doesn’t hit you over the head with it. He calls it the lowercase e structure, and once you learn to recognize it you see it everywhere — in so many great stories, books, movies.
Are there other writers or books who have been particular models for you, structure-wise?
When I was working on my book, I knew very early on that I wanted it to be a disjointed structure that told multiple stories at once and jumped around in time between different characters. If you learn the story of the HeLa cells by itself, it’s a very different story than if you learn it alongside the story of what happened to Henrietta and her family as a result of those cells. Each story takes on a different weight when you learn them at the same time. Read more »
