Barbara Kingsolver

INTERVIEWER:Do you actually go to all the places you write about? What balance do you strike (if any) between primary and secondary sources?

Barbara Kingsolver: Hooray for you, for knowing the difference between primary and secondary sources, in a world where many seem to think watching a nature show is the same thing as being in nature. It isn’t. The nature show leaves out the smells, for one thing, and the seventeen hundred hours the camera crew sat waiting for the rhinos to mate. Another person’s account of a place – whether it’s Henry Thoreau or Youtube – is only part of the story.

I almost never set a fictional scene in a place unless I’ve been there. Fiction is an accumulation of details, and if they’re wrong, it’s an accumulation of lies. Readers are not fooled. Fiction is invention but it’s ultimately about truth. If I want to remove you from your life and whisk you into a picnic on the banks of a river in Teotihuacán, here are some things I need to know: what grows there, what trees, what flowers, in that month of the year? What does it smell like, are there bees? Birds? Is it dry or humid, how does the dust feel between your teeth? What’s in the picnic basket? What does candied prickly pear fruit actually taste like? Passing on someone else’s account of these things, from reading about them, would likely render a flat, one-dimensional scene, no matter how I injected my own additions of plot and character. The sensory palette would be limited. I can only paint with all the colors if I’ve seen them for myself.

The difference between amateur and professional research is a willingness to back away from other people’s accounts of what is, and find your own. There is no “googlesmell.”