Lucy Grealy

Interview, Feb, 1996 by Andrew Essex

AE: I was particularly pained by your accounts of being whistled at by men in the street, and then ridiculed by the same men when you got closer. Do some women need to have their beauty acknowledged by construction workers?

LG: It's complicated. Why should we have to feel one way or the other? As a liberated woman, I hate to be treated that way, but at the same time, if an attractive guy whistles at me, I love it. I can rationalize those feelings. Life shouldn't come down to a choice between joy or disgust.

AE: There's a sort of portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-woman sequence in your book, where you experience catharsis through poetry and literature. What would you have done without the written word?

LG: I would have found something else - painting or photography, maybe. I think I was destined to be an outcast long before I ever got sick. Way before I ever realized my "failings" in terms of society at large, I was taught by my family that society at large was failing. It wasn't me. I knew that being pretty and having a great job wasn't automatically supposed to make you happy. We're so much larger and more profound than any twenty-four-inch waist can ever hold.

AE: Do you believe in the myth that all great art is born out of pain?

LG: Well, look at it this way: If a fucked-up childhood made you an artist, we'd be a country of geniuses. It might be an element, but I doubt life works that way.

AE: You vividly describe trying to make yourself sick to avoid having to go for chemo, but surprisingly, you never mention suicide. Was that ever an option?

LG: I was too chicken. And my mother would have been really mad at me. When I was in college, I was really depressed. I said to a friend, "I wish I could die." But rather than the usual you-shouldn't-talk-that-way lecture, there was silence. Then my friend said, "You will." It was a revelation. You see, we don't have to kill ourselves. It's already programmed in; it's going to happen. We have forever to be dead. We might as well stick around and see what happens [while we can].

AE: Do people treat you any differently since you published your book?

LG: I get recognized a lot - which I love. After all, I'm very recognizable. It helps soothe a few ancient hurts. I like being in magazines known for featuring beautiful people - I like the irony of it.