Cartwheel (48 page)
The eponymous cartwheel serves as a good example of the novel’s intention, as well as its relationship to reality. In the book, some view Lily Hayes’s interrogation room gymnastics as callous, others as benign, others as suspicious. These divided perceptions were initially inspired by the response to the cartwheel Amanda Knox was widely reported to have done during her interrogation—a cartwheel that, we now know,
never actually occurred. This episode, I think, illustrates some of the central questions I wanted to explore in this novel—questions about how we decide what to believe, and what to keep believing—while also demonstrating part of why I needed a totally fictional realm to do this.
In contemplating the possibility that this book could be mistaken as a narrative about—and judgment on—real-life people and events, I’ve come to appreciate how entirely my view of writing and reading fiction is based on a single moral premise: that the act of imagining the experiences of fictional people develops our sense of empathy, as well as our sense of humility, in regarding the experiences of real ones. To me, the fictional barrier around the characters in this book isn’t just a necessary prerequisite for trying (or even wanting) to write a novel about the fallibility of perception—it’s also fundamental to my notion of fiction’s ethical possibilities in the world. And so it is as a person, even more than as an author, that I ask readers to have no doubt as to whose story this is. In the real universe is a girl who never did a cartwheel. This novel is the story of a girl who did.
To Justin
Thanks to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Stanford University’s Stegner Fellowship program—for the time, the life-changing sense of possibility, and most of all, the people, I will be forever grateful. For their feedback on this book, I am particularly indebted to my incredible teachers at Stanford, Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tobias Wolff, as well as my tireless comrades-in-workshop: Josh Foster, Jon Hickey, Dana Kletter, Ryan McIlvain, Nina Schloesser, Maggie Shipstead, Justin Torres, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and some other guy I can’t remember. Many thanks also to Kate Sachs for the eventful early recon trip, as well as Adam Krause, Keija Kaarina Parssinen, and all of the terrifyingly smart members of the No-Name Writing Group for their incisive comments.
Thanks to my wonderful agent, Henry Dunow, who is as indefatigable as he is patient. Thanks also to everyone at Random House: Susan Kamil, Laura Goldin, Erika Greber, and Caitlin McKenna; confirmed
publicity sorceress Maria Braeckel; and especially my editor, David Ebershoff, for his remarkable insight and dedication.
Most of all, thanks to Carolyn du Bois, for teaching me to see that truth is often complicated, and to Justin Perry, for making me believe that, once in a while, it is not.
Cartwheel
A Partial History of Lost Causes
J
ENNIFER
D
UBOIS
’
S
A Partial History of Lost Causes
was one of the most acclaimed debuts of recent years. It was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and
O: The Oprah Magazine
chose it as one of the ten best books of the year. DuBois was also named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 authors. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, duBois recently completed a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Originally from Massachusetts, she now lives in Texas.
