Entertainment

POSTED: Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007

Author mixes fact, fiction to build tale of scandalous love

Whidbey Island’s Nancy Horan talks about her novel based on the true story of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, which scandalized Chicago society 100 years ago. Horan blends the facts of the affair with fiction to flesh out the dramatic story of the lovers, who left their families for a life together.

Question: How did you use factual material as a basis for your novel? What did you “recreate”?

Answer: All of the diary entries are invented. So are the letters, with the exception of a paragraph I took from one of Mamah’s letters to Ellen Key in which she explained to her mentor that she had acted in harmony with her own soul by leaving Edwin Cheney and living with Frank Lloyd Wright. I also used a real letter Wright wrote to the community around Taliesin in 1914.

“Loving Frank” is grounded in historical fact. I found the actual events that occurred during the love affair of Cheney and Wright, which spans 1907 to 1914 in the book, to be compelling material. But there were many gaps. No correspondence between the lovers remains. Frank Lloyd Wright discussed their relationship in his autobiography, and made public statements to the press during the newspaper scandals. This was very useful in helping me understand their joint point of view, their public stance.

But who was Mamah? What was she missing inside that made her so vulnerable to Frank Lloyd Wright? And once she departed with Wright for Europe, what did Mamah think privately about having left her children, about the terrible exposure and humiliation she received from the press? How did she feel about Frank Lloyd Wright as her life with him progressed, and she came to know him more intimately as a person? Biographers of Wright uniformly regard him as an arrogant, difficult man. How might that have played out as time went on? I looked at the cascade of decisions Mamah made, and how each decision led to a new set of consequences. It seemed rich territory to fictionalize.

I decided the only way I could tell Mamah’s story from her point of view was to refrain from judging her. That conscious decision allowed me to walk inside her shoes. I had strong hunches about her feelings during her exile. When I learned a cache of her letters to Ellen Key existed, and when I got copies and read them, my instincts about her emotional and intellectual struggles were confirmed. I felt comfortable about the voice I had created for her. The dialogue and invented scenes flowed from those understandings about her.

Q: Wright and Cheney saw themselves as outsiders, and enjoyed that uniqueness. How did those elements of who they are come into play with the decisions they made in their lives?

A: Frank Lloyd Wright recognized himself as an outsider pretty early on. His mother’s family members were free-thinking Unitarians who had left Wales to escape what they perceived as religious persecution. Their family motto was “Truth Against the World.” That phrase implies an antagonism, an assumption that the world (society) is often wrong.

I think Frank Lloyd Wright inherited that attitude. In fact, it partly explains why he exhibited such self-confidence in being at odds with the tastes and values of his day. A certain rebelliousness against conformity was celebrated in that family. But Wright was an innovative genius, as well, and his unique perceptions and ideas were bound to set him apart. He was bent on living true as he built true. So his decision to pursue a life with Mamah was part of that pursuit of the “truth,” as he saw it.

As for Mamah, I knew that she was a highly educated, intellectual woman who was drawn to the belief that realizing one’s individual gifts was of the utmost importance. I imagined her as a woman who was studious, bookish, and given to bouts of isolation that would have made her an outsider. She spent a good amount of her time living in the realm of ideas, just as Wright did. So, it is conceivable to me that she might act on an idealistic impulse and run off with Wright, believing their love to be of a higher order of “truth,” without fully considering the consequences of her acts until later.

Q: How was the home Wright built for himself and Mamah a visual metaphor for his philosophy of “living free in nature,” expressing the “spirit of place”?

A: He built Taliesin in Wisconsin for Mamah, and it reflects his ideas about living truthfully. Wright wanted to live true as he built true. He created Taliesin as a refuge from the prying eyes of the press and a disapproving society. He designed the house to integrate naturally into the rolling, unglaciated hills of southwestern Wisconsin that he loved so much. Taliesin is a Welsh word that means “Shining Brow.” Wright designed the house to embrace the brow of the hill where it stood, rather than sit on top of it.

He built the house out the natural materials available in that place. One might live freely with nature at Taliesin, but with the house backed up against the hillside and looking outward, one could also have a long view, and be aware when people from the outside world were encroaching.

Q: What do you think about the significance of story? How is it that you went from discovering this love affair to writing a novel about it — and spending eight years on it?

A: I was writing short stories when I came upon this particular story. It was clearly material for a novel. I knew it was an ambitious project, but it was so compelling to me, I couldn’t not do it. And so I just set out, making mistakes and learning lessons along the way. It took seven years to research and write the book, but that was punctuated by bouts of work as a freelance journalist. Yes, I was persistent, but I think many novels take that long, or longer.

Q: And the question: why is the conflict of what a woman can be/should be/must be still with us after a century of political and social change?

A: I can’t say why the conflict is still with us, but I can say that theme in the book hits a nerve with women readers of all ages, and not in predictable ways. Reading groups tell me they’ve had intense discussions about Mamah’s choices. I think many women alive today, whether old or young, have experienced the anxiety of trying to fully inhabit the role of mother yet also to realize their potential as individuals, as well. Mamah’s story causes many readers to compare their own lives and values with hers, even though she lived a 100 years ago when women’s choices were much narrower and divorces harder to obtain and less acceptable. Are some values immutable? We can see the terrible pain caused by leaving one’s children. That’s a terrible loss for everyone involved, no question about it. But how do you quantify the personal losses suffered by women over the centuries who have traditionally put the needs of others ahead of their own? What has society lost as a consequence?

Q: Did you enjoy the research process for this book?

A: Loved the research part of the project. It was very seductive and probably wildly inefficient to get lost in it as I sometimes did. But that’s how I found my best stuff — by meandering here and there in that narrow time frame from 1907 to 1914. A lot of what I learned couldn’t go in the book, but it informed me. The writing frustrated me more than the research.

Q: How are you coping with these wonderful reviews, all these accolades? How’s life on Whidbey Island, after moving from the Chicago area?

A: Life on Whidbey Island is grand. I am slowly coming to know different parts of it, and getting to know people. As for the book, I feel happy about its reception, and grateful.