"Lullabies for Little Criminals" tells the story of Baby, a twelve-year-old girl living in Montreal's red light district with her father, a junky named Jules. As a child, Baby still possesses the ability to convert the ugly and disturbing aspects of her world into things of beauty or fascination. But as Baby turns thirteen, this escape is replaced by more sinister, adult possibilities when she catches the attention of the neighborhood pimp, Alphonse.
About.com: You started as a poet, with your book, "Two Eyes Are You Sleeping." Did you make a transition to fiction at some point, or had you always written both? In what ways does your background as a poet influence your prose?
Heather O'Neill: I think there was always something very proselike about my poetry, the same way that I think there is something very poetic about my prose. After my poetry book came out, I entered a creative writing program and all the poetry classes were full so I took a prose class. Once I started, I couldn't stop. It was so much easier to get published, too, which helped.
AC: You're also a contributor to "This American Life." How did you come to have a relationship with that program?
HO: I first read about Ira Glass and "This American Life" in Vogue magazine. It isn't aired in Canada and I thought it sounded so great. I clipped the article and stuck it on my bulletin board. My boyfriend, Jonathan Goldstein, and I started listening to it online and we were blown away. Then magically, out of the blue, he ended up being called in to interview for a job as a producer there and got the job. Then one day he told me they needed a five minute piece to fill a show they were doing called "Before It Had a Name." I got out my notebook and wrote a kind of poetic piece about the moment when I learned the names of kids in my neighborhood, what it was that they had done to enter into my universe. They liked it a lot and had me record it.
AC: From the "Meet Heather O'Neill" article at the back of your novel, it sounds as though there are certain parallels between your life and that of your character. How much did you draw from your own childhood experiences in Montreal, and how much did you invent? (And I wondered, thinking about something else you wrote, if writing a novel isn't related in some ways to being a collector, but of memories, images, and stories rather than of objects.)
HO: The novel isn't autobiographical, but it does come from things I observed as a kid and what and who I was attracted to as a kid. That last point you make is so interesting and true, but I'd never thought of it in quite those terms. Yeah, as a kid I was just so fascinated with people in my neighborhood. I was really intrigued with this pimp who used to talk to me and would try and get me to hang out in his apartment and smoke pot, which is where Alphonse was born. I could not stay away from deviants as a kid. Whenever I met one, I'd just get so excited. My dad, who isn't like Jules, was continually stupefied by my choice of boyfriends. I use all the details that I encountered as a child in my writing now. They are like my huge reserves for characters and drama.
AC: I loved the list of things that moved you while you were writing the novel and the fact that you're conscious of having to make an effort to maintain your creativity. What is feeding your imagination now? And are you putting that creative energy toward another novel, or have you returned to poetry?
HO: I'm working on another novel. I don't think I could ever go back to poetry. It's something I associate with youth, like smoking joints on the street corner and wearing my hair in a ponytail on top of my hair and cramming into the back seat of a low rider. I wrote it in my teens and early twenties and it was stuff that was meant for chapbooks and to be scribbled on walls and that type of thing. I find poets and their world too intimidating. After writing "Lullabies," I feel as though I used up tons of the things and imagery that had inspired me about children. Now I'm writing a novel that has adults as the main characters. I'm still a sucker for old hotels that you can live in, and I'm also intrigued by this old, white, busted limousine that's parked on the neighbor's lawn, children playing piano, a Russian kid doing gymnastics in his living room on YouTube, mangy cats, pigeons, and drawings of pigeons.
