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Interview #759: Theoryland: An Hour with Harriet McDougal Rigney, Entry #15
Matt Hatch
When you went to Harvard, did you have any idea that you wanted to be an editor at that time?
Harriet McDougal
Not really. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher, and that seemed to be the only other possibility. I started at Wellesley; they had a major at the time that nobody else, as far as I know, did; it was called International Relations, and it was very structured—languages, poli-sci, history; I forget, but not a free moment—and I wanted to be…I thought that looked good, because I had read a comic strip for some time called Steve Canyon , and there was a character in Steve Canyon named Copper Calhoun. She always wore a satin evening dress, even in the daytime, and she smoked cigarettes in a long holder, and she had her own jet, and a multinational corporation. And she wanted Steve Canyon, who—like a fool—preferred some blonde in a gingham dress, but I thought I could fix that . And I think, “That looks good . I would like that.”
I got to Wellesley, and every freshman was given an upperclassman. First thing was, they said, “Well, you have to wear a beanie.” And I said “What? A beanie? You want me to wear a beanie ?” And I was talking to my big sister, and she said, “Have you thought about a major?” And I said, “Yes, I want to major in International Relations,” and she said, “That’s a wonderful major!” And I said, “Yeah, I thought it looked good.” And she said, “They can always use interpreters at the UN!”
Matt Hatch
That’s not what you saw…
Harriet McDougal
Not at all! And I thought, “If that’s so…” And I was dating Harvard boys, who had a lot of freedom around their majors, and I liked that, and I thought, “Well, that dream of being Copper Calhoun is obviously not going to work, so I might as well just settle down and major in English so I can read my way through four years, because after that, it’ll be no rest for the wicked, and I will have to work my fingers to the bone to support myself one way or another.” So, pretty much that’s what I did, and that’s why I transferred.
Matt Hatch
It’s interesting you went for International Relations, and in the end you switched over to English, and this has all come about because—that was probably a huge moment—that would have been a very different life, if you’d have gone the International Relations route.
Harriet McDougal
Yeah, I’d have been an interpreter at the UN! I did have a good economics teacher at Wellesley; her name Mary Jane Latsis, and she and a friend of hers who was a lawyer wrote some mysteries under the name Emma Lathen, which were very good. Each one—their detective was a trust officer in a Manhattan bank—and each one investigated a different business, so there’s one about the oil industry, and things like that. And I got interested in her after I’d left—she was a good teacher, (whisper) but she’d been in the CIA! I was checking her out on Wikipedia, and it said she was an attorney. “No she wasn’t; she was an economist!” It was the other half of Lathen that was the lawyer. But that was a nice experience at Wellesley.
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