1. Your new book lets readers experience your "underfunded and overexposed European Grand Tour." I'm sure readers will choose their favorite parts (I know I did), but what was YOUR favorite part of the experience?
I know I should probably say meeting my husband, right? And obviously, that WAS my favorite part, in the long term (you're catching me on a "happily married" day.) But I think in ways I was really the happiest when I was working at the comedy club, surrounded by this odd cast of recurring characters. It was the period of my life that most felt like a 1970's sitcom, which is what I always dreamed adulthood would be like. It was like being in Taxi or something, you know? This small group of misfit characters (some with funny accents) who are always hanging out together and don't appear to know any other people. Except we actually didn't know any other people. We all had our roles to play. It was great.
2. How did you decide what to include from your adventures, and what to leave out? (As a sub-question - how do you find such INSANE/awesome situations?)
That's the challenge of writing a memoir as opposed to a novel; you have assemble something compelling out of all these bits and pieces of real-life experience. It's like making art with found objects; you have to find a way to elevate these little memories and observations and cocktail party stories into something greater than the sum of its parts, and that can be tricky. For every scenario that made its way into the final book, I probably wrote and through out another one, especially at the beginning--oh God, I went on for pages about going to Freud's House and this Museum of Medical Oddities, and there was all this other stuff about a windmill--all gone. Maybe someday we'll do a collection of outtakes. Eventually though, the narrative starts to poke its way through the mess and then you know where to go. Also, there a reason we all have these stories we repeat over and over, that we keep returning to in our minds as emblematic of a certain time in our lives. It's because they were the best ones, or at least the most vivid ones, the ones we really have a handle on, you know? It's okay to to trust your instincts that way, I think.
As far as getting myself into these mad situations, well, when you spend a lot of time alone like I was doing during this period, people approach you, and loneliness can make you do a lot of things that are probably against your better judgment. And also, my whole life I've been a weirdo magnet. Out of the entire subway car of people, I'm the one the homeless guy decides he needs to speak to about Jesus, you know? I've always wondered why that is. I think it's because I'm interested, and crazy people can sense out interest the way a cat knows when you're opening a can of tuna on a different floor of the house. It's like: that girl in the ponytail! She's the one I can finally tell the story of my decade of sexual enslavement on that dairy farm in Saskatchewan! She'll understand! And in a funny way, I think I kind of do.
3. With your background in theatre, what inspired you to start writing essays?
Actors are all obsessed with their personal experiences, you know? It's not just narcissism (although that's a lot of it); it's a really important tool to be able to identify precisely what an experience meant to you, what your emotions were, what it looked like and what it felt like, in order to be able to access and reproduce all those things in a scene. So this was a form that felt very natural to me. It was just sort of an outgrowth of what I had already been trained to do.
The first things I wrote were actually for the theater. In acting school, I got really bored hearing the same monologues and scenes over and over again in class, so I started writing some of my own to perform, just really absurd little things that I would sometimes pretend I'd found somewhere. That led to writing plays, which sort of snowballed into prose, which led to the strange little career you see laid before you today.
4. Do you have plans for another book?
Yes! It's going to be a novel, and it's set in Berlin, and that's really all I am at liberty to tell you right now! I also just sold a three-book YA series, which I am very excited to begin work on. I'll give you the details as soon as it's announced, which it hasn't been officially yet. But you got the scoop here!
5. I've noticed that there's a new trend in writing right now - the female essayist is becoming incredibly popular, with books being released by you, Sloane Crosley, Julie Klausner and more. How does it feel to be part of this movement, and why do you think it's so (rightfully so) popular all of a sudden?
I think it's great, and I'm honored to keep being mentioned in the same breath as all of those women. What's making me happiest about it is that for so long, I think there has been an attitude, whether conscious or unconscious, that there's only really room for one or two women to be in ascendancy at one time, and that doesn't seem to be what's happening here. We're being referred to as influencing each other as opposed to crowding each other out--being treated like writers instead of token girls. That's really a big step. But I think that we're at an interesting crossroads for women in general right now, which is certainly contributing to the proliferation and popularity of this sort of writing, which is that this generation of women feel like they can be upfront about their flaws and foibles, that something personal is not going to be seen as somehow speaking for or undermining all women. We're finally getting to be responsible only for ourselves in that way, and refusing to honor judgment from all sides about how "girls are supposed to be." It's about freaking time, too.
7. What's your favorite book/movie/TV show?
I don't really have a favorite book or movie--I have different favorites for different times. But my favorite TV show is Dynasty. I really, really love Dynasty. And my second favorite is The Golden Girls. One day, I will write a PhD thesis on all the different actors that guest starred on Dynasty that also appeared on The Golden Girls, and Camille Paglia will rip her fucking heart out.
8. Most importantly - which do you prefer: cake or pie.
Cake. Definitely cake. Especially cheap supermarket birthday cake with the really gross thick frosting. That's my favorite thing.
2 comments:
Very cool interview, sounds like an interesting read as well, what was this interview for? (my apologies for not knowing what you're up to these days)
You are so lucky to interview all these amazing writers!
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