For me, the most wonderful thing of all about Edan Lepucki is not just her exquisite writing. It's that another writer gave her a shout-out on Stephen Colbert and she was on the show! How cool is that? Edan and Stephen Colbert are now besties.
She's the author of the novella If You’re Not Yet Like Me and the novel California, which debuted at #3 on the New York Times Bestsellers List and has been the #1 bestseller on the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestsellers lists. It’s also been on the IndieBound and Publishers Weekly Bestsellers Lists. California was a fall 2014 selection of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program.
I'm so jazzed to have her here. Thanks for coming on, Edan!
I always want to know
what is haunting a writer so he or she is absolutely compelled to write the
next novel. What was it for you?
Looking at my two novels, I can say that, as a writer, I’m
haunted by how familial relationships shape and influence us. How are you
changed by your parents? How has becoming a mother changed you—and what effects
have you had on your child? I am obsessed with these questions. I’m also
interested in intimacy: what it is, how it feels, and the various beautiful,
silly, damaging and profound ways we reveal ourselves to others (or don’t). I’m
interested in how a connection between two people grows stronger…or frays. I am
also haunted by my hometown of Los Angeles, which is such a mysterious,
strange, ugly-and-beautiful place. In Woman
No. 17, I was particularly interested in writing about the impersonal yet
stunning Hollywood Hills, with its affluent residents, its constant home
construction, its eerie coyotes, and all that might be going on behind closed
doors. I wanted to write primarily about women, and I wanted them to make bad
decisions. I think I will always be compelled to write about complicated
women—that is: women, period.
You had such an
almost surreal success with California, being on Stephen Colbert—did that
impact your writing of your second novel at all? Did it make you feel more
confident or more terrified?
I started working on Woman
No. 17 a year before California
was published, which meant I had about 100 pages before the whole Colbert
adventure began. I am so happy that was
the case because it meant the book could be whatever it wanted to be; it had
its own story, character, voice, and style…and it was all unrelated to the
exciting and, yes, surreal success of California.
And because I was already underway with Woman
No. 17, my writing process didn’t really change: I wasn’t daunted…and I
wasn’t super confident, either. (Or, I was in equal parts, as with any writing
project.) The only real difference is that I’m writing to you now from my
splendid writing throne, made of solid gold and encrusted with diamonds, which
they issue to every writer upon being named a New York Times bestseller. You
use yours too, right, Caroline?
For me, every novel
feels like I’m learning all over again how to write. How did writing Woman No.
17 (and thank you so much for not putting “Girl” in the title!) differ in the
nuts and bolts writing process for you?
First, thanks for thanking me for the title! I didn’t intend
for the book to be a commentary on all the books with “girl” in the title, but
once it was about to be in the world, I realized it was meaningful to tell a
story about adult women—and name them as such. And Lady in particular is no
girl. She is 41 and the mother of two children, one of whom she raised by
herself, and she's wrestling with all that's happened to her. In some ways
she's too much a veteran of life to be called a girl. Too much has happened to
her.
But I digress…
Woman No. 17 was
different from my previous projects because I had two first-person narrators to
juggle. I wanted their voices to be distinct, but I also wanted, as the book
progresses, for their narratives to echo and mirror one another, and for them
to even occasionally blur together in the reader’s mind. The doubling began
early on, in that magical-accidental fiction writing way: I wrote a passage
about how Lady’s real name was Pearl…and then, when I switched to Esther for
the first time, she was renaming herself
S. So, right away, I had two narrators using different names. Much of the
writing process was following those little leads, turning up that twinning
energy.
Another new and challenging element was the character Seth,
Lady’s teenage who gets involved with S. He doesn’t speak and his disability is
central to Lady’s relationship with him. I didn’t want to deny the reality of
his mutism, as I think such a disability would have a strong impact on one’s
life and relationships, but I also wanted to make sure he was a
multi-dimensional character with humanity and desires. I was interested in
showing how Lady and S dealt with his disability, and I also hoped the reader
would see around these narrators to consider how Seth would want to be
represented and treated, on his own terms. Is he as they see him? On a
nuts-and-bolts level, it was often very difficult writing dialogue scenes when
one character doesn’t say anything!
There’s so much about
life and art in this novel, that I want to ask where does any artist draw the
line, and should they? Is everything available to be made into art or should we
respect boundaries? Does art imitate life or is it the other way around?
These big questions can sustain many contradictory answers,
from, “Art is art and must be made, no matter who it offends or what
relationships it destroys,” to, “Art is not as important as the people you
love.” For me there is certainly a
middle ground; I am lucky to have a family and a partner who are supportive of
whatever stories I need to tell, but I also try to respectful of privacy and
feelings. I think everyone’s glad I don’t write memoir! I loved writing S because her youth gives her
a certain recklessness as far as her art-making. She is beholden to no one…or
so she foolishly thinks.
As for the other question, sometimes I believe art—narrative
art, at least—is simply a clumsy stumble to capture those ineffable moments of
life; other times, it feels like we consume so much narrative that we
understand ourselves as narrators, as characters in stories. Put in some
earbuds and there’s a soundtrack, too. What does that do to us, this
delightful, illusory, dangerous sense of control, of symmetry, of
cause-and-effect?
I’m so curious about
how your being a mother influenced your writing about mothers and children?
What surprised you? I know I always worried I’d be less creative with
children—and instead, I feel like I am more, more, more.
The fact that I’m a mother means that parenting and children
are a central theme and subject matter for me—at least, right now, as I’m in
the thick of it, with two kids ages 5 and 1. As I said in your first question,
I’m haunted by familial relationships, and I’m just fascinated by parenting:
the difficulty of it, the sacrifices it requires, how it provides intense
moments of joy and beauty—but also, wow, how boring it can be, too. I’m
interested in how it can simultaneously return you to your body, and also
alienate you from that body. I’m interested in how the relationship adjusts as
the child ages—how you see them anew as they mature, and how you come into
focus for them, again and again. All of it has surprised me. Man, it’s just
such a complicated and beautiful relationship, perfect for fiction!
I haven’t slept through the night in over a year, so I often can’t think of very simple words. I’ll say “pergola” when I mean “pillow” for instance. But aside from this (temporary!) mental slowness, I’d say that, yes, yes, motherhood has made me more creative. I’ve written more as a mother than I did before I was one. It’s also taught me the value of uninterrupted writing time. I try my best not to squander it.
What’s obsessing you
now and why?
The same-old, same-old: families, mothering, Los Angeles.
But also: alternative therapies and the quest to be happy and well; a commune;
a weird, hidden estate; a possibly magical baby. It’s too early to say anything
more.
I’m also obsessed with Jane Smiley’s Last Hundred Years
Trilogy (I’m currently on book two), my dry eyelids that won’t stop being all
red and flakey no matter how many fancy creams I slather on, and buying a new
living room rug.
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
There’s a lot of drinking in Woman No. 17, so you should ask
me for a cocktail recipe. I’ll leave you with a link to Esquire’s recipe for a
Sidecar, which is one of my favorite weekend-night drinks. I like to make one
and watch “Insterstellar” and then weep over my growing children in this
too-short life.
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